ThePowerOfGeek's recent activity

  1. Comment on The 'football' tag in ~sports.football

    ThePowerOfGeek
    Link Parent
    I like this idea a lot. It is nicely structured, and it also asked room for future expansion (eg football.australian, football.gaelic). On your concerns: Yeah, this could be a potential problem....

    I like this idea a lot. It is nicely structured, and it also asked room for future expansion (eg football.australian, football.gaelic).

    On your concerns:

    1. Yeah, this could be a potential problem. But it affects the wider tildes structure. A viable solution would be to display sub-categories at the top of the search results.

    2. I don't think this is a real concern. MLS falls under the broader scope of soccer/association football. I think MLS fans would be fine with their stuff falling under football.association.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Tildes feels so cozy in ~talk

    ThePowerOfGeek
    Link
    Yeah, I'm really liking it here! The UI is clean, simple, and very effective; the posts are interesting; and the people are polite. I'm not sure how long the closed invites system will be in...

    Yeah, I'm really liking it here! The UI is clean, simple, and very effective; the posts are interesting; and the people are polite.

    I'm not sure how long the closed invites system will be in place, or if the topic areas/sections (? I don't know what the correct term is!) will remain tight controlled (so regular users can't just create new ones). But honestly, I don't have a problem with either thing. I feel like the tighter control encourages civility and maturity.

    3 votes

  3. Comment on New model predicts that we’re probably the only advanced civilization in the observable universe in ~space

    ThePowerOfGeek
    Link
    From the article: So they're treating each of Frank Drake's equation variables as fuzzy numbers, with a minimum and a maximum range. Which is an excellent approach. But they are still constrained...

    From the article:

    “We found that even using the guesstimates in the literature (we took them and randomly combined the parameter estimates) one can have a situation where the mean number of civilizations in the galaxy might be fairly high – say a hundred – and yet the probability that we are alone in the galaxy is 30%! The reason is that there is a very skew distribution of likelihood.

    “If we instead try to review the scientific knowledge, things get even more extreme. This is because the probability of getting life and intelligence on a planet has an extreme uncertainty given what we know – we cannot rule out that it happens nearly everywhere there is the right conditions, but we cannot rule out that it is astronomically rare. This leads to an even stronger uncertainty about the number of civilizations, drawing us to conclude that there is a fairly high likelihood that we are alone. However, we also conclude that we shouldn’t be too surprised if we find intelligence!”

    So they're treating each of Frank Drake's equation variables as fuzzy numbers, with a minimum and a maximum range. Which is an excellent approach. But they are still constrained by our current understanding of astronomy, or at least letting a cautious and conservative estimate dictate many of these variables.

    Again, that's a sensible approach. But it's worth remembering that our understanding is constantly changing. And many of the actual numbers are more optimistic than our blind assumptions from years prior, once we get hard data behind them.

    Back in the 80s and before, the argument many scientists pushed was that our system is the only one with planets because we hadn't detected them in other systems.

    Then when we started finding them the argument was that small rocky worlds were extremely rare because we weren't seeing them elsewhere.

    Then the argument was that small rocky worlds in the habitable zone were extremely rare because all the planets we were finding at that size were too close to their stars or in highly elliptical orbits.

    Now that has been somewhat disapproved (we've found some like Earth, Venus, etc - not many, but as a sample they are significant), and the argument is that having the right chemical mix for life as we know it is extremely rare. Coincidentally, we can't easily detect chemical signatures yet, but that will change soon.

    There's a pattern here. We are continuously limited by our level of detection technology.

    So while they might well be right that we are probably alone, we should expect the probability to change upwards as the variables down the line become less fuzzy.

    Also, considering there are about 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, and about 200 billion galaxies in they observable universe (the 2 trillion number looks like it was more related to an earlier period in the universe), if only 1% of those galaxies have one intelligent species right now (relatively speaking).... That's still a LOT of them kicking around! Even if we'll never be able to detect them.

    19 votes