Drake, Hanson, and the meaning of life
The physicist Enrico Fermi once looked up at lunch conversation and asked: “Where is everyone?”He meant aliens. The galaxy has >100 billion stars, >1 t...
The physicist Enrico Fermi once looked up at lunch conversation and asked: “Where is everyone?” He meant aliens. The galaxy has >100 billion stars, >1 tn planets. So we shouldn’t be alone - we should see lots of signals. Shouldn’t we? Decades later, this argument was made one notch clearer with the Drake Equation . (It’s just basic physics plus the product rule plus a bunch of guesses.) It aims at the expected number of visible civs in our galaxy. It’s usually criticised as approximate, statistical, not really science, vast uncertainties, strong assumptions. But it’s better than nothing as a t
saved by
related reading
- The Fermi Paradox - Wait But Whywaitbutwhy.com
- All Possible Views About Humanity's Future Are Wildcold-takes.com
- That Alien Message — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Fermi paradox - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
- Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Developmentnickbostrom.com
- How much do you believe your results? — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex | Quanta Magazinequantamagazine.org
- The future is vast – what does this mean for our own life? | Our World in Dataourworldindata.org
- Sentient Developments: Nick Bostrom: "Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing."sentientdevelopments.com
- If we’re alone in the Universe, should we do anything about it?aeon.co
- Kardashev scale - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
- Robin Hanson Says You're Going to Liverichardhanania.substack.com