[ExI] Easter Island again

[Lee Corbin]

Alas! So many great emails, so little time  :-(

Keith writes

>> But if there is a way to survive indefinitely, then we've
>> bought as much time as we need. Eventually, I claim, that
>> so long as the gene pool doesn't go down hill, ways will
>> be figured out to make one tiny advance after another.
>> I'd bet that if you turned loose 500 Keith Hensons on
>> Easter Island with one billion dollars of equipment and
>> 5000 nubile and fertile young women, you could count on
>> coming back in a couple of centuries and finding a very
>> advanced society indeed.
> 
> Hmm.  I really doubt it.  Not even with 500 immortals.

I see the (stronger) point you're making. But economically
immortality isn't what's needed, immorality is, and so that's
why I provided the excess young women.  :-)

> $ billion is a thousand million.  Split 5000 ways that
 > won't even buy a decent house in California,

The idea behind the billion dollars was to set up hydroponics
facilities, which I believe don't need anything more than
energy to run (apart from initial raw materials). The bulk
of the billion---that I had in mind---would go towards
implementing the long capital chain necessary to fabricate
from scratch first, the necessities (food, clothing, shelter)
and the technology.

Perhaps that's not possible, but perhaps it is.

Now if it *is* possible, then waiting around for a century
or so as the rest of 20th century tech is devised requires
only patience, and hard work from all the Henson progeny.

(in the below, you do not address hydroponics specifically
---have you looked into it?)

Lee

> but it is not the money  I have really severe doubts
> about being able to sustain even a modest technological society with
> the resources you could get from Easter Island, at least with the
> technology level we have today.  It's entirely possible that a
> nanotechnology based society could though.  Incidentally, about 4000
> Tasmanians wasn't enough to sustain their level of culture and the
> history of smaller isolated groups indicates they die out.
> 
> We know the industrial base does replicate itself on earth as well as
> the human population that is part of it.  I am not saying it could not
> be done on the moon or Easter Island, but I don't know how.
> 
> Keith