StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Just to make the economic situation a little more complicated: There are still 20 billion or so people still suffering in hell, and digging them out and building even minimum accomadation takes time and money. I imagine that sooner or later either the living or the dead (and possibly both) will impose a 'get others out of hell tax' on all cross-portal transactions above a certain amount.

More complex II: I know that some people seem to be happy with the idea of a cardboard box afterlife, but I for one would like to have internet access, a good computer, cable TV, a car, and maybe a gun. (And it is Hell, so maybe add an xbox to that list.) Moreover I'd like to insure these things against theaft and fire and flood damage, and replace them as they wear out. I can't see how you could do that on an income of only a few hundred or a few thousand dollars a year. And the non NATO 2nd lifers will want that too. And it's not like english skills matter any more.

So all the fun of economics AND immigration too!

And to possibly make it simplier again... The demons are (allegedly) able to live on earth because they are able to regenerate their own bioenergy-field. Or some such plot device. If they can do this, then there's no reason the dead couldn't do the same via technology, in which case they could stay on Earth as long as they were very careful in monitoring their battery packs. This would interestingly present people with a choice: Rely on the equivolent of a buggy pace maker, or choosing to live elsewhere. This could slow the slump, and offer certain financial institutions with a get out clause. "Well if you're choosing to violate the terms of your policy (which we wrote with this in mind) then that's your problem!"

ANTIcarrot wrote:More complex II: I know that some people seem to be happy with the idea of a cardboard box afterlife, but I for one would like to have internet access, a good computer, cable TV, a car, and maybe a gun. (And it is Hell, so maybe add an xbox to that list.) Moreover I'd like to insure these things against theaft and fire and flood damage, and replace them as they wear out. I can't see how you could do that on an income of only a few hundred or a few thousand dollars a year. And the non NATO 2nd lifers will want that too. And it's not like english skills matter any more.

I see no reason why working in Hell should pay worse than doing the same on Earth (well, until we get to the very far future when Hell is ludicrously more populous and there are likely a variety of jobs on Earth that take advantage of Earth's properties that pay well due to the scarcity of Earth people, which would give Earth people a nice bit of money to get started and by then the entire economic situation would be radically different). Now, about those costs, I don't have the numbers but I doubt it'd be too much more expensive than on Earth to have that stuff once we get going, and the amount of time it takes to save up for something semi-permanent like a house is a considerably better investment, so I'd say that your minimum level of living is eminently attainable once things get settled down with supply and demand and we start exploiting Hell.

GrayAnderson wrote:I suspect the curvature is somewhat less drastic than 1:100 (keeping the size of a neutron star in mind and knowing that this place is that much bigger), but I still see the compatibility issues Stuart raised (and as he put them, they make sense).

The curvature is such that all straight paths loop back on themselves after about 40,000 kilometers; that practically requires curvature on the order of 1:100.

It's not spacetime curvature that makes neutron stars so small; quite the opposite. The point is that in normal space time (which is for practical purposes flat), the only way to get significant curvature is to place a really large mass at extremely close range. But the mass has to be so great that you can't use ordinary matter like rocks or lead, because they aren't dense enough: by the time you're close enough to the center of mass to experience significant curvature, you're already inside it and the gravitational effects are canceling each other out.

So you need something that is both extremely massive and extremely dense very close by to achieve that much curvature in our universe. I don't think dwarf stars can do it, but I know black holes can, and neutron stars might for all I know; I haven't actually sat down and checked the math on them yet.

Well, I did some law digging and found out that Finland for one does not have issue of wealth drain, or at least it is reduced.

Our laws require that person to whom is receiving the possessions from the last will must be alive at the time of death. Essentially, that negates possibility of making testament for yourself, you would need someone else to act as recipient of property. Person can be actual or legal but still in existence prior to death.

Exception to rule is case of an unborn child, but even those must be conceived prior to death.

Another limitation is that in case of having descendants or widow. Widow first receives half, unless there is a prenuptial agreement, then children are entitled to at least half of what remains.

Because of legal issues like this, I think there is going to be quite a lot of difference on how this situation affects nations.

Simon: I'm going to beg you to enlighten me on that (seriously, I am...I'm no physicist and the math can make me dizzy, but I like to at least understand what's going on). I'm not sure what a given curvature would produce...or for that matter, even what curvature the surface of the Earth has (even if it's negative in a sense here).

Tiwaz wrote:Well, I did some law digging and found out that Finland for one does not have issue of wealth drain, or at least it is reduced.

Our laws require that person to whom is receiving the possessions from the last will must be alive at the time of death. Essentially, that negates possibility of making testament for yourself, you would need someone else to act as recipient of property. Person can be actual or legal but still in existence prior to death.

Exception to rule is case of an unborn child, but even those must be conceived prior to death.

Another limitation is that in case of having descendants or widow. Widow first receives half, unless there is a prenuptial agreement, then children are entitled to at least half of what remains.

Because of legal issues like this, I think there is going to be quite a lot of difference on how this situation affects nations.

Well, the answer there is that you'd set up a corporation (a Hell Corporation, probably linked to via Delaware in the US) as a legal person, and leave your assets to said corporation. You'd be the owner of the only notional share prior to that, but that would be held in Hell as an HDR (Hell Depository Reciept) beyond the reach of your home government. You die, the assets (at least partly) transfer to that corporation, and you pick up your share and your retained assets. Even if you're constrained to 1/4 of your assets, in a lot of cases that will translate to "I leave the house to my wife and kids and take the money and run". And all of this averts arguments about your second-life self being akin to a cloned child and all sorts of other nonsense I could throw at the idea.

I make that argument to make the point that there are ways to get around almost every law, even if doing so involves playing a bit fast and loose with the tax man. And as I said before, there are probably plenty of people willing to risk jail time to obtain a decent standard of living in Hell.

Chlodwig wrote:

Ultimately, though, in one sense you have a sump. In another sense, you have a highly workable capital pool that doesn't require much return on their investment. That presents issues of its own (crowding out and whatnot), but the effects of those issues are a lot less obvious to me at first glance.

Im not sure if interest as we know it will really work in this cenario in the very long run.
The problem is that yes, with any interest at all the money pool is going to rise, but having a couple billion 2nd lifers generating huge amounts of money will only work if there is something to actually buy for them. I can see a big inflation comming up because people have a lot of money and not enough goods/services to buy with them.
Was it Hitchhikers Guide where they head tree-leaves as money and ended up with 3 forests for one peanut?

My guess for the very long term is that most production/capital is going to Hell or Heaven and Earth is 'reduced' to a breeding ground.
Why spend your first life which only lasts 80-100 years (or 40-50? and then entering 2nd life voluntarily? ) on work when you have all eternity in hell to do so much easier anyway?
Especially if 2nd lifers can't visit earth for more than a day or so I don't see much point in investing into infrastructore on earth (again in the very long run).

I guess the question is timescales. The other thing is that yes, you've got the issue of "if there were streets paved of gold there'd be something else used as a means of exchange" situation. However, let me suggest that you're going to have a steadily expanding population...if anything, the demand for money will be rising for quite some time even without inflation doing anything, just to keep the dollars in circulation per person stable. Let me also point out that a situation akin to that with China may emerge, too: Money does go in, and they have a positive balance of trade, but investment back out does need to be factored in. On at least a medium-term timescale (i.e. years to decades), this should hold up...and I'll again point out the fact that with the demons to work with, we've got some pretty interesting expansion possibilities in the long run.

I also second the point made by ANTIcarrot (which I think echoed an earlier point of mine): living in a box may be fine for some people for whom that was their original standard of living, but you're also going to have plenty of people that want the equivalent of a middle-class American lifestyle for the rest of time. Some may even want to, on occasion, have a first-class dinner simply to do so even if they don't metabolize a bit of it. There are plenty of things that will be subject to at least some scarcity, and there are physical goods as well...to build on ANTIcarrot's point, if Nintendo suddenly winds up with a billion potential customers, they're going to be working that market. Same with Hollywood and films (I think this has been discussed before), with concerts, etc. The markets are too big not to go after, and this is one case where I think supply will create its own demand in a lot of cases (even if the various media differ on audience...some ancients may well be more interested in a poetry recitation in lieu of an action film).

I guess the question is timescales. The other thing is that yes, you've got the issue of "if there were streets paved of gold there'd be something else used as a means of exchange" situation. However, let me suggest that you're going to have a steadily expanding population...if anything, the demand for money will be rising for quite some time even without inflation doing anything, just to keep the dollars in circulation per person stable. Let me also point out that a situation akin to that with China may emerge, too: Money does go in, and they have a positive balance of trade, but investment back out does need to be factored in. On at least a medium-term timescale (i.e. years to decades), this should hold up...and I'll again point out the fact that with the demons to work with, we've got some pretty interesting expansion possibilities in the long run.

Agreed.
My main point was that I think that in the very long run focus of just about anything is going to move to Hell/Heaven simply because the majority of people will live there. As soon as that happens (and after a couple generation when the 'old money' doesn't have any connection back to earth I am wondering how people in their first life are going to pay for their education and life.
Lets say the current generation moves all their assets to hell, the next generation has to start over but has at least the physical assets on earth. in 2-3 generations you have most wealth on people who are 3-4 generations removed from current first lifers. By then most assets are going to be where the majority of people are going to be which is hell. I am really wondering what this will do for all kind of social structures. Are families going to be really large? Especially with basically endless 2nd. life?
For corporations this presents another problem. Consider somebody working to a top position. This usually happens when the previous generation gets promoted even further or retires. Now your 2nd life is going on for a very long time. Nobody is going to retire so the younger generations will have trouble to get a good position (aggravating the problem that first lifers will be removed from income even further).
IMO this setting might be very interesting in a couple hundred years.

The otherwise good short story Three Worlds Collide makes a couple interesting points, in passing.

In this world, people live forever barring violent death, which is normally (the story being a notable exception) rare. As such, they had to come up with ways to solve this incumbency problem.

Part of the story is that there has turned out to be a virtually infinite number of wormholes orbiting each and every star, which means exponential growth is in effect and has been for a long time. This is roughly the same environment that I'd expect in the hell-verse; we have no reason to think the number of universes is limited* (counts typically go zero-one-near or actual infinity), and automated portal generation would also allow semi-automated exploration.

Sustained exponential growth with a doubling time shorter than one first-life lifetime implies that, at any given time and once we've overcome the inertia from earlier periods of sub-exponential (or slower exponential) growth, most people will still be on their first life. As such, in a democracy the first-lifers will actually hold the vote, and humans are notoriously short-sighted. Chances are good they will, at least, shoot for some kind of fairness.

So. The solution they came up with is actually pretty simple: Nobody above a certain age (one or two centuries, I believe) is allowed to hold an administrative position. There are likely also limits on how much economic power one person can hold, but that was not explicitly stated.

It's a dramatic change, yes. It would be very hard to rewire our current legal system for this, but the hell-verse humans at least have centuries before it becomes a pressing matter. And we've seen larger changes in our own history, some even reasonable.

One thing that bugs me is that everyone here seems to assume the current precedents matter. They likely won't; what the courts say is important only up to the point where new laws are written, and those laws will be tailored to a condition where first-death isn't very important. I'd be surprised if they end up with anything as sane as a shelf-life on power, though.

*: The fact that it's possible to target a portal to a particular universe does not mean the total number is not infinite. As a very simple example, consider the case where universes exist in an infinitely large true-universe, and portal coordinates are relative to the origin.

So. The solution they came up with is actually pretty simple: Nobody above a certain age (one or two centuries, I believe) is allowed to hold an administrative position. There are likely also limits on how much economic power one person can hold, but that was not explicitly stated.

Hmm, interesting one but it would assume that everybody in power voluntarily steps down after their time is up. I think something like that actually working is rather unlikely.

It's a dramatic change, yes. It would be very hard to rewire our current legal system for this, but the hell-verse humans at least have centuries before it becomes a pressing matter. And we've seen larger changes in our own history, some even reasonable.

Agreed,
the question is how long it would take and how thorough it will be and if it can be done without a nice and long civil war.
IMO a lot of economic concepts we take for granted now will need to be changed quite drastically.

There are strong cultural taboos against not stepping down, and an entire caste (well, sort of; it is of course voluntary) of people whose sole purpose is to safeguard the rules and sanity in general.

I'm not entirely sure how we'd get there, but I think the scenario would be stable enough once established.

(And if you actually read the story, you'll see real aliens. The demons and angels don't count, not even close. Of course, they're not really supposed to be aliens, so that's not a problem unless you expect them to be.)

GrayAnderson wrote:Simon: I'm going to beg you to enlighten me on that (seriously, I am...I'm no physicist and the math can make me dizzy, but I like to at least understand what's going on). I'm not sure what a given curvature would produce...or for that matter, even what curvature the surface of the Earth has (even if it's negative in a sense here).

Be warned: I may be doing something wrong here. I think I know what I'm talking about, but don't take my word for it; get a second opinion.

Think about the Earth. At the equator, the Earth has a circumference of about 25000 miles. Therefore, if you walk 25000 miles in any direction on the Earth's surface, you will wind up back where you started, having gone around a circle.* Now, consider that there are 360 degrees in that circle. Each degree corresponds to about 25000/360, or about 70 miles on the surface.

A bit of fiddling with trig shows that if you walk one degree around the circumference of a circle, the path you take will diverge from a straight line by about 1.75%. 1.75% of 70 miles is 1.225 miles. So for every 70 miles you walk on the Earth's surface, your path is deflected away from a straight line by a distance of 1.225 miles towards the center of the Earth. That's a curvature of about 1 in 50, give or take a little.

On top of that, note that two lines that start out parallel on the Earth's surface eventually cross. You can test this by starting at the equator and heading due south, while a friend starts heading south beside you. At first, any instrument you care to use will show that you are travelling on parallel paths, and any instrument you care to use will show that both of you are travelling in a 'straight' path, not bending to the left or right. And yet somewhere between your starting point and the South Pole, you will bump into your friend.

*Assuming you can walk on the ocean bottom, or that you're Jesus and can walk on water, or that you wait for a "Snowball Earth" period in which the oceans are frozen solid and the planet looks like Hoth...
_________

Both these things happen on Earth because the Earth is shaped like a ball; walking around on a sphere you're inevitably going to go in circles. In Hell, it's because of "positive" spacetime curvature. In positively curved space, space bends back on itself after you walk about 25000 miles, so, just as with the math above, we can show that the curvature is about one part in 50.

But this kind of curvature is a funny animal, because it doesn't involve bending a physical surface (like the surface of the Earth). It bends the definition of straight lines. Fire a laser through a region of curved spacetime, and it will follow a straight path... but from the point of view of an outside observer, the laser will seem to bend. In the same way, if I have a B-1 bomber with inertial guidance that tells it whether it is moving up, down, left, or right, and I fly it in a "straight" line through Hell, never changing my course... sooner or later I will come back to my starting point, even though I never changed course. And this would be true of any course I picked- as a result, parallel lines in Hell will eventually meet, just as lines of longitude on the Earth's surface meet at the poles.

Spacetime around the Earth is only very slightly curved, to the point where it's very difficult to tell, because the only masses around that can warp spacetime with their gravity are light** (like the Earth) or distant (like the Sun). For all practical purposes, we can treat spacetime around the Earth as flat: parallel lines drawn in space*** will not meet.

**In astronomical terms...
***Not on the surface of the Earth, which is curved, but through the air or through outer space near the planet.
________

But if we have a very dense mass very close by (say, a neutron star that weighs as much as the Sun but packs it all into a space the size of Manhattan Island), then the gravity of that mass is sufficient to produce much sharper spacetime curvature. At that point you might see situations where spacetime itself is curved to something like 1 in 100 or 1 in 50. Get close enough to a black hole and you're guaranteed to see it. But in nature, the only places where this can happen are extremely dangerous places to stand, which is why I described them as being within "danger close" range of the objects in question. Anywhere that gravity as we know it is intense enough to warp our (basically flat) spacetime into something with a curvature of 1 in 50, gravity is strong enough to be a major threat to your life. And any object capable of generating such an intense gravitational field will be doing very alarming things in the way of radiation, electromagnetic fields, and so on.

So except for the (somewhat false) analogy to the curvature of the Earth's surface, the curved space of Hell isn't like anything else we can observe in our own universe.

First of all, Simon, thanks for the explanation. Makes sense, and I think I follow.

Baughn wrote:The otherwise good short story Three Worlds Collide makes a couple interesting points, in passing.

In this world, people live forever barring violent death, which is normally (the story being a notable exception) rare. As such, they had to come up with ways to solve this incumbency problem.

Part of the story is that there has turned out to be a virtually infinite number of wormholes orbiting each and every star, which means exponential growth is in effect and has been for a long time. This is roughly the same environment that I'd expect in the hell-verse; we have no reason to think the number of universes is limited* (counts typically go zero-one-near or actual infinity), and automated portal generation would also allow semi-automated exploration.

Sustained exponential growth with a doubling time shorter than one first-life lifetime implies that, at any given time and once we've overcome the inertia from earlier periods of sub-exponential (or slower exponential) growth, most people will still be on their first life. As such, in a democracy the first-lifers will actually hold the vote, and humans are notoriously short-sighted. Chances are good they will, at least, shoot for some kind of fairness.

So. The solution they came up with is actually pretty simple: Nobody above a certain age (one or two centuries, I believe) is allowed to hold an administrative position. There are likely also limits on how much economic power one person can hold, but that was not explicitly stated.

It's a dramatic change, yes. It would be very hard to rewire our current legal system for this, but the hell-verse humans at least have centuries before it becomes a pressing matter. And we've seen larger changes in our own history, some even reasonable.

One thing that bugs me is that everyone here seems to assume the current precedents matter. They likely won't; what the courts say is important only up to the point where new laws are written, and those laws will be tailored to a condition where first-death isn't very important. I'd be surprised if they end up with anything as sane as a shelf-life on power, though.

*: The fact that it's possible to target a portal to a particular universe does not mean the total number is not infinite. As a very simple example, consider the case where universes exist in an infinitely large true-universe, and portal coordinates are relative to the origin.

I'd like to note that, even if you assume a growth rate of 3% (the high end of the third world), you'd have to sustain that for about 100 years to get from 6 billion to 100 billion (I think the pit estimate was 80 or 90 billion?)...and that's excluding mortality in the meantime. Assuming about 1/70 mortality (worldwide life expectancy sitting a hair under 70 years), you have to add another 50 billion to the dead count in the interim. You'd need to get up to close to 200 billion on a curve like this. And of course, all of this assumes no population pressures emerge on the humans above, even temporary ones (food, crowding, declining birthrates...the sorts of things that are going on IRL right now). Reducing the growth rate to 2% results in the gap being closed even more slowly (you've still got a gap of 55bn to fill after 150 years).

Yep, that's true. Exponential growth will eventually catch up with any constant, but nobody says that has to be very soon; frankly, one to two centuries is sooner than I expected (not having run the numbers, silly me).

While we're noting things, though: Most of that 100 billion in the pit are not going to have any useful effect on world policy for a good long time. At the moment, Earth is the effective heavyweight, not hell; as time passes, youngsters will remain in control through sheer numbers, and are unlikely to ever lose that advantage so long as direct mind copying remains science fiction.

Baughn wrote:Yep, that's true. Exponential growth will eventually catch up with any constant, but nobody says that has to be very soon; frankly, one to two centuries is sooner than I expected (not having run the numbers, silly me).

While we're noting things, though: Most of that 100 billion in the pit are not going to have any useful effect on world policy for a good long time. At the moment, Earth is the effective heavyweight, not hell; as time passes, youngsters will remain in control through sheer numbers, and are unlikely to ever lose that advantage so long as direct mind copying remains science fiction.

Yes and no. I'm not sure what number are "free" at the moment, but it seems to be a non-negligible number. I'm also nut sure what the rate of those being pulled out is, either...we've made wild guesses there, but at the moment that's just conjecture. Also, you've go all the dead from Earth coming in, so in a sense, "free Hell" is filling up from two sides at the moment...and we're probably going to be bringing in a non-negligible number from Heaven unless we simply annihilate the place in our attack, too.

Oh God, I just had a terrifying thought. What if the Russians find Lenin, or worse Marx? Or what if the Chinese run into Mao?

You just brought back to mind another thought: What is Walt Disney going to have to say?

Get me out of the freezer!

Night_stalker wrote:Oh God, I just had a terrifying thought. What if the Russians find Lenin, or worse Marx? Or what if the Chinese run into Mao?

Marx is not a problem; he's a pretty harmless bookish type by nature. Lenin could be more of a problem, being a talented revolutionary, but we could do worse than the United Soviet Socialist Republics of Hell, and probably will.

Mao is a real problem, because he's not only a talented revolutionary, he's an incompetent supreme leader. Hopefully, we can find Undead Deng Xiaoping first...

I'm not too worried by those guys because the only advantage they have over anybody else is that they already (notionally) command the loyalty of large numbers of people, and even if they had the loyalty of large countries, it's only for one lifetime, it isn't now, and those people would be second lifers and consequently will slowly be found and have a considerable disadvantage relative to first lifers/ex-first lifers. A few are still dangerous though, notably the soviet ones because they may still have a major draw to somewhat affluent people, but really, all the military equipment is in the hands of the first lifers and so is the money, I doubt that any historical leader would be able to be a bigger threat than internal divisions unless they do something major, and it's a small pool with that potential. If they weren't popular in the 20th century, they wouldn't be able to command the loyalty of enough people to really be that big a deal, I think.

Oh boy, what if they find Stalin? I can't see him tolerating Russia's position today. Incidentally, what do you think would happen if they ran into Lee Harvey Oswald? We could fianlly put those stupid conspiricy rumors to rest!

Night_stalker wrote:Oh boy, what if they find Stalin? I can't see him tolerating Russia's position today.

I can't see Russia's position today tolerating him, either. I'd bet on him vanishing into a very deep pit obscurity if he tries to make too much trouble.

True, but many would support him, just because his idea of ruling Russia was a Russia to be feared, not mocked! A Russia that was strong, and not corrupt.

I don't think Stalin gets a vote, and it could just be that he's 'never found'. There has to be SOME souls in hell that accidentally second-died in the intervening years.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:I don't think Stalin gets a vote, and it could just be that he's 'never found'. There has to be SOME souls in hell that accidentally second-died in the intervening years.

Well, and let's not forget that for all of the people notionally loyal to Stalin and Mao, there are also a lot of people who would be happy to kill them. Those numbers might even be bigger in some of these cases...I am imagining some particularly badly-hated figures tempting a mob to attempt to form at the Hellmouth on news of their death.

By the way, was there ever any announcement of whether Uriel somehow interfered with the dead resurrecting?

Night_stalker wrote:True, but many would support him, just because his idea of ruling Russia was a Russia to be feared, not mocked! A Russia that was strong, and not corrupt.

Yeah. So's Putin's idea of ruling Russia. And Putin is more discriminate about killing people.

Simon_Jester wrote: I'd bet on [Stalin] vanishing into a very deep pit obscurity if he tries to make too much trouble.

I think this could easily be the fate of many former "great leaders." Many people would consider them dangerous. Their second lives could well be exciting and short.