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Notes -
This exercise has been gaining some traction on Twitter among anti-wokes, with some even calling it “demonic.” That’s a bit much, but it is potentially an interesting exercise, and one I’d like to apply somewhat rational heuristics to “solve.”
My approach requires some assumptions:
The goal is to both survive and reproduce.
They arrive instantly at this new planet.
This new planet is ecologically identical to Earth.
The crux of the exercise, in this view, is to balance survivability with reproductive capacity. Survivability can be the ability to provide calories, medicine, make fire, or a host of other skills. Additionally, one must consider second order effects; one man is sufficient for reproduction, but having one man and seven pregnant women will probably not produce enough calories to survive.
I am going to go through each of the potential participants and provide initial thoughts:
An accountant with a substance abuse problem: no clear sex signal here, as women make up 60% of accountants, but men make up 66% of substance abusers, according to quick Googling. Accountancy is not a relevant skill set, and provides no info as to physical prowess. Relapse means little initial productive capacity.
A militant African American medical student: a real standout pick. Medical student tells me that they have some degree of medical knowledge, above average intelligence (even accounting for AA), and militancy leads me to think male. Almost definitely going.
A 33 year old female Native American manager who speaks no English: a potentially fertile woman, but potential for communications issues, and, despite the stereotype I think is being played with, little signal that she would be “in touch with nature” or anything. No directly applicable skills in management.
The accountants pregnant wife: a must take; guaranteed fertile woman. This also tells us the accountant is almost definitely male and not impotent, and likely both are late 20s/early 30s. No other noted traits or skills.
A famous novelist with a physical disability: this person ranks low on survivability and reproducibility. I don’t want to burden the group with a disabled, and likely old, man or woman.
A 21 year old female Muslim international student: a great pick. International students are selected for intelligence to some extent, and a 21 year old is likely to be both able bodied and fertile. I can’t imagine Islam will impede usefulness or cooperation too much.
A homophobic Spanish clergyman: I would expect old, and potential to take beliefs in chastity to an extraterrestrial grave. No discernible skills either.
Female Movie Star, recent victim of SA: probably attractive and physically fit, probably older, little in the way of useful skills. I don’t see a compelling value-add.
Racist cop: almost definitely a high-T, physically fit male. Maybe the least agreeable of the bunch, but also likely to have one of the highest survivability quotients. Someone needs to provide calories, do physical labor, and ward off predators. This guy may be the best option.
Gay, vegetarian, male pro athlete: the most physically capable, and thenceforth likely to be the most useful. Much will depend on sacrificing beliefs like eating meat to survive or aiding in reproduction with females. Could also help identify certain vegetables, but that seems like a stretch.
Asian, orphaned, 12 year old boy: does not come with immediate usefulness in procreation, and probably diminished capacity for manual labor compared to other male options. I guess likely to have a higher IQ, but would he even make it to adult development if he’s taking up a spot? Maybe. There’s also a potential benefit to staggering age to provide better odds of a potent male for the next generation.
60 year old Jewish university administrator: probably intelligent, but statistically likely to be a post menopausal woman. The downside of lower average physical ability without the fertility upside. Could potentially be an organizing force or, if male, still potent, but that’s a risk.
In sum, I will take participants 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, and 11.
I did not place significant value on administrative or managerial skills, as I do not expect them to translate well (I am basing this off of watching Survivor!) and I expect other competent members to fill these roles.
Population bottleneck is not necessarily killer, depends on what bad genes the bottleneck has. There are many cases of bottlenecks ending up fine, it greatly increases but does not 100% guarantee the chance of bad genetic outcomes, and we're already starting with what looks like a very diverse gene pool in the sample. Nonetheless, I agree that basic due diligence would require a genetic screening of anyone being sent to at least avoid the obvious known pitfalls.
Male accountant. No idea if the substance abuse problem will be specifically relevant once on a different planet. Substance abuse negative sign of self control, holding it together enough to hold down job and family potentially promising if he doesn't keep the problem. Known to not be impotent.
I agree that the medical student is an obvious choice. Young, decent odds of intelligence and relevant knowledge.
No relevant skills, short fertility horizon, communication problems, a very middle tier pick, basically just if we need to fill out a spot.
It's an entire extra person as long as the pregnancy survives! As obvious as the doctor. (also, if we're going for "demonic" it seems fairly obvious we should be asking the remaining women on this trip to also get pregnant, ASAP, from some of the four billion men not being taken who have also passed genefic screening problems)
Nothing in this entry suggests any advantage of this person of unknown age and gender over our standard for "filler", number 3. Cut.
Agree that this is a great pick. International, so again more genetic diversity, and young and female.
Nothing in this entry suggests any advantage for this person of unknown Abe and gender over our standard for "filler", number 3. cut.
Unlike you, I don't see any reason to believe she's probably older. Female movie stars skew young, only a handful stay famous once older. She presumably speaks English, has decent odds of being younger than 33 (our standard for filler), almost certainly has good soft skills if she's made it to star level in a cutthroat industry. Keep.
Racist cop. I am concerned about the low agreeability and the part where he's armed. High risk, if he ends up killing anyone on the trip. On the other hand, if he's not killing anyone else would be a good choice. Personally I suspect a survival situation with only 8 people depending on each other should be enough to trigger a "my tribe" attitude towards them, but I don't know. Tentative keep.
Professional athlete excellent, rest only helps if he'll compromise as needed (gay is easily solved if he'll donate sperm, he doesn't need to actually have sex with the women and could be a stabilizing factor). Keep.
Orphaned 12yo boy - I like this for the tiny bit of age diversity (otherwise it's all 20+ and the fetus, this gives us a bit of a bridge). 11 is already old enough to be able to be given responsibility quickly. Inclined to keep.
If this was a university professor I'd say it could maybe be salvaged depending on the field of knowledge, but it's a university administrator and that's not even close to valuable enough a skillset to justify choosing a 60 year old. Obvious cut.
That gives us 3 people to obviously cut, with our remaining choice of who to cut the accountant, the manager, the cop. We've only got three women so the manager is an obvious keep. Need to figure out odds of cop killing his team members and on that basis make the final cut, but overall, it probably needs to be the accountant unless the cop is judged too high risk.
Final cull: accountant, disabled novelist, homephobic clergyman, 60yo.
The actual question is how the fuck we ended up with such a terrible roster for final 12 humans to begin with. Ending up with 50/50 on gender is bad but there were only 4 likely to be fertile women in the original set! An 8:4 man to woman ratio is insane for this scenario! And the men in question aren't even all physically fit, let alone passing basic screenings for mental health! If these were the last humans left alive and viable after some catastrophe that's one thing, but the question says they're "selected". In which case the person selecting is so incompetent I'm now left to assume my chosen 8 all have something terribly wrong with them because someone is deadset on sabotaging our last chance.
Same, expect culling cop instead of the accountant. Cop is too high risk. One factor to consider is exactly which substance the accountant is abusing; is it something to be found in the new world, what would be the withdrawal effects?
Okay, everyone is waaaay overstating this risk. How many innocent minorities does the average racist cop kill for no good reason in their career? Let alone ones they get to know intimately. You're accepting a woke rhetorical frame where it's normal for prejudiced cops to fly off the handle and attack a black minding their business because the cop is like a bull seeing red.
If anything, the vetting process police officers go through makes them less likely to go out-of-control in tense situations than the general public. Yes, cops kill more people than accountants, but that's a question of base rates.
The outcome of putting racist cop on a spaceship with seven minorities is overwhelmingly likely to be a scene from Gran Torino, where things are tense for a bit and then everyone starts to identity as a tribe and they chill. And I'm not talking "99% chance" but "99.999[insert more nines here]% chance"
Why is no one mentioning the gay athlete giving people AIDs if we're going to entertain these super fringe risk scenarios?
I'm making the (ludicrous*) assumption that all relevant information for the decision is included in the descriptions, so anyone not specified female is male, and if the gay athlete isn't mentioned to have AIDS he doesn't.
Whereas the cop being armed and with an existing history of excessive force is explicitly mentioned. I still think he probably will be okay, but having someone with a gun and already established violence and low agreeableness is definitely a big gamble. The odds of his losing his temper and killing someone may not be high, but the the degree to which we'd be fucked if he does it is high. Now I can't remember if risk is the word I'm looking for or if risk includes probability, but what I meant was the word for "how bad the bad thing is", not "probability of the bad thing happening".
*Ludicrous because this question sucks, but without the assumption there's just no point playing at all.
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I'm not even saying "the risk of him killing or maiming someone", just the chance of having some sort of a conflict that reduces the coherence of the group.
Ah, fair enough. GEAJ mentioned him killing someone, and I thought you were seconding that fear.
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