{"id":249,"date":"2020-10-13T19:17:30","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T19:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=249"},"modified":"2020-10-13T19:17:30","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T19:17:30","slug":"mars24","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars24","title":{"rendered":"Imagining Elon Musk’s Million-Person Mars Colony – Chapter 24"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Imagining Elon Musk’s Million-Person Mars Colony – The greatest thought experiment of all time<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by\u00a0Marshall Brain<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapter 24<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How Will the Mars Colony Handle Innovation?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever thought about innovation and its importance to modern society? What causes innovation? What increases or decreases the rate of innovation? Is it possible to have too much innovation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of these questions are important to Elon Musk’s Mars colony, because the colony will be an independent, self-sustaining instantiation of the human species on another planet. Does the Mars colony need innovation? If so, how much?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One way to examine and understand innovation is to look at what happens with human societies that never innovate. These societies seem to reach of stage \u2013 we might call this stage “good enough” \u2013 and then these societies simply stick with the status quo, sometimes for thousands of years. Here are four examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Native American culture. We traditionally think of Native American culture in the way it is most commonly portrayed in movies, like the movie\u00a0Dances With Wolves<\/a>. Native American culture did have technology. They lived in a form of housing, known as the teepee [ref<\/a>]. They had a way to hunt for meat, known as the bow and arrow. They had ways to preserve meat, usually by drying it into jerky [ref<\/a>]. They were able to make clothing and shoes from animal hides. They had to innovate to create teepees, arrows and moccasins, but then the innovation stopped.<\/li>
  2. Inuit culture. The Inuit live up around the Arctic circle area in what is now known as Canada. They too developed an array of technologies unique to their environment including kayaks, igloos, dog sleds, rather amazing winter clothing, sunglasses, etc. [ref<\/a>]. But again they reached a certain point with their technology, and then they stopped. Kayak technology, for example, is considered to be at least 4,000 years old [ref<\/a>]. This technology was good enough, the Inuit used it unchanged for thousands of years.<\/li>
  3. Afghanistan culture, aka Pashtun culture. Pashtun culture is at least 2,000 years old. It “has little outside influence, and, over the ages, has retained a great degree of purity.” [ref<\/a>], [ref<\/a>]. They hunt with slingshots, live in mud houses [ref<\/a>], etc. There are villages in Afghanistan today that are not that much different from a village from 1,000 years ago.<\/li>
  4. Australian Aboriginal culture. As described in the following video, this culture basically mastered fire, and little else. This culture might be 50,000 or more years old [ref<\/a>]:<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
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