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I think the most significant term in the Drake equation is the one chosen by users of it to hang themselves on this week. It's an equation that pumps out a numb

I think the most significant term in the Drake equation is the one chosen by users of it to hang themselves on this week. It's an equation that pumps out a number between zero and bazillions dependent on imaginations towards a situation that is nevertheless a paradox. The only thing that can be said right now is that it's perhaps likely that the number is >1.

pfdietz 3y ago
It's >1 over what volume? The galaxy? The observable universe? All the unreachable volumes of space beyond that in our universe? All the many-worlds branches of this universe?
- gizajob 3y ago
  “Perhaps likely >1” - in whatever volume the Drake equation covers. Until it goes to a certainty of >1 in the volume we can explore then it’s basically =1. I don’t believe the current absence of evidence is much of a useful data point. Until we have scoured other star systems and the rest of the galaxy turning over rocks we can’t really generate useful empirical data to fill in the numbers on the Drake equation. The paradox of “where is everybody” has myriad solutions. A mistake definitely lies in philosophers and theorists believing their sci-fi ideas are better than anyone else’s. Certainly not useful data towards writing papers that form a proof of any number as a solution. It’s hard to prove an absence, particularly when there’s a universe of empirical data that can be potentially gathered but hasn’t been yet. If I was a betting person, I’d put a stake on there being life somewhere like Enceladus. Even life from earth in the form of fungal spores has existed for long enough to escape and float around the galaxy - they’ve had a few hundred million years. Life here could have also landed from elsewhere as easily as terrestrial abiogenesis. There’s just so much we don’t know and haven’t tested. Not being able to pull radio signals out of the noise proves nothing given the mere seventy years of attempts. I’m not sure about many worlds, and how that could be proved either to be a useful part of science. By the same token, in an infinite universe, then literally every single possibility and permutation is being tried, so in that case, yeah there’s life everywhere. Including a universe where I’m out being the first human to find it rather than writing this comment.

pfdietz 3y ago

It's >1 over what volume? The galaxy? The observable universe? All the unreachable volumes of space beyond that in our universe? All the many-worlds branches of this universe?

gizajob 3y ago
“Perhaps likely >1” - in whatever volume the Drake equation covers. Until it goes to a certainty of >1 in the volume we can explore then it’s basically =1. I don’t believe the current absence of evidence is much of a useful data point. Until we have scoured other star systems and the rest of the galaxy turning over rocks we can’t really generate useful empirical data to fill in the numbers on the Drake equation. The paradox of “where is everybody” has myriad solutions. A mistake definitely lies in philosophers and theorists believing their sci-fi ideas are better than anyone else’s. Certainly not useful data towards writing papers that form a proof of any number as a solution. It’s hard to prove an absence, particularly when there’s a universe of empirical data that can be potentially gathered but hasn’t been yet. If I was a betting person, I’d put a stake on there being life somewhere like Enceladus. Even life from earth in the form of fungal spores has existed for long enough to escape and float around the galaxy - they’ve had a few hundred million years. Life here could have also landed from elsewhere as easily as terrestrial abiogenesis. There’s just so much we don’t know and haven’t tested. Not being able to pull radio signals out of the noise proves nothing given the mere seventy years of attempts. I’m not sure about many worlds, and how that could be proved either to be a useful part of science. By the same token, in an infinite universe, then literally every single possibility and permutation is being tried, so in that case, yeah there’s life everywhere. Including a universe where I’m out being the first human to find it rather than writing this comment.