[video] Robin Hanson: Uploads Economics 101

Maybe I can write more on near-far and signaling in another book. One thing at a time. Most of the things that make our physical world luxurious or impoverished have little to do with the cost of simulating them. A dirty smelly hut is just as expensive to simulate as a vast mansion. Yes, they might spend 0.1% more relative to brain computing costs on computing VR if that increases work productivity by more than 0.1%.

khafra14y20

The point: Not that a vast mansion will be too difficult to simulate relative to a smelly hut, but that anything simulated in sufficient detail will become luxury, while non-wealthy ems live in the relative squalor of palatial mansions that just don't look/feel/sound/smell quite right, in an unpleasant way.

1gwern14y

A mansion will have dozens or hundreds of rooms; how can equally difficult rooms be just as expensive to simulate when there are hundreds more rooms in one scenario than another?

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