This post is really cool, I’ve curated it. It abstracted some massive constraints in history into the key numbers (how much people, horses and ships could carry + how much resources an army needs) and helped me understand history much better. The generalisation of 10-20% is interesting. More stuff like this please! (...I mean I guess there’s your whole sequence on this stuff :D)
Btw, your section on extreme slackness reminds me of Hanson’s Age of Em, which is related, mapping out the future of civilization if we’re all ems. Here are related quotes from his summary on the website:
...a kilo-em runs at 1000 times human speed, while a milli-em runs at one-thousandth… The cost to run an em is proportional to speed probably within at least a factor of one million above and below human speed… Ems can meet well in virtual reality when signal delays are less than reaction times; kilo-ems need to be within 15 kilometers...
Like us, ems gain by clumping together into cities. Unlike us, ems slower than kilo-ems can interact fully across cities without moving brains via virtual reality. This greatly reduces travel congestion, allows bigger cities, and puts most ems in a few big city-states. Iconic city locations are less about travel. City centers host faster ems and those doing interconnected tasks, although the very fastest are often in peripheries. City combinatorial auctions can substitute for centralized zoning and utility allocation, allowing em cities to deal with interdependencies quickly and flexibly. Working ems are faster than milli-ems, kilo-ems is the typical speed, and leisure usually runs faster than work. Em speeds clump, with a ratio between clumps near eight, and so cities may separate into regions for different speeds. Physical transport across a city seems very slow to kilo-ems, encouraging very local production, and hugely discouraging space travel.
It makes me think that as you approach movement at the speed of light, this results in an equilibrium noticeably different than if you approach infinite speed (like your portals), and that might be a more applicable ideal to think about.
This post is really cool, I’ve curated it. It abstracted some massive constraints in history into the key numbers (how much people, horses and ships could carry + how much resources an army needs) and helped me understand history much better. The generalisation of 10-20% is interesting. More stuff like this please! (...I mean I guess there’s your whole sequence on this stuff :D)
Btw, your section on extreme slackness reminds me of Hanson’s Age of Em, which is related, mapping out the future of civilization if we’re all ems. Here are related quotes from his summary on the website:
It makes me think that as you approach movement at the speed of light, this results in an equilibrium noticeably different than if you approach infinite speed (like your portals), and that might be a more applicable ideal to think about.