Can anyone recommend some resources, or provide actual examples, of any relevant evolutionary-biology-style equations which could describe what factors would most likely predominate to allow for the survival of sapience, given such factors as the ease which any given individual can acquire the means of killing large numbers of people, the scale of those means, the willingness o people to use those means, the ability of small groups to travel away from other groups, and so on?
Or, put another way - is there any way I can quantitatively check my intuition that a valuable way to avoid certain existential risks is to flee Earth?
Quite possibly- My impression is that space habitats tend to be more fragile and expensive than planets for a number of reasons, and so when you compare equal-cost options a lot of benefits of space habitats evaporate (with the caveat that any estimate of costs is going to be very, very wide).
Space habitats more expensive than terraforming Mars? You're having to import large quantities of volatiles in either case, Mars needs more imported per person supported (since you'll be using lots of them in the upper atmosphere where they only provide radiation shielding and pressure, instead of smaller quantities to directly support biologically active processes), Mars outgasses the hydrogen you import thanks to photodisassociation of water molecules, and Mars has half the available solar power of a 1 AU orbit (and while you can possibly power a habita... (read more)