May 9
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Poland
seen from United States
seen from Greece
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Germany
seen from Yemen
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Sweden
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from Russia
A list of tattoos I’m going to get, in chronological order, including placement:
A sheep, drawn by my mum, on my left wrist
The pulsar map on Voyager, wrapping around my right hand and extending up my arm
My cat, on my left thigh
My dog, on my left thigh
A runner duck or highland cow, drawn by my sibling, on my right shoulder blade
A skylark, drawn by my dad, next to the thing my sibling drew
A hare, drawn by my mum, next to the thing my dad drew
The Drake equation, on my right thigh/hip area
A diagram of Artemis II, just below the Drake equation
A “purpose tattoo”, opposite the pulsar map
The Scorpio constellation on my left hand, between my thumb and pointer finger
More will be added to this list as time goes on
THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS IN CIVILIZATION
In Search of Lost Civilizations
In the second thought experiment of this series, I speculate on the problems that would be involved in searching for extinct agricultural (non-industrialized) civilizations on alien worlds. I consider three climatological scenarios that have forced the extinction of civilizations—snowball worlds, water worlds, and desert worlds—through the disruption of settled agriculturalism. To set this up I discuss some methodological preliminaries on satellite archaeology, and I finish with some of the methodological lessons learned.
Quora: https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD
Links: https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/
Video: https://youtu.be/P-8VMQhHM30
Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7xvj7pmafJCOJvDtWNWlZ1?si=EpWqgxqfT3-gYkrfjn7PmQ
Episode: S02EP20
#civilization #ThoughtExperiment #SpaceExploration #archaeology #ExistentialRisk #RemoteSensing #Snowball #slushball #waterworld #desertification #aridification #technosignatures
Apropos nothing:
Everybody keeps talking about probability calculations about how aliens COULD OR COULD NOT visit earth.
But did someone even think about that this alien civilization could
solely consist of microbes?
killed it's own world because the wrong lizard could get to powers?
The Drake Equation has always been nonsense
"The most famous “tool” used by the SETI community to discuss the statistical likelihood of advanced extraterrestrial life is the Drake Equation... it does not appear to be very scientific at all, but entirely based on vibes."
The Drake Equation is Bullshit
Ok a PSA on the Drake Equation: A bunch of guys who knew fuck all took some drugs. They had a circle jerk about how clever they were, and came up with a spurious equation. It's used to calculate the number of alien civilisations, based on how many lego bricks Carl Sagan could fut up his ass after a couple of popper.
Because people are credulous slackjawed yokels when confronted by a guy who has his own TV show, the Drake Equation is still getting used. It claims that the entire Galaxy is just full of alien civilisations, all of whom have Netflix and WiFi.
This is so ludicrously bad that I got a kobold to run the numbers:
Yip? You want to know how many space buddies we might have, yes? Let's use the famous Drake Equation to find out! This equation helps estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilisations in our Milky Way galaxy. Here are the parameters we will use, based on the latest data:
N=R∗⋅fp⋅ne⋅fl⋅fi⋅fc⋅L
Where:
R∗: The average rate of star formation in our galaxy.
𝑓𝑝fp: The fraction of those stars that have planetary systems.
𝑛𝑒ne: The average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets.
𝑓𝑙fl: The fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life.
𝑓𝑖fi: The fraction of planets with life that develop intelligent life.
𝑓𝑐fc: The fraction of civilizations that develop technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.
𝐿L: The length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.
Based on the latest research, here are the values we will use:
R∗: 2 stars per year
𝑓𝑝fp: 1 (almost all stars have planets)
𝑛𝑒ne: 0.2 (20% of these planets can support life)
𝑓𝑙fl: 0.1 (10% of these planets develop life)
𝑓𝑖fi: 0.01 (1% of these life forms develop intelligence)
𝑓𝑐fc: 0.1 (10% of intelligent civilizations develop detectable technology)
𝐿L: 420 years (average length of time civilizations can communicate)
Let's plug these numbers into the Drake Equation:
N=2⋅1⋅0.2⋅0.1⋅0.01⋅0.1⋅420
Calculating this, we get:
N=2⋅1⋅0.2⋅0.1⋅0.01⋅0.1⋅420=
0.168
"So, the estimated number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy is approximately 0.168. This means that, based on these parameters, there might be less than one such civilization in our galaxy. Maybe we are quite alone, or maybe the parameters are too pessimistic! Ah, the mysteries of the cosmos! Kobold think this is very interesting, but also a bit lonely. Maybe we need more mushrooms and roasted cheese to cheer up!"
And this is why when people fanwank about the Drake equation, I get salty. Thanks Research Kobold: Thobold.
Citations: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation [2] https://science.nasa.gov/universe/exoplanets/are-we-alone-in-the-universe-revisiting-the-drake-equation/ [3] https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.05573 [4] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/drake-equation/fraction-of-stars-with-planetary-systems-fp-1961-to-the-present/71DDE7F46C63543C4C0FD79A0DA4027D [5] https://www.seti.org/press-release/how-many-habitable-planets-are-out-there [6] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/drake-equation/fraction-of-suitable-planets-on-which-life-actually-appears-fl-1961-to-the-present/4A473491BD70F5A10007A8C428D1FEF5 [7] https://www.seti.org/drake-equation-index [8] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/astro801/content/l12_p5.html [9] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/drake-equation/fraction-of-civilizations-that-develop-a-technology-that-releases-detectable-signs-of-their-existence-into-space-fc-1961-to-the-present/3B18044AD7E7D9F83053D59E0BCEF74A [10] https://www.space.com/25219-drake-equation.html
Are We Alone in the Universe? Revisiting the Drake Equation
I’ve actually run out of things to watch on YouTube a couple times over the past week. Given how much video material is uploaded to YouTube