this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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chapotraphouse
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Doesn't the Fermi "Paradox" involve plugging in a lot of purely vibes-based values into the Drake Equation?
I thought it was essentially: the universe is really fucking big so there must be life, so why haven't we seen it yet?
I think the answer is "The universe is really fucking huge and we haven't explored even a fraction of it yet." And "Alien animals do not want to make themselves known or are incapable of making themselves known." Some alien species that resembles a microscopic sessile sponge colony isn't going to be obvious to us, for example.
Also, the time scale is practically infinite as well. So infinity in (at least) 4 dimensions leaves a lot of room for empty space
Not being an pverspeculatovw nerd non paradox: there might be guys out there or there might not be but space is cool wither way so we should look at it more regardless. If we find guys, neat. Until them assume no guys
Oh yeah, totally I'm all for space exploration and it would be amazing if we found life. Just because we might not find anything doesn't mean we shouldn't try. I just think we should be more careful about the way we do it, so we don't miss our chance.
BECAUSE the universe is really fucking big.
Yes. I can't find the original lecture, but here are the lecture notes and the paper that makes the argument that the Drake Equation isn't necessarily a great argument for or against alien civilizations.
Not only are the assumptions in the Drake equation vibes, but if you tune them to get answers that (a) we are alone in the entire galaxy or (b) we are alone in the entire visible universe. There is also the assumptions that we could easily detect a signal for aliens. There's also a compelling argument that we simply do not have enough information to clamp down on the parameters.
The Drake equation works exactly because there are many parameters. If you are off on one or all of the values, in most likelihood, the errors cancel out and you have a reasonable estimate for the odds of alien life. At least that’s the idea.
Except they are already vibes based so there is no reason to think the initial approximation is accurate. They could all be massive overestimates. There is no reason they need to regress to the mean.
True, and that uncertainty is something that Drake himself never denied. It’s more of a quick heuristic explanation that outlines the main questions that a search for life would need to answer. I think of it as more of a binary equation that answers: Is there extraterrestrial life or isn’t there? The precise value is not that meaningful.
I think it's a somewhat useful thought experiment for asking why we don't observe EM signals like our own (albeit incomplete re: detectability of far off signals). But it is very anthropocentric so it also serves as a useful object of criticism, as even the questions it asks are probably wrong.
It really wasn't his best work, his discovery of the number of piano tuners in Chicago was much better.