Re: Burning the Cosmic Commons

Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.Berkeley.EDU)
Fri, 27 Mar 1998 16:58:51 -0800

Wei Dai writes:
>> but regions should still fear falling too far behind competing neighboring
>> regions. So a pressure for maximum speed still seems to apply.
>
>Wouldn't this pressure only apply at the borders? As each region
>concentrates its resources on its border, the interiors of such regions
>might be relatively untouched by the colonization wave. Perhaps that would
>explain why we haven't observed a colonization wave.

I doubt you'd get it being untouched for very long, but you'd have to
work out a model to better see. My paper suggests that maybe a colonization
wave *did* pass by here, its just that they didn't stay around long.

'gene writes:
>Where are the artefacts? Where are the global signatures (IR holes in the
>skies)?

In my model, they may not stay around long enough to build visible artifacts.

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