Ensuring post-apocalyptic survival at TL8?

[Agramer]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

.............

I agree with your points except :
-lack of need of Uni (How much stripped down version? Just art and such or?)
-minimum population

There is no problem to make Military outpost at TL8 and to keep it at TL8 generation later.
But thats Military outpost and not preservation of full TL.

I could be wrong on minimum amount of people needed to preserve TL completely,though maybe someone here will dispute that :))

Edit:

What Im trying to say is that you need Structure to keep TL.Structure requires labour which requires big population due all segments that make our TL.

Maybe simplest example is just Medicine.How many different departments do big Hospital complexes have...so with few backups we are already at thousands of people and we just started.And if we lack even single department than our TL is already starting to slip due other Doctors not having same expertise as that department specialists.

[Agramer]

To be sef sustainable youd need something like this.

Texas Medical center... has about 13 hospitals, a mental health facility, 19 academic schools, a pharmacy school... and employs 72,600, of which 15,000+ are doctors and upper level educators, plus an additional 33,000 students"

Numbers can be cut down but it is still a lot for just Medicine.


Other way to look at it is(after talking with Urologist-surgeon,when explained what were discussing here):

Originally Posted by Urologist

Figure 2 nurses per doc to max efficiency in the office or ER. add 2 nurses per operating room functioning, per shift, plus 1.5 to 2 anesthesiologists per OR room functioning.
Number of MDs(Urologists):call it 2 to 3 in each specialty, training up to double their number for redundancy and allowing for population growth.

Now multiply this bare numbers by hundreds of Medical specialities and add some more for technicians not mentioned here(x-ray...etc) and top everything off with cooks,janitors...etc

Though he did say that regardless how good specific MD/student is that slips of knowledge wold happen during generation shift without formal education(Universities) and that in long run apprenticeship modle cant sustain such broad base of knowledge.

So from whatever angle we look we need thousands,more likely tens of thousands,for Medicine alone without even touching rest of Iceberg that constitutes TL7 or TL8

[riprock]

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....
A student's only real requirement is willingness to learn. After that, a good teacher can always make the student into a good student.

All right, duly noted, I need to sort through my thoughts on that.

I had originally prepared a melodramatic comment on modern education, but it would be too rococo in comparison to your terse critique.

So going forward, let's note the education issue as something requiring extra resources - whether that means a professional vocational school or a university will require more thought.

As a starter, I invite you to consider techshop.ws:

http://techshop.ws/take_classes.html

It is grist for the mill, as they say.

Originally Posted by Agramer

What is DIY?

...
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).

DIY is an abbreviation for "do it yourself." It is the modern version of "arts and crafts."

Agramer, I appreciate your detailed comments, but I have to ask you to wait a few days before I can get through them all and give them the attention they deserve.

[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..."?

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

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).

Main topic:

The very unusual situation of starting a small colony on a new world with an initial capital investment of working tools distorts the costs of resources and labor, IMHO.

I have several hundred academic papers that I believe are relevant to these issues (they cover macroeconomics, business administration issues, engineering, etc). Whether my belief in their relevance is correct or not, it would be unreasonable to try to winnow them on a GURPS forum. Thus I will try to limit myself to easily accessible web pages.

I think the GURPS angle of this issue can best be expressed in terms of a handful of important leaders: Arizmendiarrieta, Gingery, Gershenfeld, Dunbar, Vail, Robb.


José María Arizmendiarrieta demonstrated what can be done by the co-operative economic system in a community with a high degree of fictive kinship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%...izmendiarrieta


David J. Gingery asserted (and gave very impressive empirical evidence) to indicate that a functional metal-working shop can be built from scrap. He began by casting his own metal, and produced a lathe from cast metal. He was able to construct an entire machine shop from a cast-metal lathe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Gingery

[The wikipedia page has extensive links.]

Neil Gershenfeld showed how a bunch of high-school students with less than a semester of training can produce serviceable integrated circuits out of basic industrial products.

http://cba.mit.edu/people/index.html
http://fab.cba.mit.edu/
http://ng.cba.mit.edu/

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar_number


Jeff Vail picked up on many of the efficiencies of communities that use Dunbar's number. I chose the figure of 500 as an optimal community size in order to have three "tribes" of about 150, plus a "priesthood" of about 50 to lead the "rhizome community." This notion is the most speculative part of my claims.

http://www.jeffvail.net/2007/01/what-is-rhizome.html


John Robb developed some of Jeff Vail's work in a number of directions, including the ecological engineering done by the New Alchemy Institute.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Alchemy_Institute

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/...le-edible.html



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.

The first question requires more detail. I take the following statements to be noncontroversial:
a - Capital can be substituted for labor;
b - Tribal communities are composed of an armed citizenry, not a disarmed peasantry regulated by a military caste;
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.
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. As a real-life example of how homogeneous communities demonstrate great cooperation, consider the Mondragon Co-Op.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondrag...ve_Corporation


Given a,b, c, and d, let us consider the demand for medical services in a tribal community. Does a physician punch a clock and work a set number of hours (perhaps eight at the clinic and four "on-call")? I doubt it. The tribe will demand excess capacity so that there are enough physicians to deal with genuine emergencies, but physicians are so highly skilled and multi-talented that they do not need to limit themselves to medicine. They would be full-time doctors only when emergencies demanded it. Most of the time, routine medicine would substitute capital for labor, and the physicians' excess labor would be available for other needs. While this does not perfectly correspond to the Mondragon experience in the Basque region, I believe it is the correct extrapolation from the smaller tribal size and the highly intelligent gene pool.


The second question is, in my opinion, more obvious. Universities and government schools are (IMHO) grossly inefficient at processing highly intelligent pupils. Since the community consists only of highly intelligent parents, barring grotesque mutations, the children will be highly intelligent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschool

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor..._%28scholar%29

http://www.librarything.com/work/254268

I submit that if Illich and Roszak cannot convince the reader that modern schooling is a hideous Procrustean bed that deforms and mutilates the human spirit, then my own writings to that effect would be a tale written by a Gene Ray, full of $CREAMCAPS and TYPO"S, signifying www.timecube.com.

But my own neurosis about Procrustean beds is not relevant to Molokh's GURPS campaign. Molokh has said that she wants teaching as a separate economic sector, and my existing model has to be adjusted accordingly. But right not it is after midnight in my time zone, and I have to get up at five-thirty.

[Agramer]

Originally Posted by riprock

As a starter, I invite you to consider techshop.ws:

http://techshop.ws/take_classes.html

It is grist for the mill, as they say.

Technoshop is "how to make" class...

Technicians knowledge is "How to make" or "How to operate".

Engineers knowledge is "Why does it do that in such conditions and what would change if we change conditions" type of knowledge.

example: FABRICATION: Aluminum Sand Casting class on technoshop...

Itll teach you how to "blacksmith" aluminium.....what it wont teach you is(Which would be expected from engineer to know):

-what if humidity is high in area...will/what would be structural changes
-how does metal react on different temeperatures(outside ones) during casting
-How long will it last,How long if made under different conditions
-How much weight can it support
-How much(minimum) extra support would it need to hold something
-Can it be done in "cheaper" way(using less material)
...etc

....Now even if you amas amazing amount of "how to make/How to do" you will still lack knowledge that engineer brings to table.

Edit: Ouch ,you posted while I was typing...
/postpones above ,again,5+ hour read for later date :)) .....

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by riprock

The second question is, in my opinion, more obvious. Universities and government schools are (IMHO) grossly inefficient at processing highly intelligent pupils. Since the community consists only of highly intelligent parents, barring grotesque mutations, the children will be highly intelligent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschool

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor..._%28scholar%29

http://www.librarything.com/work/254268

I submit that if Illich and Roszak cannot convince the reader that modern schooling is a hideous Procrustean bed that deforms and mutilates the human spirit, then my own writings to that effect would be a tale written by a Gene Ray, full of $CREAMCAPS and TYPO"S, signifying www.timecube.com.

But my own neurosis about Procrustean beds is not relevant to Molokh's GURPS campaign. Molokh has said that she wants teaching as a separate economic sector, and my existing model has to be adjusted accordingly. But right not it is after midnight in my time zone, and I have to get up at five-thirty.

I don't 'want' to make teaching a separate economic sector. I'm saying that transfering advanced knowledge cannot be done by people who are not taught/talented enough to do it. It also takes time and effort. Since it has to be done all the time, it just as well might be done by professionals. Though this isn't a final decision - I'm not a judge, I'm a person interested in the discussion. I like seeing different PoVs.

As someone who experienced both homeschooling and schoolschooling, I can say that while schools have their learning-stoppers, these are mostly related to other pupils. I know that individual education is more efficient, but I doubt it would be economically feasible when workforce is limited.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

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

Well, my physics textbook and teacher said they're just frequencies at which the instrument produces sound. But musicians say that's not what a note is, yet can never explain what it is, saying I will understand when/if I learn to play. Since I can't differentiate them by hearing, I have no idea who of them is right, and if the latter, what is a note.

[martinl]

1) Some stuff will be very hard to produce due to infrastructure requirements yet still and valuable. (Computer chips, chemicals that are industrially valuable but hard to make/mine, high precision instruments that are rugged yet hard to build, pretty much anything that needs a market of 1M+ to be an economically valuable industry...) For this sort of stuff, just bring a long term supply plus copious notes on how to manage it when you run out. This will allow you to concentrate on stuff you can do more easily.

2) People seem to be assuming massive population growth is easy. I think it is going to be one of the hardest parts in a TL8 society. Are you going to enslave all the women to pump out kids? If not, you need a way to convince them to do so voluntarily. If so, how are you going to keep them enslaved? How many people are going to be needed to take care of and educate the kids? How are you going to deal with the political consequences of a youth that massively outnumbers it's elders? Politics in general are going to be severe - everyone here has been ripped from their home and their home has been destroyed, along with many people they loved. PTSD everywhere. Oh, and you're surrounded by pristine wilderness - anyone who really dissents can run away unless you run the place like a prison...

3) Recruitment. You need talented TL8 folks willing to take a huge risk here. On one hand, if the approaching apocalypse is not obvious, you will need a large incentive to get the recruits to sign on for training/orientation. (Untrained and unoriented colonists are not recommended.) If the approaching apocalypse is obvious, people are going to use political clout to get chosen as colonists, and you will end up with a colony of professional politicians and bazillionaires. If the obviousness changes during prep time, you might end up with suitable colonists you've recruited and trained at great expense getting bumped by politicians.

4) Planning. You can probably get a very good return on investment if you spend money researching the problem more thoroughly than you might on an internet message board. If your colony will cost a trillion dollars and you have ten years to prepare, consider spending 100 billion in the first 5 years on modeling the problem and finding solutions to them.

5) Redundancy and fallback. Always have multiple copies of anything vital (includes specialists) if at all possible. Always have a fallback position for losing all of them that isn't "all die, oh the embarrassment!"

[riprock]

First, a comment from MartinL:

People seem to be assuming massive population growth is easy. I think it is going to be one of the hardest parts in a TL8 society. Are you going to enslave all the women to pump out kids?

Well, since this is GURPS, I had rather assumed I could get settlers with 15-point Fanaticism, "Do whatever it takes to make the colony succeed."

Next, a comment from Molokh:

I'm saying that transfering advanced knowledge cannot be done by people who are not taught/talented enough to do it. It also takes time and effort. Since it has to be done all the time, it just as well might be done by professionals.

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

If that speculation is moonbeams and unicorn giggles, then, yes, by all means allocate for full-time professional teachers in the personnel budget.

If that speculation is worthy of the time and brain-power required to entertain it, I should flesh it out later, as in, next week. Real life is taking up too much time...


Following quotes from Agramer:

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.

Hmm.

It would be cynical to say that what engineers learn in the real world is how to keep silent and nod patiently while listening to less technically inclined people.

In the real world, broadly speaking, yes, there's a difference between a 100 IQ technician and a 150 IQ engineer, but I wonder how much of that is inherent smarts rather than training. It would be hard to measure.

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 right there might be a deal-breaker for some GMs.

3)
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.

You may not realize this, but a high-quality machine shop is a high tech factory.

A high-quality machine shop nowadays has CNC, and CAD/CAM at the minimum. A really high-quality machine shop nowadays is a fab lab, in the Gershenfeld sense.

Fab labs can make (large and bulky) computer chips with one technician and a whole lot of starting capital. Personnel is not the bottleneck - the time, expense, and trouble required to get a fab lab functioning is the bottleneck.

4) Large industrial Agriculture is much more efficient that family based agriculture.

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

5)
How many little things do you think constitute overall TL?...

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.

In fact, there are (at least) two kinds of academic journals that do try to quantify tech level. One is the macroeconomics sort, another is the R&D management sort, such as Technovation.

If anyone reading this has an interest, try entering the phrase "technology level" into your favorite academic lit search engine. I think you'll find that - at least in the macroeconomics journals - the resulting papers mostly seem to use the notation A for "technology level" in their models. This notational similarity makes me think that somewhere there is an existing body of macroeconomics theory that has set the precedent.

After 17 Dec 2009, I'd like to post a little summary of some macroeconomics papers that are relevant to tech level. This week, I'll be a little busy. It is very easy for me to get sucked into the problem of finding academic opinions that square with my viewpoint, and until 17 Dec 2009, I need to budget my time a bit.

Edit: I should probably start with the cladistics papers, but first I need to focus on some real-world deadlines.

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 guess we should find some actual real-world case studies of small engineering teams - if possible, from coops like the Mondragon Co-op - and see if I can fit some real-world data to my notions of labor costs.

Edit: Also, I should be able to document a case of a single person working with a fablab, and a single person working with a reprap, in order to document that TL 8 already has robotics and automation that (as far as I know) GURPS doesn't hint at in the rules for TL 8.

[Agramer]

Originally Posted by riprock

You may not realize this, but a high-quality machine shop is a high tech factory.

A high-quality machine shop nowadays has CNC, and CAD/CAM at the minimum. A really high-quality machine shop nowadays is a fab lab, in the Gershenfeld sense.

Fab labs can make (large and bulky) computer chips with one technician and a whole lot of starting capital. Personnel is not the bottleneck - the time, expense, and trouble required to get a fab lab functioning is the bottleneck.

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?