What society might survive the 3 generation rule
A not widely accepted psycho-social phenomenon but one our descendents might sometime face, the Three Generation Rule states:
that the degree of social discipline needed for a space habitat to survive indefinitely is beyond the capability of "normal" human societies. The human tendency to favor short-term expediency will, over time, make the habitat ecosystem more and more precarious.
Putting it loosely, people tend to put off patching the leak in the roof till its raining.
In the Ten Worlds setting, this means that space habs tend to run down, and fail catastrophically in 1-5 generations from when they were established. The average is 3 generations, hence 3-gen rule.
It works somewhat like the three generation in wealth building.
- The first generation scrounges, saves, and manages to put 10% of their wealth aside for investments over a 45 year period.
- The second generation is instilled with some of the discipline to maintain the wealth but perhaps too optimistically relies on the knowledge that they'll get inheritance from the first generation.
- The third generation hasn't seen the effort required to ensure a safe and comfortable retirement. It usually & mostly fails to save money in any meaningful way or wisely invest any money they may have inherited from prior generations. Often they spend any capital they've acquired trying to keep up with their wealthier friends. They end up frittering away the wealth.
Only in a society entirely maintained artificially, failure to manage your colony responsibly and with discipline means certain death for everyone on-board.
In such a society the people need to thread carefully between the wide-eyed green idealism and the greedy corporate capitalists. Either side could be good or bad depending upon the issue at hand. Allow anyone to run-away with their ideals and you could doom an entire colony to death.
In societies with very large populations, some people in each generation are moving up and taking on a more technologically sophisticated (and/or disciplined) jobs than their parents to take the place of others are moving down. But in small populations, a slight imbalance in one of the generations leads to the catastrophic failure of the colony.
- How do we develop a society that can survive in an artificial environment, that requires at least a small group of people in each generation to dedicate themselves to topics they may have no interest in pursuing ("But dad, I don't want to be an algae sludge farmer!" "Sorry daughter, you scored highest in the aptitude tests.").
- Also how do we ensure that essential skills aren't lost due to the death of people with extremely specialized skill sets?
Edit & addendum: 7/13/2015
I don't like answers with automation in them. The reason is automation tends to replace human labor in unskilled or repetitive jobs. It replaces them with machinery that requires technical and/or specialized skill sets to maintain.
I think that ultimately a colony is most likely to survive in a situation in which no technological skills are required to maintain it - meaning the environment is passively maintained by the environment. This means an environment that naturally supports life and this typically means a planetary surface. If we can't have such a thing, how do we ensure that the society can survive for 10 or more generations (e.g. for a generation ship to travel to another world)?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/20275. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
There are two parts to the problem: short-term issues and long-term issues.
Short-term issues
Part of the problem of the Three Generation Rule is that people like procrastinating. Why do today what you can put off 'til tomorrow? Or, in this case, why do today what you can put off 'til the next generation? If I understand correctly, though, people will start to do things they don't want to do when it becomes apparent that if they don't do them immediately, they will die.
The solution to these problems, of course, is to do the maintenance continuously so that this stage of crisis is never reached. So there must be an incentive to do the maintenance. This can be accomplished by one of two systems, which are positive and negative reinforcements. As an example, I'll say that there is a micrometeorite shield that needs repairs (not a particularly difficult or disgusting task, admittedly). Here's what happens when Spaceman Spiff is needed to fix it.
Positive reinforcement
Computer: Spiff, you didn't do the repairs on the micrometeorite shield, like you were scheduled to do.
Spaceman Spiff: I'll get to it. I'm busy, and I have some other things to do.
Computer: You'll get an extra helping of chocolate cake tonight if you do it.
Spiff: I'm on it.
The problem with this implementation - besides the fact that they will one day run out of chocolate cake - is that people could learn to game the system. If they wait until to do a task, they know they will be rewarded in the end. A better way is to simply make a long-term promise: Fix the shields whenever you're supposed to, and you'll continue to get extra helpings of chocolate cake.
Negative reinforcement
The problem with positive reinforcement is that there's no immediate downside to not making the repair. When the repair really, really, really needs doing at the last minute, there is a motivation: death. This is simple logic; If Spaceman Spiff doesn't do X, Y will happen. In this case, Y is death.
The system can be applied to short-term maintenance, too. Let's go back to an alternate version of the conversation.
Computer: Spiff, you didn't do the repairs on the micrometeorite shield, like you were scheduled to do.
Spaceman Spiff: I'll get to it. I'm busy, and I have some other things to do.
Computer: Spiff, you might be interested in knowing that between the micrometeorite shield and the main structure is a very, very thing layer. It just so happens to contain some electrical wiring that is associated with the heating system. If there is some damage to the shield, then the main structure will not crumble or be irreversibly damaged. That will happen quickly after. But what will happen is that those wires will be irreversibly damaged, which will cause the average temperature in the crew quarters to drop by about - oh, I don't know, about ten degrees. This won't kill you - no, not by a long shot - but it will make some sleeping periods very cold.
Spiff: I'm on it.
This time, there is a definite consequence to Spiff not doing the repair, and this consequence will make him and his crew members very, very unhappy. This system will probably work better than the positive rewards system.
You could apply this to other tasks, too. For example, if the algae are not introduced to nutrients on a regular basis, then perhaps other organisms added to them could emit large quantities of gases that will make life quite unpleasant. Or if the sewage system is not cleaned properly . . . well, the effects of that are automatic, providing you figure out how to install some strategically placed vents.
Long-term issues
This is trickier. It's one thing to motivate someone to "feed" the algae. It's another to convince someone to spend their entire life farming algae sludge.
I need a bit more time to finish writing this one. In the meantime, I'm all ready to address any issues with the first section.
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