Which would last longer/be more prosperous: an all-male society, or an all-female one?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Going with the off-the-cuff analysis (along the lines Taomist pointed out, I’m assuming the point of the exercise is asking “who gets along better, men with men or women with women”) the stereotype would be that the women would be more likely to get into disagreements with each other, but the men’s disagreements would be more likely to result in death and mutual destruction.

There have been two seasons of Survivor where the original tribes were separated by gender. Both had tribal mix-ups before the merge, and in both cases, the women kept to their original gender alliance and started voting out the men. In the first of the two seasons, the final 7 contained 6 women and 1 man - and the man made it to the end and won. In the second, the final 7 again contained 6 women and 1 man, but the women were smart enough to vote off the guy early.

22

I suspect a major determining factor in the survival of either group would be settling on a long-term common goal. Something that everyone in the group wants, for one reason or another, that can only be accomplished by working together to build the necessary infrastructure.

On Andros, there is an obvious answer. All those guys running around? Each of them has an X-chromosome. If they can build the infrastructure, they can start working on cloning, and eventually make some women. Children will naturally follow, and in due time a race of immortals will set out to conquer the universe…where they will meet a strikingly similar race consisting entirely of females who reproduce exclusively through cloning…and mastered it enough earlier to have already built an empire.

All this, of course, assumes that they realize the vastly increased importance of serious accidents that Der Trihs has pointed out and exercise enough caution in their activities to defy the actuarial tables. (Which are, I will point out, based on a society in which people routinely sit down in thin metal shells and hurtle around at speeds no animal on Earth has evolved to cope with.)

23

OK, let’s say their neurogenesis manages to stay at a functional replacement rate (which is credible for the age range we’re talking about). Their capacity to learn is great, once they get sufficient stimulation. No old age, no resources spent on training replacement generations.

In theory, they could advance much much quicker. And they’ve seen modern technology, not to mention the effects of Skald tech. They know some neat stuff is possible.

In practice, trying to build a technological base could blow up on them. And they don’t replace until they find a way to.

I don’t know, but I think some of them would be around for a really long time. Possibly after getting some of the others killed, but still.

24

Both will last more than 200 but less than 2000 years.

People want to live, generally speaking, so they’ll keep going on. However, accidents, violence, suicide, etc…will have killed almost everybody within 2000 years, according to a previous thread.

25

If they manage to survive the early years, create shelter, agriculture, technology and such, the women have the advantage in that they’re way, way ahead on reproduction. They have all the genetic tools needed to start an aggressive cloning program once they have the technology to accomplish it. So if they make it past the early stages, they’ll make it to 2000+.

However, modern humans in a situation like that? Pretty significant number of them is going to die off before they manage to get the food issue under control, I suspect. So I have no idea if they’d make it past the early stages or not. Assuming both islands make it past the early stages, I expect the men will probably die out due to both conflict and accidents after 200 but before 2000, while the women will make it past 2000.

26

I don’t think 20,000 people is anywhere near what you’d need to support an advanced technological culture. You’d need more like millions not tens of thousands to support a bare bones technological culture. It can take thousands of people to develop and build single pieces of technology, much less a whole civilization. Judging from the history of isolated groups of people, the colonists will regress to a stone age level when the libraries decay and they have to rely on what they can pass down.

27

Parts of both groups will survive for more than 20 years, but less than 200. There won’t be a significant difference with gender, both will face the same issues common to humans.

Namely, the essence of being human is “us” and “them.” Without the presence of an outside group, and even with that, the tendency is to splinter rather than join. It’s mostly been conquest which brings groups together.

It’s not going to take more than a year for rival groups to form. Much less, probably a few months. Since you’re taking only Americans, then there will be the usual suspects. The red states types and the blue states type. The Christians and the nots. Whatever. You won’t start off with classes, but give it time. On the positive side there aren’t any gun holders vs. not. Point is, it really matter how the groups are divided, once they are, they will emphasis their differences.

Madagascar is a huge island, almost the size of Texas, and 10,000 people would just be dots on plains, so one would think that the groups could just take off and never see each other for a zillion years, but we have unmistakable evidence that Skald is truly evil. There’s the Central Shrine which is worth fighting for the death for. A group with access to modern knowledge will be able to decimate a group without.

The other problem is that with the given scenario, the immediate need for cooperation by the entire 10,000 members is minimal. The only real need would be attempt to create cloning, and that would be a several hundred year project for a group this size. It would become impossible when the groups separate and start spending their efforts gaining an advantage over each other.

Without the ability to grow, then each death by accident, murder, war or suicide will decrease the population. With a mortality rate of even 1%, then it’s pretty much over in 500 years. At 2% it would only take a couple of hundred. The only thing which would keep the populations from totally collapsing is that there will be a few bands which will take off to the far sides of the island and live as stone age hunter gatherers. For small bands to survive long term, the requirement would have to be bonds strong enough to overcome the natural jealousies.

Add the frustrations of no opposite sex around, questions of how to divide resources, etc., I don’t think that any of the subgroups or bands will be able to last more than 200 years.

28

Except that they don’t need to pass anything down, because they’re all eternally young. They might be a bit fuzzy on the details after a couple hundred years, but they will all remember computers, airplanes, et cetera, and at least a significant minority will understand the idea of “we need to develop human cloning if this society is to have a future.”

That said, I still don’t think 10,000 people minus however many die out in the first decade are going to be enough to build up to a biotech industry.

29

I can remember computers. That doesn’t mean I can build one out of rocks and coconuts.

30

This has not been my experience, and I went to a women’s college and work in a field (librarianship) that’s about 80% female. While unpleasant women certainly exist (I’ve got a particularly horrible former boss I could go on and on about), as do adult cliques, I’ve rarely felt that this was a serious problem in all/mostly female environments. I have my doubts as to whether men are any less prone to unpleasantness or cliquishness.

However, I could easily believe that other factors exaggerate these problems in some all-female groups. The prestige, danger, training, amount of physical labor, etc., associated with mostly male and mostly female occupations tend to be quite different. I would imagine that, say, coal miners have less time, energy, and opportunity for gossiping and sniping in the course of their job than a bunch of hair stylists.

31

If I bring gingersnaps, can I go to the UN-appropriate island? :smiley: I’ve worked in primarily male workplaces, which may be why I had no clue how to survive in a mostly-female one. Obviously, batting my eyelashes and looking cute doesn’t really work when everyone else has longer eyelashes and is cuter. <pouts>**

**I am SO being sarcastic there.

32

My guess is, assuming a normal population distribution of sexual orientation in the test subjects , you will have some men more than willing to become de facto females, and these will become a very precious resource that will be fought over, so the whole “no females” thing will last a short period of time until the gay or transgender oriented men figure out the power dynamics of the situation.

I’m not sure how this will play out on the female side, but in the absence of the opposite sex humans will make do.

Re survivability my real guess is that by doing this the time traveler is somehow going to wind up impaled on stake with his balls sewn into his mouth. You focus a group of 40,000 very angry and frustrated intelligent immortals to do nothing but hate you creative shit can happen.

33

It’s not 20,000 people, it’s two groups of 10,000 with absolutely isolation between the groups. If either or both of the groups were to start to splinter, then you are starting to talk about even fewer and fewer cooperative members. I think it’s likely you will have bands of several dozen to several hundred people each, in which the primary focus will be developing weapons to fight each other or to protect themselves. It would be nice for everyone to work together, but we haven’t really seen that anywhere.

34

Nitpick: You mean 10,000, as there were 20,000 lab rats and they were split in half by gender. Not that it matters much, as the smaller figure supports your basis point even better.

They’re not passing anything down unless they invent cloning tech; and if they manage to do that, your entire argument is refuted anyway. :wink: Of course, they’re not aging either.

35

Well, they have tons of books–the entire Library of Congress, with multiple copies of each, I think. I don’t remember what I wrote in the OP but unless I edited it out for brevity, said tomes and the buildings n which they sit will be set up to ensure maximum longevity.

36

Andros might persist beyond 2000 years, but only if the colony is able to overcome the sexual barrier quickly. If the men relegate themselves to forming fluid homosexual relationships then they might well advance and last the time. They have a natural advantage starting out of physical power and given natural distribution of jobs, experience.

Themyscira will last somewhere from 200 to 2000 years. They will likely lose more to accidents and infighting early on before stabilizing. They will have a tougher time in the early going, but good cooperation could overcome this problem. Unfortunately it seems that women are programmed to squabble, and this could undermine their long term chances.

37

I think the more interesting question is how much technology will the various societies be able to produce before they die off, either by war or alcoholism, and is there a difference between the male and female worlds?

With abundant docile game animals, it wouldn’t take much to kill them. Just walk up and slit their throats, or shoot them point blank with cross bows or whatever. One would assume that the men would be more likely to work on inventing more flashy ways of killing prey, though. They would also serve double duty if wars broke out.

I still believe that both worlds will break up into rival tribes fairly early on. That seems to be how humans have been doing things forever. Would there be any difference by gender in the size on the respective tribes or if they would be more or less likely to go to war?

38

Men would just end up creating the technology to create women from their seed and artificially growing them. I think the same would happen with a female society. Hell, we already have the technology to create semen from a woman’s body that can be implanted into their lesbian lover. I think that in the long term absence of each other, women and men both crave each other and will create each other.

39

Where do you think these docile game animals would be coming from? Because I certainly ain’t providing 'em. Where’s the fun in that?

Admittedly, if any of the inhabitants of Themyscira happen to be Dopers, it might occur to them that male Rhymers named Skald are easily manipulated by female tears, but that is easily guarded against on my part. And I don’t see how that helps Andros.

40

I agree with Mnemnosyne et al. about the initial period, probably 10 years or so, being crucial. Certainly a number will commit suicide in a short time, but one thing I thought of immediately was that if I were one of the test subjects on Andros and I heard a recording saying I would not age and was immune to disease, I wouldn’t begin to believe it for a decade or so. I also think that most people would suicide after about 200 years, no matter what, I think most people are not equipped for a longer haul. But some would hang on out of cussedness. We know who we are.
:slight_smile: