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There's also the dimension of how functional the nominal infrastructure is. If it actually worked as well, Mumbai would roughly be like New York, but of course it is way more overloaded for the infrastructure so you have to navigate a 2x cognitive burden of hacker knowledge.
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This multiple increases rapidly from simplest to the most complex habitation. The cognitive burden multiple for a broken small town over a healthy one is maybe 1.2. For a megapolis scale, it is at least 2 (can't be too high because there's minimum viable functionality effect)
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Besides 0s and 1s, what’s a non-lousy binary? If you subscribe to Wheeler’s information theories, then the bit is the only non-lousy binary. You can make a Borgesian funhouse out of everything else. Especially if it involves territorial claims.
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Put it all on a pressure gradient of competition for space/attention and it breaks down neatly into three phases of human matter: dispersed, clumpy, ubiquitous. Gas, liquid, solid. The rest is chemistry.