We are about to become a multi-planetary species. What type of government should be established on other planets, moons, and space-faring civilizations?
You didn't mention selection? The type of person who would go to Mars may be more likely to fit the survival framework. The vulnerable narcissists and power-trippers might choose to stay on earth, where they seem to run things. Martian society might be a different mix of people as a result.
1. The analysis of dyadic complexity is oversimplified in a way that hides an important detail. For me and 20 others, there are about 200 possible dyads. But when it comes to 2,000 others, there are probably no more than 10,000 possible dyads due to time and effort and lack of interest. The problem is that the dyadic graphs are themselves objects with their own pair dyads, but this new level has emergent properties that do not exist on the lower level.
2. Instead of looking back at foundational documents, we should focus on the method of writing the foundational documents. I advocate a triadic approach. Based on my experience with Nuclear Power Plant operating procedures, there are three parts: the theory, the procedure and the validation metric. This is also true for software documentation: requirements/design/test. For example, the US Constitution contains only the procedures (the articles and amendments). Typically, people go back to documents like the Federalist Papers, which you quote. This theoretical justification should have been written into the Constitution alongside the procedures. The third part - the validation metric - is completely missing from the Constitution and even our current government. For example, the section on Presidential elections, besides having the theoretical justification for the way it is implemented, should also have a way of judging if the election was free and fair, whether it met the theoretical desiderata and a time-based analysis of long-term outcome that determines whether the outcome was a sound one. If the validation fails (such as unintended consequences), then there could be one of three reasons: the theory is wrong and needs to be updated, leading to new procedures and new validation criteria; the procedure is wrong and does not meet the theoretical needs; or the validation metric is wrong - it does not measure how theory and practice mesh. I am unaware of any government document anywhere that is written in this style.
As you mention the possible demographic dimensions of these colonies, my understanding is that a direct democracy would be counterproductive. No one, including Musk, needs to reinvent the wheel when there are thousands of years of governance in history, political science, sociology and anthropology to study for a possible candidate as the most suitable political system in a space colony. No need for overtly mechanistic social models from people who tend to see society as some sort of a summation of its individuals.
The most ludicrous piece of Musk's Mars fantasy is his timeline. What, he thinks he'll establish Plymouth Rock up there before 2030? We don't have anywhere close to the knowledge or technical proficiency to accomplish this. We can't even send a person to Mars yet. It was a crackpipe dream in 2018. If he was more stable and could focus on just *one* project (like, give up on Tesla & X, the latter of which he's done a piss-poor job of managing) he *might* be able to pull something basic off on Mars before he dies. But he doesn't have the focus, and frankly his managerial skills leave much to be desired. Given how over-engineered the Tesla is, I would NOT trust my life to a loose cannon like Musk. He may be a genius, but a stable one he ain't.
Agreed. The economic and intellectual resources Musk would devote to Mars colonization would be much better suited to solving the myriad problems here on Earth.
In your well conceived "Justice and Freedom Dozen" common characteristics of how large human groups are governed, two traits, fair and just laws and enforcing civil liberties, are specially amended. You add, "all citizens regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation," but curiously "the franchise is granted to all adult citizens."
Why is the amendment necessary (twice) if it's not necessary in the first characteristic? Adding those selected citizen classes is a concession to current sociopolitical "hot button issues," but your essay aims to transcend history. Those two amendments simply introduce controversy. What does "religion" even mean? Is Falun Gong or the next new religion included? Are non-religious citizens included? Is a pedophile sexual orientation included? Gender is a social construct, and different societies viewing "gender" differently can successfully employ your "12 ideals."
Worse still, our species can be segmented by geographic groups sharing characteristic genotypes but we cannot be "cleanly" segmented by "race" (but Chimpanzees can), so "race" has no place in specially protected classes. Human races simply don't exist, so why even mention that? Stop at "all citizens."
There is a lot of literature about what kind of people we might run into in space. Many people fantasize of friendly, smiling extraterestrials who have no faults and will give us good advice and sound guidance.
This is unlikely. In order to build spaceships and travel through space, people MUST be insane.
A little thought reveals why this must be so. Spaceships are huge, complex
devices. They imply a massive industrial base, with mining industries to provide
metals, energy production facilities to provide energy to work it,transportation networks
to transport materials to the place of assembly, large work forces at several locations, which
must all be co-ordinated by some centralized authority, large-scale food production and
distribution systems to feed all those workers who cannot be employed inproviding their
own food, a housing industry to keep them in shelter, other industries tosupply the materials
to build the houses, in short, a total industrial society. Sane people would never create such a
society and would not want to live in one.
Sane people would not spend their lives in coal mines, for example, working to provide coal to produce electricity to smelt iron ore to build spaceships. Sane people would not build nuclear reactors to generate electricity because they would recoil in instictive horror from the environmental
consequences of nuclear power. Sane people would not dam rivers to generate electricity because they would value far too highly the free-flowing river and the multitude of life-forms it provided for.
Sane people, in short, would never build an industrialized civilization capable of space travel.
So we won't run into any helpfull role-models in space. We might run into Vulcans out in space. A
cold, controlled people, severly disciplined and with all emotions repressed. Weprobably won't run into any Klingons, though. In the close confines of a spaceship they would kill each other off long before they got this far.
You didn't mention selection? The type of person who would go to Mars may be more likely to fit the survival framework. The vulnerable narcissists and power-trippers might choose to stay on earth, where they seem to run things. Martian society might be a different mix of people as a result.
Or they could go to Mars where the community is smaller and they stand a better chance of taking over everything.
Two observations:
1. The analysis of dyadic complexity is oversimplified in a way that hides an important detail. For me and 20 others, there are about 200 possible dyads. But when it comes to 2,000 others, there are probably no more than 10,000 possible dyads due to time and effort and lack of interest. The problem is that the dyadic graphs are themselves objects with their own pair dyads, but this new level has emergent properties that do not exist on the lower level.
2. Instead of looking back at foundational documents, we should focus on the method of writing the foundational documents. I advocate a triadic approach. Based on my experience with Nuclear Power Plant operating procedures, there are three parts: the theory, the procedure and the validation metric. This is also true for software documentation: requirements/design/test. For example, the US Constitution contains only the procedures (the articles and amendments). Typically, people go back to documents like the Federalist Papers, which you quote. This theoretical justification should have been written into the Constitution alongside the procedures. The third part - the validation metric - is completely missing from the Constitution and even our current government. For example, the section on Presidential elections, besides having the theoretical justification for the way it is implemented, should also have a way of judging if the election was free and fair, whether it met the theoretical desiderata and a time-based analysis of long-term outcome that determines whether the outcome was a sound one. If the validation fails (such as unintended consequences), then there could be one of three reasons: the theory is wrong and needs to be updated, leading to new procedures and new validation criteria; the procedure is wrong and does not meet the theoretical needs; or the validation metric is wrong - it does not measure how theory and practice mesh. I am unaware of any government document anywhere that is written in this style.
As you mention the possible demographic dimensions of these colonies, my understanding is that a direct democracy would be counterproductive. No one, including Musk, needs to reinvent the wheel when there are thousands of years of governance in history, political science, sociology and anthropology to study for a possible candidate as the most suitable political system in a space colony. No need for overtly mechanistic social models from people who tend to see society as some sort of a summation of its individuals.
The most ludicrous piece of Musk's Mars fantasy is his timeline. What, he thinks he'll establish Plymouth Rock up there before 2030? We don't have anywhere close to the knowledge or technical proficiency to accomplish this. We can't even send a person to Mars yet. It was a crackpipe dream in 2018. If he was more stable and could focus on just *one* project (like, give up on Tesla & X, the latter of which he's done a piss-poor job of managing) he *might* be able to pull something basic off on Mars before he dies. But he doesn't have the focus, and frankly his managerial skills leave much to be desired. Given how over-engineered the Tesla is, I would NOT trust my life to a loose cannon like Musk. He may be a genius, but a stable one he ain't.
Agreed. The economic and intellectual resources Musk would devote to Mars colonization would be much better suited to solving the myriad problems here on Earth.
In your well conceived "Justice and Freedom Dozen" common characteristics of how large human groups are governed, two traits, fair and just laws and enforcing civil liberties, are specially amended. You add, "all citizens regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation," but curiously "the franchise is granted to all adult citizens."
Why is the amendment necessary (twice) if it's not necessary in the first characteristic? Adding those selected citizen classes is a concession to current sociopolitical "hot button issues," but your essay aims to transcend history. Those two amendments simply introduce controversy. What does "religion" even mean? Is Falun Gong or the next new religion included? Are non-religious citizens included? Is a pedophile sexual orientation included? Gender is a social construct, and different societies viewing "gender" differently can successfully employ your "12 ideals."
Worse still, our species can be segmented by geographic groups sharing characteristic genotypes but we cannot be "cleanly" segmented by "race" (but Chimpanzees can), so "race" has no place in specially protected classes. Human races simply don't exist, so why even mention that? Stop at "all citizens."
There is a lot of literature about what kind of people we might run into in space. Many people fantasize of friendly, smiling extraterestrials who have no faults and will give us good advice and sound guidance.
This is unlikely. In order to build spaceships and travel through space, people MUST be insane.
A little thought reveals why this must be so. Spaceships are huge, complex
devices. They imply a massive industrial base, with mining industries to provide
metals, energy production facilities to provide energy to work it,transportation networks
to transport materials to the place of assembly, large work forces at several locations, which
must all be co-ordinated by some centralized authority, large-scale food production and
distribution systems to feed all those workers who cannot be employed inproviding their
own food, a housing industry to keep them in shelter, other industries tosupply the materials
to build the houses, in short, a total industrial society. Sane people would never create such a
society and would not want to live in one.
Sane people would not spend their lives in coal mines, for example, working to provide coal to produce electricity to smelt iron ore to build spaceships. Sane people would not build nuclear reactors to generate electricity because they would recoil in instictive horror from the environmental
consequences of nuclear power. Sane people would not dam rivers to generate electricity because they would value far too highly the free-flowing river and the multitude of life-forms it provided for.
Sane people, in short, would never build an industrialized civilization capable of space travel.
So we won't run into any helpfull role-models in space. We might run into Vulcans out in space. A
cold, controlled people, severly disciplined and with all emotions repressed. Weprobably won't run into any Klingons, though. In the close confines of a spaceship they would kill each other off long before they got this far.
And so would we.