In "my April Fool's day confession", Eliezer Yudkosky writes of dath ilan,
"When autopiloted cars were developed 20 years before I left, and the modular house system was already in place because that just required big cables, there was coordination to pick the largest stretch of land on Earth which had good year-round weather. And then that became ‘the great city’ and pretty much everyone who wasn’t farming, mining, or otherwise tied to a particular location moved house there."
Keltham, in mad investor chaos and the woman of asmodeus, reafirms this:
"Default - uh, that's the biggest city in Civilization where you live if you want to live around lots of options, and you don't have any particular reason to live anywhere else."
On what continent did Civilization decide to locate their default city? Eurasia or the Americas?
I will resolve based on Mr. Yudkowsky's authorial declaration or unabigiuous statement in a glowfic.
If he publically states that default is in the dath ilani analog of Africa, Asia, or Europe, the market resolves to "Yes". If he states that it is in the dath ilani analog of the Americas (or anywhere else for that matter), the market resolves to "no". If he declines to clarify the location, it will resolve to N/A.
Similarly, if some definitive info is given in the text of glowfic that uniquely pins down a continent, I'll resolve on that basis.
(I am not caught up on Planecrash or other glowfic. It's possible this has already been revealed, in which case, feel free to bid this arbitrarilly high or low immediately.)
Eliezer is welcome to outright reveal the answer in the comments, before the market closes, or to drop cryptic hints, as is his wont.
Related questions
In aviation is the most dangerous routine activity, the plane is headed towards the Default Continent. In the analogous thread set on Earth on which it is based, the plane is heading to LA. This is not definitive but I do count it as a hint that it's in the Americas.
Things informing my "no" bet:
I think maybe California is actually the place with the best year-round weather, according to conventional ideas about what weather is good; iirc Redwood City somewhere has a commemorative sign saying something like "best climate, determined by government test", referring to a time when some Russian autocrat commissioned a survey to find the place with the most human-compatible climate? Likely some details in there are mangled, but I think there's a recognizable reflection of a true fact
Eliezer in fact chose to live in the bay area for a long time, though of course this was probably mostly determined by its other Default-y attributes (it's where the people and institutions he wanted to be close to were, and in a country where he has citizenship)
@BenWeinsteinRaun "largest stretch of land on Earth which had good year-round weather" sounds more like the Mediterranean if taken literally, though maybe it shouldn't be taken literally
@BenWeinsteinRaun I mean, I would indeed expect a place with a Mediterranean climate (whether Csa or Csb) to be the location of Default, but I would also expect Default to be somewhere relatively stable, tectonically.
@SEE damage from earthquakes is relatively cheap to mitigate, though. Also I vaguely wonder if dath ilan has a "scheduled earthquake day", where they intentionally relieve tectonic pressure. I'm unclear on whether current Earth science predicts that such a thing is possible/advisable.
@BenWeinsteinRaun I misremembered the nationality of the alleged surveyor of Redwood City; it was Germany rather than Russia. But also, iiuc it turns out that this is disputed, and also that the claim was actually that the Bay Area tied with the Canary Islands and North Africa along the Mediterranean.