I think the protagonist here should have looked at earth.
That’s certainly one plan that could have been tried, given a certain amount of outside-view, objective, rational analysis. Of course, one could also say that “Mark Watney should have avoided zapping Pathfinder” or “The comic character Cathy should just stick to her diet”; just because it’s a good plan doesn’t necessarily mean it’s one that an inside-view, subjective, emotional person is capable of thinking up, let alone following-through on.
Can you think of anything that a person could do, today, to increase the odds that, if they suddenly woke up post-apocalypse and with decades of solitary confinement ahead of them, they’d have increased odds of coming up with the most-winningest-possible plans for every aspect of their future life?
That’s certainly one plan that could have been tried, given a certain amount of outside-view, objective, rational analysis. Of course, one could also say that “Mark Watney should have avoided zapping Pathfinder” or “The comic character Cathy should just stick to her diet”; just because it’s a good plan doesn’t necessarily mean it’s one that an inside-view, subjective, emotional person is capable of thinking up, let alone following-through on.
Can you think of anything that a person could do, today, to increase the odds that, if they suddenly woke up post-apocalypse and with decades of solitary confinement ahead of them, they’d have increased odds of coming up with the most-winningest-possible plans for every aspect of their future life?