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> While the odds are almost 100% that there's intelligent life somewhere I disagree, it's pretty easy to make "Drake equations" go to zero, particularly if you
by mcpackieh 3y ago
> While the odds are almost 100% that there's intelligent life somewhere
I disagree, it's pretty easy to make "Drake equations" go to zero, particularly if you limit the scope to just the Milky Way galaxy (only 10^11 stars.) The Rare Earth Hypothesis is consistent with all of our empirical observations of the universe thus-far.
- mattmaroon 3y agoI don’t think it’s easy to make the Drake equation go to zero, though it is within the relatively limited section of the universe from which of visitor could get here.
- mcpackieh 3y agoTwo or three independent "one in a million" chances will push the Drake equation to near zero in the milky way. Such chances could be things like "chance of multicellular life developing from unicellular" (took billions of years on earth, maybe it was never likely to happen in the first place) or "chance for multicellular life to invent radios" (overwhelming majority of multicellular life on earth was never going to invent radios. Evolution isn't directed to create tool-inventing apes.) Or it could be a few dozen 50/50 chances that need to be cleared, or some mix of the two. Drake equations only spit out "aliens likely" if you assume earth-like planets will inevitably create human-like life but that's a hell of an assumption. And then we look into the night sky and see/hear nothing from the aliens that supposedly must be up there and call it a paradox... well it's not a paradox if the Rare Earth hypothesis is true. If the empirical evidence is saying one thing and the speculative math is saying another thing, it's probably the speculative math that's wrong.