Why do you prefer neolithic Middle East to the paleolithic? The advent of agriculture probably decreased the life expectancy, and I don’t see anything which could compensate it in early agricultural societies. Put another way, I would strongly prefer a dangerous, but at least a bit adventurous life of a hunter-gatherer to the slavish work of a primitive peasant.
Agriculture, city life, and large scale trade networks arose together, and I prefer this higher population and culture density and lower risk of violent death to Paleolithic somewhat higher quality of food.
I ordered the choices until I was happy about them (that part wasn’t too difficult as they’re mostly chronological). Then I did “if I was about to live in nth, and there was a time machine that with p% moved me to n+1th, and otherwise to n-1th era, what would p need to be for me to take it” kind of lottery thinking.
Conversion of these to utilities was done by Ruby code in the post.
Why do you prefer neolithic Middle East to the paleolithic? The advent of agriculture probably decreased the life expectancy, and I don’t see anything which could compensate it in early agricultural societies. Put another way, I would strongly prefer a dangerous, but at least a bit adventurous life of a hunter-gatherer to the slavish work of a primitive peasant.
Agriculture, city life, and large scale trade networks arose together, and I prefer this higher population and culture density and lower risk of violent death to Paleolithic somewhat higher quality of food.
Hey taw, did you write a code to present yourself with lotteries, log your choices, and compute your utilities?
I ordered the choices until I was happy about them (that part wasn’t too difficult as they’re mostly chronological). Then I did “if I was about to live in nth, and there was a time machine that with p% moved me to n+1th, and otherwise to n-1th era, what would p need to be for me to take it” kind of lottery thinking.
Conversion of these to utilities was done by Ruby code in the post.