Indeed the source!

Post #391,063 by a6l6e6x 6/22/14 4:53:53 PM Reply	Indeed the source! Alex "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." -- Isaac Asimov
Post #391,069 by gcareaga 6/22/14 5:50:21 PM Reply	Missed opportunity When I heard the equation, it was just something else to remember long enough to regurgitate it onto an exam. I wish I had had the foresight to think to ask this question. When Drake created the equation, I think there was a mid-century assumption bias that technologically advanced civilizations would be immortal (the civs if not the constituent biologicals). What about an extinction rate? Yeah, it could be partially accounted for in L, but I think it rates its own variable. Maybe c really is a hard wall and macro-biological travel across the gulf of stars is impossible. If this is the case, home stars will will eventually die, violently or slowly in the case of the sub-fusion brown dwarves.
Post #391,070 by a6l6e6x 6/22/14 6:10:42 PM Reply	Re: advanced civilizations would be immortal I distinctly recall Sagan mentioning civilizations doing away with themselves because of some stupid act. Frankly, between folks seeking rapture and those seeking 72 virgins, it's becoming an ever more probable event. Alex "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." -- Isaac Asimov
Post #391,071 by gcareaga 6/22/14 6:46:10 PM Reply	Re: advanced civilizations would be immortal It shouldn't be binary; all cigs endure or all perish. Okay, well maybe the latter, but if so what is the lifespan? Need a variable even if it is a blind guess.
Post #391,072 by Ashton 6/22/14 7:16:11 PM Reply	Thanks for reminder 'extinction rate', also that bias. Clearly noted (now!) re, in '50s: strong presumption that Techno implicitly could solve any problem ('you could parse in Boolean?' they may have meant; the smarter ones, anyway.) My 'institute' was certainly rife with such bubbly optimism. But for those not up to Drake's eqn., Sagan's audience: I thought he did a decent task of conflating such missing-parts? into that ominous phrase about (Our!) tendencies to commit seppuku in the name of any number of cockamamie rationales. (As with 'I.Q.' too..) I doubt that any number in an equation could capture such a species-wide defect, into some Probability #. Besides if that blindness tracks "IQ", we're certainly doomed to a death of un-Natural kind, anyway.

Welcome to IWETHEY!