Thanks for this Luisa, I found it very interesting and appreciated the level of detail in the different cases. One thought and related questions that came up when reading the toy calculations at the end of each case:
For a fixed number of survivors, there is a trade-off between groups of different sizes. The larger the groups, the more likely each group is to survive, but the fewer groups need to be wiped out in order for humanity to go extinct.
What might this trade-off look like and is there some optimal group size to minimise the risk of extinction?
What are the game theoretic considerations of individuals forming groups of varying sizes and how do these vary depending on the extent to which people care about their own individual survival and human extinction?
What group sizes might we expect in practice and is there anything we could do to influence group sizes in the event of a catastrophe?
Given the low likelihood of extinction you suggest, I think these are relatively low priority questions but could be potentially interesting for someone to look at in more detail.
Thanks for this Luisa, I found it very interesting and appreciated the level of detail in the different cases. One thought and related questions that came up when reading the toy calculations at the end of each case:
For a fixed number of survivors, there is a trade-off between groups of different sizes. The larger the groups, the more likely each group is to survive, but the fewer groups need to be wiped out in order for humanity to go extinct.
What might this trade-off look like and is there some optimal group size to minimise the risk of extinction?
What are the game theoretic considerations of individuals forming groups of varying sizes and how do these vary depending on the extent to which people care about their own individual survival and human extinction?
What group sizes might we expect in practice and is there anything we could do to influence group sizes in the event of a catastrophe?
Given the low likelihood of extinction you suggest, I think these are relatively low priority questions but could be potentially interesting for someone to look at in more detail.