A City On Mars

[SunlitZelkova]

1 hour ago, tater said:

If someone on Mars is a deatbeat, maybe they don't deserve sustenance. In a necessarily closed system like a small domed colony (whatever shape it takes ), the resources are much more obviously finite than on Earth. If everyone needs to pull their weight you're stuck with a market punishing them somehow, or them eventually tossed out the airlock.

A very "hard sci fi" take on this sort of future would be an interesting one.

What did you think of my proposal to have “Everyman an everything” and replace human managers with AI?

I’m curious if you see any flaws.

If you believe the root of what causes people to not want to work is different, I’d be interested to know too, and what you think it is.

31 minutes ago, tater said:

Thinking of the science fiction describing such a colony got me thinking about colonist selection...

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

I’ve seen estimates of MVPs ranging from 14 people in total, equally divided among men and women, to 14,000 people with no effort made to separate genders.

I have no idea how we’d test such a thing before going to Mars, so the colony would probably need to be as big as possible.

[mikegarrison]

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

People worked together to slay a mammoth and then shared the results.

Mostly people hunted deer and rabbits, not mammoth.

Anyway, studies of hunter-gatherer cultures have tended to show that hunting -- which brings in a large amount of quick-to-spoil meat and tends to be kind of random -- usually results in the meat being shared. It kind of works like a meat food bank, except that instead of storing the meat in a freezer, they store the meat in the memories of the other hunters, who then later share their own good fortune. Hunting camps still work like this today. It's quite common when you go hunting that if someone in your party gets an animal, everyone stops hunting and helps haul the meat back to camp. And then everyone splits the meat equally.

But gathering -- which tends to simply be a matter of putting in the work to get a fixed amount of results -- tends to not be shared, and instead the one who gathers the most gets the most.

On Mars, undoubtedly everyone would work together communally, at first, and all eat from the same food supply.

[tater]

9 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

What did you think of my proposal to have “Everyman an everything” and replace human managers with AI?

 

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Ideally, everyone would be trained to do everything with the colony’s systems. You don’t want an accident taking out all your nuclear specialists and having no way to run the reactor.

This would require a pretty strict IQ test on all colonists (I'm fine with this, might as well start the gene pool in the best possible way) to require everyone to be cross trained in multiple modern technological specialties. You have to be able to write code, do mechanical engineering, genetic engineering, and do a kidney transplant, depending on the day? Seems... nontrivial.

Managers... we'd all like to see them replaced with pretty much anything. Maybe a wastepaper basket? (OK, there are in fact good managers, but the manager to worker ratio should be grossly lower than it is here)

The idea of a truly self-sufficient colony is a long, long pole. It requires:

all the engineering specialties

medical

sciences (bio, physics, chem—all with subspecialties)

farming or construction? These both seem like sci/engineering adjacent as much will be done by tech, not humans with shovels.

Lower skilled work? This is likely mostly robots. No need for a grocery checker, for example, or shelf stocker.

Systems to generate more of the above (education/training) in perpetuity (which requires enough kids that their personal interests align such that covering the needed jobs happens organically).

 

 

15 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

If you believe the root of what causes people to not want to work is different, I’d be interested to know too, and what you think it is.

It will be even harder to tease this out on Mars, as I assume that decently autonomous robots are in the mix from day 1—as well as competent AI systems. Doesn't need to be "AGI" or Culture Minds, just narrowly useful AI tools that are well integrated enough to be a labor multiplier for both physical and cognitive work. Not really sure what people will DO on Mars, honestly. Clearly farming is a thing, but it's not gonna be picking season in southern CA style farming that just needs "pickers," it will be more technical I imagine. At the very least not as labor intensive. Construction? Yeah, I guess, but are they building new pressure vessels, or using delivered ones? Or are they 3d printed? Food prep/service? Medical. Bottom line is that people work partially out of a desire to do something, and partially because they have to to live above a bottom of the barrel level. The point is why would any new, bespoke society allow this at all? Criminality, for example. Violence, stealing? Out the airlock (body to then be picked up and composted, obviously, least their carbon has value).

 

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Humans have been around for 300,000.

Of course, when homo sapiens emerged from the other (now gone) hominids is not 100% clear.

[PakledHostage]

2 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

That goes back 6,000 years. Humans have been around for 300,000.

Recognizing it's just a story and without giving too much away, the topic of slavery does figure into the movie "Quest For Fire" (set about 60,000 years ago). It ends up working out well for them.

Edited April 25 by PakledHostage

[tater]

^^^ All the examples of pre-state human societies are tribal groups, and don't map to what we're talking about at all, IMHO. Things that work for an extended family group (a tribe), do NOT work for even just 100,000 people, much less a million. Same with @SunlitZelkova's claim of slavery being  exclusively modern. You can't make an argument that a virtually universal practice did not commonly occur in societies that have no history to interrogate. It's fair to say we don't know, but since we DO know even biologically that our close relatives (chimps) kill singleton males from other troops, but will take their females as mates—it seems likely something like slavery happened. It happened (happens?) in some isolated tribal cultures in very recent history as well (the SW Pacific, I think). A huge tangent, anyway.

 

 

It would be really, really interesting to see a fully fleshed out sci fi take on this thread. Like a better version of Red/Green/Blue Mars.

Edited April 25 by tater

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

No one told Columbus to go sail west, and no one told any settler to move somewhere else.

Afair, Columbus previously had spent some time in Iceland, and was informed about existence of a landmass to the West, and even had seen some maps.

The circumnavigation distances are much shorter close to the pole, so it sounds probable.

As the Earth was a sphere in his time, and its radius was already well-known from navigation, this would give him a rough estimation, how far can it be at the Europe latitude.

Obviously, we don't know the pre-Columbian Columbuses lost in sea on going to the West.
Maybe, he was the 1000th of them. Maybe, exactly due to the Icelandic tales he prepared better.

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

no one told any settler to move somewhere else

They did!

Sounded as "Go freaking 'way, heretic sectants, from our lovely country of sin!"

And it was even more simple with then-future Australians.

7 hours ago, tater said:

The cost DOWN the gravity well is actually pretty low.

(10 000 m/s) / 2 = 50 MJ / kg.
You have to burn ~1 kg of fuel just to deliver 1 kg to LEO.
Together with need in oxygen and in expendable parts, it easily grows ten times, if not hundred.
How much fuel do you spend to deliver a tonne of cargo by car?

But what's even much worse, is the total absence of heat sink in vacuum.
And the larger is the space station, the lower is the surface-to-volume ratio, making things even fatal for space industry.

Btw, there is almost vacuum on Mars, too.

7 hours ago, tater said:

Send everything automated, and a few people around to run the robots.

And the few people in LMO, in the rotating habitat with 1 g.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I would be very interested to know how compact those constructions robots could be made. Kinda like how the battle droids unfold in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. There’s also the possibility of avoiding a folding mechanism and sending the robots in pieces and assembling them on the surface.

The metal strength stays same as now. So, the wireframe droids can carry a bag for you, but not something heavy.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Wendat (Huron) Indians who did not have private property in the sense we know today but still functioned just fine.

When you have nothing but some food and hand-made expendable tools, the private property is what you had eaten before neighbors did.

On the other hand, do you see that Hulk in feathers, sitting at the camp fire?
Go, take his axe and a piece of meat from his plate, because there is no private property in your tribe, so he will understand and give a friendly smile.
Also you can always have a sleep in any wigwam around, because all your tribe is a big family.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Even humans 50,000 years ago were able to work together to build large structures without having to barter each other into doing it, or suppress people into slaves.

50 kya the humans were nomadic family groups, rarely meeting each other, but having a lot of human bones in their kitchen trashcanpits.
Also, if make somebody a slave, he would eat the gathered berries instead of you, so it's much better to eat him himself with the berries garnish...

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Slavery is a very new invention.

...but if the year is good, and you have a lot of other meat, you can damage his feet and make cleaning your kitchen trashpit from the remains of previous prisoners, clean animal skins, and do other unpleasant jobs, till the winter, when you can eat him to save the food supplies.

Also, do you see that jerk at the trash heap?
He didn't pass the G.O.A.T. initiation test (what a loser!), and now is treated as something between the woman and the dog.
All tribe makes him doing something for them, so don't hesitate to command him, too.
He's a shame of your tribe, and should be happy for living. A less advanced and tolerant tribe would kick him out from the tribe to save food, so a bear would eat him long ago.

Slavery? What's that? You don't have it.
Selling people for money? What a nonsense! All people are free!
You are just using the coward who was afraid of dying in battle, and the puny jerk from your tribe in the manner they deserve, and they are free to stop it at any moment with any rope on any branch. It's only their choice to keep living this way.

5 hours ago, tater said:

how does Mars stop me from this unsanctioned economy? Throw me out the airlock, or disallow my choice?

Why not? Easily.

Spoiler

Do you see, comrades, the bourgeous renegade who is privatizing the collective property by speculation, and trying to economically enslave you again?
The heartless moneylender, whom you all owe the money?
Doesn't he deserve the highest measure of social defense? Don't answer, he does.

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

People should want to work for the Mars colony’s benefit, not for food. There’s food on Earth if they want that.

If they born on Mars, they have  no choice.

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I think splitting colonies into smaller hubs would be better than a single monolithic dome, as this would help stave off potential future internal conflicts- give them the freedom to make their own decisions about what they want to do.

This would increase conflicts for being a local boss; decrease the ability of the boss to make the lazies working, and the undisciplined ones follow the safety rules; increase conflicts between the domes; and make it harder to leave the dome where you don't want to communicate.

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

So why not remove human managers? Obviously you’d need team leaders for certain tasks, but these team leaders would actually partake in the activities they’re directing, unlike some managers on Earth.

Because two domes are manufacturing same things, and somebody should select, which ones to buy/take for other domes.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

What did you think of my proposal to have “Everyman an everything” and replace human managers with AI?

See the picture above.
Several human units with enhanced privileges are redistributing the material resources from the human unit who had disproportionally overconcentrated them, to optimise the social logistics, that's what AI can see there.

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

But gathering -- which tends to simply be a matter of putting in the work to get a fixed amount of results -- tends to not be shared, and instead the one who gathers the most gets the most.

They call "gathering" the practice when the returned hunters report that the raspberry place looks full of berries, and next morning the women and kids take baskets and march to the place to gather all berries and bring them to the camp, while the hunters are hanging around, kinda they are hunting and guarding rather than just don't want to bother with gathering.
In the evening they share the gathered.

1 hour ago, tater said:

 

3 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Ideally, everyone would be trained to do everything with the colony’s systems. You don’t want an accident taking out all your nuclear specialists and having no way to run the reactor.

This would require a pretty strict IQ test on all colonists (I'm fine with this, might as well start the gene pool in the best possible way) to require everyone to be cross trained in multiple modern technological specialties.

No, it would require robots and Siri.
Everyone can say: "Siri! Repair the reactor!"

1 hour ago, tater said:

Clearly farming is a thing, but it's not gonna be picking season in southern CA style farming that just needs "pickers," it will be more technical I imagine.

I would be not so sure.
When robots are doing everything complicated, the people have to have at least something to do themselves.
Finally, we come to

Spoiler

Edited April 25 by kerbiloid

[SunlitZelkova]

3 hours ago, tater said:

This would require a pretty strict IQ test on all colonists (I'm fine with this, might as well start the gene pool in the best possible way) to require everyone to be cross trained in multiple modern technological specialties. You have to be able to write code, do mechanical engineering, genetic engineering, and do a kidney transplant, depending on the day? Seems... nontrivial.

Managers... we'd all like to see them replaced with pretty much anything. Maybe a wastepaper basket? (OK, there are in fact good managers, but the manager to worker ratio should be grossly lower than it is here)

The idea of a truly self-sufficient colony is a long, long pole. It requires:

all the engineering specialties

medical

sciences (bio, physics, chem—all with subspecialties)

farming or construction? These both seem like sci/engineering adjacent as much will be done by tech, not humans with shovels.

Lower skilled work? This is likely mostly robots. No need for a grocery checker, for example, or shelf stocker.

Systems to generate more of the above (education/training) in perpetuity (which requires enough kids that their personal interests align such that covering the needed jobs happens organically).

The thing that made me even suggest that in the first place is Neuralink. Musk’s vision is to eventually modify humans to help them compete with AI.

A human with such modifications could easily do all the tasks mentioned.

3 hours ago, tater said:

^^^ All the examples of pre-state human societies are tribal groups, and don't map to what we're talking about at all, IMHO. Things that work for an extended family group (a tribe), do NOT work for even just 100,000 people, much less a million. Same with @SunlitZelkova's claim of slavery being  exclusively modern. You can't make an argument that a virtually universal practice did not commonly occur in societies that have no history to interrogate. It's fair to say we don't know, but since we DO know even biologically that our close relatives (chimps) kill singleton males from other troops, but will take their females as mates—it seems likely something like slavery happened. It happened (happens?) in some isolated tribal cultures in very recent history as well (the SW Pacific, I think). A huge tangent, anyway.

 

 

It would be really, really interesting to see a fully fleshed out sci fi take on this thread. Like a better version of Red/Green/Blue Mars.

Yeah, I take that back that slavery is a new invention.

I would dispute that there were “tribes” followed by “states,” though. Take a look at Poverty Point and Sannai Maruyama, which predate agriculture but were places of large gatherings where something was probably exchanged (whether it be stories or beads we don’t know). Or the North American Calusa, which did not practice agriculture but coalesced with a king and court.

There are the Nambikwara, who shifted between having a tyrannical ruler in the dry season who led them to nomadically forage and back to horticulture and anarchic village life in the rainy season. These guys were once seen as an example of Paleolithic life.

There was no original state of human society.

Now, aside from that, I don’t know what would work in an environment like Mars. We might have varied options on Earth, but in Mars there basically has to be one set form of command. Imagine trying to switch styles of governance on the ISS.

I agree about the sci-fi take. Maybe there’s an aspiring author lurking here.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

50 kya the humans were nomadic family groups, rarely meeting each other, but having a lot of human bones in their kitchen trashcanpits.
Also, if make somebody a slave, he would eat the gathered berries instead of you, so it's much better to eat him himself with the berries garnish...

Ah, but what of Göbekli Tepe, or the mammoth houses at Yudinovo?

Mass gatherings occurred, as did extravagant burials of individuals like at Dolní Věstonice.

These point to some form of social organization beyond families.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

When you have nothing but some food and hand-made expendable tools, the private property is what you had eaten before neighbors did.

On the other hand, do you see that Hulk in feathers, sitting at the camp fire?
Go, take his axe and a piece of meat from his plate, because there is no private property in your tribe, so he will understand and give a friendly smile.
Also you can always have a sleep in any wigwam around, because all your tribe is a big family.

This was actually not the case. People owned their own bow and arrows, and collections of beads, and certainly garments, but food was shared to those who needed it.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

If they born on Mars, they have  no choice.

There’s always self harm and hunger strikes.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

This would increase conflicts for being a local boss; decrease the ability of the boss to make the lazies working, and the undisciplined ones follow the safety rules; increase conflicts between the domes; and make it harder to leave the dome where you don't want to communicate.

That’s why I suggest the AI managers. If a computer calculates stuff based on factors, what’s important and needs to be done is basically fact. It isn’t like humans making arbitrary decisions on what should be done.

Edited April 25 by SunlitZelkova

[monophonic]

5 hours ago, tater said:

If someone on Mars is a deatbeat, maybe they don't deserve sustenance. In a necessarily closed system like a small domed colony (whatever shape it takes ), the resources are much more obviously finite than on Earth. If everyone needs to pull their weight you're stuck with a market punishing them somehow, or them eventually tossed out the airlock.

3 hours ago, tater said:

Bottom line is that people work partially out of a desire to do something, and partially because they have to to live above a bottom of the barrel level. The point is why would any new, bespoke society allow this at all? Criminality, for example. Violence, stealing? Out the airlock (body to then be picked up and composted, obviously, least their carbon has value).

So when an accident renders your top performing crew member a quadriplegic, out the airlock he goes? Where do you draw the line between a deadbeat and someone worthy of sustenance due to their prior performance? Who gets to draw that line? Does the rest of the crew just take it and wait for their turn to slip below that line?

[tater]

10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I would dispute that there were “tribes” followed by “states,” though. Take a look at Poverty Point and Sannai Maruyama, which predate agriculture but were places of large gatherings where something was probably exchanged (whether it be stories or beads we don’t know). Or the North American Calusa, which did not practice agriculture but coalesced with a king and court.

I was using "pre-state" to mean tribal or other smaller groupings of humans. The specific label doesn't matter. This is a term Pinker has used. Bottom line is I'm talking smaller units (largely kin based) where I think different rules apply. Regardless, peoples here (the Americas) were stone age.

 

9 hours ago, monophonic said:

So when an accident renders your top performing crew member a quadriplegic, out the airlock he goes? Where do you draw the line between a deadbeat and someone worthy of sustenance due to their prior performance? Who gets to draw that line? Does the rest of the crew just take it and wait for their turn to slip below that line?

For the science fiction novel, interesting to explore

I would have to assume that there's some sort of social contract where you have to at least try to do something useful, at which point disease/accident is a hardship the society copes with. I'm thinking more like people who have never contributed anything useful to society. I can drive through parts of ABQ in the middle of the day and see many such people. For trained, but useless people... politicians fit the bill .

 

Edited April 25 by tater

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Dolní Věstonice.

Based on the smooth, symmetric, and sharp geometry of their statuette, I would doubt that they were able to define the age of ceramics, and that it's older than 1922 when it was revealed to public.

On Mellaart et al.:
https://www-gazeta-ru.translate.goog/science/2018/03/13_a_11680993.shtml?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

People owned their own bow and arrows, and collections of beads, and certainly garments, but food was shared to those who needed it.

Nobody argues. That hulk needs this food more, unless you can prove to him the opposite.

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

This was actually not the case. People owned their own bow and arrows

If a just-made backup bow is laying on somebody's bed, it's obviously common, as he went hunting without it.

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

That’s why I suggest the AI managers. If a computer calculates stuff based on factors, what’s important and needs to be done is basically fact. It isn’t like humans making arbitrary decisions on what should be done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Savonarola

Still prefer the perfectly righteous man to rule and judge you?

 

1 hour ago, tater said:

For the science fiction novel, interesting to explore

I would have to assume that there's some sort of social contract where you have to at least try to do something useful, at which point disease/accident is a hardship the society copes with. I'm thinking more like people who have never contributed anything useful to society. I can drive through parts of ABQ in the middle of the day and see many such people. For trained, but useless people... politicians fit the bill .

Here you go.

[tater]

35 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Here you go.

That's just for full citizenship (the right to vote), not for actual existence—"Get to work, hippie, or out the airlock you go!"

[kerbiloid]

16 minutes ago, tater said:

That's just for full citizenship (the right to vote), not for actual existence—"Get to work, hippie, or out the airlock you go!"

Ja, ich verstehe, was Sie meinen.

[kerbiloid]

(Offtopic)

Spoiler

Not exactly that, just a battle station in the asteroid belt.

https://epizodsspace-airbase-ru.translate.goog/bibl/tehnika_-_molodyoji/1987/1/52-55.html?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Oops, google failed translating on reopen.

 

Edited April 25 by kerbiloid

[SunlitZelkova]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Based on the smooth, symmetric, and sharp geometry of their statuette, I would doubt that they were able to define the age of ceramics, and that it's older than 1922 when it was revealed to public.

On Mellaart et al.:
https://www-gazeta-ru.translate.goog/science/2018/03/13_a_11680993.shtml?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp

I’m talking about the burials of people.

https://www.donsmaps.com/tripleburial.html

Not everyone was buried. So why these people?

One possibility is some social organization beyond an egalitarian hunter-gatherer tribe existed.

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Nobody argues. That hulk needs this food more, unless you can prove to him the opposite.

People actually argued all the time. Debate and persuasive powers were valued skills among the Wendat.

They just didn’t force people “at gun point” to do things. At least not people of their own tribe.

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Savonarola

Still prefer the perfectly righteous man to rule and judge you?

I don’t get your point with this, but it does make me wonder how a religious group would fare in trying to colonize Mars.

Kinda like those Mormons in The Expanse who planned to fly interstellar.

5 hours ago, tater said:

I was using "pre-state" to mean tribal or other smaller groupings of humans. The specific label doesn't matter. This is a term Pinker has used. Bottom line is I'm talking smaller units (largely kin based) where I think different rules apply. Regardless, peoples here (the Americas) were stone age.

So would you say technology level defines what types of societal organization are feasible?

I wasn’t trying to say different rules didn’t apply, just that the rules were varied. It makes me believe varied forms of societal organization are possible now, too.

By the way, the Wendat, who had a unique form of society in which leaders existed but no one was required to follow them by “law,” only if they could persuade everyone through orating skills and debate, had a population of up to 30,000 when European settlers began to arrive.

Obviously there was certainly strife, there was still crime and the Wendat went to war every now and then, but it worked as far as maintaining everyone’s basic needs went.

I list this example not to say that such a form of government would be viable on Mars, but just to say that “tribes” are sometimes a lot bigger than they are imagined to be. I don’t think population size really affects what forms of government are feasible. At least when you’re under 50,000 people or so. I have no idea about millions, which the Mars colony could be expected to reach.

[kerbiloid]

12 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I’m talking about the burials of people.

https://www.donsmaps.com/tripleburial.html

Not everyone was buried. So why these people?

Are you sure, they were buried?
Based on the left one, they were killed, or inhumated alive to send them to gods of the underground, especially since the middle one was an anatomically deformed (hermaphrodite? just strangely looking?), and possibly impaled like a vampire.

19 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

People actually argued all the time. Debate and persuasive powers were valued skills among the Wendat.

Yes. The arguments.

Spoiler

All these people are open for the discussion about their rights on their private property.

 

28 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I don’t get your point with this, but it does make me wonder how a religious group would fare in trying to colonize Mars.

Savonarola is almost an etalon of righteous, non-selfish person, like an AI,  just wanting others be as righteous.
But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
See, what happened next.

31 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

a unique form of society in which leaders existed but no one was required to follow them by “law,”

Any low-level tribal and criminal society doesn't have a leader established by law, as there is nobody to establish the law.
You follow the strongest, or the most rich, or the "eldest" family of your tribe.
But you are free to stay alone, until some force wnats to take yours or you.

35 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

had a population of up to 30,000 when European settlers began to arrive.

Occupying (in good sense of the word) what area, km²?

Typical density for the hunters-gatherers is ~0.1 human/km².

Largest European cities were 10..20..50 k, and they were fed by farmers.

40 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

but it worked as far as maintaining everyone’s basic needs went.

Impossible for the hunters-gatherers due to the highly variable amount of food per year.
They mass born in fat years, and mass die in thin years, so the population is held at the low bound, and kid mortality is normal.
A significant advantage of settled agriculture.

[tater]

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Obviously there was certainly strife, there was still crime and the Wendat went to war every now and then, but it worked as far as maintaining everyone’s basic needs went.

Rates of death due to direct human action (homicide) have been decreasing over time. It is possible for stone-age (no metal tools) civilizations to exist, I never said otherwise—those are "state" societies as far as I am concerned. Central power results in fewer homicides. This is hugely tangential (as was slavery). My only point is that "alternate economic systems" that may or may not have existed in small, pre-literate societies (hence cultures with no actual history we can interrogate) are not really useful for technologically advanced societies on Mars. <shrug>

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

but just to say that “tribes” are sometimes a lot bigger than they are imagined to be. I don’t think population size really affects what forms of government are feasible.

I think population size has an obvious impact, particularly among people who share nothing going in. We're talking about transplanting people who have all sorts of different backgrounds—some of which might have demonstrated themselves to be mutually exclusive so far in recent history in terms of living in harmony—a "tribal" system likely goes sideways.

Note that many tribal systems had methosds of interpersonal problem-solving that we might find abhorrent. Violence, for example (most societies had some form of dueling, often described as "ritual warfare"). While the total casualties are low compared to modern warfare, the populations are far smaller, so the %s are high. A "raid" that satisfies itself with a single opposing member killed is a big deal in groups of 50 people.

[SunlitZelkova]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Are you sure, they were buried?
Based on the left one, they were killed, or inhumated alive to send them to gods of the underground, especially since the middle one was an anatomically deformed (hermaphrodite? just strangely looking?), and possibly impaled like a vampire.

What’s the likelihood they were killed lined up like that?

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Yes. The arguments.

Your images come from a European caricature of the native person.

Both a Frenchman named Lahontan and the Jesuit missionaries who lived there spoke of how the Wendat did not use violence to force others (within their group) to do things they wanted them to.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Savonarola is almost an etalon of righteous, non-selfish person, like an AI,  just wanting others be as righteous.
But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
See, what happened next.

The AI is not going to want others to have arbitrary values like “righteousness” and what not. It’s just programmed to ensure the physical survival and expansion of the colony.

This regulates basic needs and the functions of the colony.

The colonists are free to decide how they want to spend their own free time.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Any low-level tribal and criminal society doesn't have a leader established by law, as there is nobody to establish the law.
You follow the strongest, or the most rich, or the "eldest" family of your tribe.
But you are free to stay alone, until some force wnats to take yours or you.

When I say “law” I mean public decisions, which the Wendat did make when deciding things like going to war or not.

No one could force anyone to do anything. It was up to the persuasive powers of the person proposing the action to convince others to help.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Occupying (in good sense of the word) what area, km²?

Typical density for the hunters-gatherers is ~0.1 human/km².

Largest European cities were 10..20..50 k, and they were fed by farmers.

18-25 villages over 35x56 km area, with a total population of 18-22k. Lands farmed extended up to 880km squared.

http://www.1704.deerfield.history.museum/scenes/nsscenes/lifeways.do?title=Wendat#:~:text=Most of the villages%2C of,through their success in agriculture.

These were not hunter-gatherers. Many tribes besides them cultivated maize and other crops.

And yet, no money, no institutionalized trade, no authoritarian chief. Farmers did not force others to give them something in return for food, they gave it as they believed freedom was an important value, and you’re not free to do much besides gathering food if you’re hungry.

[magnemoe]

20 hours ago, tater said:

^^^ All the examples of pre-state human societies are tribal groups, and don't map to what we're talking about at all, IMHO. Things that work for an extended family group (a tribe), do NOT work for even just 100,000 people, much less a million. Same with @SunlitZelkova's claim of slavery being  exclusively modern. You can't make an argument that a virtually universal practice did not commonly occur in societies that have no history to interrogate. It's fair to say we don't know, but since we DO know even biologically that our close relatives (chimps) kill singleton males from other troops, but will take their females as mates—it seems likely something like slavery happened. It happened (happens?) in some isolated tribal cultures in very recent history as well (the SW Pacific, I think). A huge tangent, anyway.

It would be really, really interesting to see a fully fleshed out sci fi take on this thread. Like a better version of Red/Green/Blue Mars.

Agree, extended family groups was the standard  social unit until 10 K years ago.  Yes it was larger units but they was mostly to meet others, trade and solve conflicts. 

Slavery was mostly ancient, it died out in most of the world, yes you had forced labor, but much softer. Slavery got an upswing after colonization of America as it was an labor shortage. 
Now part of the reason slavery died out in Europe and probably other places is that slaves has an added cost, you have to hire guards to keep them in line or treat them well enough that they stay. 
If you can hire people cheap enough why use slaves, if you have enough hungry unemployed they are likely cheaper.  

Back in the bronze age wage labor was not really invented yet, you was part of the family or you was paid for an task like gig or day work, or you was an slave. 
Rome and some other place probably took so many slaves because their wars they became an slave economy. Taking Jerusalem after the Jew revolt paid for Colosseum. 
Imagine wars being profitable, expensive weapon system has multiple benefits  

[darthgently]

22 hours ago, tater said:

it seems likely something like slavery happened. It happened (happens?)

https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/map/#mode=data

Still a very big problem

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

What’s the likelihood they were killed lined up like that?

To occupy less place after killing them comfortably, and to need less efforts to cover with ground.

How could three men be buried in one tomb?
Did they die at once? Then why this burial composition is so strange.
Usually people don't bury with hand put on another one's crotch like he's petting or protecting the neighbor. They either align or cross the arms.
And the bones don't look lying straight.
No gifts are seen. This also makes the sacrifice version less probable. The interworld travellers usually have a bribe for the underworld spirits.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Your images come from a European caricature of the native person.

Spoiler

It was just a glamour cinematographic version of the native uniform, and I can see nothing caricature in them.

For me, it's vice versa, the movie screenshots depict normal warriors of their tribes.
They should look frightening for the other tribes, and a gentle nature is not welcomed when a normal practice is to hunt each other, or drill the prisoners' head (traditional for Chukcha and Inuit, based on the XVIII-XIX war reports), or scalping the heads (normal for the Northern Amerindians, despite of the modern nonsense that the Europeans had brought this practice; nowhere in the Europe they do it, just because a settled nation doesn't need to carry the souvenirs and have them lightweight, entire heads on the fence are good enough).
Burning and piercing is a normal part of a tribal initiation, this also leaves a print, and illustrates the softness.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Both a Frenchman named Lahontan and the Jesuit missionaries who lived there spoke of how the Wendat did not use violence to force others (within their group) to do things they wanted them to.

IIrc, the Indians were successfully using force and violence against other tribes, while of course a missionaire can just give advices.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

The AI is not going to want others to have arbitrary values like “righteousness” and what not. It’s just programmed to ensure the physical survival and expansion of the colony.

"Righteousness" = "following the right rules, established for greater good".

AI can't be programmed, it can be taught on examples. That process can be programmed.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

This regulates basic needs and the functions of the colony.

Exactly what Savonarola was doing. Everything excessively spent is a sin and should be prohibited. Including the Botticelli's paintings.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

When I say “law” I mean public decisions, which the Wendat did make when deciding things like going to war or not.

"Decision" means "punishment for those who doesn't follow it", otherwise it's a "wish".

For the punishment, the Wendat should have an intertribal mechanism to force any tribe to follow the decision.

Otherwise is just an anarchy.

If they had such mechanism, it doesn't look that their society was so much kind and soft, because the punishment is for the whole tribe, including innocents. Good people don't do so.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

18-25 villages over 35x56 km area, with a total population of 18-22k.

2000 km2
0.1 human/km2 = 200 hunters-gatherers
1..2 human/km2 = 2000...4000 steppe herders
10..100 human/km2 = 20..200 k peasants

All local Siberian peoples  (except ~1 mln Yakuts, who are medieval invaders), are 200 k in total, and that's more than was in early XX.

Somebody had published a rather optimistic view on the tribal demography.

There is no so much food in the forest, that's why the people turn it into plowland.

6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

These were not hunter-gatherers. Many tribes besides them cultivated maize and other crops.

The very place of 35x56 km2 is either for several villages of peasants, or for 2..3 tribes of hunters-gatherers.
They are antagonists, they need the opposite. HG need forest, not field; P need field, not forest.
At the same time once the agriculture appears, the peasant population exceeds the hunter-gatherer population by orders of magnitude, and inevitable conflicts force the HG either to leave the place, or to be assimilated.
So, I'm afraid, it's a fantasy.

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Now part of the reason slavery died out in Europe and probably other places is that slaves has an added cost, you have to hire guards to keep them in line or treat them well enough that they stay. 

Alive, but hidden.
Also it's cheaper to pay for several guards than for a hundred of workers they guard.
Just such practice competes with mass forced labour used by much stronger corporations, lol, so it's marginal or used in places which nobody cares about.
Say, the mining in Africa. Of course, technically the children are willingly do it. But in fact, how could they reject?

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

If you can hire people cheap enough why use slaves

Labour camps and prisons of XX in all developed countries were also a labour force, cheaper than hired ones.
For unqualified mass labour, like channel digging, stone crashing, or wood cutting.

Btw, V-2 were manufactured by the slaves (prisoners), so even told rocketry.

Edited April 26 by kerbiloid

[SunlitZelkova]

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

How could three men be buried in one tomb?
Did they die at once? Then why this burial composition is so strange.
Usually people don't bury with hand put on another one's crotch like he's petting or protecting the neighbor. They either align or cross the arms.
And the bones don't look lying straight.
No gifts are seen. This also makes the sacrifice version less probable. The interworld travellers usually have a bribe for the underworld spirits.

Because Ice Age people actually might have had varied culture and not a monolithic way of thinking across Eurasia.

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

IIrc, the Indians were successfully using force and violence against other tribes, while of course a missionaire can just give advices.

Hence why I said within their group.

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

"Righteousness" = "following the right rules, established for greater good".

AI can't be programmed, it can be taught on examples. That process can be programmed.

The objective of all life is to survive, no?

Would you say one’s desire for food and water is an opinion?

I suppose it could be.

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

"Decision" means "punishment for those who doesn't follow it", otherwise it's a "wish".

For the punishment, the Wendat should have an intertribal mechanism to force any tribe to follow the decision.

Otherwise is just an anarchy.

If they had such mechanism, it doesn't look that their society was so much kind and soft, because the punishment is for the whole tribe, including innocents. Good people don't do so.

The Wendat did have punishment mechanisms for things people agreed were bad, like murder. Instead of punishing individuals, the whole clan would have to pay tribute to the clan of the slain person, creating an incentive to prevent others from committing murder. Kandiaronk said this was more effective in preventing crime than European punishment of the individual, but we don’t really know for sure whether that was true or not.

What the Wendat did not do was force people to do something they didn’t want to. No one was forced to participate in war against another tribe if they were not convinced it was the right course.

I don’t think a decision requires punishment of those who don’t agree and cooperate. Sometimes decisions involve recruiting volunteers to execute them, in which case those who oppose go unpunished because they aren’t needed.

5 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The very place of 35x56 km2 is either for several villages of peasants, or for 2..3 tribes of hunters-gatherers.
They are antagonists, they need the opposite. HG need forest, not field; P need field, not forest.
At the same time once the agriculture appears, the peasant population exceeds the hunter-gatherer population by orders of magnitude, and inevitable conflicts force the HG either to leave the place, or to be assimilated.
So, I'm afraid, it's a fantasy.

7 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Not the case. Pacific Northwest tribes were “peasants of the fish” in that they conducted mass harvesting and processing of salmon according to the right time in the season. The environment they lived in was unsuitable for HG lifestyle because the main trees were conifers. They raided each other for slaves because the leaders could not convince their own people to take up the intense labor needed for processing salmon.

But the northern Californian peoples, who lived with access to similar abundance of salmon, consciously refused harvesting salmon and preferred the hunter gatherer way of life, because they valued work for the individual and did not believe in slavery, unlike the almost bourgeoise-like leaders of the Pacific Northwest peoples who showed off their immense wealth (and shared it) during potlatch.

But the Pacific Northwest people never raided the northern Californian HGs, despite being in close proximity.

(The northern Californian peoples actually did keep a small number of slaves, but the institution was frowned upon and those who owned them were ostracized)

[magnemoe]

12 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Also it's cheaper to pay for several guards than for a hundred of workers they guard.
Just such practice competes with mass forced labour used by much stronger corporations, lol, so it's marginal or used in places which nobody cares about.
Say, the mining in Africa. Of course, technically the children are willingly do it. But in fact, how could they reject?

Labour camps and prisons of XX in all developed countries were also a labour force, cheaper than hired ones.
For unqualified mass labour, like channel digging, stone crashing, or wood cutting.

Btw, V-2 were manufactured by the slaves (prisoners), so even told rocketry.

Yes, I know about the rise of slavery in Soviet Union and Germany. Now these regimes was not very rational. It also makes sense to use prisoners as labor if you have to imprison them anyway.  US and UK also did this with POW, who is legal if working conditions is decent and work is not dangerous or making weapons.  You would anyway be scared of the sabotaging stuff. But if they can do farm work or make simpler stuff you can put these people on making weapons. 

As for not rational, US slave owners did not want to use their slaves for dangerous work like mining, they could easy loose the expensive investment. So they get immigrants to do these jobs, 
In both Germany and Soviet prisoners dying was positive as it was people you wanted to get rid of, or they did not care at all. Germany killed millions of Soviet POW, they stopped as they needed them as slaves. 
More people died making V2 than got killed by them. 

[DDE]

11 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Yes, I know about the rise of slavery in Soviet Union and Germany. Now these regimes was not very rational. It also makes sense to use prisoners as labor if you have to imprison them anyway.  US and UK also did this with POW, who is legal if working conditions is decent and work is not dangerous or making weapons.  You would anyway be scared of the sabotaging stuff. But if they can do farm work or make simpler stuff you can put these people on making weapons. 

As for not rational, US slave owners did not want to use their slaves for dangerous work like mining, they could easy loose the expensive investment. So they get immigrants to do these jobs, 
In both Germany and Soviet prisoners dying was positive as it was people you wanted to get rid of, or they did not care at all. Germany killed millions of Soviet POW, they stopped as they needed them as slaves. 

I can fetch you a Trotsky quote about how slave labor is less effective under capitalism, but that is "not necessarily true" for socialism, and taking that as an axiom is backwards thinking.

The stuff millenarianism does to people's brains...

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

You would anyway be scared of the sabotaging stuff.

Less than a half of manufactured V-2 was reaching London, but they were not effective not for this reason, but for poor navigation equipment and attitude controls.

So, the prisoners' labour can into rocket science.

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

In both Germany and Soviet prisoners dying was positive as it was people you wanted to get rid of, or they did not care at all.

It was not positive, it was considered appropriate. About a half survived.

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Germany killed millions of Soviet POW, they stopped as they needed them as slaves. 

Originally they had captured more than were able to hold, but soon moved them into the labour camps.

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

More people died making V2 than got killed by them. 

Only because V-2 was not enough accurate to aim the preferred targets.

London was looking too desert those days.