How small population can maintain contemporary technology level

[Czcibor]

I'm interested in that question not for novel purpose, but for pen and paper RPG scenario.

Assumptions:

1) It was possible (though under cost of becoming clearly a soft SF ;) ) of transporting a big group of people to a far away habitable planet with contemporary tech.
2) Such transfer mechanism worked a bit also in past, (last deviation from hard SF, I promise, ;) I needed a way to make local organisms compatible) thus local flora, fauna and microorganism evolved from those from our planet. Had there been any local primitive life forms - they were outcompeted by our. Consequence - local plants and animals can be edible.

3)The planet is a bit colder, but a bit more massive and it has twice as high atmospheric pressure. (with slightly lower oxygen percentage it should work, right?) It orbits a really tiny red dwarf (so it is tidally locked, I calculated something like 8 day orbit). Because of denser atmosphere and let's say 80% ocean cover it should have reasonable heat transfer. (right?) Additionally the system is binary and there is also a yellow main sequence star. The planet gets 2/3 of heat from the red dwarf, and 1/3 the main sequence star. The orbit of planet is tilted to the plane of orbit of both stars around common centre of mass thus in long run every point on planet surface is going to be temporarily heated and no long term freezing of carbon dioxide is possible.

4) I assume that the main place of settlement would be on the side heated by red dwarf, but not in the hottest point. I also assume that the heating from effectively long "day" (day seen from perspective of someone watching the yellow star) would reduce habitability of places with more continental climate - thus main settlement would be near shores. I also think that with low population density the main source of electricity should be water power.

OK, I have the following question - what would be the minimum population to maintain industrial complex and thus technological civilization? (Assume that it was possible to backup all or practically all necessary information like blueprints or info about technological processes. Also assume that there were people to choose from, thus on general it was possible to take people who were good at their field)

By expected part of technological civilization I mean:
-possibility to produce personal computers
-possibility to produce wide array of normally used medication (I case if it can be differently understood, I mean something like: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2011/a95053_eng.pdf )
-modern agriculture with fertilizers, pesticides and tractors
(except from that a much lower standard of living is possible, with much lower personal consumption. Also let's say resignation from ex. aircraft is possible. The aim is to preserve only slightly reduced life expectancy and information technology, using steamboats if necessary - fully acceptable.)


What would be the most effective way to cut the corners to achieve that? Desperate standardization (any colour as long as it is black)? It's too early for application of additive manufacturing, right?

 

[Nimbian]

what would be the minimum population to maintain industrial complex and thus technological civilization?

That's an Extremely difficult question to answer, since the answer can very so much depending on local conditions, how large are stores that have basic (for the tech base) materials and chemicals, even societal structure can play a part.

Now from your description the planet while not a traditional Terran, has been seeded with Terran/Earth life. How long ago was it? Did it include animal life or simply plant life? if there were native life of the animal kind are they still around? are there a mix of local and Earth Animals?

Societal structure is important factor. I assume either a Democratic government, or a almost military government possibly based on the Command Structure from the ship? Some where in between?

What is the most common form of land Transport, Air Transport and Sea Transport. (I know you mentioned steamships) This determine how far the settlers will go for materials, and how many people would be involved in simply maintaining the transportation. What is the most commonly used fuel? Coal can only take you so far.

One of the most important questions is, how important is the answer to the story, or is it important to the setting, or is it some thing you want to know for personal interest? If it is important to the story, why is it?

 

[r4z0r84]

Adam, Eve and a god. a massive explosion. in terms of australia, it only took a ship full of criminals and a few guns to take it over, to permiate life on another planet though would require for example 800 years worth of sustained life on the ship traveling at the speed of light (theoretical) before any inhabitable planet were to exist. not to mention the energy required to reach such speeds or the habitate required to sustain life that long in space.

Basically the question at hand would effectively mean how many people are required to re-create a world/space craft that can sustain life for over 800 years, but then again you did state they are already there, and they just need to know how many people are needed to be sent down to populate and generate technological advances, technically the minimum amount would be 2 both would have to be able to have kids and then those kids have kids and so on and so forth, but to already have all the technology there, you would have to bring it with you, and train those on the ship on how it all works so that over the 800 years the 8-16 generations worth of humans on the vessel have maintained the knowledge and drop all the technology there at the new planet.

In terms of people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population
to give you an Idea for the minimum a group of 66 people in 2008 lived on Pitcairn Islands, so id say around 50 or so people would be enough, and in terms of technology i thought of a simple solution. Download the internet, it will only take 150ish years at 10gbps internet, plus you will need over 10billion terabytes worth of hard drives but hey in the future people may have that much on their own personal computers haha i mean if you think back to the first personal computer the 8080 practically anyone can create one if you have the schematics.

So after downloading the entire internet and everything on everyones home computers you then come to storage on a ship, this ship will have to be extremely large not only for the 100 people on board but the storage of all our intelligence, or you could for example set up a long range wireless configuration and just wait 800 years for 1bit of information from Earth haha personally i think the storage on the ship works out better.
think of it as a central intelligence named Siri-US haha okay i think i'll stop now.

Hope I've helped or stunned/sparked a few electrons in your brain.

 

[AlephZero]

in terms of australia, it only took a ship full of criminals and a few guns to take it over

It didnt take just one ship. It took a continuous supply chain of ships for a long time. The important question is now long it took before the "criminals" didn't need to keep importing bullets for their guns - not to mention setting up a mining industry to produce the raw materials for making more guns.

I think a plausible answer to the OP's question (i.e. a reasonably small number of people) depends on the existence of some new manufacturing technology. You could imagine that simething similar to current 3D printers could manufacture a lot of necessary products (inclding more 3D printers), assuming suitable raw materials were available. But if you look at the size and cost of say a computer chip fabrication plant, the current technology only "works" on a very large scale with a few global suppliers. The technology for a huge multinational company to make a few thousand special-purpose chips and sell them to a small startup company exists. The technology for the small company to make those chips entirely on their own does not. The same may apply to medicines (but that's outside of my expertise).

 

[Borek]

North Korea - with about 25 millions people - is more or less (rather less) self sufficient. Remove ideological idiocy that makes their economy inefficient and they should be able to produce all they need even in isolation.

Australia? New Zealand?

Not that in answers the question, but that would be my approach to find the answer. So IMHO we are talking millions.

 

[Czcibor]

One technical issue - no ship, just teleportation of all people and equipment. (and effect practically not replicable in future)

Now from your description the planet while not a traditional Terran, has been seeded with Terran/Earth life. How long ago was it? Did it include animal life or simply plant life? if there were native life of the animal kind are they still around? are there a mix of local and Earth Animals?

Both plant and animal life, including megafuna. No mixed species, though living organism had quite a few million year to evolve to local conditions.

Societal structure is important factor. I assume either a Democratic government, or a almost military government possibly based on the Command Structure from the ship? Some where in between?

Effectively speaking monocracy at first decade and later a meritocracy. So first a blatant (though usually softline) dictatorship, later bothering to write a constitution which would maintain status quo thou with prime minister with emergency powers on the top. The final transition would be organising tests for citizens and let those who pass them to elect a small parliament. Also constitution would require for some strategic decision to randomly select a focus group from citizens and check whether they agree (or at least don't oppose to fiercely ;) ).

What is the most common form of land Transport, Air Transport and Sea Transport. (I know you mentioned steamships) This determine how far the settlers will go for materials, and how many people would be involved in simply maintaining the transportation. What is the most commonly used fuel? Coal can only take you so far.

I used them only as an example what can be used while almost keeping tech achievements of contemporary civilization. I'd expect a world that would have limited amount of fossil fuels (though if you come back in a hundred million years ;) ). I don't have any special expectations in that area. I expected that:
-when there is huge water cover
-civilization is concentrated in coastal regions
-there are no roads at start and low population density discourage too intensive infrastructure building
the dominating means of transport should be ships (when measured in tonne-kilometre)

I don't expect rail (to low amount of transported goods to justify high investments), except in city(cities) for mass transit.

One of the most important questions is, how important is the answer to the story, or is it important to the setting, or is it some thing you want to know for personal interest? If it is important to the story, why is it?

I've been creating an RPG scenario for quite a while. I'd like to game master a game in slightly odd world, though in such which does not have any serious logical holes, except of accepted deviations from reality.

North Korea - with about 25 millions people - is more or less (rather less) self sufficient. Remove ideological idiocy that makes their economy inefficient and they should be able to produce all they need even in isolation.

Hard to say, I'd say that's more matter of surrealistic economy - ex. the Soviet Union had to import food all the time in spite of controlling vast amounts of perfect agriculture land including Ukrainian Chernozem.

Australia? New Zealand?

Not that in answers the question, but that would be my approach to find the answer. So IMHO we are talking millions.

I think somewhat within that line - ex. vast empty spaces and a few really big cities. Though I see one problem here - a reasonably managed economy nowadays is an open economy.

 

[Nimbian]

Keep in mind I'm not an expert, in fact IRL your question would take experts months to hash out.

Also a lot depends on the Plan for development.

It also depends on how long they received supplies from their patron civilization. Was it just one chance to send people and material? or was it over the course of a few days or months or even years? (perhaps as a side effect of the transportation device.)

The Shorter the "Window" the More people and supplies that would be needed to maintain a decent tech base. While the inverse would be true, since they could Step up the technology over time, as specialist arrive., by having the needed materials located or even being exploited.

I see around 300,000 to 1 million being necessary to a "Modern" Tech base, they would have had bring food for at least 3 years (which would drain even faster with children being born) Most would have had to be generalists with as low as 5-10% being specialist. And then would have had to work back up to certain technologies and convinces as Local resources start flowing in. There would be many technological inconsistencies, Since if you need Gold for circuitry but if there isn't a local source or even one you know about, you either substitute with what you do have or you don't build it. This can mean radical redesigns of common place items. Old Machines might be more valuable as sources of Modern alloys and other materials that can't be produced or mined or acquired at that particular point.

So long a free and open knowledge base is maintained, you'd see every thing from cars to planes with-in ten fifteen years, most would be home made contraptions, using leftover parts, but they would be there. Government equipment would be build much simply with one thought in mind, longevity.

Other important questions (more for setting sake) are why was it a on shot deal? or why did People stop coming? Was this expected? was it a local condition that prevents the "teleport" from working or one on Earth, or even is it inexplicable? If its a local conditions is there concern that Earth will start sending people again? Are they preparing for this eventuality? (at least these are questions I would ask my self about my settings)

Of course this is all just speculation and conjecture on my part. If you like my ideas steal them and integrate what you thing is good into your stories and writing. :)

 

[Ryan_m_b]

SF Author Charles Stross asked this question a few years ago
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insufficient-data.html

A few key points:

- A modern labour pool is extremely specialised
- Few of those specialities could be done away without without disrupting the network, possibly catastrophically
- There is a limit to how specialised one person can be, for skilled labour it can take 5-10 years to go from novice to fully fledged (but not master!) worker
- Not all knowledge can be/is codified, developing a way to codify tacit knowledge would be a must for redundancy
- Few databases are built as teaching resources, most are reference or rely on previous knowledge
- Building on the last two points you can't learn something well without someone who knows it teaching you. It might be quicker to reinvent brain surgery with reference texts but without knowledgeable teachers you are going to have a painful learning curve (with fatal mistakes).
- This latter point means that a certain percentage of each profession is going to have to also be a teacher which means keeping another skill set

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Adam, Eve and a god. a massive explosion

This whole answer remind me of Adaptation by Mack Reynolds. Essentially thousands of planets have people dropped on them, after a few generations all their high-tech gadgets have worn out and they're pretty much hunter-gatherers (it's not really explained why but this OP is a good approach). A thousand years later Earth sends a ship to one of these systems with the goal of taking the now huge but still primitive population and teaching them to build a high-tech civilisation in 50 years.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I've been thinking about this and for a work of fiction it would be interesting to come up with some ideas for how to lower that number. This would be good for knowing how many colonists we could get away with at minimum but also has applications for post-apocalypse scenarios. With that in mind;

Mildly speculative ideas
- socioeconomic regulations to reduce the number of superperfulous jobs e.g dozens of different telecoms services.
Pros: frees up labour
Cons: reduced competition reduces efficiency
- digital encyclopaedias designed to teach subjects as well as act as reference material regardless of readers previous knowledge and skills.
Pros: easy access digital learning
Cons: very hard to program
- designing database of critical machines necessary for an advanced society designed to be built by amateurs with basic tools e.g. The open source ecology project
Pros: simplifies and standardises across industries
Cons: may be difficult to impossible for various machines
- keep the population in a constant state of learning and working multiple jobs
Pros: knowledgeable and adaptable workforce
Cons: impossible to keep up to date in multiple fields, high work load and stress may damage overall productivity

Very speculative ideas
- advanced industrial automation aka lights out manufacturing
- intelligent software capable of outperforming a skilled human in most fields
- intelligent augmentation e.g nootropic drugs, personal digital assistants, brain implants etc

 

[onomatomanic]

[...] impossible to keep up to date in multiple fields [...]

This is true, but I'm also thinking it's not as much of a hindrance to your scheme as one might at first suppose.

To pick up your earlier example, let's say our colonist-to-be xenobiologist (or whatever) spends one day per week assisting a brain surgeon. Clearly, the former isn't going to become as technically skilled as the latter, nor are they going to be able to keep up with any but the most seminal of theoretical research in that field. Nevertheless, once the colony gets underway, they are going to be able to perform the occasional brain surgery without killing many of their patients - and, more importantly in the long run, they are going to be able to train a new generation of brain surgeons. That new generation won't be as good as its Earth counterpart, but it will be as good as its Earth counterpart was a few generations ago.

So, in short, there's no need to be all the way up to date in a given field to be of use. As long as the colony has someone who's only a little out of date, they'll be much better off than they'd be with someone who's trying to learn from scratch without an actual teacher, no matter how good the teaching materials are.

 

[Czcibor]

The Shorter the "Window" the More people and supplies that would be needed to maintain a decent tech base. While the inverse would be true, since they could Step up the technology over time, as specialist arrive., by having the needed materials located or even being exploited.
[...]
Other important questions (more for setting sake) are why was it a on shot deal? or why did People stop coming? Was this expected? was it a local condition that prevents the "teleport" from working or one on Earth, or even is it inexplicable? If its a local conditions is there concern that Earth will start sending people again? Are they preparing for this eventuality? (at least these are questions I would ask my self about my settings)

[really soft SF]
Window of opportunity - approximately 6 months.

Standard incoming doom, but instead of Hollywood world saving in the last moment there was a possibility to teleport using psionics and temporary space time anomaly big enough group of people to a distant planet.

Yes, I know how it sounds. However, it makes quite good gaming scenario, with player characters who have both odd civilization to deal with and can use psionic powers. ;)
[/really soft SF]

I see around 300,000 to 1 million being necessary to a "Modern" Tech base, they would have had bring food for at least 3 years (which would drain even faster with children being born)

I agree with the estimate. (I'm not saying that's correct but "almost a million" was a value that I thought of for scenario, thus I'd stick to it unless someone shows me that that's rather wrong) I think slightly concerning the food reserves - there are untapped resources of fishes and big land animals, thus fishing and hunting sounds as good source of protein.

Most would have had to be generalists with as low as 5-10% being specialist. And then would have had to work back up to certain technologies and convinces as Local resources start flowing in. There would be many technological inconsistencies, Since if you need Gold for circuitry but if there isn't a local source or even one you know about, you either substitute with what you do have or you don't build it. This can mean radical redesigns of common place items. Old Machines might be more valuable as sources of Modern alloys and other materials that can't be produced or mined or acquired at that particular point.

In general I know that, that's the reason why I asked where to cut corners without loosing quality too much. I've already found a few low hanging fruits:
Containers - in practice one don't need great variety of bottles and jars, a few standard ones would be enough, and no one short of marketing guys would see a difference.
Financial services - instead of having high amount of banks that are supervised by financial supervision, central bank to manage macroeconomic affairs and gov to bail them out, there can be simpler solution with usual elimination of intermediaries - everyone with an account in central bank with possibility to both place deposits and take a loans against collateral like real estate and limited loans without such. The only place where some real additional value is added is in grading more risky investments, but that can be mostly solved by some smaller intermediaries.
Processors - a few standardized types would suit most cases. Just with multiprocessor constructions or dumbed version/ slightly defective ones used for more trivia functions.

 

[Czcibor]

SF Author Charles Stross asked this question a few years ago
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/07/insufficient-data.html

His estimate is terribly high, though he has much higher expectation I do. What I really look for is a Kalashnikov ;) - simple, inexpensive, fail safe device that actually does almost the same job at a fraction of the price ;)

- Building on the last two points you can't learn something well without someone who knows it teaching you. It might be quicker to reinvent brain surgery with reference texts but without knowledgeable teachers you are going to have a painful learning curve (with fatal mistakes).

I'm not convinced about this "painful". Brain is the only organ that lacks pain receptors, thus operating it in inept way shall create lot's of damage, though no pain as such. :D

Mildly speculative ideas
- socioeconomic regulations to reduce the number of superperfulous jobs e.g dozens of different telecoms services.
Pros: frees up labour
Cons: reduced competition reduces efficiency

Yes, I also thought about it. Actually I faced even a greater obstacle - in quite many industries you would face natural monopolies. There would be presumably no good idea to deal with that - the least bad scenario would be a private entity (just to keep someone sensitive to costs), set prices (because there would be no competitors to keep you in line) and society paranoiac about possible corruption and demanding Assange merges with Zuckenberg ;) amount of transparency.

- digital encyclopaedias designed to teach subjects as well as act as reference material regardless of readers previous knowledge and skills.
Pros: easy access digital learning
Cons: very hard to program

I thought about quite a few simpler teaching programs to save on teachers.

- keep the population in a constant state of learning and working multiple jobs
Pros: knowledgeable and adaptable workforce
Cons: impossible to keep up to date in multiple fields, high work load and stress may damage overall productivity

I think that partially the political system (meritocracy) would encourage that, partially one could expect some selection process at start (who to take, who to left behind because of limited transport capabilities) and continuing Flynn effect for a while.

Very speculative ideas
- advanced industrial automation aka lights out manufacturing
- intelligent software capable of outperforming a skilled human in most fields
- intelligent augmentation e.g nootropic drugs, personal digital assistants, brain implants etc

If one start with very limited population then inventing too much new technology (in contrast to adapting old ones or simply achieving economics of scale) would not be price effective. Nowadays when you sell processors any production short of global is not able to justify huge R&D costs.
That does not mean that tech development would be stopped, but terribly slowed down. However, I'd expect more incremental improvements - ex. if we can't count on new processors with double speed then the code would have to be optimalized. I see quite many areas when with contemporary tech one could improve used solutions ex. give every citizen a digital signature and make all contact with gov through electronic means, thus speeding everything up and saving need for quite a few civil servants.

 

[Nimbian]

SF Author Charles Stross asked this question a few years ago http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...ient-data.html

An interesting read for sure, But what onomatomanic said is more in line of what I was thinking. Also every specialist you bring along would have to pull double duty teaching and working. You don't take Aerospace engineers with you if you don't plan to built air-buses.
Any engineer could design simple aircraft, he would of course tell you that it won't be perfect and the safety margin will be much lower then if a Specialist engineer had designed it, but safety standards were much lower in the 1900s then they are now. The primary reason? Money.

Speaking from experience, many safety regulations DO interfere with work efficiency, but are necessary to protect the company from stupid, careless, or lazy employees. With today legal system anyone could sue any medium sized business or smaller that they had worked for into the ground, because they made a mistake and were maimed. That's right if any of you had any illusions about those regulations I'm sorry to kill them, but they protect the EMPLOYER. Not saying it doesn't help the Employees at all.

Likewise I don't see homes having powered dishwashers, so no need for a Maytag man.

Going back to his original post the requirements he was looking at were

By expected part of technological civilization I mean:
-possibility to produce personal computers
-possibility to produce wide array of normally used medication (I case if it can be differently understood, I mean something like: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2011/a95053_eng.pdf )
-modern agriculture with fertilizers, pesticides and tractors
(except from that a much lower standard of living is possible, with much lower personal consumption. Also let's say resignation from ex. aircraft is possible. The aim is to preserve only slightly reduced life expectancy and information technology, using steamboats if necessary - fully acceptable.)

Translate Possibility to some people have them, others do without.

PCs are about the hardest thing you'll be able to produce as I am reminded of a quote from the PC Game Alpha Centauri "You make Tools, to make Better Tools, to Make more precise tools...", so Stockpiles and recycling would be of the utmost importance in a Colony society, especially of high tech tools.

Many specialties ARE actually superfluous. they are only useful (or cost effective) in large complex systems. Look at what what Charles Stross said about the automotive industry. a lot of these extra subsystems he mentioned are useful to the point where we would not want to live without them, yet vehicles could operate, perhaps less effectively, as they do today.

Also many items today have built-in obsolescence, Complicated designs would be dropped for simpler more robust designs.

Expensive technologies would essentially become a cottage industry where a Computer or Phone could and probably would likely take weeks if not more of work.

Less advanced technologies ≠ primitive people.

The Pyramids, the Great Wall, and other monuments of the ancient world were built without the benefit of modern technology, Smart people found solutions to allow them to build these things. In a society where resources are limited, people WILL find ways to do what they want to do, it will simply be more expensive in TIME.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Re: getting people to assist and everyone to teach...good idea but hard in practice. Not everyone who is good in one field will be good in the next and as we're dealing with minimum number we get the interesting problem of wondering how many people you need to ensure that they all are good and interested in more than one important field with minimum overlap.

As for painful learning curve I didn't mean that literally but rather along the lines of the numbef of failed surgeries and fatalities resulting from not having an expert handy.

Finally with regard to people being smart and able to do anything in time forgive me for being a party pooper but this ideal is dangerous. The techno-optimistic belief that anything is possible or that it can be done if imagined detracts from a proper analysis of the difficulties involved. Yes building a grand monument is impressive but (for example) building a technologically advanced civilisation from a feudal state without easily available fossil fuels could be impossible regardless of how innovative individuals are.

 

[Borek]

As for painful learning curve I didn't mean that literally but rather along the lines of the numbef of failed surgeries and fatalities resulting from not having an expert handy.

Result is still better than not having a brain surgeon at all.

 

[Nimbian]

Re: getting people to assist and everyone to teach...good idea but hard in practice. Not everyone who is good in one field will be good in the next and as we're dealing with minimum number we get the interesting problem of wondering how many people you need to ensure that they all are good and interested in more than one important field with minimum overlap.

I agree that it wouldn't be easy but that doesn't mean it might not be necessary. Allocation of the Human Resource would be very important in the early years. I can easily see Kids going from elementary into apprenticeship type positions, no matter the field (farming to Medical). Aptitude tests can help narrow down where children should begin. Adult retraining is up to the writer, it would be expensive most likely.

Finally with regard to people being smart and able to do anything in time forgive me for being a party pooper but this ideal is dangerous...

Your Forgiven . The Idea may be dangerous but might be necessary on a colony world.

The techno-optimistic belief that anything is possible or that it can be done if imagined detracts from a proper analysis of the difficulties involved.

quite right. But from experience in managing in a relatively new field (making plastic recycling profitable is extremely challenging now a days) Any time some one says its too difficult, what they really mean to say is its too expensive to do with what they know. Thats why it is called R&D and not just R. I can't count the times I've been told it can't be done (cheaply) and then I go make a change and it works with little investment, with mixed results, but usually some improvement. drove my boss nuts (which was fair since he drove every one else nuts). Now I'm not saying that there is no limit to what's possible, eventually there is going to be a point where it takes more energy to do some thing then the return will provide.

Yes building a grand monument is impressive but (for example) building a technologically advanced civilization from a feudal state without easily available fossil fuels could be impossible regardless of how innovative individuals are.

Yes it could very well be. there is no way of know that on Earth. At the same time Wind and water power were being exploited for hundreds of years (in some pretty complicated arrangements) before the steam engine was built. At the same time without Coal (a common Fossil fuel) its doubtful we would have been able to progress pass the Bronze age, since we would not have been able to heat the forges hot enough.

oh and Question, What system are you building your setting for? Gurps? Savage world? or some other system?

 

[Antiphon]

Assume 1/10th of all technical experts have most of the expertise of the other 90%. Then assume that the technical literatti is 0.1% of the world population.

Next assume that the know-how is fully concentrated (as the above fraction) in a single highly industrialized country like Japan.

Then 0.1% / 10 * 300M = 30,000 very very carefully chosen people.

 

[r4z0r84]

Like they did with the 2012 movie, the ships were apparently designed to sustain life and re populate the world after an apocalyptic accurance. They had to pay extreme amounts of money to be allowed access, or be very select few individuals that are required to keep the technology.

According to the bureau of statistics the estimate is 127,570,000 people in japan as o the 1st of august 2012, this is taking account of all ages, if we were to select a certain age range the number would be lower again also roughly 7 million people are required for 0.1% of the worlds population.

im not sure how you get 30,000 from calculating your above equation you get 300,000 unless I am doing something wrong.

 

[Nimbian]

Then 0.1% / 10 * 300M = 30,000 very very carefully chosen people.

The Above equation uses 300,000,000 not 300,000

The US has a Population of 314 Million plus as of 2011

0.1% = 0.001
0.001/10 = 0.0001
0.0001*300,000,000 = 30,000

 

[Antiphon]

The Above equation uses 300,000,000 not 300,000

The US has a Population of 314 Million plus as of 2011

0.1% = 0.001
0.001/10 = 0.0001
0.0001*300,000,000 = 30,000

This is correct; I incorrectly assumed Japan has about 300 million people. Using the US instead you'd get my estimate of 30,000 people.

 

[Borek]

30k people calculation is missing the point of the question. You can select such people for a first generation, but I doubt in their ability to pass the knowledge.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Assume 1/10th of all technical experts have most of the expertise of the other 90%. Then assume that the technical literatti is 0.1% of the world population.

Next assume that the know-how is fully concentrated (as the above fraction) in a single highly industrialized country like Japan.

Then 0.1% / 10 * 300M = 30,000 very very carefully chosen people.

That's an interesting attempt at an answer but it has a few flaws. The intitial premise that a fraction of experts will know almost everything is flawed. If anything it is more like a bell curve with experts knowing a lot about related fields and less about fields further away. So the knowledge and skills of a cardiologist might be 80% similar to a hepatologist but 1% similar to a mechanic.

Also whilst your attempt takes into account skilled labour we are still going to need unskilled labour to carry out many of the tasks. Possibly this could be done by idle skilled labourers from other fields but it would be interesting to know how many man hours in each field are needed each day to keep society going.

 

[Czcibor]

Re: getting people to assist and everyone to teach...good idea but hard in practice. Not everyone who is good in one field will be good in the next and as we're dealing with minimum number we get the interesting problem of wondering how many people you need to ensure that they all are good and interested in more than one important field with minimum overlap.

Just to get some hard data, I suggest a following reasoning:
1 million population
I use my country (Poland) as a benchmark. Because our public health care is so great... No, because it still haven't collapsed this year. ;) So according to our statistical yearbook of 2011 (data from 2010) for 1 million people, we have:
2082 doctors, of whom:
194 are surgeons
54 are neurologists

Thus I think that population should be able to keep a few neurosurgeons. (especially if just in case some surplus is taken at start) Also assuming that one have to train every year 1/30 of of whole doctors pool one would have to train as doctors 70 medical students every year.

I'm not sure about very narrow professions though it seems that anyway that should be enough doctors not to have learn neurosurgery from books.

As for painful learning curve I didn't mean that literally but rather along the lines of the numbef of failed surgeries and fatalities resulting from not having an expert handy.

As you probably see from my language I'm not a native speaker, though I understood what you meant. Nevertheless, chance for understanding term "pain" here literally was to funny for me to ignore.

oh and Question, What system are you building your setting for? Gurps? Savage world? or some other system?

Good guess - GURPS 4- very flexible for worlds with different technology. Maybe I should note it TL(8-1) ;) - devices look like modern, though under closer inspection show quality matching that from the cold war. ;)

I see that everyone tends to be very careful about giving exact numbers. OK, maybe I'd change a bit the direction.

How in practice would look like reduction of dependency on big economy and looking for simpler substitutes? And what outcome (popular device) that would lead to? Mobile phones with lead-acid battery? ;) (I fully understand the general trend, though I'm curious about practical examples)

Would a tidally locked planet try to adjust itself so that on the part closest to the star and the part exactly opposite a landmass would be more likely than in other places?

 

[Nimbian]

As a way of putting it into perspective the above example of 2082 Doctors for 1 Million people means the percentage of Doctors is 0.208% of one million people are doctors.

 

[Antiphon]

That's an interesting attempt at an answer but it has a few flaws. The intitial premise that a fraction of experts will know almost everything is flawed. If anything it is more like a bell curve with experts knowing a lot about related fields and less about fields further away. So the knowledge and skills of a cardiologist might be 80% similar to a hepatologist but 1% similar to a mechanic.

Also whilst your attempt takes into account skilled labour we are still going to need unskilled labour to carry out many of the tasks. Possibly this could be done by idle skilled labourers from other fields but it would be interesting to know how many man hours in each field are needed each day to keep society going.

You misread what I meant. Let's talk about herpetology only. I assert that if you lost the bottom 90% of herpetologists, the remaining 10% who were the best of them would be able to preserve almost all of the art and science that is herpetology.

You would not need any skilled or unskilled labor to preserve herpetology; you would need it to build a herpetology center where it could be practiced. That's not the same thing as preserving the know-how.

The calculation of ~.2% of the population being physicians means my guess of 0.1% is in the right order of magnitude.

 

[Borek]

You would not need any skilled or unskilled labor to preserve herpetology

Now I have no idea what your number - 30000 - represents. Is that number of people required to preserve the knowledge? Who is going to feed them?

 

[Antiphon]

Now I have no idea what your number - 30000 - represents. Is that number of people required to preserve the knowledge? Who is going to feed them?

Yes, preserve mainly and practice to small degrees.

I think the OP was wondering how small he could shrink a society that could maintain a high level of operating technology. My estimate didn't account for long-term sustainability of the equation. That would require things like schoolteachers, farmhands and bricklayers and not just technocrats.

 

[Borek]

OK. But the question IS about long-term sustainability.

 

[Nimbian]

lol, yet at the same time it provides a reasonable starting point.
An Irony that is not lost on me since I suggested at the low end of my post that 300,000 people of which 5-10% are specialist would be necessary.

How ever it would also mean that one bad virus could send the entire population back to the stone age.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

How ever it would also mean that one bad virus could send the entire population back to the stone age.

+100000000. Size = redundancy and this should be taken into account as well. It's all very well that the exact minimum population of 11,632,742.6 people trained to various levels in various specialities with strict work schedules is shipped to Planet X but one bar fight, one bout of flu, one fire etc and the whole thing comes crashing down.

Obviously I exaggerate for effect but it is a really interesting point because it has really important implications for the socioeconomic models that the society will adopt. As a very simple example a society with too much personal freedom might leave itself open to accidental self destruction (think tragedy of the commons), too little freedom might create escalating social tension ending in bloody revolution.

 

[Czcibor]

+100000000. Size = redundancy and this should be taken into account as well. It's all very well that the exact minimum population of 11,632,742.6 people trained to various levels in various specialities with strict work schedules is shipped to Planet X but one bar fight, one bout of flu, one fire etc and the whole thing comes crashing down.

One car from which a few friends came from work crashed. I understand consequences.

But I started to wonder - wouldn't industrial base be the more limiting factor. When I tried to look for industrial output, for ex. mobile phones:

Randomly chosen, unrepresentative example with actual data - one line - 3 mln mobile phones per year, whole, finished factory 10 millions mobile phones per year. Wouldn't economics of scale be a bigger problem?

http://www.chinascopefinancial.com/news/post/15411.html

 

[Nimbian]

Industrial base is scalable thou. In the above example they make 10 million phones because they believe they can make a profit off 10 million phones.

In a Colony situation, certain things will be majorly scaled down.
EX. there is no need to make 1 million phones a year for a population of 1 million, likely only a few thousand a year to make replacements and for the colonist's children. It would likely be made of identical or nearly identical design.

Large production run type industrial base. would be reserved for things the colony regularly consumes in quantity, is necessary for survival and/or can be stockpiled.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Industrial base is scalable thou. In the above example they make 10 million phones because they believe they can make a profit off 10 million phones.

In a Colony situation, certain things will be majorly scaled down.
EX. there is no need to make 1 million phones a year for a population of 1 million, likely only a few thousand a year to make replacements and for the colonist's children. It would likely be made of identical or nearly identical design.

Large production run type industrial base. would be reserved for things the colony regularly consumes in quantity, is necessary for survival and/or can be stockpiled.

That's all well and good but the point is to consider economics of scale. Making 10 million phones isn't necessarily 10 million times more expensive than making 1. This has an interesting effect economically on our smallest group because it may be that they are less efficient than a slightly larger group. This line of thinking pretty much follows the thread because for the last few posts we've been talking optimum number rather than straight minimum.

 

[Czcibor]

Obviously I exaggerate for effect but it is a really interesting point because it has really important implications for the socioeconomic models that the society will adopt. As a very simple example a society with too much personal freedom might leave itself open to accidental self destruction (think tragedy of the commons), too little freedom might create escalating social tension ending in bloody revolution.

I'd consider as more natural solutions curbed personal freedoms. As long as a only few people are seriously p**** off:

Do they break law in any way?
NO - no problem, thank you citizen for raising awareness about this problem. It will be discussed in the future and we would be grateful if you help making a draft of new law that would mitigate it... READ: Good luck, your idea would be either silently drowned in a subcomission or officially killed in the parliament ;)
YES - well that's merely (or at least can officially claim) a problem of selfishness (like tax evasion), mental problems (like psychopathology) or lack of knowledge and responsible behaviour. Would be dealt accordingly by tax authorities, health care system, education authorities or police pending on its nature.

Relatively small group while there are no weapons among general public that would also be solvable. As if left wing riots that are in Germany every first May or regular strikes on French universities were about to change anything...
Just have riot police prepared, don't overreact to avoid loosing general support and problem would be solved.

However, there's a place where a see a potential explosion that couldn't be solved easily. At first there would be taken people generally without children. Then, there would be at first a few years of food rationing. So either people deliberately would have no children, or in really bad scenario some women would not have menstruation cycle anyway. Then, the conditions would improve, official policy would be encouraging having children... And we end up round 2 decades later with a baby boom which would not accept hardships and sacrifices as politely as their parents did.

Solutions:
- High quality education with proper amount of indoctrination
- Official policies (including both tax structure and provided free services) encouraging early marriage and having children (yes, officially lack of people, unofficially married males are not so hard working revolutionaries)
- Long compulsory education (talents are needed) and proper care for school dropouts (read: sending them compulsory a few islands away for let's call it vocational training for a physical job)
- Leaving recreational drugs legal but purchased only in limited amount and at high price from state monopoly (yes, "circuses" part of "bread and circuses")
- Poorly paid public works offering everyone a job (it disarms people who complain that there is no work)
- Keeping low corruption and more or less reasonable policies to avoid making gov an easy target
- Having a few parties that change from time time that have roughly the same policies but place slightly different accents among policies and can be no complain that there is a dictatorship
- Keeping high level of surveillance to reduce crime (mild punishment to show how humanitarian the gov is, and after a few wrist slaps most of people would learn anyway)

Do you consider that as workable?

In a Colony situation, certain things will be majorly scaled down.
EX. there is no need to make 1 million phones a year for a population of 1 million, likely only a few thousand a year to make replacements and for the colonist's children. It would likely be made of identical or nearly identical design.

Actually if you produce 5000/year and have 1 000 000 users, even if there is no population increase you get that an average phone has to survive for 200 years...

No, the phones that I had couldn't do that ;)

So... maybe 100 000 a year, it has to survive for 10 years and has a battery that was replaced in the meantime at least once or maybe even twice.

With 100 000 a year you get 384 daily (for 5 day work week, no other holidays or 274 for work every day) Too much to produce in a tiny workshop but rather small amount for purpose of serial production.

Solutions (except of mentioned one standard model)? The electronics inside also serves as transmitter for wireless internet, with longer antenna for mobile stations or any electronic device that replaces radio or TV? The factory produces electronics for mobiles only for one month every year, then recalibrates tools and produces somethin else?