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I’ve always found these “Drake equation” and “Fermi paradox” discussions pseudoscientific at best. Its fun speculation and poses interesting questions but there

• whatshisface 6y ago
  >Its much more likely that our estimates are off "Our estimate for stage N in the drake equation is way too high" == "The great filter is stage N in the drake equation." So the interpretation chart goes: - No errors: There are tons and tons of aliens and they're prime-directive-ing us like the Federation from Star Trek. - One error: Oh no! Great filter! (unless it's in our past) - Many errors: Not as interesting. As for why it's compelling at all, the original point of the Drake equation was to make you think about it, and also realize that it's very, very tough to get exactly one. Almost every set of numbers you pick results in either less than one (which we know isn't true because we exist), or more than one. So the argument is, who knows how alone we are, but we're not alone.
  • cgriswald 6y ago
    Some terms of the Drake equation are probabilities. The product of those terms can be very much less than 1 and we can still exist. If you accept the weak anthropic principle all our existence says for sure is the product is not 0, which we already knew had to be the case for any such equation.
• Apocryphon 6y ago
  A lot of these high concept hypothesizing is fun, almost like the modern equivalent of charting out celestial hierarchies. Also consider coming up with speculative measures like the Kardashev scale or inventing megastructures like Dyson spheres or ringworlds. It’s like incorporating a bit of sci-fi into your scientific theorizing.
• scotty79 6y ago
  I treated them as back-of-the-envelope calculations that can only give very rough estimate.
• gibrown 6y ago
  I think what is interesting is the narrowing of possible hypotheses based on what we do know. The estimates are certainly off, but helping to better define and refine the question is still a worthwhile scientific endeavor. Yes, we probably won’t have answers in our lifetimes, but that doesn’t mean the effort is not worthwhile. Plugging in and modeling the statistics based on what we know has proven to be a very effective means of scientific discovery in other areas. It helps narrow down where one can find direct evidence.
• MauranKilom 6y ago
  Read the paper and ignore the article. They investigate a more detailed model of the galaxy than a single arithmetic equation and draw sensible conclusions about how different priors might actually affect (or rather, how some of them curiously don't affect) different properties of the distribution of life in our galaxy. For example, where in the galaxy we would expect most life to form.
• maxerickson 6y ago
  The Drake Equation didn't come forward as an attempt to correctly fix each parameter and thus estimate how common life is, it came forward as a summary of the things that should be considered. Of course that was 60 years ago or whatever, but you are on the same page as the guy that came up with it.
• smnrchrds 6y ago
  I tend to agree with you. The best explanation I have heard about Fermi paradox is that it disappears when you express the number of planets in exponential notation. If instead of saying "what are the odds that we are the only intelligent species when there are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [random number, I don't know the number] planets in the universe," you express it as "... when there are 10^36 planets in the universe," it becomes easy to answer: Imagine creation of intelligent life requires 36 uncorrelated parameters to line up in a planet, an each of those parameters have a 10% chance of occurring in any given planet. There would be only one such planet in the universe in all likelihood. Our loneliness in the universe doesn't seem so implausible now, does it?
  • poisonborz 6y ago
    Except the number of parameters is maybe much lower, and the the universe had ~14 billion years in a ~93+ billion lightyear radius to have them coincide.
• almog 6y ago
  They make that point exactly (and mention Drake equation of course) along with other possible explanations such as that it might be the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself, in what is probably my favorite This American Life #617 — Fermi's Paradox. Perhaps I remember it so vividly because it was the perfect setting: I was 3+ months into hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, North California, night hiking by myself, earphones on, the wildfire smoke started to clear up, the air was crisp and the night sky got sprinkled with countless bright stars for the first time in a while. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/617/fermis-paradox https://www.thisamericanlife.org/617/fermis-paradox
• hindsightbias 6y ago
  When realistic distributions of uncertainty are applied to the Drake Equation, the paradox dissolves: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404
  • gus_massa 6y ago
    They don't use realistic distributions (in spite the abstract says that). They assume uniform distributions in the interval [0, x] where x is somewhat like the current best guess. It is well known that the product of variables with an uniform distribution has a result that has not an uniform distribution, but some distribution that has more values closer to 0. So there is no surprise that multiplying almost 10 variables with uniform distribution you get something that almost 0 almost all the time. But it is not realistic to use an uniform distribution. All the variables depend on a lot a subparts, so a realistic distribution must be something that looks like a log normal distribution with a peak near the current best guess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-normal_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-normal_distribution
    • taktoa 6y ago
      They use log-uniform and log-normal distributions, see page 10.