On Sunday 2003-12-21 18:28, Alberto Monteiro wrote: > Trent Shipley wrote: > > The first questions that come to mind are for the interval in question > > how many O-2 habitable planets are there, how many of them are currently > > leased for habitation, and how many uplifted main-sequence O-2 species > > are competing for those planets. At one point I suggested that there > > might be 10,000 to 12,000 uplifted species, but now I think this might be > > a bit low. > > I have done some estimates on this. From data from GURPS Uplift and > from Contacting Aliens, I estimate: > > * about 2 million populated planets at each time
Across how many galaxies? (Note that for the 1000KY +- Contact Galaxy 4 was fallow, so it doesn't matter. The real question is whether the GIM populates 2M planets in Galaxy 2 or throughout GIM controled space.) > * about 10 planets per race > * about 200,000 races I'll take this on faith, with the qualification that 200K O-2 races is somwhat inconvenient for writers. > Most of those species would be doing "nothing", except about > * 10% being uplifted > * 10% in the 100,000-year period of indenture > * 10% uplifting a pre-sentient race > * 10% being served by an indentured client > > Alberto Monteiro > > _______________________________________________ Your model seems to be pre-uplift (stage 0) -> uplifting client (stages 1 to 4?) -> indentured client (stage 5?) Since stage has the same population, and assuming mortality is minimal, each stage must take the same amount of time. My mental model is pre-uplift (stage 0) -> uplifting clients, this includes indenture (stages 1-5) The pre-uplift stage goes fast but has high "mortality" as the GUI denies claims or proposed projects. It is also irrelevant. We do not worry about pre-clients in this "census". The mean term for uplift/indenture combined is 100KY We approximate the rate of uplift as an average of 1.1 client per mature species. (The [fictional] real rate has to include non-reproducers and mortality and some growth in the number of citizen species it must be between 1.01 and 1.2.) Clients are not fairly distributed. Lets assume 11% of all O-2 citizens are minors. (1% of these are going to get 'lost') Note this seems to imply that the mean life expectancy for an O-2 citizen race is about 1,000,000 years. This is a bit short for purposes of continuity with the fiction. If you want the mean life expectency between the start of uplift and passing-on to be 10MY then you need to divide by 10, so only 1.1% of all O-2 citizens would be minors. With maximally equitble distribution about 10% of Citizens are patrons, 1% of the population have 2 clients. In this sort of society you might want to uplift your client early to maximize your power. This implies a species lifecycle of 10% minority, 10% young adult, 10% active parent with client, 70% empty nest (except for the 10% of the population who get a second client). With low death rates the average client in its minority/indenture would have 4 ancestors in its patronymic because a citizen tends to start its uplift project when it is about 200KY old. Alternatively, a most responsible citizen might uplift their client late so they have a lot of wisdom and technology for the project. Then you have 10% minor, 60% adult, 10% parent, 20% elder. Patronymics tend to be short. At really low levels of equity only 1% of all species might be patrons at any given time and many patrons will be active uplifting clients throughout their careers as main sequence citizens. If we want 1MY mean life-spans, then 11% clients and 5% patrons might provide for interesting but not grossly inequitble politics consistent with existing sources on the Uplift Universe. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
