"I'd say about ten times as heavy as this one," he evaded neatly. "Now on this facsimile I can illustrate the ideas we've been developing. Here, you see this screen and these knobs. I'll turn this switch on and we can watch this part of it just as if this was the real computer." My surprise was genuine. His demonstration mockup was a live one. I wished my brother could see it. "On this screen we record your time-dependent utility function. For your convenience, the input is mechanical, but from this point on all the Statistomat's computing is performed digitally." I said, "Huh?" "Time-dependent utility function," he repeated brightly. "Oh, I can't be bothered--all that technical stuff--leave it to specialists," I muttered, making the trap nice and inviting. But he knew he had to explain. "Naturally only the essentials need _your_ personal attention," he said smoothly. "You express in the time-dependent utility function your financial policy--the broad, overall outlines of the course you want to steer. This must come from you. This makes the difference between a Robert Jones and a Michael Thompson. You have a possibility of doubling your investment in a year, let's say. How certain do you have to be of it before you prefer it to a more conservative investment? Even odds? Six to four? Or we might ask a similar question about a ten-year period. You see the point." "Uh ... but it depends on how much I've got." I kicked myself. My brother would not approve my helping the salesman along like that. "Ah, yes! Certainly! When you have a hundred million, an extra million won't seem nearly as important to you as when you have twenty-five. We understand! Our technical expression for this is that the value of money to the investor is not a linear function of dollars. Logarithmic, some say--but that depends on the investor. Whatever relationship you select as a matter of fiscal policy. That is a part, a critical part, of the information which you give the Statistomat when you work out your time-dependent utility function, or risk function, as we call it for short." "No risk! Can't afford risk!" "Mr. Borch, I speak with confidence when I assure you that your estate can be subject to as little risk when its direction is assigned to the Statistomat as in any other way." I almost called him on that, until I reflected that he had really made only one specific claim: that you could feed just as excessively conservative a risk function into the Statistomat, if you were compulsively conservative, as you could into the G.C. Incomac. That might be true. He went on, "Two of the soundest business research agencies in the country have been invited to inspect all our operations and have okayed us, not once but repeatedly: the S.E.C. and the F.T.C." Darn right they've checked you, I thought--by law. And don't think they'll stop. * * * * *