There would also be a small number of freaks who are psychologically as different from typical humans as men and women are from each other. Do they get their own planets too?
Also, Venus is much larger than Mars, but the genie sends roughly equal populations to both planets. Women usually have larger social networks than men, so I don’t think that women prefer a lower population density. Or did the genie resize the planets?
Well, realistically speaking Venus is probably impossible to terraform at all. The Mars and Venus thing seems to be included just for the symbolic value.
Okay, maybe not strictly impossible, but probably harder than using one of the moons of Jupiter, or building a giant space colony with a simulated earthlike environment.
Probably a plot hole, but there’s at least the defence that one of the restrictions may have given him no choice. (Or that Venus and Mars were the only two planets he could feasily use)
Or maybe the women are just on the other side of Mars. Stephen just assumed that, since the men were on Mars, the women must be on Venus—but really, which would be easier: terraforming Venus or building a big ol’ wall around the Martian equator? Something about twenty miles high, made of solid diamond, should suffice for keeping people apart for a few decades, which is all it’s supposed to do. And there’s no reason people couldn’t be subdivided down to arbitrarily small distinctions—for instance bisexuals, who would seem to need a ‘planet’ each. (It’s supposed to be a failed utopia, remember?)
Or this is what I thought, at least, until I scrolled down to find that Eliezer suggested some of Venus’ mass was moved to Mars to make the surface area bigger.
There would also be a small number of freaks who are psychologically as different from typical humans as men and women are from each other. Do they get their own planets too?
Also, Venus is much larger than Mars, but the genie sends roughly equal populations to both planets. Women usually have larger social networks than men, so I don’t think that women prefer a lower population density. Or did the genie resize the planets?
Well, realistically speaking Venus is probably impossible to terraform at all. The Mars and Venus thing seems to be included just for the symbolic value.
“impossible” is a pretty strong claim when talking about superintelligences.
Okay, maybe not strictly impossible, but probably harder than using one of the moons of Jupiter, or building a giant space colony with a simulated earthlike environment.
Probably a plot hole, but there’s at least the defence that one of the restrictions may have given him no choice. (Or that Venus and Mars were the only two planets he could feasily use)
Or maybe the women are just on the other side of Mars. Stephen just assumed that, since the men were on Mars, the women must be on Venus—but really, which would be easier: terraforming Venus or building a big ol’ wall around the Martian equator? Something about twenty miles high, made of solid diamond, should suffice for keeping people apart for a few decades, which is all it’s supposed to do. And there’s no reason people couldn’t be subdivided down to arbitrarily small distinctions—for instance bisexuals, who would seem to need a ‘planet’ each. (It’s supposed to be a failed utopia, remember?)
Or this is what I thought, at least, until I scrolled down to find that Eliezer suggested some of Venus’ mass was moved to Mars to make the surface area bigger.