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Exponential growth can continue in virtual realities as the physical reality maxes out.
by orasis 7y ago
Exponential growth can continue in virtual realities as the physical reality maxes out.
- incompatible 7y agoThis assumes that the virtual realities are constructed in a proprietary model with consumers and producers. Actually, everybody would have to be both, otherwise the system would grind to a halt with consumers unable to raise funds to purchase products. But information doesn't need to be rationed in that way: what happens if people join an open source virtual reality instead, where consumption is unlimited and production is voluntary? Nothing in this world would be part of the economy as economists measure it.
- kreldjarn 7y agoDid you read the piece? They talk about VR.
- Ancalagon 7y agoActually, they dismissed it pretty quickly I thought.
- jbay808 7y agoI believe the "dismissal" is this cogent argument: Shuffling bits around takes energy; if your virtual reality services grow exponentially and energy production doesn't, then the price of energy must also increase exponentially or else one of your VR companies could buy all the energy and shut down the competition. Energy production (and computation) are limited by the capacity of the earth to vent heat into space at a reasonable surface temperature. So unless you allow for an exponentially expanding real-world physical economy, you can't have an exponentially growing virtual economy.
- b_tterc_p 7y agoThe price of energy is capped at the cost to privately produce it for yourself, which is probably pretty low in the scheme of all encompassing virtual real estate fiscal gods.
- orasis 7y ago1 additional bit of information allows exponentially more complexity to exist. Digital scales very very well.
- heraclius 7y agoThere are energetic constraints on the processing of information that eventually become relevant, though far beyond limits sans virtualisation.
- rini17 7y agoOr perhaps the capability of humans to actually have so many economical transactions will max out first, no matter what virtual reality.