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>I’ve always felt the numbers people enter into the Drake equation overly optimistic. This may be the right way to think about it but even so you would only ch

>I’ve always felt the numbers people enter into the Drake equation overly optimistic. This may be the right way to think about it but even so you would only change the order of magnitude of the final answer which won't be 0. Given the timescales involved one would still expect a species to have either left behind structures or modified their galactic neighborhood to a degree that is detectable or would have significantly colonized large parts of the universe/galaxy by now.

simiones 4y ago
There are plenty of plausible choices for terms of the Drake equation that give 0. Remember that the Earth itself is relatively old as planets go - 4.5 billion, compared to the Universe's 13.8 billion; and the current "era" of the universe only began when it was ~9.8 billion years old, so about 4 billion years ago. So, if we were to assume that the appearance and evolution of life on Earth as the benchmark for how long it takes for life to appear and evolve, and if we assume that life couldn't/was much less likely to arise before the current Dark Energy-dominated era, then it's quite possible for us to be one of the first radio-wave-emitting beings in the whole universe, let alone anywhere in our general area. Of course, any such assumption is entirely unfounded: we just have no idea how likely it is (and how long it is likely to take) for life to arise and become radio-wave emitters, and even less about how this may have been different in earlier times in the universe. There are perfectly plausible choice for the Drake equation parameters that reach the exact opposite conclusion and give hundreds or thousands of expected civilizations in our neighborhood.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  >There are plenty of plausible choices for terms of the Drake equation that give 0 Given our own existence any solution to the drake equation would by definition have to be >= 1 right?

simiones 4y ago

There are plenty of plausible choices for terms of the Drake equation that give 0. Remember that the Earth itself is relatively old as planets go - 4.5 billion, compared to the Universe's 13.8 billion; and the current "era" of the universe only began when it was ~9.8 billion years old, so about 4 billion years ago. So, if we were to assume that the appearance and evolution of life on Earth as the benchmark for how long it takes for life to appear and evolve, and if we assume that life couldn't/was much less likely to arise before the current Dark Energy-dominated era, then it's quite possible for us to be one of the first radio-wave-emitting beings in the whole universe, let alone anywhere in our general area. Of course, any such assumption is entirely unfounded: we just have no idea how likely it is (and how long it is likely to take) for life to arise and become radio-wave emitters, and even less about how this may have been different in earlier times in the universe. There are perfectly plausible choice for the Drake equation parameters that reach the exact opposite conclusion and give hundreds or thousands of expected civilizations in our neighborhood.

adamsmith143 4y ago
>There are plenty of plausible choices for terms of the Drake equation that give 0 Given our own existence any solution to the drake equation would by definition have to be >= 1 right?