Comments on: The Drake Equation http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/ Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:42:12 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: John A http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/comment-page-1/#comment-1696 John A Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:42:12 +0000 http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/#comment-1696 John, The formula is based upon guesses of each parameter with such wide possible values that it can mean anything at all. That's isn't science, its faith in mathematical form, because no estimate can be shown to be wrong and therefore unfalsifiable. John,

The formula is based upon guesses of each parameter with such wide possible values that it can mean anything at all. That’s isn’t science, its faith in mathematical form, because no estimate can be shown to be wrong and therefore unfalsifiable.

]]> By: John Creighton http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/comment-page-1/#comment-1595 John Creighton Sat, 29 Aug 2009 12:44:17 +0000 http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/#comment-1595 I still think question of if A then B can be interesting even though we may not know if A is true. Besides, you can take off the terms we don't know or can't determine and it still answers interesting questions. For instance without (f_i, f_c and L.) it will still give us the number of planets which support life. Perhaps f_c isn't completly un-estimatable. Wireless comunication seems to be a natural evolutionary of technology. Surely at some point in technological evolution people will develop television. Of course, I'm not sure it will ever be possible to detect such signals at any sufficient distance. Also as technology becomes more advanced people are able to transmit more information with less power so perhaps the dectection problem is extreemly difficult. I wonder what it would take for a signal to be detectable and how an alien race would know how to look for it or even what it means. Consider some of the problems of detection. I presume all frequencies won't travel at the same speed so I image the original waveform would be quite difficult to reconstruct even if it is highly noise resistant. (How will the detector know how much phase delay there is for each frequency component or how long the word length is) As for f_i, who knows........maybe a new field in mathematics will develop called evolutionary statistics. How many possible gene combinations are there (given a finite genome length)? How likely is each combination to survive? Or perhaps put another way, what is the average time to extinction for a given species? How long on average would it take to develop advanced technology (social evolutionary statistics). Who knows what kinds of advance problems we might solve in the future. You may think the question is uninteresting. I think it is interesting. Besides isn't what is interesting somewhat subjective? I still think question of if A then B can be interesting even though we may not know if A is true. Besides, you can take off the terms we don’t know or can’t determine and it still answers interesting questions. For instance without (f_i, f_c and L.) it will still give us the number of planets which support life.

Perhaps f_c isn’t completly un-estimatable. Wireless comunication seems to be a natural evolutionary of technology. Surely at some point in technological evolution people will develop television. Of course, I’m not sure it will ever be possible to detect such signals at any sufficient distance. Also as technology becomes more advanced people are able to transmit more information with less power so perhaps the dectection problem is extreemly difficult.

I wonder what it would take for a signal to be detectable and how an alien race would know how to look for it or even what it means. Consider some of the problems of detection. I presume all frequencies won’t travel at the same speed so I image the original waveform would be quite difficult to reconstruct even if it is highly noise resistant. (How will the detector know how much phase delay there is for each frequency component or how long the word length is)

As for f_i, who knows……..maybe a new field in mathematics will develop called evolutionary statistics. How many possible gene combinations are there (given a finite genome length)? How likely is each combination to survive? Or perhaps put another way, what is the average time to extinction for a given species? How long on average would it take to develop advanced technology (social evolutionary statistics). Who knows what kinds of advance problems we might solve in the future. You may think the question is uninteresting. I think it is interesting. Besides isn’t what is interesting somewhat subjective?

]]> By: John A http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/comment-page-1/#comment-1586 John A Sat, 29 Aug 2009 07:10:50 +0000 http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/#comment-1586 Which means its still meaningless. Which means its still meaningless.

]]> By: John Creighton http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/comment-page-1/#comment-1574 John Creighton Sat, 29 Aug 2009 02:37:57 +0000 http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/#comment-1574 We can possibly estimate all the parameters except for f_i, f_c and L. We can possibly estimate all the parameters except for f_i, f_c and L.

]]> By: John A http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/comment-page-1/#comment-576 John A Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:57:15 +0000 http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/#comment-576 The Drake Equation does raise an important question in the philosophy of science - if I parametrize my beliefs into an untestable equation containing unknowns which cannot be measured - is it still science or is it disguised religion? The Drake Equation does raise an important question in the philosophy of science – if I parametrize my beliefs into an untestable equation containing unknowns which cannot be measured – is it still science or is it disguised religion?

]]> By: John Creighton http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/comment-page-1/#comment-575 John Creighton Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:12:30 +0000 http://things.auditblogs.com/2008/02/17/the-drake-equation/#comment-575 I never took the Drake equation as science but rather I took it as philosophy. Bias or not, if we consider the scale of the universe and how small we are in it, then the possibility of life seems probable and I do not care weather you call the feeling science, philosophy prejudice or bias. A big part of science is wonder. Without it what drives us to investigate the universe beyond what is know? The prospect of making contact with another civilization to me would seem profound. The idea that we are alone in such a big universe begs the question of why? Why was all this created just for us? Are we that important that special given that we will only be here for an instant in the lifetime of the universe. To me the quote in the move contact, "If we are alone it would be an awful waste of space" may seem simple but I consider it deep. I never took the Drake equation as science but rather I took it as philosophy. Bias or not, if we consider the scale of the universe and how small we are in it, then the possibility of life seems probable and I do not care weather you call the feeling science, philosophy prejudice or bias.

A big part of science is wonder. Without it what drives us to investigate the universe beyond what is know? The prospect of making contact with another civilization to me would seem profound. The idea that we are alone in such a big universe begs the question of why? Why was all this created just for us? Are we that important that special given that we will only be here for an instant in the lifetime of the universe. To me the quote in the move contact, “If we are alone it would be an awful waste of space” may seem simple but I consider it deep.

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