Re: poly: star-probe functional forms; economics of morality

From: Robin Hanson <hanson@econ.berkeley.edu>
Date: Thu Feb 05 1998 - 12:50:41 PST

Rich Schroeppel comments:
>R(s) should probably start at R(0)=0.

The idea is that an arriving probe brings with it resources
in the sense of organized machinery, and that this machinery
then tries to "reproduce".

>There are "step function" effects, as new ore is discovered.

I don't see a prayer of knowing what these are to model them now.

>And an upper limit -- eventual exhaustion, except maybe of the stars.

The function I gave has such an upper limit.

>Survival fraction: Might need to reflect somewhat fractal
>organization of star systems: clumps of molecules, star clusters,
>galaxies, super-clusters, galaxy centers, etc.

I'm modeling a uniform distribution of identical oases.
Not right, but seems a good first step.

>Q(P): Would this be affected if a probe could detect that an
>oasis is occupied, and bypass it?

Yes.

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
Received on Thu Feb 5 21:03:56 1998

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Tue Mar 07 2006 - 14:45:29 PST