This is an interesting study, it seems that his numbers are not too far off what I plugged in as a placeholder (that our current energy consumption is within a couple magnitudes from becoming climate altering)
Though I’m not making sense of the nanobots yet haha
Ah thanks, so the equilibrium is more robust than I initially assumed, didn’t expect that to happen.
So the issue won’t be as pressing as climate change could be, although some kind of ceiling still exists for energy consumption on Earth nevertheless...
Oh yes! This can make more sense now.
#humans has a decreasing marginal returns, since really the main concern for #humanity is the ability to recover, and that while increases with #humans it is not linear.
I do think individuals have “some” concerns about whether humanity in general will survive, since all humans still share *some* genes with each individual, the survival and propagation of strangers can still have some utility for a human individual (I’m not sure where am I going here...)
Ah, I never thought about this being a secretary problem.
Well, initially I used it as an analogy for evolution and didn’t think too much about memorising/backtracking.
Oh wait, the mountaineer has memory about each peak he saw then he should go back to one of the high peaks he encountered before (assuming the flood hasn’t moped the floor yet, which is a given since he is still exploring), there is probably no irrecoverable rejections here like in secretary problem.
The second choice is a strange one. I think the entire group taking the best chance on one peak ALSO maximises the expected number of survivals, together with maximising each individual’s chance of survival.
But it still seems that “a higher chance that someone survives” is something that we want to take into the utility calculation when humanity wants to make choices in face of a catastrophes.
For example, if a coming disaster gives us two choices
(a): 50% chance that humans will go extinct, 50% chance nothing happens.
(b): 90% chance that 80% of humans will die.
The number of expected deaths of (b) significantly exceeds the one of (a), and (a) expects a greater number of humans surviving. But I guess many will agree that (b) is the better option to choose.
Yes, those two pieces can change the situation dramatically (and I have tried writing another parable including them, but found it a bit difficult for me)
I’m pondering about what is the best strategy with communication. Initially I thought I can spread them out and each mountaineer knows the location/height of other mountaineers in a given radius (significantly larger than the visibility in the fog) and add that information into their “move towards the greatest height” algorithm. Which might work, but I cannot vigorously show how useful that will be.
Regardless, I think evolution can’t get much better than the third scenario, it doesn’t seem to backtrack and most likely doesn’t communicate.
There is also that my analogy fails to consider that the “environment” changes overtime, so the “mountain landscape” will not stay the same when you come back to a place after leaving it. This probably prevents backtracking, but doesn’t change the outcome that you’d most likely be stuck on a hilltop that isn’t the optimal.
I think there are economic factors under the play, although it will be more subtle than just a plain comparison of “alleged GDP per capita”.
I recall that both China and the Middle East went through a process of “de-industrialisation“ from the European High Middle Ages to the Early Modern period. Essentially both China and the Middle East started substituting machines for simple human labour, causing cranes, water mills, etc to become rarer over time.
And strangely enough a study showed that when this was happening there was little difference in real wages between Western Europe and the Middle East (so the substitution of capital with labour was not due to low wgaes), and I guess China won’t be too different in this regard.
Why did this happen is beyond me, I think susceptibility to nomadic raid/invasion was mentioned.