Minecraft and the Cost of Starting Over

My Minecraft World

I have played on the same Minecraft world for the past year and a half. Some structures remain almost exactly as I originally built them, while others have been expanded or edited as the world developed around them.

As a result, the world is not particularly consistent. An older building might sit beside something much larger that I built recently. Roads have to work around structures that were never designed with them in mind. Sometimes, the easiest solution would be to remove everything and build again.

But I usually don’t.

When I cannot treat an existing world as a blank space, I have to consider what is already there. An older building might limit where a road can go or force a new structure into an unusual shape. Instead of designing what would work best independently, I have to design what works alongside decisions I already made.

There is also a cost to starting over. Demolishing something means losing the resources and time already invested into building it. More importantly, older parts of my world have value beyond how useful or well-designed they are. They show how the world developed, what I was building at a certain time, and how my ideas have changed since.

I think this exists outside of Minecraft too. Older buildings, for example, are not always demolished simply because something more efficient could replace them. Renovating them can preserve the resources already invested into their construction, while also maintaining the history or cultural significance they have accumulated. The best solution therefore depends on more than what could be built in their place. We often approach improvement as if the ideal solution is whatever we would design from scratch. But existing things carry previous investments, limitations, and sometimes cultural or emotional significance. A technically better replacement is not necessarily a better decision if it requires sacrificing everything that already has value.

Minecraft has made me think about improvement less as replacing the old with something better, and more as deciding what is actually worth replacing. Sometimes demolition is justified. Other times, the more interesting solution is adapting what already exists to serve something it was never originally designed.

Designing for a Changing Environment

Montauk Point Lighthouse, New York

When I visited the Montauk Lighthouse Museum, dioramas of the landscape and lighthouse were displayed, spanning several centuries. Individually, each diorama simply showed what Montauk looked like at a certain point in time. But as I viewed them in chronological order, something else became apparent. The lighthouse remained in place, while the coastline surrounding it continued to change.

The Montauk Lighthouse was built in 1796, but coastal erosion has gradually brought the edge of the land closer to the lighthouse. Engineers have since constructed a stone revetment along the coastline, where large rocks absorb the energy of incoming waves and reduce further erosion.

What interested me was how the timeframe changed what I was able to see. Changes to an environment can be gradual and difficult to recognize over a few years. But when the timeframe expands to decades, or even centuries, smaller changes accumulate into a much clearer trend. This is especially important with environmental problems like coastal erosion, rising sea levels, and changes to ecosystems.

Montauk Coastline, 1796

Montauk Coastline, 1860

Montauk Coastline, 1903

Montauk Coastline, 1943

It also changed how I thought about environmental engineering. Engineers aren’t only designing for the environment that exists today. Looking at how an environment has changed over a larger timeframe can indicate how it may continue to change, and what we build has to account for that.

The individual dioramas showed what Montauk looked like at a certain time. Collectively, they showed something more important: how much it had changed.

From Understanding to Engineering

iGEM Grand Jamboree 2025, France

Before iGEM, I had already worked on research involving the biodegradation of crude oil in desert soil. The research focused on understanding how microorganisms could contribute to breaking down pollutants in the environment. But when I joined iGEM, the question changed. Instead of studying what biological systems could already do, we had to consider what we could design them to do.

Our project focused on improving soil microbial resilience under extreme heat, with the broader goal of supporting urban greenery in arid environments. We explored biological systems that could improve heat tolerance and water retention. But designing a solution required more than understanding the biology behind it. We had to consider how different components would work together, how the system could be tested, and whether the solution could realistically function in the environment it was designed for.

What interested me was the difference between understanding a problem and engineering a solution to it. Research can explain why something happens or reveal a process that already exists. Engineering begins with that understanding, but asks another question: what can we do with it?

This became clearer when I attended the iGEM Grand Jamboree. Teams approached problems in agriculture, medicine, industry, and the environment using the same underlying field of synthetic biology, but produced completely different solutions. The science provided the tools, while engineering determined how those tools could be applied to a specific problem.

It also changed how I thought about what I wanted to study. I was already interested in environmental research, particularly in understanding how biological processes could address environmental problems. But through iGEM, I became more interested in what happens after that understanding is established. How can a process be applied, designed around limitations, and eventually developed into a solution that works outside of research?

That distinction is what drew me toward engineering. I still value understanding how environmental systems work, but I am more interested in using that understanding as a starting point. iGEM showed me that I did not only want to study environmental problems. I wanted to work on the process of solving them.