<aside> ✴️ Subdirectory for Three-Body: Competitive Dynamics in the Hyperscale Oligopoly

Initial Positions and Laws of [Competitive] Motion

Mass and the Law of [Economic] Gravitation

Velocity and the n-body problem

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<aside> ✴️ Table of Contents for Velocity and the n-body problem

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[From NASA via EarthSky.org] Artists rendering of a supermassive black hole consuming a star

The fundamental axiom of economics is the human mercenary instinct. Without that assumption, the entire field would collapse.

— Cixin Liu, The Dark Forest

The n-body problem: An Allegory for the Cloud

Let’s imagine a fictional place — we’ll call it “ECON”.

From Microsoft: Multi-engine n-body gravity simulation

Imagine that we’re playing through the starter tutorial for an immersive, multiplayer VR game from an alien civilization called The n-Body Problem.

From our VR headset, we log into a command center in which we can observe this fictional game Universe which operates under Universal laws that are different but similar to the laws under which our own Universe operates. In this fictional Universe, matter is either dumb, smart, or dark — dumb matter passively adheres to the same laws of physics that exist in our Universe, smart matter is able to actively exert force to shape its surroundings and form connections with other smart matter, and dark matter is an inferable but unobservable theoretical construct that is some function of the dumb and smart mass within a system. Furthermore, dumb matter can be converted into smart matter and smart matter can degrade back into dumb matter, but trends indicate that the ongoing transition from dumb matter to smart matter is a monotonically increasing function.

Gamers here can make a career out of placing bets on the amount of dark matter that they estimate is present in particular regions of Space. Since different market participants have differing information and there exist various methodologies for evaluating the measure of this theoretical construct, [some like to measure flows, others estimate using multiples of comparable masses, and even others just buy and sell whatever they see is popular] there exists an active in-game financial market of people expressing their opinons through buying/selling at whatever price others are willing to sell/buy.

Our observation of this otherrrr Universe is limited (so far) to a single galaxy which is composed of various stellar systems. In this galaxy, which has been named “ECON”, there exists one particular galactic sector, the “IT” sector, that has been growing faster than the other sectors in ECON through its faster absorption of surrounding matter in Space. As an aside, the ECON galaxy itself has been accumulating mass and energy from the broader Universe at a rate of 5-6% per year (Earth years, that is).

The defining characteristic of this “IT” sector is the relatively high ratio of smart mass in the system, mass that seems to be forming connections to the concentrations of smart mass (smart mass communicate by streaming patterns of electrons at each other) in the Economy’s other systems and is also accelerating the pace at which stellar system “IT” is gathering matter. While ECON has historically exhibited disperse concentrations of carbon-based smart matter, there has been a relatively recent burst of silicon-based smart matter in “IT” that has better computing, networking, and storage capabilities than the carbon-based smart matter that still dominates ECON (we suspect, too, that there might be other forms of smart matter in this Universe that exists outside of our current observational capabilities). Observations show that larger, concentrated masses of carbon-based smart matter have historically utilized and instrumentalized silicon-based smart matter to communicate, but increasing concentrations of silicon-based smart matter seem to be networking and communicating without carbon-based mediation, leading some to believe that silicon-based smart matter will one day replace carbon-based smart matter.

In the game’s lore, only a few decades following the formation of the “IT” sector, observers noticed an interstellar Cloud (which we’ll just call “The Cloud”) within the “IT” sector that contained the highest mass and concentration of highly networked, silicon-based smart matter observed in ECON. Whereas the Total Astronomical Matter (TAM) of IT is growing at a rate of only 5-10% per year given IT’s already large size, the size of the Cloud is growing at a rate of around 20% per year through the steady absorption of less connected, less smart matter within “IT” — some people predict that the Cloud will eventually engulf the entirety of “IT”, leaving some observers with the view that the TAM of “The Cloud” will converge towards the TAM of IT.

The Cloud’s center of gravity is comprised of three bodies of highly concentrated masses of smart matter, both carbon and silicon-based — the first of these bodies to coalesce is currently the largest of the three with the second-largest body possibly approaching the size of the first and the smallest body lagging behind the other two in terms of mass. The carbon-based smart matter of these three bodies are exceptionally proficient at the rotation of variously shaped silicon-based matter required for the instrumentalization of silicon for computation and so these carbon-based masses are widely known as “shape rotators” to observers. While shape rotators exist throughout ECON, there seem to be especially high concentrations of shape rotators within the Cloud and particularly at these three compan-, I mean celestial bodies.

Normally, a system of three sufficiently large celestial bodies comprised of dumb mass would devolve into a chaotic system but since these three bodies are smart, they exist in a stable configuration because, unlike theoretical three-body systems in physics textbooks in which unchanging mass bodies indiscriminantly follow the physical laws of motion and gravity, these smart masses in the Cloud follow competitive and economic laws that seem to be maximizing for the quanta of dark matter (darK matter henceforth referred to as a capital “K”) that the bodies possess. These three bodies are pushed and pulled by each other, constantly jostling for a position that gives them access to more flows of smart matter (carbon-based and silicon-based) as well as dumb matter to convert into networked silicon-based smart matter that feeds into the maximization of their bodies’ overall estimated measure of “K”.

Stellar systems in other galactic sectors like CPG, FIG, and NRG (particularly in the OIL subsector of the NRG sector) increasingly network their internal smart matter with the Cloud’s smart matter, utilizing information derived from the Cloud’s computational capabilities to better accumulate K for their own sectors of the ECON galaxy and transferring a portion of their increased flows back to the Cloud as payment for utilizing the Cloud’s smart mass — the Big Three are increasingly competing with each other to connect with mass bodies in other sectors of ECON.

https://www.figma.com/embed?embed_host=notion&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.figma.com%2Ffile%2Fwyf5VPpxThGTIDDvgMArRV%2FUntitled%3Fnode-id%3D0%253A1

The overall mass of the Cloud, despite being anchored by the Big Three, is comprised of assemblages of other masses which in aggregate are comprised of two to three times more K than the Big Three despite having much less matter, both dumb and smart. These dematerialized, “softer” bodies — dubbed Interstellar Volumes, or ISVs — began emerging in the Cloud in the wake of the Big Three’s formation, orbiting around the Big Three to utilize computational resources and sell resultant information to other sectors of ECON whilst simultaneously attempting to avoid getting too close to the trio lest they risk being devoured. While each of the Big Three would prefer not being disintermediated by these softer satellite bodies, each of the three are too preoccupied in competitively positioning against the other two to also fight back against the soft bodies which end up paying to use their computational resources anyways. It should be noted here that other mass bodies with large concentrations of silicon-based smart matter exist in the Cloud but these other compani-, masses, have decided that selling the utilization of their silicon isn’t the optimal path towards accumulating K. The Big Three are therefore referred to as the “Public Cloud” in that they network with and sell to whichever mass bodies will pay them for use of their silicon-based smart matter.