Ensuring post-apocalyptic survival at TL8?

[vicky_molokh]

I think IQ 14-15 is waaaay too optimistic. IQ11-12 seems more reasonable.

[Langy]

I have a speculative notion that full-time professional work is not the most efficient way to allocate highly skilled labor.

The truth of this statement depends entirely on the size of the community. If the community is large enough, then it's most efficient to have everyone working full time in one specific area - the greater the specialization, the better. This is simple, first semester economics.

On the other hand, if the community is too small to require a person working full time, then no, it isn't efficient to have that person work full time.

For this discussion, I'm assuming the experiment is able to draw on a starting population where no IQ stat is lower than 14 in GURPS terms, and that no child will have an IQ lower than 15.

That probably is a deal breaker. IQ 14+ people are incredibly rare in a realistic setting, and you won't be able to guarantee that all children will have higher IQs than their parents. Some of them will be dumber just by random variation.

Check out all the "What is GURPS IQ?" and "Who has high IQ?" threads from a few months back.

I disagree strongly. Industrial agriculture functions in the same way that Goldman Sachs makes money - massive government intervention covers up fundamentally bad design.

This meshes nicely with my first point. Industrial agriculture is less efficient in a small society, but simple economics show that it will always be at least as efficient as small-scale agriculture in a large society and will most likely be more efficient. Same deal with full-time professional work, basically.


I'll note that 500 people is way, way too little to include all of the specialties required for maintaining TL8. Remember that you need all those different specialties of medicine, as well as tons of specialties in other fields, like research sciences, engineering fields, different fields of mathematics, etc. If you don't have all of those, you aren't fully TL8.

500 people is probably way too low for ensuring survival, too. You'd have to set up multiple small colonies like that to get any sort of decent survival odds, but each colony will be subject to catastrophic failure if even a small percent of its population dies because there are simply too few people in the colony to allow for much redundancy.

Also: You can't just substitute capital for medical service. If there's nobody around to treat or diagnose a problem, you can't spend money to fix it. What you spend money on is the guy treating and diagnosing the problem.

[Figleaf23]

Originally Posted by riprock

Irrelevant side note: Your sig says : "Rule B492: live by it or die trying." But on that page I see several bits of GM advice, none of which call out to me as particularly inspiring. Does Rule B492 encompass all of them? Or is it some shorter passage, such as "All he has to do is listen to the players describe what they're doing, then use the rules of the game to tell them what happens..."?

It refers to the rule about the GMs common sense being the ultimate guide. (Bottom left corner, I think.)

Main topic:...

Robin Dunbar indicated that humans function more efficiently in small groups of less than 200 persons.

...

Are these communities functioning unit within a larger social superstructure, or it the suggestion that 200 is the optimal number of people for a whole society?

Given the above background, it remains for me to explain why I think that being a doctor in a town of 500 souls is not a full-time job, and why I think that universities are not necessary.

Personally, I find neither of those propositions controversial.

The first question requires more detail. I take the following statements to be noncontroversial:
a - Capital can be substituted for labor;

I beg to differ there. In economic theory and taking an economy in aggregate, capital can be substituted for labour. But at TL7/8 in practical terms that's not universally true, and this community (be it 500 or 20000) is not going to have the scale to allow it to be statistically correct. There are no machines that can yet substitute for a human surgeon, for example.

c - Armigerous tribal citizens have an inherent preference to defend their own property and their own rights rather than demanding protection, arbitration, and regulation from centralized authority.

That's a bit of a truism, though.

d- Demand for medical services in a highly-intelligent tribal frontier community is very different from demand for medical services in a bell-curve civilized community. Civilized medical agencies seek to maximize private profit. Tribal communities seek to maximize the common good.

That would have to be a matter of argument or data, I would think, rather than being tendered as a non-controversial item.

[riprock]

Originally Posted by Agramer

Just to snip at this.

Why cant Countries with "unlimited" finances devoted to Nuclear power create it if you can do all of it in "small machine shop"?

Iran,N.Corea...etc ?

Why is it such a problem for them?

The last time I checked, many countries have various applications of nuclear power, and it isn't a technical problem.

It *is* a political problem. I see a lot of news stories about Iran and North Korea getting political problems due to their technical successes with nuclear science.

I suspect you're listening to hearsay and getting false impressions, but if you have some news stories you want to cite, please give a link.

Originally Posted by Molokh

I think IQ 14-15 is waaaay too optimistic. IQ11-12 seems more reasonable.

Okay, if you're going to add a constraint like "modal IQ must be no higher than 12" than I can't promise you a solution with 500 people.

Originally Posted by Langy

If the community is large enough, then it's most efficient to have everyone working full time in one specific area - the greater the specialization, the better. This is simple, first semester economics.

First semester economics also says that Alan Greenspan can counterfeit money indefinitely and people without jobs should be given suburban houses with mortgages.

I'll stick with barbarous relics and J.K.Galbraith.

Originally Posted by Langy

IQ 14+ people are incredibly rare in a realistic setting, and you won't be able to guarantee that all children will have higher IQs than their parents. Some of them will be dumber just by random variation.

Check out all the "What is GURPS IQ?" and "Who has high IQ?" threads from a few months back.

I've heard of regression to the mean before. I just don't agree with you about exactly how it works. Also, there isn't a consensus on exactly what measures could be taken to deal with low-intelligence children.

For example, one might envision a fanatical police state where unpromising children were subject to infanticide.

Originally Posted by Langy

Industrial agriculture is less efficient in a small society, but simple economics show that it will always be at least as efficient as small-scale agriculture in a large society and will most likely be more efficient. Same deal with full-time professional work, basically.

Again, "simple economics" says that Keynes was right. History, as told by the Austrian school, says that Keynes was wrong. (And quite possibly some competing school of historians says Keynes was the love child of time-traveling Robert Anton Wilson and Cthulhu.)

Rather than citing "economics," I think it would be best to cite specific titles and authors concerning specific technical problems.

On the topic of square-foot food gardening, for example, here is Jeavons:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Grow-More-.../dp/0898157676

Originally Posted by Langy

I'll note that 500 people is way, way too little to include all of the specialties required for maintaining TL8. Remember that you need all those different specialties of medicine, as well as tons of specialties in other fields, like research sciences, engineering fields, different fields of mathematics, etc. If you don't have all of those, you aren't fully TL8.

Do you have any citation with a list of the exact specialties that are required to maintain TL8? Because if you do, I hope you can ease my task of the cladistics issue I mentioned upthread.

Industrial cladistics is still being discussed in the scholarly journals of several fields. I think I need to give a condensed outline of the findings before anyone else on this thread will be bothered to investigate cladistic issues seriously.

Originally Posted by Langy

500 people is probably way too low for ensuring survival, too. You'd have to set up multiple small colonies like that to get any sort of decent survival odds, but each colony will be subject to catastrophic failure if even a small percent of its population dies because there are simply too few people in the colony to allow for much redundancy.

500 people is for a particular scenario that includes ideal weather and geography, bountiful natural resources, fanatical devotion to the cause, and sky-high intelligence levels.

Originally Posted by Langy

Also: You can't just substitute capital for medical service. If there's nobody around to treat or diagnose a problem, you can't spend money to fix it. What you spend money on is the guy treating and diagnosing the problem.

One can indeed substitute capital for many medical services. Anyone who decides to take an aspirin rather than pestering a physician has substituted the capital of aspirin for the services of the physician.

This is not the same as saying the substitution of capital for labor never runs into limits.

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

It refers to the rule about the GMs common sense being the ultimate guide. (Bottom left corner, I think.)

Thanks, I'm looking at page 492 now and I see: "Use common sense."

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

Are these communities functioning unit within a larger social superstructure, or it the suggestion that 200 is the optimal number of people for a whole society?

I think the serious anthropologists who studied it say that humans prefer to live in self-contained tribes of 100 to 200. Obviously, this is not always an option in modern societies: even the Amish enclaves have to face the outside world every so often.

In pop-sci terms, the Dunbar number can be made to promise almost anything for your company, just so long as you buy Malcolm Gladwell's next book. Practically speaking, I opine that most people work better within a small "tribe" of closely trusted persons, and that most people like to shut out the larger society whenever possible.

I have recently observed a university with more than 10,000 students. Everyone tries to define a little "tribe" or "village" of less than 200 souls and behaves as if the rest of the university - and the rest of the city - is not part of the tribal world.

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

I beg to differ there. In economic theory and taking an economy in aggregate, capital can be substituted for labour. But at TL7/8 in practical terms that's not universally true, and this community (be it 500 or 20000) is not going to have the scale to allow it to be statistically correct. There are no machines that can yet substitute for a human surgeon, for example.

Yes, but how often does one need surgery when living in a resource-rich planned community with lots of automation?

I should have been much more specific; I should have said something like, "I have a list of cases wherein high-tech professionals managed to accomplish feats which had been previously dismissed as 'impossible' by substituting capital for labor."

And then I would have to do the hard part, which is actually reel off a list long enough to satisfy everyone.

I suppose most people are not aware of the numbers of moving parts in a mechanical pencil, or the numbers of parts in a crude automobile, or the number of parts in a modern airplane. (I would look it up, but I'm at my GURPS library, not at my office.)

First distinguish between "part type" and "part." A toy car might have two part types, namely "wheel" and "body," but five parts, because there are four instances of the wheel part.

Let's assume there's 10 part types in a mechanical pencil, 1000 part types in a crude automobile (that's a 1910-style auto, a 2009 auto has many more types of parts.), and 10,000,000 part types in a modern airplane. (I suspect that's closer to a Piper Cub than a DC-10.)

Even if our fictional community of 500 people had all the parts to a DC-10, they wouldn't be willing to spend the time and energy to put them together. Conversely, they might be willing to do a "barn-raising" style of one-time labor donation in order to assemble 1000 types of parts into a 1910-style automobile, because the community might greatly benefit from a little basic transportation.

A normal community would not be able to make all 1000 types of parts. But Neil Gershenfeld, with a fab lab, could make all 1000 types of parts. Thus a fab lab is a typical example of how capital can substitute for labor even with a solo operator.

By the way, how many folks were aware that some people assemble functioning airplanes from kits?

http://www.zenithair.com/zodiac/xl/index.html

So one might conceivably have a single IQ 14 individual who might operate a fab lab to produce a kit (he would have the blueprints from the get-go). That same individual might then assemble those parts into that plane, and even fly that plane.

And if a single individual (with a fab lab and plentiful raw materials) can build a plane single-handedly, I believe a community that *starts* with all the necessary tools can continue to maintain those tools.


Of course, the only way to be sure is to give me enough money to set up my own fab lab. I can do it for a mere 30,000 Euros. I assume everyone else on this thread is convinced that the money will be well-spent, right...?

[Crickets....]

[vicky_molokh]

First, I see that the number 500 is scary to many people, so I'm considering assuming 100k, maybe even 300k (Iceland, right) as a safety measure.

Second, I don't think that a car is a good example of an esoteric TL8 device. Late-TL8 multifunctional cars (e.g. automobile/autosnowsled transformer) are being designed and built by single families in my country. Apparently, the greatest obstacle to making such production mainstream is getting the license to actually drive it afterwards.

Computers, splicing machines, X-rays and similar microtechnologies seem like the real challenge. Of course, I could be wrong about the last paragraph.

[Langy]

First semester economics also says that Alan Greenspan can counterfeit money indefinitely and people without jobs should be given suburban houses with mortgages.

I'll stick with barbarous relics and J.K.Galbraith.

Are you saying that comparitive advantage doesn't exist? 'cause that's what makes an industrial farm or a full time work week instead of spreading the work out to lots of other people efficient. Unless you decide comparitive advantage doesn't exist, it will always be more efficient to specialize.

Anyone who decides to take an aspirin rather than pestering a physician has substituted the capital of aspirin for the services of the physician.

Anyone who takes aspirin instead of going to a physician is doing the wrong thing. It's not one-or-the-other - aspirin is able to do specific stuff that physicians by themselves can't do at all. He could write a prescription for aspirin or some other pain reliever, but if the pain is little enough that an aspirin would help you shouldn't waste the doctors time, and if its enough that you should talk to a doctor just taking an aspirin won't help you.

Now, if you can extend that to all drugs, you might have a point that you can significantly substitute capital for the services of a physician - but having everyone be their own pharmacist and physician is a terrible idea. People will inevitably make bad decisions and overdose or otherwise near kill themselves because they took the wrong combination of medicines, all because they aren't supposed to see an actual physician because you smartly decided giving everyone access to tons of medications instead of giving them access to a physician was a good idea.

500 people is for a particular scenario that includes ideal weather and geography, bountiful natural resources, fanatical devotion to the cause, and sky-high intelligence levels.

None of that stuff helps all that much. You're still sticking all your eggs in one tiny, tiny, very vulnerable basket, and if only a few specialists die, your entire colony is going under.

[riprock]

Originally Posted by Langy

Are you saying that comparitive advantage doesn't exist? 'cause that's what makes an industrial farm or a full time work week instead of spreading the work out to lots of other people efficient. Unless you decide comparitive advantage doesn't exist, it will always be more efficient to specialize.

I'm saying that first-semester economics grossly exaggerates Ricardo's notion of comparative advantage, and makes it seem like a general law.

Edit:
A bit of googling on terms like "comparative advantage" ricardo distortion gave me a large number of articles on how china's interactions with the USA were causing numerous economists to question the Ricardo doctrine, and how Ricardo's ideas are being stretched out of shape. I won't link to the top ten articles, but I skimmed many articles that called Ricardo into question.

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/mov...es/000129.html

June 12, 2002
Comparative Advantage
Question: What do you think is the most misunderstood concept in your discipline?

Answer: For Economics this question has a stock answer. The most misunderstood concept in Economics is the concept of "comparative advantage." First developed early in the nineteenth century by David Ricardo, "comparative advantage" holds that we should export not those commodities that we can make more efficiently than people in other countries can make them, but those commodities that we can make most efficiently relative to the efficiency with which we make the average good or service. This principle has a corollary: we should import not those goods and services that we make less efficiently than other people make them, but those goods and services that we make less efficiently than we make goods and services in general.

A country that allows its trade to be shaped by this principle of comparative advantage will find that its workers find employment in those industries in which they are most productive. It will find that its profitable firms grow and its unprofitable firms shrink. And it will find that those goods that used to be produced domestically at relatively high prices--because the country was unable to produce them efficiently--will have their prices drop as domestic demand is satisfied by cheaper imports.

It is important in assessing comparative advantage that "efficiency" be defined in its broadest possible sense. A commodity that we can make cheaply but that generates a lot of pollution is in all likelihood one that we cannot make "efficiently." A commodity that is expensive in resources to produce, but that as a by product teaches valuable skills to workers or provides valuable ideas to other businesses and sectors, is in all likelihood one that we can make "efficiently."

Yet, somehow, a huge number of people think not in terms of "comparative" but of "absolute" advantage: they think that if American businesses can produce goods using less worker time than other countries, that we have no business importing such goods. But they are wrong. The true source of long-run wealth is for us to specialize in what we are best at--not for us to distribute traded goods-sector workers around all sectors and make everything in which we are more productive than other countries.

Posted by DeLong at June 12, 2002 12:37 PM

Not coincidentally, the economics teaching profession is not entirely free of conflicts of interest.

Mysteriously, the Nobel Prize for Economics is always awarded to economists who call for more centralization of social power. It's almost as though academics are not perfectly objective and immune to the principal-agent problem.

[Langy]

That passage you quoted doesn't refute anything about what I said. It's true, and it's certainly something I know, but it doesn't change the fact that a community that has people working in specialties will be more efficient than a community that has everyone doing everything. A guy who is trained really well to be a farmer will be a better farmer than a guy who's trained to be a farmer, a doctor, and an engineer, even if the other guy is just as good at farming as the first guy - the first guy has a compartive advantage at farming. Similarly, efficencies of scale apply to manufacturing, agriculture, etc.

[riprock]

Originally Posted by Langy

That passage you quoted doesn't refute anything about what I said. It's true, and it's certainly something I know, but it doesn't change the fact that a community that has people working in specialties will be more efficient than a community that has everyone doing everything. A guy who is trained really well to be a farmer will be a better farmer than a guy who's trained to be a farmer, a doctor, and an engineer, even if the other guy is just as good at farming as the first guy - the first guy has a compartive advantage at farming. Similarly, efficencies of scale apply to manufacturing, agriculture, etc.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that you haven't read my previous posts in the thread, because your claims flatly deny claims I made in post 34 with no quotation or sources cited to justify your denial.

So, basically, you CAN cite yourself as an authority. Go ahead. You can ignore all the stuff I wrote (in post 34) about why 500 is a relevant number of persons and go on a tangent about eggs in a vulnerable basket. That just means you want to have a separate conversation. This practice is sometimes referred to by the English idiom "they were talking past each other," or "they were arguing past each other."

You, Langy, have nothing whatever to gain by reading my posts. If you read them, you might figure out what I was talking about. It is better to keep ignoring whatever I write and insisting that your conversation is the right conversation to have. That is your winning strategy. Run with it.

The other folks in the thread who might take an interest in cladistics, such as Agramer, have already gotten as much cladistics education out of this thread as they are likely to get. Beyond that, their local university's department of industrial engineering might or might not be of service. But as for you, Langy, do not seek out any papers on cladistics. Avoid cladistics at all costs, and you win the game.

[Agramer]

Originally Posted by riprock

..... such as Agramer,.....

Cladistics ? :Cambridge dictionary doesnt ahve that word and I dunno what it means.


Though regardless from what I learned by reading your posts and following really interesting links upon links from them I still disagree with you about fundamental questions of this discussion.

You insist that small community can survive on its own and be very productive while keeping its tech base.

I agree with you with whole of above sentence.But I find tech base and TL being 2 very different subjects.In your interpretation, "tech base" is What we need to have operating to thrive as community but it still doesnt describe Full TL.

I asked Nuclear question about N.Korea and Iran...both refused to let observers in at some point,but they still dont have functioning A-bombs.why is that if thats so simple? you cant say its "political" since they are trying to get there and IF they succeed than it would become "The Political".
Though were here talking about technology and not politics,so why dont they have Bombs by now if thats so simple?

You also didnt comment on simple example of Medicine requirements for amount of Doctors/nurses/technicians necessary(which alone breaks your 500 people mark) to just hold things in order during their generation(not even considering lapses in passing knowledge to 2nd generation without structured school system,aka Medical Universities followed by specialisations).

Youre trying to refute that specialisation leads to efficiency while whole History shows us that it is true:

Single Master workers with apprentices were "destroyed as base of production" by Manufacture type of production which in change was surpassed by Factory type of production where in each step single worker was becoming more and more specialised and efficient(In that single aspect of whole process).

Originally Posted by Dunbar Number Wikki

Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.[1] Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.

I really dont see any correspondence with Dunbar number and what youre inserting Dunbar number means for your 500 criteria.

Furthermore ,Dunbar number "is" around 50 people for normal person living in stable environment and it rises in times of need to 150ish,which is "maximum" number of people with whom single person can have stable relationship which is to some degree accepted by Military in size of company(80-150 man depending on Army),since Company commander(Captain) is last in chain of command who is on frontlines directly with his men.Above that officers tend to sit in command posts.

What does it have to do with our subject I really dont know.

Also after all reading Im just under impression that youre refusing to accept anyones other argument for anything and just continue citing some "Academic source" that doesnt prove anything or refutes anything claimed by other participants in this discussion,as that last economic quote wasnt(Actually it did prove that specialisation is more efficient but that wasnt your intention when you quoted it).