Comment by lotharbot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lotharbot | Hacker News Reader

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> "what are the implications to the Drake equation?"

I'm not a fan of the Drake Equation. The "equation results" section of the wikipedia page shows the range of variability: there may be anywhere from hundreds of millions of civilizations in our galaxy, to maybe we're the only one in the entire universe (a difference of close to 30 orders of magnitude), based on different guesses for some of the other parameters. Both sets of numbers are using the current understanding that we can discover exoplanets etc. and that they're not terribly rare. Prior to that understanding, estimates varied by another 5-10 orders of magnitude.

In other words, these newer discoveries don't get us particularly close to a definitive answer from the Drake Equation. We still don't know whether there's intelligent life at millions of stars in each of billions of galaxies, or if it's possibly just us.

The only sort of data that would let us actually use it to generate a meaningful answer would be the discovery of more intelligent life.

The Drake equation was meant to be illustrative; lowballing everything (particularly the L term, since we were in the midst of the maddest of MAD at the time) and still coming up with a non-zero value was really the point. As long as what you're plugging in isn't on the order of "the Scriptures say it can't be, therefore it's zero", you will arrive at a non-zero value, and that makes at least the attempt to find and make contact with other technological civilizations reasonable.

> "coming up with a non-zero value was really the point."

When you're multiplying a bunch of non-zero quantities, that's the only possibility. It's not really illustrative or useful, though -- particularly because the range of possible estimates still includes "we are alone in the universe".

You don't need the Drake Equation to tell you that it's reasonable to explore and search.

> The only sort of data that would let us actually use it to generate a meaningful answer would be the discovery of more intelligent life.

Yes but since we don't have any of those discoveries the Drake equation is really the best we can do right now.

I think what he is saying is that the Drake Equation does not get us anywhere useful. A theory that has such a wide range of outcomes does not eliminate much - and most science is eliminting options not demonstrating a truth.

In fact the less-than-helpful results are a useful reminder of Karl Poppers maxims

'Trying is the first step to failure'

-- Homer Simpson

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