Thread · HN Continuity

I've always hated speculation based on this equation because most of the variables are complete shots in the dark.

Sure, we can measure stellar formation and planetary occurrence, but that's about it.

Planets within habitable zone? How do we know what habitable is? We've examples of extremophiles on earth that could potentially live well outside the habitable zones we typically draw, and who's to say that life can't form in a Jupiter style atmosphere just because it didn't happen here (that we know of)? What's the habitable zone for hypothetical non-carbon life forms?

Fraction of suitable planets that develop life? Well, we've got n of 1 on that. We've found other earth-likes within habitable zones and we simply can't determine whether they do or ever did develop bacteria because they're too far away and our sensors are not sensitive enough.

Fraction of life-bearing planets that develop intelligent life? Technically, every planet we know of that bares life bares intelligent life. Does that mean the variable is 1? Not likely.

Fraction of intelligent lifes that create interstellar comms? Again, so far, 100%. Is it likely to be 1 in reality? Probably not.

Length of time such beings transmit in total from first to last broadcast. We've literally no way to determine this. Thus far universal average is, what 120 years? But those very first broadcasts were so weak and not intended for space interstellar comms. The first message sent to space deliberately wasn't until ~50 years ago, so the average space communication time of all known species is ~50 years, but again it's only n of 1 and so means effectively nothing.

AND it doesn't even calculate the thing we really care about which is the odds that we get to interact with or observe alien intelligence. There is no control for "ah, yes, as the universe ages, there will be more communicative species, but your species will have died before then, or will have died in the length of time required to establish back and forth communication. It doesn't tell us what the odds are of their having been a species that sent it's last broadcast before we started recording. It doesn't tell us how long we should expect to wait before it is overwhelmingly likely that we receive a broadcast...

It just feels like a uni bloke got high one night and said, right, well there'll have to be planets, and they'll have to have life, and that life will have to develop intelligence, and that intelligence will have to reach out, and it will have to reach out for long enough for us to hear it. Like...yeah, duh? What about species that have colonized and spread beyond their own planet due to overpopulation? The number of planets in the sky doesn't really matter if a single planet spawned 117 different communicative interstellar communities, does it?