Ludic fallacy

Biological Parallel

Lab experiments show fruit flies prefer certain temperatures and foods—clean, repeatable, quantifiable. Then you release them into the wild, where temperature fluctuates hourly, food appears unpredictably, and predators hunt randomly. The sterile ludic environment (controlled lab) bears little resemblance to the irreducible complexity of real ecosystems. Biology in the wild isn't a game with known rules; it's Knightian uncertainty where the rules change, the board shifts, and new players arrive unannounced. Clean models predict clean systems, but nature is comprehensively messy.