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

In My Humble Opinion
41

As several of us have pointed out, there just isn’t the critical mass large enough to build the infrastructure large enough.

Let’s just take the microscope. Yup, there are book on how to make one, but each of the steps are not trivial. Glass? OK, here’s an article on how to make it:

Skad is a nice guy* but he’s not going to provide bags of the proper silica sand for the taking. Do you know what silica sand looks like? Do you know how to find the right type? Can you find the location? Then there are all of the other minerals.

It’s possible to learn, but it will take time and people. The problem is how much time and how many people. Then being able to develop steel or other metal for the microscopes. This isn’t even getting into the electronics necessary for this type of advanced technology.

This is why a number of us say that it’s impossible given the number of subjects, the fact that you have no way of reproducing until the attrition rate ensures that you won’t have enough workers. What percent of the population can you devote to this project? Between needing people to obtain food, shelter and clothes, there just aren’t enough people to spare to make this happen fast enough. This is why one poster said you would need a group in the millions.

And if they start to break up into factions, this pretty much stops the show before it starts.

From your OP.

Game animals evolved in the absence of predators are docile by nature.

*OK, “is a nice guy” technically should be “a malicious son of a bitch” but I’m not sure I can say that outside of the Pit.

42

I voted both will last beyond 2000 years because I believe humans are inherently good and will not simply kill each other because there’s no TV or sex.

43

Snip. That only sounds hard, actually. It is actually pretty easy to make shitty glass. The other additives are not strictly necessary, though things like soda ash can be procured from campfires. As for silica sand, that is the main component of all sand. You can create a simple glass furnace with nothing more than fired clay and hardwood as fuel, though coals and bellows are better.

Steel is a little more difficult, as it requires certain ores to be available on island. However, given that Skald has been polite enough to leave us all sorts of lovely information about such things, it won’t take overly long to find and process it on a minimal level should it be available. Commercial-grade steel would be a long way away, but you’ve got a tiny population. You don’t need commercial steels, you need artisan level outputs, which is certainly doable. How many microscopes do 10k immortals really need? they’ve got time.

Plastics would be difficult.

44

I, for one, would be setting sail as soon as possible to find the fabled island of women.

Honestly, without women, life is impossible for me to imagine.

ETA: Skald, you are a remarkable person to be able to create these hypothetical situations.
I hope you use this talent in your real-world endeavors because otherwise a valuable resource is going to waste.

45

I’d expect a few people to be still alive after 2000 years from both groups, but how many I have no idea.

Given that they’d know modern technology and potentially reproductive cloning was possible, there’s an obvious common goal for a significant proportion of them, more so for women than men as it’s so obviously a lot more likely that they’d be able to manage it.

Both groups would probably decide to work towards this after it became obvious that they really weren’t aging, and they really couldn’t leave. For the reason of difficulty, I’d expect a larger consensus among the women than the men: I’d expect more of the men to argue for exploration to try find some women, though this might be a major goal for the main female group as well, I’d guess it’d be lower down the list (even if you know it’s not possible for them to get back to earth they can’t know). They’re supposed to be above-average intelligence after all, so most of them will probably realise that they’d be better off working together, and might be able to achieve something none of them can do alone.

Given a common goal for a large group, a settlement with agreed rules would pretty much follow, presumably with a scientific group supported by the others- food should really not be a problem, as with even a basic level of agriculture in these conditions, I’d estimate that 20-30% of the population could specialise in farming and sucessfully feed the rest, with a static/slowly declining healthy population. Other groups would probably start specialising in building, and making clothes or other necessities, some would be involved in disputes, entertainment, paper making and library copying as well as generalised society running. Some people in both groups would refuse to go along with the collective and bugger off into the wilderness and might try form their own unlikely-to-last-mini-society, but it should still leave at least a few hundred, and probably a few thousand to dedicate themselves pretty well exclusively to scientific purposes.

We really can’t look at previous cultures for parallels, as it’s never been the case that the whole culture had an actual tangible goal to work towards, with written instructions for a large part of the way; neither has it ever been the case that they had no dependants to support (or very few- there will presumably wind up with a few injured/disabled group members needing care at some point). It may be a small culture, but that’s a pretty major list of advantages, especially considering that likely some of them would be starting off with reasonable skills.

Incidently, I don’t think the gender average strength difference would make any real difference- most of the jobs that will need strength are jobs that benefit several people (land clearance, building etc.) so they could be done by several people. I don’t think the food and housing problems would be a major issue, at least after the first year or two, and temporary shelters and foraging/hunting could keep almost all people alive, if not happy and healthy for that time. The start of some form of collective would probably happen in these first years, probably as a result or preventative measure of conflict over access to the library and tools, depending on individuals.

The next major societal problem for the women, assuming they can find all the resources they need to eventually start mekin babbehs, would probably when they start outlivin’ them babbehs (presumably still all girls, unless they somehow re-engineer Y chromosomes from of somewhere)- I’m guessing they won’t inherit the no aging thing after all. That would be pretty damn depressing, especially after potentially hundreds of years of research, and would probably start a bit of a suicide wave. Once the tech was there though, the kids should be able to keep on with it, so they should be able to keep it going a while. I can’t guess how long it would run then though for any more than I can guess how long our present society can keep going for. The ‘goal’ that would probably have been holding the group together would after all have been acheived. Maybe the original members who decide to carry on would be able to hold society together, maybe not.

I’m not sure why, but I don’t think the men, if they manage the cloning, would find that as hard to deal with- possibly because they’d be able to make kids of both genders, and would be able to recreate a society like the one they were born in. Plus they’d be creating potential partners (however weird that might feel given the age gap), not simply children.

BTW, I’m curious as to why Acid Lamp thinks women are more likely to die in accidents and squabbling in this situation, seeing as that’s exactly counter to the norm. Care to elaborate at all?

46

And artificial wombs? How do they rank on the easy-to-difficult scale? My guess is that would be a tad bit over the abilities of artisans.

It would be interesting to see if there is a way to extract eggs without using semiconductors at any of the stages. I donno. Maybe if you do abdominal surgery. With the necessary anesthesia, antibiotics, pain medication . . .

Even “straightforward” IVF is not a trivial process, with a fairly low success rate. Creating enough of the various drugs and artificial hormones is not going to be a walk in the park.

Can cloning be done with the Professor approach on Gilligan’s Island?

I don’t see it, especially if the groups start to beak into factions.

47

My 2 cents:

Like others have said, 10,000 is not many people. I think after initial turmoil, people would figure out that everybody’s role is pretty vital. Sure you would have caste type sociological systems, but if you tried to dominate/ destroy people, you yourself would suffer.
In our modern society in America, the rich/ruling class can want the poor to not have healthcare and good living situations because it doesn’t affect them. Their nice things (BMWs, Samsung TVs, etc) are made in another part of the world. Also there are an infinite amount of companies willing to make these toys.
In this island society, if you screw the farmer or the engineer or anybody else, you will not be able to enjoy the fruit of their labor… and there wouldn’t be enough people to make up the difference.

48

You do realise Madagascar is MASSIVE, right? If you spread the 10 000 evenly it’s quite possible most will die before meeting another human.

49

I made a point above that even the basics were going to be hard to do, but let’s look at actually cloning.

I’ve never attempted to remove a nucleus from an egg, but I’m assuming that this is a little more difficult than raising corn. Fusing an enucleated egg with a cloning subject cell requires electricity, and one can only assume at a highly precise voltage and current at controlled temperatures and other conditions. I’ve designed control systems, but I have no idea how to do it without capacitors, resistors and various chips.

The problem is that the required amount of technology is overwhelming when you really think about it. Semiconductors are going to be impossible, given the few number of people involved. As I’ve mentioned before, creating artificial hormones is another task which will be impossible without advanced technology.

With at most a few thousand, (which I believe would be impossible to sustain), it’s not like all of these are going to be dedicated to cloning. They won’t be able to get anywhere near that stage.

I don’t think you can blissfully assume people will work together. These has never been a society without war. Why would this be different?

50

I know it’s far from an easy prospect, but think: they’d be operating on a totally different time scale to us- no aging, no time limits. They potentially have hundreds or thousands of years to work stuff out- I think they could get to near-Victorian levels of technology in a few decades, as they already have all the basic principles worked out for them.

It’d surely take much longer than it took Western Civilization from that point, but I really think that taking out the limits of caring for kids, and the fact that all the population can pretty well equally contribute makes it utterly incomparable to any actual civilisation. Neither do they have to fight diseases, or defend themselves against any outsiders, or any of the other myriad ways of taking up time, energy and resources we need in an ordinary society.

And no, I don’t think war would be that likely: I don’t think there would be much for anyone to gain through war- they have no family to protect, no territory shortage, and getting the standard ‘the-other-group-are-subhuman’ propoganda would be much harder than normal, as basically every member would have met every other member, plus they’re starting with very limited potential weapons; the only things worth fighting for are the books 'n tools, and they’re both useless without people. There might be splinter groups, and initial fights (without any real weapons) but I can’t see how it would work out long term any way other than ‘the largest group winds up with almost all the stuff’, at which point they’ve basically won, hopefully without too much death. The only way they can get people is to recruit them, they can’t breed more, unlike any country (bar the Vatican), and as soon as this actually sinks in they should start acting like no other society. .

If they don’t, they’re idiots, and they’re not supposed to be idiots.

51

First of all, women have been responsible for a great deal of inventions, especially those in traditionally feminine spheres. Amongst our primate cousins, inventions and the passing of inventions is more commonly seen in females than in males, so there’s absolutely no reason to assume that males are better at inventing things than females.

Secondly, although we like to think of ourselves as incredibly clever compared to our ancestors, I don’t think either group would be able to survive for long unless some of them had been trained in subjects like farming, hunting with handmade weapons, etc. I took a prehistoric technology class as part of my Evo Anthro degree and, damn, those ‘primitive’ weapons can be impossible to make even with detailed instructions showing you exactly how to make them. There are no knowledgeable ancestors showing you which wild plants are safe to eat, no bush medicine (unless you get lucky), etc. People in traditional societies have huge knowledge databases which modern people are arrogant enough to dismiss. I only saw a few episodes of Survivor, but I did see one where they built their camp on dry river bed. An old man who had farming knowledge warned them that their camp would be flooded when the rains came, but all the suburban/urban youngsters ignored him and built the camp. Of course, the rains came and nearly obliterated all of their items. I’ve studied these cultures and I know more than most, but I wouldn’t want to be stuck on said island.

Thirdly, men and women have their differences, but I think that fights will play out in various ways. Men are often better able to cooperate when faced with a common enemy, but what sort of common enemy would be seen on the island? Groups of each other? Men are more likely to die from violence due to a strange male than women are, so I question anyone who believes that the men will be able to get along better than the women. Likewise, although some groups of women are none for their petty competitions, I’ve been apart of some large, all-female groups (notably my high school) where we had very little female-female competition and the entire environment was very supportive. I think both groups could be much better off without the distractions of the opposite sex, although same-sex romantic and sexual relationships will flourish in both populations. If these same-sex relationships are not divided by old gender expectations, then this will help avoid much of the interpersonal drama.

52

Civilization is one long history of people being idiots. This is what humans do, we’re idiots and we fight. The fact that there are no outsiders works against group cohesion, as there are no common enemies to keep people together and to override the differences. The history of the humans is the history of war and fighting. As you say, there are things to fight over. The tools, weapons and books. Any weapons which can be used for killing game can kill people. Just because there are no guns, doesn’t mean that people will be nicer to each other, as millions of years of history have proven.

I see many problems with the assumption that people will sacrifice their short-term interests for a long-term, improbable goal with no clear path forward. Because the end game is so far off, and so uncertain, and in the absence of an urgent, pressing need, what would drive people to undertake such an endeavor without the ability of the new society to compel this? For the men, it’s even less likely, as artificial wombs do not currently exist, nor are there any hormone treatments allowing men to be pregnant. Will sufficient individual members of such a society sacrifice themselves to allow others to undertake open-ended research for what many will believe will likely fail?

Here is yet another place where Skad’s diabolical plans can be seen. If there were a range of intelligent people, then perhaps there would more people who are willing to be the grunts.

The idea that although there aren’t that many people, there still is plenty of time to accomplish is overly simplistic and under estimates the difficulty of the project and neglects the nature of the endeavor. The amount of time required to learn even the more relatively simple things such as building farming and hunting without guns, for people without these experiences.

I don’t believe that one can assume that the natural tendency toward disagreements will not occur simply because a situation such as this has never happened before. A new society has to be created, new laws and rules enacted and all of this without a pressing requirement for group cohesion, which would normally drive people into accepting compromises.

I also see the possibility of large numbers of depressed people. Many people talk about the excitement of moving abroad, but I’ve seen how many people wind up missing their family and friends, and move back quickly. Knowing that there is no way to go back home too loved ones is going to be very painful for many people.

53

No, I’d drop them persons on a given island in the same place. If I were going to kill them, why would I faff about?

54

Obrigado.

Murder far predates television.

I expect the mods would read that, shrug, and say, “Meh. Technically a rules violation, but not only obviously true but part of the official record.”

The OP doesn’t say specify so this doesn’t count as “official,” but I certainly envisioned animals relocated from our Earth, not native species. It wouldn’t be amusing if the pawns were only hunting bunny rabbits.

55

You are missing the point. It does not require large scale, commercial infrastructure to create high technology. What it does require is the ability to process and machine materials with precision. All can be available in time to our immortals. They don’t have a large population, so there is no need for large scale anything, except perhaps farming/ranching. Once basic needs are met, people will have to learn to do many different jobs if they want to pursue the goal of creating the opposite sex. It isn’t impossible, just difficult. They will likely have 50-75 years of fairly pre-industrial technology until they can produce enough tools to make more complex materials and structures. After that, the limited quantities needed to pursue that goal, along with the available knowledge and instructions will make things easier. Take for example electricity- a hydroelectric turbine sounds pretty complicated, but it really is quite simple. given the ability to work metals, they could have electricity rapidly. It wouldn’t be like our current system, but you could get the basics really quickly. They don’t age, they don’t get sick, they have nothing but time to work it out.

56

OK, my take on the OP was that only the [del]poor suckers[/del] lucky individuals were taken from our Earth. If the game animals are as well, then that’s different. Bows and arrows, here we come. It would be nice to include sights on the compound bows, but either way, people can learn. *

I’m not missing your point, I’m disagreeing with you. Big difference.

I believe there are a few major differences in assumptions here. First, it seems that you are assuming that the population will be relatively stable, a condition required in order for people to benefit from being immortal.

I don’t believe that will be the case. I believe that any main group which is able to maintain possession of the library and thus the core knowledge which is required in order to clone, will suffer from a sufficient number of deaths, suicides, defections and possibly wars that the rate of population decline will too high to accomplish the required tasks. The OP itself is asking if people believe that the population will be entirely depleted or not.

And the numbers matter because it will take a critical mass in order for sustain development efforts. More about that later.

I agree that it won’t be as difficult to reach a level of preindustrial age development, especially with a library to go by. Let’s use your WAG of 75 years. We need to make up a number for the decline rate, the number of people who die or leave the group. Even at what I would consider an overly optimistic percentage of 1%, that only leaves the entire group population at a little over 4,700 people in 75 years, less than 2,300 people at 150 years, and less than 500 at 300 years. Even this number fails to take into the sharp decline within the first several years by splinter groups and other causes such as suicide and murder. If, say 2,000 people left then there would be less than 3,400 people at 75 years. In any of these scenarios, there just simply won’t be enough people available for all the necessary tasks.

In order for cloning to be possible, the decline rate would have to be essentially zero, an extraordinary accomplishment which would go against hundreds of millennia of hominid history. The history of humans is the history of fighting.
The argument you are presenting for a higher rate of cooperation is the drive to reproduce, but the goal is so far in the distant future and so uncertain that it cannot inspire a sufficient level of group cohesion. For every person arguing for, there will an equal or greater number of naysayers. For either case there are serious potential showstoppers, technologies which aren’t possible yet even in 2012.

For the men, one would be the womb. How would that be handled? Another would be to create a cell with two X chromosomes. For the women, making males would be impossible, so there would never be partners of a different sex. The reason people won’t cooperate could very well differ by gender. I can easily see groups of the guys striking out on their own to explore their new world. Just because they were transported there, doesn’t mean that the voice they hear is telling the truth.**
The test subjects are humans. They will fight. People will leave.

A third difference in assumptions is the ability of these people to accomplish herculean tasks. Your argument is that the limited number of people can accomplish anything given time. As explained above, the amount of time is not infinite, and the projects are far more complicated than your assumptions.

Let’s take an example I gave previously: artificial hormones. Or take the electricity example you gave. No, it shouldn’t be difficult to make a small scale generator. The difficulty will be to be able to regulate the voltage and current in cloning. This is not simply going to be done with analog discreet devices. Nor are you going to build a ‘scope without transistors to measure the voltage and current.

*Says TokyoBayer, former Utah state high school Class C archery champion.
** Seriously, would you believe him?

57

Ah this explains things quite a bit better. I still disagree with your numbers, but that is primarily because we have never had a scenario like this to extrapolate from. My thoughts are that the majority of the drive to divide, explore, etc… comes from the desire to give one’s children the best possible chance. A colony of immortals *should *function differently. Since their replacement level is zero, and we have to assume a non-zero accidental and homicidal death rate, I agree that their numbers will decline over time. I don’t see any reason though that the decline rate should be anywhere near as high as you predict. They don’t become ill, and while they are susceptible to mechanical injury, the main problems of infection/ poisoning are now non-existent. Further, they are all (or nearly all) able-bodied young adults. There are no children, elderly, sick, or pregnant women to think of, slow down for, or consider in terms of progress. That is *optimal *for work. If they are able to assemble themselves into reasonably sized groups, they should be able to provide everything on a pre-industrial level rather quickly. In fact, small “villages” ought to be able to reach “medieval village” level within a few years given adequate access to resources. Knowing that something exists and is possible is the largest step to creating it. Our colonists know that plows, blacksmiths, foundries, internal combustion engines, electricity and iphones are possible. They might be **way, way **out of reach, but they exist.

Let’s use a simple example: Hunting. It is likely that within a random group of 10k men, that there will be a significantly large number who have hunted or fished recreationally. A smaller number will have had extensive experience at this as well. Now since we KNOW that guns are possible but practically out of reach for a while do we go back to clubs and sticks? Of course not, we start building primitive bows, blowpipes, and snares and nets. We do not revert any farther in technology than what is strictly limited by our resources. Likely a hunting parties will form up to help supply our smaller groups with food while the other men (or women) work on building communal shelters. Once the immediate needs for food and shelter are met, it is likely that someone will start working on simple kilns and forges to make ceramics, glass and low grade poured metal for tools. It isn’t too far of a jump from that level to simple hand cannon or flintlocks. Because we know it is possible, there is no innovation to be done. Far less trial and error involved. We can consult texts when necessary to assist us in our goals.

58

OK, this is the crux of the matter. There are two points here, if the drive to explore and develop primarily or substantially comes from the desire to better ones children and the second if a small group of imports do function differently.

For the first, I would need to see additional evidence or hear more of an argument to accept that. Certainly there is a strong desire, but is it the primary one? Equally importantly, would that desire then translate into action for one’s potential children and then would that desire be enough to overcome the millions of years of other biological drives such as selfishness?

Are there any arguments which could be made looking at history, psychology, evolutionary biology? Or is it a WAG which isn’t necessarily persuasive to everyone?

The second point is if a group of immortals *should *be different. Again, what would make them different than their millions of years of ancestors? I don’t need to prove that humans have fights or get into wars. If you believe this is going to be a Utopian society (in that it would keep people together relatively peaceful in such a way that less than 1% of the people leave the group per year, are killed, die of alcoholism, suicide, etc. over thousands of years), how would this group be able to do that which has never been able to be accomplished?

Repeating myself from last time, but something which you didn’t address, the barrier to technology is so high that it goes into uncharted waters. Artificial wombs are currently science fiction. Cloning of humans has not been successful yet, even with the latest state of the art technology, and even with other mammals, the success rate is still only several percentage. There is no way to make a Y chromosome for women.

The question is if there are sufficient people for the development of unproven technologies. If the groups started with more people, then sure. If there were several million then yes, I think it would be likely. If it were less, say 12 people, then absolutely not. The question is if 10,000 people is enough or not, and could they accomplish the impossible before the population drops enough to where it’s not longer viable?

I agree that there will be development and think you are correct with your example on hunting. As I posted, I would expect the group would get bows and arrows. By knowing that technologies are possible, it will save hundreds of thousands of years of human development. Certainly knowing that glass is possible and how to make it will make all the difference rather than having to stumble on it by chance. However, there is a difference between building an ox wagon and a Ferrari, which is the cloning of cars.

How do you create enough group cohesion to entice people to sacrifice themselves or a goal which not a few will believe impossible? How do you keep serious rifts from occurring? How do you direct the development of technology? Do you allow the market to decide? If so, then will cloning ever occur? Do you have a controlled economy? Will enough people agree to that? There are some skills which such as metal work, in which there are benefits other than just Project Cloning. However, there are others, such as artificial wombs, in which there the benefits seem more obscure. Likewise, the development of artificial hormones is not going to be a branch off from a flourishing drug industry.

It would be different if the group comprised willing volunteers who could be selected based on a willingness to work together. However, since these [del]suckers[/del] individuals are simply taken without consent, then I do not see the same degree of cohesion, especially since there is no immediate downside to not making long-term personal sacrifices for this goal.

59

No, it’s impossible. Advanced technology needs far more specialists than they have people. I doubt they could get past steam engines at best. And all the time they tried, they’d be losing people in accidents.