Ensuring post-apocalyptic survival at TL8?

[vicky_molokh]

Raising TL above 8 isn't strictly necessary for meeting the challenge, no. Being able to maintain it indefinitely for further generations, though, is essential, so other people's point about universities is very important.

BTW, ditching democracy is acceptable, but remember that a revolt inevitably will result in loss of equipment, knowledge and TL, so we must keep the population content. As mentioned before, this can be compared to the Alpha Centauri scenario, but without the hostile ecosystem and the TL9ish starting gear.

[riprock]

Originally Posted by Molokh

Ahem, we're talking about maintaining TL, i.e. reproducing techy stuff (at least the essentials of those TLs - i.e. machines, [primitive] computers, plastics, hydroponic farms etc.).

Allow me to roll out my insanely huge collection of DIY insanity.

Primitive Computer Hardware: FabLab a la Gershenfeld can make circuit boards.

http://fablab.marcboon.com/pcb/

A large number of circuit boards adds up to a crude "integrated circuit."

Computer Software: Use Linux and BSD.

Primitive Plastics: Use organic farming to get bioplastics.

Hydroponic Farms: Check issue 18 of Make magazine.

Arduino for home agriculture-
off-grid laundry -
drip irrigation -
solar heating
sustainability
etc.

Machines. Use the Gingery approach to work up to the Factor-E Farm level. Vincent R. Gingery was an American who started with a bucket of sand and a lot of junk and managed to build his own machine shop. He wrote quite a few books about it.

The modern equivalents of Gingery are the folks building open-source machine tools at:

http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?ti...nstruction_Set


They can start with rural junk and end up with:

HABITAT PACKAGE:
CEB Press (brickmaking machine)
- Sawmill
- Living Machines (I think that means water purifiers)
- Modular Housing Units |

AGROECOLOGY PACKAGE:
LifeTrac Multi Purpose Tractor -
MicroTrac -
Agricultural Spader -
Agricultural Microcombine -
Hammer Mill -
Well Drilling Rig -
Organoponic Raised Bed Gardening -
Orchard and Nursery -
Modular Greenhouse Units -
Bakery -
Dairy -
Energy Food Bars -
Freeze Dried Fruit Powders |
ENERGY PACKAGE:
Pyrolysis Oil -
Babington Burner -
Solar_Combined_Heat_Power_System -
Steam Engine Construction Set -
Solar Turbine -
Electric Motors/Generators -
Inverters & Grid Intertie - Batteries |
FLEXIBLE INDUSTRY PACKAGE:
Lathe -
Torch Table -
Multimachine & Flex Fab -
Plastic Extrusion & Molding -
Metal Casting and Extrusion |
TRANSPORTATION PACKAGE:
Open Source Car

Originally Posted by Agramer

Youre missing few things here:
...
see... ;)

Clearly I failed to communicate my notions of labor economics. Your question would not have arisen if I had expressed myself clearly. I do apologize for writing so clumsily, but I do not change my claim.

Maybe I'm missing out on the communication, but if you think I'm lacking a boatload of data on how to improvise industrial tools, I've got a lot of posting to do.

[riprock]

Originally Posted by Agramer

Who will pass all that specialised knowledge to next generation(Which is 1st premise of Molokhs question).

I don't believe you have a realistic notion of how knowledge gets passed on and how skills get maintained.

A skill that is practiced is remembered by its practitioner;
a skill that is practiced in a small community tends to get passed on within the community.

Modern education often serves as soul-destroying busywork that obstructs skill transmission.

Do you disagree?

Originally Posted by Agramer

When spare parts run out who will produce new ones and how?

The Gingery method was detailed in my previous post. Gingery was one real-life person who built a ridiculously complete machine shop. His methods are widely studied - but apparently not by everyone.

Originally Posted by Agramer

Who will feed numerous offspring's? If your automated Hydroponics are that good..where is limit? Amount,wear/tear...etc Regardless someone has to work even in automated Hydrophonics.

Apparently my previous post on this matter did not make my position clear.

I have already claimed that each household can produce abundant food with minimal work. Apparently you wish to contest some part of that claim, but we haven't gotten down to specifics for some reason.

http://books.google.com/books?id=9_s...ing%22&f=false

http://www.your-vegetable-gardening-...gardening.html

Originally Posted by Agramer

How many little things do you think constitute overall TL?

Your rhetoric is ambiguous. Are you implying that everyone else on this thread has a complete, itemized list of TL details, but I don't? Are you implying that the number of little things is incalculably vast?

Reality Check: Real-life academics write papers about how many little things make up real-life TLs.
Let me quote four papers.

1-
McCarthy, I., Ridgway, K., 2000. Cladistics: a taxonomy for manufacturing
organizations. Integrated Manufacturing Systems 11 (1), 16–29.

2- This paper doesn't give a full taxonomy for all tech levels - it is just a close-up view of modern manufacturing. However, it pushes the technique of cladistics for industrial problems.

Achieving agility using cladistics: an evolutionary analysis
C. Tsinopoulos*, I.P. McCarthy

Journal of Materials Processing Technology 107 (2000) 338±346


3-
Journal of Cleaner Production 13 (2005) 887-902

Modelling manufacturing evolution: thoughts on
sustainable industrial development
James Scott Baldwin, Peter M. Allen,
Belinda Winder, Keith Ridgway

Abstract
With many tools available for industrial sustainability, it appears that problems now lie in implementation. Management
uncertainties and other barriers are undermining progress toward sustainable industrial development. With the aim of modelling
manufacturing evolution, this paper presents a study that integrates manufacturing cladistics, an evolutionary classification scheme
from the biological sciences, with evolutionary systems modelling, from the physical sciences. The study highlights the problems
associated with the implementation of new technologies and practices. This new approach is then evaluated in the context of
sustainable manufacturing. The aim would be to guide transformations and explore the evolutionary differences between sustainable
and non-sustainable organisations, and identify new structures offering industry novel solutions for sustainability.



Keywords: Sustainability; Manufacturing cladistics; Evolutionary systems; Organisational transformations; Management decision-making


4-
CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology 57 (2008) 467–472
Modelling evolution in manufacturing: A biological analogy
Hoda ElMaraghy, Tarek AlGeddawy, Ahmed Azab

from the Abstract-
An innovative mapping between the evolution of
manufactured products and biological evolution is proposed where cladistics are used to track such
evolution. A typical industrial example is used for illustration. The significance and applications of this
approach are discussed. The obtained results provide a promising foundation for future research in
products and manufacturing systems evolution and co-evolution.

Originally Posted by Agramer

And besides main point is to have expanding community which will preserve its TL level and in 2nd-3rd generation even start to increase it.

I don't want to speculate about how many generations would be required to advance tech until we can agree on more fundamental issues of the argument.

Originally Posted by Agramer

Who will tune Pianos when Physician is having fulltime job of being physician and let alone teach children poetry.Besides when will he find time to teach next generation of physicians....If hes doing it..knowledge will be lost..let alone piano tuning and nuances of poetry.

I don't think I made myself clear with the piano-tuning comment. Let's leave that to the side and return to the issue of labor economics after we have a handle on the engineering feasibility of using five hundred people to build a toolset.

Originally Posted by Agramer

What about wife? Is she breeding agricultural organisms or for medicine or for any of hundreds of potential fields? How can she do all that stuff.

I can't be sure from your written communication style, but I think you're letting your rhetorical flourishes distract us from the issues.

When you ask "How can she do all that stuff?" I'm not sure if you're stressing that it's impossible, or if you're requesting an explanation.

Originally Posted by Agramer

see... ;)

I don't concede any of the points I think you've tried to make. However, my grasp of your communication is loose, and I don't know that I'm evaluating your thoughts as they were intended.

Also I apologize for not posting this many hours ago - for some reason I couldn't log onto this forum for most of yesterday.

[riprock]

Originally Posted by Molokh

Raising TL above 8 isn't strictly necessary for meeting the challenge, no. Being able to maintain it indefinitely for further generations, though, is essential, so other people's point about universities is very important.

Even if I can get the majority of readers to agree to my engineering notions of how industrial co-evolution works, I think the second sticking point will be labor economics.

If I can ask your indulgence, I'd like to first address the hardware issues of fab labs and open source machine tools.

If we can get consensus on the mechanics of that, I will further argue that skills can be preserved and transmitted without recognizable universities.

Consider, for example:
http://opensourcemachine.org/

That website reads in part:

The MultiMachine
... a humanitarian, open source machine tool project for developing countries
...
The MultiMachine all-purpose machine tool that can be built by a semi-skilled mechanic with just common hand tools. For machine construction, electricity can be replaced with “elbow grease” and the necessary material can come from discarded vehicle parts.

I am not sure that most of the readers of this forum would even agree with that basic claim. Perhaps they would claim that the Multimachine would never work, or that it could never be built by people without college degrees, or that it requires too much starting capital.


In brief, Molokh's issue is fictional (i.e. "How can the GM move fictional characters to a fictional world and have them do a fictional Robinsonade?") but the science underlying my contentions concerning this issue is factual. Over the past ten years, many highly-skilled workers and academics have considered issues of industrial sustainability.

Unfortunately, the popular media, notably Kevin Kelly, have suggested that industrial interdependence is simply too complex to be considered. This has been disproven by McCarthy et al. Industrial evolution can be mapped out by means of cladistics.

Most of the readers of this thread will probably decline to read engineering journals. (A flat-out refusal to read might be preferable to a shallow reading! Then again, if anyone reading this has an interest in the journals, by all means post a reply or PM me.) However, the practical side of this field has been extensively documented on the web by a very diverse assortment of interested parties.

For example, Jeff Vail wants to build a sustainable society that can survive peak oil:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4720

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4741

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4774

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4844


Conversely, the fabrication crowd (the fablab/reprap hackers) are just hackers: they just love the act of using technology.

http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome


The Whole Earth/Organic Farming/Urban Farming bunch are somewhere in-between. They like the activity for its own sake, but they also want to save the world:

http://www.nature.my.cape.com/greenc...ewalchemy.html


In short, the technology side of this is a real-life technical topic. It should not be hand-waved; rather, you should pick a set of technical experts that you trust and put their opinions into GURPS terms. (Note that the technical experts are not unanimous: Jay Hanson of dieoff.org might believe the human race will go extinct; Neil Gershenfeld might believe that Hans Moravec will lead us to a post-human singularity in ten years; Jeff Vail will probably predict wars against "global guerrillas.")

Beyond the technology, the issue of universities is a question of economics and demographics. I am less sanguine about proving that rigorously, because I don't think economics is very clear-cut. Even if it were clear-cut, it tends to produce acrimonious controversies.

[malloyd]

Part of the difficulty here is deciding what you mean by maintaining a TL7 or 8 civilization. There are a good many millions of different products manufactured now, if your civilization must be actually making them all right now to qualify as TL8, then you really will need millions of workers and trillions of dollars of infrastructure.

If you don't have to produce them all right now, then the question becomes how many of them can you not be producing before you decide the TL has dropped. After 1 engineer who can read and a patent library probably can figure out how to produce most of them given a year or two - is a civilization with this still TL8? Probably not. But where you decide to draw the line above that is pretty arbitrary. What *is* the TL of a civilization that, say, can't make x-ray tubes right now, hasn't made one in two generations, but has a warehouse full of spares and could tool up to make them by the end of next year if nothing more important comes up?

Much of the difficulty is that TLs aren't purely about either knowledge or current production, there is a significant standard of living component for individuals, and probably an equally signficant standing infrastructure and existing trade routes component for civilizations. In some ways, I think you could argue that a new colony could *never* not drop many TLs in the first few years after it arrived, no matter how much stuff it brought along, simply because a part of being a TL5+ civilization is having in place stuff like mining and transport infrastructure that it is going to take time to set up.

How many people do they need to construct all that in a generation? Well, not much infrastructure really lasts more than a half century replacement time, and probably not more than couple percent of our population is involved in replacing it, call it a billion man-years, so maybe 50 million people to rebuild it in a generation. Capital costs are in the same order of magnitude as wages, so probably not more than trillions of dollars of equipment given some of it can be bootstrapped as part of their civilization building effort.

[vicky_molokh]

Malloyd: TL8 is defined as the information-oriented era with some other bits. It would include (based on GURPS Basic Set): Personal computers (at least on the level of 286), fuel cells, advanced batteries, solar power, gas turbines, hydroponics, DNA-related tech, essential pharmacy, medical scanners (X-ray etc.), organ transplants, unmanned (AI or teleoperated) scout craft, plastics and metals etc.

Things Basic suggests for TL8 that I allow to ignore due to being near-useless for small communities: anything space-related, fission power plants.

I'm also assuming we can skip over luxuries which are easily doable at TL8, but are not feasible for scaling reasons - coca-cola factories, TV channels (aside from Youtube-like DIY video repositories).

Is that sufficient to describe it?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by riprock

I don't believe you have a realistic notion of how knowledge gets passed on and how skills get maintained.

A skill that is practiced is remembered by its practitioner;
a skill that is practiced in a small community tends to get passed on within the community.

Modern education often serves as soul-destroying busywork that obstructs skill transmission.

Do you disagree?

I disagree, and here's why. As they say,
'The one who cannot do, teaches to do; the one who cannot teach to do, teaches to teach. The one who can do, can only do.'

While it sounds harsh, it is also a very true proverb. For instance, my SO plays several musical instruments, but is incapable of teaching me, because of being unable to explain how to do it, or even explain what a note is.

Sure, bad teachers still can produce good students - but only when the student is stubborn, curious and talented, and not otherwise. The rest they will accuse of being inept, lazy or whatever, but the result will indeed be near-zero.

A student's only real requirement is willingness to learn. After that, a good teacher can always make the student into a good student. A good teacher and a talented, willing student will result in a perfect student. An unwilling-to-learn student will give bad results even with a very good teacher.

[Agramer]

Originally Posted by riprock

Allow me to roll out my insanely huge collection of DIY insanity.

What is DIY?

Originally Posted by riprock

I've got a lot of posting to do.

Ill start with :

"Phuuuuh" and continue with "Aaaahhhhhh" lol

I started reading at 09:00 and after following your links and links of links and watching several videos it is now 14:52 h...

One more lol haha :d


1) I would like to thank you for that info.It was very,very interesting read(specially links onto links) and I learned a lot today :))

2)

Originally Posted by riprock

I don't believe you have a realistic notion of how knowledge gets passed on and how skills get maintained.

A skill that is practiced is remembered by its practitioner;
a skill that is practiced in a small community tends to get passed on within the community.

Modern education often serves as soul-destroying busywork that obstructs skill transmission.

Do you disagree?

Even if I agreed on passing very specialised knowledge from one person to next...which as efficient educational model I dont,since sooner or later youll have "bad teacher"/"non interested student" case or case of student without aptitude for that line of work(someone with deficiency in math in high tech field) when all that high tech knowledge will go down the drain.

More important is basic nature of Universities as institutions.You dont learn "What you will need to know" .... thats what technicians learn/do. What you learn ,as engineer...etc, is "What you may need to know" which makes tremendous difference in base of knowledge,implementation of same and multidisciplinary application /cooperation of same.

What I do agree on is that modern education model is in desperate need of change from mostly "rote learning" and stuff that it still didnt surpass.But thats irrelevant for our discussion.

3)

Originally Posted by Agramer

Originally Posted by Agramer View Post
When spare parts run out who will produce new ones and how?

Originally Posted by riprock

The Gingery method was detailed in my previous post. Gingery was one real-life person who built a ridiculously complete machine shop. His methods are widely studied - but apparently not by everyone.

I was referring to very specialised spare parts,not something you can build in good machine shop but something you need specialised high tech factory to make,since we do assume that such community would have top of the line machine shops.

4)

Originally Posted by riprock

I have already claimed that each household can produce abundant food with minimal work. Apparently you wish to contest some part of that claim, but we haven't gotten down to specifics for some reason.

Large industrial Agriculture is much more efficient that family based agriculture. Im not disputing that with some profound thought agricultures labour man-hours can be cut down tremendously,but it still doesnt change fact that modern world has tendency toward specialisation which leads to efficiency(Real world is full of imperfections so no need to dispute this,since it isnt working exactly like that even in todays world,although it should).

5)
[QUOTE =Agramer]How many little things do you think constitute overall TL?[/QUOTE]

Originally Posted by riprock

Your rhetoric is ambiguous. Are you implying that everyone else on this thread has a complete, itemized list of TL details, but I don't? Are you implying that the number of little things is incalculably vast?

Not rhetoric,just my subjective impression that number is really vast,dont have clue what that number would/should be,but if I start using terms as "quality of life","way of life","ease of living" which are ambigous it gets complicated.
So no,I dont have clue how much of those 2little things" is needed to preserve <i>fully</i> targeted TL but number must be very high.

6)

Originally Posted by riprock

Let's leave that to the side and return to the issue of labor economics after we have a handle on the engineering feasibility of using five hundred people to build a toolset.

I have never disputed that. I disputed 500 people preserving TL in full during two generation span.

7)

Originally Posted by riprock

When you ask "How can she do all that stuff?" I'm not sure if you're stressing that it's impossible, or if you're requesting an explanation.

Im stressing that such multidisciplinary doctor of sciences is wasted resource on everyday jobs that would be in "normal world" delegated to technicians with small supervision of such expert.But that with your 500 people mark we dont have room for those technicians.

8)

On your 2nd post I mostly agree with what you say and what most of people linked said.

What I do disagree is that we will have "Replicator"(ala Star Trek) technology on TL8. Yes Rot machine is nice and will do a lot for mass produced goods and even specialised parts that could all be made at home,but still a lot of technology will be out of reach of such machine during TL8(OR it will be mamuthian mobile factory).

Originally Posted by riprock

If we can get consensus on the mechanics of that, I will further argue that skills can be preserved and transmitted without recognizable universities.

Yes,skills can ... but still Unis are what kickstarts whole process and are actual centres of "new thought"(Yes,Im aware of numerous non-University related inventors,but still most of major breakthroughs are achieved through assistance of Unis to some degree).


To summ all of above :

You presented me with very interesting read and I learned a lot of new stuff.

I fully disagree that fully functional TL8 society can be sustained with such small number of people(Im not even delving into deep sea/space programs here).


15:35 h /post :)

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by Molokh

I disagree, and here's why. As they say,
'The one who cannot do, teaches to do; the one who cannot teach to do, teaches to teach. The one who can do, can only do.'

While it sounds harsh, it is also a very true proverb. For instance, my SO plays several musical instruments, but is incapable of teaching me, because of being unable to explain how to do it, or even explain what a note is.

Hm ... Is anyone else able to explain to you what a note is?

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by Agramer

... Large industrial Agriculture is much more efficient that family based agriculture. Im not disputing that with some profound thought agricultures labour man-hours can be cut down tremendously,but it still doesnt change fact that modern world has tendency toward specialisation which leads to efficiency(Real world is full of imperfections so no need to dispute this,since it isnt working exactly like that even in todays world,although it should).

That's within the Earth 2009 production and organization paradigms. I think the point is, that a planned ark community could be established on more situation-appropriate paradigms for that purpose. Earth 2009 has a massive scale, established infrastructure forms, and legacy-organizational elements that make specialization an efficient choice. Take away scale and swap in different established infrastructure, and suddenly a diffused (frontier/self-sufficiency) model for production makes more sense.

Im stressing that such multidisciplinary doctor of sciences is wasted resource on everyday jobs that would be in "normal world" delegated to technicians with small supervision of such expert.But that with your 500 people mark we dont have room for those technicians.

I agree with you that 500 people seems low, but I think it's very very doable with say about 20,000 people, and arguable down to maby 5000 (leaving aside any tech-assisted population boosting).

Because scale is small compared to Earth 2009, in a lot of cases demand would not be sufficient to support specialization in a lot of cases anyway. While the super-doctors idea may be stretching things a bit, it seems to me that it would be reasonable to ask a select group of highly motivated people to bring or add a second or third occupational specialty to their erudition. Perhaps not as significant as their main line, but available if needed and teachable. Medic/beekeepers, Agronomist/videographer, etc.

Yes,skills can ... but still Unis are what kickstarts whole process and are actual centres of "new thought"(Yes,Im aware of numerous non-University related inventors,but still most of major breakthroughs are achieved through assistance of Unis to some degree).

Personally, I think the idea of needing a university for this challenge is too much 'mission-creep'. We're not trying to advance knowledge, where trying to avoid slipping any lower than TL7 with the smallest footprint possible. I don't think it's necessary or practical to include a replication of the structures of traditional academia in the mission requirements.

That said, you might want to include some kind of sub-function/facility/social structure/ethic that captures some core functions of universities: collegial free inquiry, teaching a shared paradigm for transmitting analytical meaning, eliciting critical thinking ability. Maybe you'd go with a stripped-down university to 'keep the flame alive', so to speak.

{BTW, regarding food production: there's no need to get too fancy, Molokh said it's an Earthlike ecology, so pick your best spot for your relatively tiny population, apply well known technology with a handful of people to ensuring a the basics, and food will practically take care of itself.}