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Why is it intuitive? To me, it's more intuitive that we cannot expect to be alone in this galaxy. Perhaps we're the first advanced civilization, but in that ca
by hvidgaard 9y ago
Why is it intuitive?
To me, it's more intuitive that we cannot expect to be alone in this galaxy. Perhaps we're the first advanced civilization, but in that case we will not be the last. The vastness of the universe make the chance of us being one-of-a-kind thing really low. If we accept that laws of physics created us, then they can happen else where. And the Drake equation gives an estimate, albeit we have no idea if the variables are reasonable.
- DiThi 9y ago> The vastness of the universe make the chance of us being one-of-a-kind thing really low. But it also means the chance of ever communicating with a different life form is really low.
- goatlover 9y agoProbably depends on whether we can expect to find them within something like two thousand light years, or two hundred million plus.
- hvidgaard 9y agoWe should be able to detect structures signals from past civilisation, if any such exists. If not, we would probably make it easier to future civilisations to detect us.
- millstone 9y agoDetection is different than recognition. The signs of microscopic life were known and even exploited for thousands of years before anyone realized that what was leavening our bread and making us sick was life.
- hvidgaard 9y agoIt was implied that I was talking about advanced civilisations. Without some significant kind of structured radiation we cannot detect them with our current technology.
- roywiggins 9y agoAll it takes is some egotistical civilization that builds von Neumann replicators to build KILROY WAS HERE monuments made of diamond on every moon in the galaxy (it's a big galaxy, but there's millions of years to play with). It's at least mildly surprising that there's no evidence of any extrasolar visitors in our solar system's past.
- millstone 9y ago> The vastness of the universe make the chance of us being one-of-a-kind thing really low. If we accept that laws of physics created us, then they can happen else where. You would probably agree that no other alien civilizations speak English. Why not, in the vastness of the universe? Because while the universe is big, the possibility space of languages is so much bigger that no language will ever be repeated. If history were such that the entire world spoke one language, we might seriously think that aliens had to speak it too. A key question is whether life is like a language in an infinite possibility space, or is something special.
- chicob 9y agoIt's intuitive to me because I try not to fall for the human-scale numbers. The Drake equation does not give an estimate. It gives us a train of multiplying factors to which arbitrary values can be assigned, and with it a false sense of a sound estimate. It's like the lab coat archetype in ads: it looks sciency, but it really isn't.