Free Range Free Chat

Monday, Monday. Back again, I see. It’s the beginning of another wild week in the news — on a macro and micro level, the information brain burn is reaching the Red Zone. Welcome to today’s Free Chat, all topics within reason, all civil and conversational behavior welcomed. . . . 🤘😉

The Red Zone, not to be confused with the Red Planet, means that with all the information, changes and adrenaline fueled activities making up each day, we’re seeing repeated stories about space exploration, alien probes, Mercury in Retrograde, do-or-die searches for Nessie, Bigfoot and radio signals from distant lands, solar flares and meteors, disrupted tides, spherical objects washing onto beaches, UFO secret files reviewed — when our human eyes look to the sky; we Imagine escape to the strange and unknown because the known is now the zone. We’re getting worried.

Science is telling us that if escape to Mars (or anywhere else, for that matter) is in our future, not all personality types need apply. In fact, if we’re starting to panic and dream of escape into space, scientists are reminding us that “wherever you go, there you are,” and NO, we can’t all get along. . . .

If you are thinking of becoming one of the first humans to colonize Mars, you might need to consider your personality type. Research examining the optimal personality types to be able to help a Mars colony become stable and sustainable found that those with neurotic personality traits are a risk to themselves and others. (NotebookCheck)

Perservance captures a shot of the Ingenuity helicopter flying over Mars. (Source: NASA)

A team of scientists from George Mason University created computer simulations of a Mars settlements with between 10 and 50 people. . . . Each of the simulated settlers were given one of four aggregated personality types and included “agreeables”, ‘socials’, ‘reactives’ and ‘neurotics’.

Space.com defines these personality types: Agreeables are “individuals with the lowest degree of competitiveness, low aggressiveness, and not fixated on stringent routine,” while Socials were “individuals with a medium degree of competitiveness, extroverted, require social interaction, but are not fixated on stringent routines.”

People with a medium degree of competitiveness and competitive interpersonal orientation and who are fixated on stringent routines were classed as Reactives. The final group, Neurotics, are “individuals with a high degree of competitiveness, highly aggressive interpersonal characteristics, and challenged ability to adapt to boredom or a change in routine.”

In the models, Red Planet settlements started with an equal number of these four personality types. In all the tests, the researchers pointed out that the Agreeable personality types were the only Mars settlers to last the duration of every single run. 

Which one are you? I’m still thinking — give me a minute. . . 😁

And this is Free Range, the Monday Free Chat zone at News Views where we open the forum for info/idea exchange. Free Range refers to the places we go in our minds, in our cars, in our rockets, chat rooms, hallucinations, sailboats and submarines. Boundaries? There are only a few and they’re common sense boundaries we keep so our conversations here are civil, creative, fun and sincere — you know what they are. . . What’s going on in your world today?

IFLScience