FAQs (keep ‘em coming!): 1. "We’re here, so that proves/implies intelligences are common", or "sets a lower bound on lambda_B (the birth rate)". Sadly not! We only observe ourselves because we exist, it couldn’t be any other way. This is a product of the weak anthropic principle. For example, you might naively conclude that 1/lambda_B ~ 4 billion years, since thats how long it took on Earth to get to us. But Brandon Carter’s paper (arxiv.org/abs/0711.1985) exemplifies why this thinking is wrong with an analogy of hard locks. If a lock takes 100 years to pick, on average, but only 10 minutes have passed by thus far, one might guess no-one could have possibly succeeded. But, in fact, given enough independent lock pickers, someone will luckily pick the lock very quickly. That person would then be in error to conclude their lock pick time was typical. The basic issue is you just can’t use “us” as a data point, because we *are* the observers and thus “us” is not a fair, representative sample from the distribution. I've also written about this extensively before, see arxiv.org/abs/2005.09008 and kzfaq.info/get/bejne/n7KSldODvri7ZY0.html 2. "You said the flasks are all nearly similar, but planets could be very different from one another!" True, good point. I somewhat regret emphasizing the similarity between the flasks, I used that analogy to make things easy to follow but it adds a confusion with deeper thought. In fact, the flasks could be wildly different and the conclusion is the same. Let’s make some boiling, some acidic, some salty, etc. In doing so, we make some choices as to how to diversify them. The thing is, it’s very unlikely that the choices we make here will just so happen to split the sample <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="3050">50:50</a> between dissolving and not dissolving. Because remember we made those choices in the absence of any information about compound X, so why should they happen to divide the sample evenly like this? Another way of thinking about it is that there is some logistic function which acts like a switch between dissolving and not dissolving, with the x-axis being the conditions of each flask. The neck of this logistic, the switch point, occurs at some unknown position, A. To get a <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="3050">50:50</a> split, the conditions would have to saddle the neck of the logistic curve event on each side, but the logistic extends very far in both directions, so it’s pretty unlikely we’d happen to choose a set of flasks that land <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="3050">50:50</a> either side of the unknown switch point A. Hopefully this extra analogy helps, but at the end of the day it might be helpful to look Jaynes’ paper (ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4082152)

Drake never meant the equation to be used. He meant it to be an agenda for discussion at the astrophysics conference where he presented it.

I'd like to mention that it's really nice that you do not use background music. It helps me to concentrate on what you say and your voice is so soothing too.

Absolutely compelling and a fresh take on the Fermi Paradox that's going to give me pondering material for a good long while. For anyone interested in the possibilities of other life in the universe, this is a gem. And also, exomoons! We want exomoons!

As an uneducated layman, I'm genuinely grateful for the way you explain your theories to the likes of me. Thank you, my friend.

"Cool Worlds searched for aliens and what they found was TERRIFYING" What the title would have been if this was not a real science channel 😅

The irony that Jaynes' initials are E.T. was not lost on me.

I do think there is one major problem with this though is that while you have a 'death' term a more accurate term would be 'invisible' - in other words when we would no longer be able to detect a civilization with our existing telescope technology. One reason for that could be death, another reason would just be a switch to wideband radio communication, as well as more use of cables, etc. Like, even though we use way more communication tech today then in the 1960s the amount of 'radio light' we give off from more modern technology is probably a lot lower. And TBH I don't really think that if there was another planet with earth-like technology, we wouldn't see it. All the techno signature stuff is based on the idea of civilizations way more advanced then ours (i.e. dyson spheres, etc) But we don't actually know if there will ever be a dyson sphere around the sun, for example. Honestly at this point, it doesn't seem like we would be able to detect a planet with earth level technology with our current "observation power" (other then, ironically, chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere - which we are phasing out anyway!)

KZfaq is either teeming with intelligent scientific channels or there are barely any. Cool Words is the shining beacon on an otherwise desolate video sharing platform!

E.T. Jaynes thought experiment is the perfect embodiment of the quote "Once is never, twice is always." Unfortunately, we are stuck on the once is never part of it, both for stars with life in the universe, and in regard to civilization developing on a world filled with life.

"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination." - Douglas Noel Adams

The problem is that people think of the Drake equation as an actual attempt at prediction when it was just meant to organize a meeting agenda to discuss SETI.

You are a boon to humanity. Thank you for seeking to ground a conversation widely polluted by people who are happy to say anything that gets them attention.

Been waiting for this update from Cool Worlds for several years. Probes the limits of academic literature relevant to the Fermi paradox and the question of aliens all the while steeping in the ever deeper wonders and mysteries of the universe - Cool Worlds doing what Cool Worlds does best.

I've come to understand recently just how many events led up to us and how many more are necessary to become a spacefaring civilisation, which alone is quite the feat. No wonder we can't see anyone.

The Drake equation was a conversation starter. We owe a lot to Frank Drake for getting us started down the path of thinking about this problem in a more cleared-headed way.

very rare to see a video mentioning aliens, while still grounded in reality

Thank you for such great content. I love that you go beyond the typical pop-sci slop and actually get into the math/statistics behind your and others’ work-which I really love learning about. Also, as this video shows, I appreciate your realistic view of the universe-such as the true difficulties of interstellar travel and the likely rareness of other Earths and intelligent life. I can’t wait to become a member of the Cool Worlds Lab when I start my new job after graduating later this summer. Keep up the awesome work.

CIVILIZATION BLINK RATE Q: Hypothetically, if Moore's Law continues indefinitely, then how many years before a silicon computer must become an optical computer, then subatomic computer, and then for superintelligence to operate most efficiently the computer must be made of neutron star or quark star material? How many years for the shrinking CPU to become so miniaturized that it becomes identical to a primordial black hole? How many years does the math dictate when that would be necessary? Just as a mathematical exercise. Now, if all superintelligent alien civilizations followed Moore's Law in this way, and entire planets and solar systems were converted into pure CPU's, would that 500?-year progression be detectable from Earth, merely a quick blink at galactic time scales? Exponential growth has a way of growing exponentially. Until the limits of the physical substrates of intelligence, the Planck-scale circuitry. Would trillions of such quark-plasma CPU's all over the galaxy behave like dark matter?

Amazing research and great video as always. A couple thoughts; If Galileo could glimpse the International Space Station with his telescope-a revolutionary technology in his own time-he wouldn’t have the resolution to even guess at what he saw. He would only see a bright moving point in the sky. The difference in our level of technology from Galileo’s time is impressive, but it might pale in comparison to the difference in technology between a Kardashev 0.7 civilization and a Level 3 civilization. An alien civilization capable of colonizing the galaxy would possess exotic technology that we may not have even dreamed of yet. I’ve always thought it presumptive to assume that we would be able to identify their presence at this point in our development. If we assume there’s some merit to this argument, this makes it difficult to dismiss the high-occupation scenario. We still wouldn’t have a clue where we were on the curve unless we improbably spot another sub 1 civilization. And then we would have an n of 2.

As a great man once said... "Ack ak. Akk ACK-AKK!"

If you think that’s been misused, remember Claude Shannon himself even came out and said “come on everyone stop using my theories to say things they don’t say”. While I firmly believe there is other intelligent life in the universe, I feel the insane distances involved, along with the universe still expanding, means we’ll never meet each other.

It's not a fine tuning problem, it goes much deeper than that. It's that loads of humans, earn loads of money, building equipment that only humans understand to search for how humans on other planets would behave. When we cannot see them out there using TV's, cell phones etc. then we default to either - we are alone or we are the only intelligent one's. The fundamental question is how would a species far ahead of us communicate. Even we know that the frequency spectrum has its disadvantages, maybe they have over come this and are thus unseen by us.

Taking the beaker analogy, what if a random, unknown number of the beakers are empty. Then, no, compound x won't dissolve. If you don't know how many beakers are empty, then instead of close to 0 or 100%, we should expect either close to 0 or 50%. Anything that would make a planet permanently uninhabitable would be like an empty beaker. And that brings some of the vagaries and problems with the Drake equation back into the mix.

You have found some sort of Legendary Blackboard. Congratulations.

While our observations can clearly rule out every planet having a technological civilization, it's still entirely possible that every suitable planet has life. The Earth could very well be representative of this; it has had life for almost its entire history, while only having a civilization for a very brief moment. In other words, maybe life is extremely common, and civilizations do try to emerge very frequently, but they are so short-lived that no one ever lives long enough on astronomical timescales.

One thing that has always struck me is, we are looking, but we have only been looking for maybe a few hundred years in the optical, maybe 100 years using radio telescopes. This is out of 13. Billion years. Aliens would have to be relatively close, technologically advanced and be existing at roughly the same time to have overlap with ours. It’s that overlap I think will be the most important factor.

This is one of the few channels, if not the only one, where the presenter has not been afraid to disagree with the optimistic search for life. He's expressed his skepticism in other videos and I think it's refreshing. I think some anti science logic has become so ingrained that people cannot fathom the opposite being true. We've all heard that "Is arrogant and self centered to think we are the only ones in the galaxy" but like... Even scientist think there's a strong, rational, chance that's the case.

Personally I find this formulation of the problem far more compelling for the existance of "life", than for the prevalence of "technological civilizations". The mere existance of life must indeed be either everywhere or almost nowhere as it is fundamentally a question of the likelihood of chemistry turning into a system of self-replication (similar to the water in the glass flasks analogy and I lean heavily towards "everywhere") However, when it comes to technological civilizations I have always thought the brief "phase transition" to a state where the entire galaxy is covered is flawed. I can imagine several factors that could either slow the expansion or halt it at a value substantially lower than 100%, challenging that assumption and create large regions with minimally visible tech civilizatiions including: Ideology, the usefulness of planets with life for science, Internal and external conflict and disagreements between civilizations, a reasonably high probability of death or decline for civs etc. Additionally, even if the curve does apply, the relative youth of the universe compared to its lifespan increases the liklihood we are in the ascending part of the curve, especially if the rate of civilizational expansion is somewhat slower than some currently beleive.

Cool worlds always seems to make my day better! Because I'll stop what I'm doing no matter what it is and watch

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="12">0:12</a> I see Michio in the thumbnail, I click away. This goes back. Way back. About 35 years. A steady drip, drip, drip.

I read the title as "Alien Optometrists" and was like "huh, never seen an alien wear glasses"

Do we not definitionally live in the expansion phase of a civilisation, our own? It may be a very brief window but here we are. The issue I have with the ‘statistically unlikely’ approach is that everything at play here is statistically unlikely. The idea that something which is demonstrably possible has happened exactly once is… a little silly to me.

Man, I'm really happy to see you in a new video

A rational video that provides an interesting topic without exaggeration and hyperbole. Very, very much appreciated

The hills are alive.

Dr. Kipping, I absolutely agree with you here. But there are a few issues you also need to consider when analyzing where we are. (I'm going to try to keep it short.) First, there are limitations on radio signals. I remember a paper that calculated that most of our radio transmissions would be indistinguishable from noise after 2 or 4 light-years. So, let's select a bigger distance, 10 light-years. The only human-made radio communications that would survive are the powerful directional transmissions, which are really rare. So, radio SETI is an interesting search that, sure, should be attempted, but you can't hope for much there. Second, we have 2 biases that need to be considered: the same way that there's the "aliens of the gaps", there's also the "nature of the gaps". Because doesn't matter what we detect, someone is always going to create a natural explanation for it. The worse part is that even I agree with the second bias, exactly to avoid the first one. A natural explanation is always going to be more probable. So... In the end, all we know is that we know nothing... Because even if we've already detect alien civilizations out there we'd probably not know that and explain as something natural... But there's a way to solve this issue, but it's never going to be a complete solution: we need to start to think about what we could detect that would be evidence of an alien technology. And, fun enough, we did it about dyson spheres and now we have a few candidates. You know? Anyway, we may even be the first. I don't know, no-one knows. So we need to investigate it. Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

The universe is unimaginable big, when we look at the sky we look mainly at a very old picture. When species need a long time to evolve and show tech signs we need to have more sensitive equipment and a lot more time to so we can see a newer picture.

My favorite KZfaqr, by far. Another stellar video, Dr. Kipping, thank you!! Sharing with a bunch of folk rn!

If only more teacher has that next level fascination/dedication to the true pursuit of science. The calculations must describe the world/universe as closely as possible to the field data. BRAVO!

I hate those misleading thumbnails featuring Michio Kaki on other channels

In terms of adding new perspective to the 'where is everybody' issue, this seems like a real breakthrough in logic that feels like very solid ground to make an informed conclusion that the universe is indeed probably empty at this point in time. In terms of inspiration I don't find this nearly as depressing as it's presented though. To me, this seems like a grand opportunity to be the spark at the beginning of that upward curve. It's interesting to me that humans want to see themselves as so unremarkable that we need to find some other civilazation to confirm we're just random lifeforms on a rock. Perhaps so we can leave the burden of exploration to someone else...so we can be handed the knowledge about the nature of existence without us having to do the unfathomable work of having to figure it out ourselves over the next few eons. Maybe we're missing the cosmic joke that we are still so very special and our generation has the unique position of being at the very start of that civilization that will inevitably colonize every star in the universe. Maybe our desire to know everything is just so much bigger than the small fraction of time we're allotted to exist will allow. It's a bit like getting to the mountain peak to see another infinite number of mountains in front of you....but you're the only one there to climb them and that still means something. Pretty cool to me! Love this channel, thanks for doing what you do and doing the real work to help us all wonder.

ROFL. EXACTLY 42 civilizations! I wish I could give you a hundred upvotes for that one. That's a pretty genius way to do it. Because realistically the Drake equation should expand to include the probability of the number of civilizations that successfully transcend each Fermi paradox great filter. That could get a bit unwieldy.

I think saying we don’t see anything out there is a bit like saying there’s no such thing as (rare thing) because we can’t see it in our relatively small percentage of data collected. Despite the exciting and laudable advances in these areas, we simply do not have enough observations to make an informed guess. Time is on our side, and you can’t leave time to observe other worlds that are 100,000 light years away that could have life. The big question would be could the few life bearing planets ever be synchronized.

But what if we add +1 to the equation? We already know of one, supposedly, intelligent civilisation. The star system we know best brings us off the zero mark. Love your work!

It's almost certain that we're the only spacefaring civilization in the Milky Way and probably the Local Group, too. But in distant superclusters, Type II civilizations could be expanding and the news (i.e., light) hasn't hit us yet.

1. Why assume a steady state? 2. Use the Drake equation as follows: think about how our observations influence the bounds on each factor and hence on the product. Then decide to do experiments that improve the accuracy of these bounds. 3. If smartlife is rare we must choose to survive so that the galaxy is not empty. If smartlife is common we should work out how to survive within that more complex context, including choosing a global civilization style that does not attract hostile attention.

Cracks me up that people still think we're alone in the galaxy, let alone the universe.

As you were describing your process, I was thinking.. have you really tried to pull it apart... well.. of course you did.. lovely!.. excellent logic, loved the video! One thought.. I'm a Radio R&D Engineer, I've run the Friis equation for interstellar comms and it's seriously scary, my best guess for a link to transmit data from an interstellar probe is to use an ultra-collimated laser.. probably about a foot diameter collimator.. with a 1~0.3arc second wide data beam, and an ELT sized receiver at the L2 point, wavelength will be a balance between narrowness of the beam and the spacial selectivity of the receiving dish/scope.. to ensure the receiver can achieve a sufficiently low level of noise from the star adjacent to the probe. All that means all interstellar communications would be nearly impossible to intercept (see beam width). Thus I don't think any of the radio searches will ever find anything, no one will use radio for long range comms. I also recall a paper pointing out that the combined radiated energy from all earths FM transmitters combine to a signal level that's virtually undetectable from 4light years (a level measured in nano-Janskys). What I'm saying is, IMHO, civilisations are probably much more difficult to detect that we think.. but thank you for sharing a really interesting line of work.

Yes, based on all the available information and after crunching some numbers I conclude that our existence is statistically improbably, so much so that I tend to regard all the actual people I regularly encounter day to day as little more than a curious and highly eccentric artifact of floating point arithmetic imprecision; a continuously growing cumulative error.

The fact that we took 4 billion (with 1 Billion years left before life dies out entirely) years to evolve, 1/3 the age of Universe is a serious issue. Prokaryotes evolve very quickly; however, eukaryotes unambiguously evolved 1.6 bya, multicellular life evolved 0.6 bya, so combination evolution of eukaryotes, multicellular life, & intelligence is a great filter. We're lucky to be here.

All of the searches we’ve made so far involve listening to radio waves, a technology already obsolete on Earth less than 100 years after it was invented.

My opinion: We are still too early in our Universe to see multiple civilizations to exist at the same period of time and at locations where contact is possible.. This would be a VERY lucky event so early in the universe considering intelligent life here took 1/3 of the Universe's age to appear... If another civilzation is alive right now, chances are they are more than 1 million light years away.. Also, 4 billions years of stability must be a very rare occasion in our early universe... People underestimate the hostility of the universe, the distances involved and how intelligent life must be a glimpse in astronomic terms

You hit the nail on the head at the end, "Maybe were looking in the wrong place.". This is my conclusion as radio waves are not everything, we know they are too slow for communication across star systems and solar systems. The must be a something else, in Statrek they called it subspace, it could be anything we just dont know yet.

I wish more people would write a scientific paper every time they released a KZfaq video

This is actually a good example of why not to oversimplify things, and why some of the factors in the Drake Equation are important. Life, intelligent life, technological life, and detectable technological life are all different things, and not does not necessarily follow the previous one. Another important factor, is that, despite our best efforts so far, we are just barely scratching the barest surface of detection efforts, and at present even a nearby civilization at a technological level comparable to our own would be very difficult to detect. We simply lack the ability to conduct proper surveys so far, and as a result we lack the data to make predictions that fall much out of the philosophy side of things rather than actually standing firmly in the science side of things.

"Which is inconsistent with "our observations" of the galaxy." But we haven't observed the galaxy.

The problem with this equation is thinking of humans as one single civilization inhabiting our planet. There are human civilizations that have come and gone and are now extinct. Many of them. All of human kind did not experience the industrial revolution, only certain civilizations made it to industrialization and computerization among the many inhabiting the planet. We still have hunter gatherer people inhabiting the planet with rocket launching people. Calling all of that one human civilization is too simple and can't represent a value of 1 in the equation. If there are aliens, it's safe to assume that not every alien has a space ship or the resources to travel the stars. They may have a shadow government controlling all the best technology too, who knows.

I think there are a lot of people, especially mainstream scientists, who are afraid to think that there may be species out there that are much more intelligent than we are. Our egos never fail to make us look frail.

I've been a fan of this channel for a long time, and this is one of my favorites. While listening to the birth/death theory, I couldn't help thinking about the simulation hypothesis. The absence of detectable civilizations always takes me to the simulation hypothesis. My mind then immediately takes me to the double slit experiments where light wave functions suddenly collapse and change from a wave to a particle when being observed. I'm not a PHD experimental physicist, but this phenomenon scares the hell out of me.

The increases even further the Copernicus Paradox. Why we are in a planet where technology can be develop when practically all habitable planets technology development is impossible?

"Only a Sith deals in Absolutes" - or more seriously - I am doubtful of that "all or nothing" idea. It would have to be expanded really - it would also imply that basically if you have life on a planet at all, it either almost never develops into multicellular life or it almost always does. It either almost always develops a civilization or it almost never does. And then you end up with a galaxy that either has civilizations and life on almost all planets or on almost none - and at the same time it means that it would be improbable to have life without civilization on any other planet. And I think that makes it more likely that we dont deal in absolutes but that basically something similar to the Drake equation makes sense - to describe each of the features of technological life separately because it could be something in between.

Love your candor as always. Thanks

This is a compelling paper - there are a couple of things I find problematic, you address some of these which can mitigate the 0% conclusion, and I am glad you addressed them: 1). As I understand, the formula supposes uniform galaxies across the universe, but we know they vary in both size and shape. Some may have a lot of life, some close to nothing 2). The theory supposes technologically advanced civilizations, but we might be the only ones who’ve gotten this far (though I find that hard to believe). There might be other forms of life we are unaware of, as you said. 3). The signatures we are looking for may be the wrong type. If aliens truly are out there, what are the chances they would be using radio waves? 4). We might be at the very beginning of the curve; earth is 4.5 billion years old. What if take-off on the curve is in another 500 million years?

The editing with visual memes was really good.

I'm sorry I have to say this but mainstream science needs a reality check. When goverments all over the world are worried about what flying in the skies that no one can explain scientist should pay more attention. An alien civilization could be 100% different from all the scientific methods we apply to comunicate or discover them. The science may be absolete here and we need to change our way of understanding other worlds. We may exceeded in math but our theories are as best as our primitive thinking.

You are good, no need to apologize for not make stupid clickbait :) you are one of the few reasons i still check in on YT!

3 observations: 1. Compared to its lifespan, the universe is young as is the galaxy. 2. Cognitive science suggest that life and self-awareness are not too uncommon in the galaxy, but that intelligence and the evolutionary means to implement it may be very rare. 3. The speed of light is very slow and there are many puzzles about the nature of the universe and galaxy that we have yet to understand. I am in the camp of those who believe that intelligent life on earth may be a one off in the galaxy, if not the universe, and that we should do everything we can to preserve it and propagate it through the universe

The real problem with the Drake equation, is that it supposes civilizations belong on planets/star-systems. I believe all technological mature civilizations quickly (immediately) disintegrates into a myriad of small space/time-traveling nomadic tribes, with almost no detectable signature.

There is no alien life. We're it. Whether you believe in "simulation theory" or a tradition definition of God, there is some sort of creator external to our universe. The nature of that creator is beyond our comprehension and unknowable to us.

I wrote a scholarly paper on exobiology, reviewing all available pertinent literature, as a college freshman in 1974. The primary conclusion is the same as yours. There is no lower limit to the birth rate. There is no data at all on the death rate, as we ourselves could hit technological death at any time. Sagan realized this in the 1975-1977 range, and proposed nuclear winter as a possible mechanism. As an actuary, there are certain further maths that are relevant to the equations. One relates to ruin theory, and in this case focuses on the high slope part of the curve, as that is the part of the curve that is humanly 'interesting'. The most interesting part of the curve, to me, is how many planetary and stellar systems WE (earth) occupy in humanity's future. This includes augmented humanity. If that number is significantly more than one, next consider death contagion. It's possible that if life on mother Earth goes extinct, that lands a crushing (psychological or economic) blow to the newer worlds.It's also possible that the explorers won't really worry about life on Earth once takeoff point is achieved. Finally, it's possible that one or more greater intelligences exist, either aiding or hindering our potential to expand beyond this solar system. It's also possible that advances in physics/propulsion/life span will make expansion trivial. Or, that some combination of human idiocy kills 90%+ of humanity, returning humanity to the brutish and short phase, temporarily or permanently. None of these have any fine mathematical predictive power, save the the chances for each of the listed outcomes appears to be greater than zero.

Fundamentally, there are not true steady states in our universe until we reach maximum entropy.

A few assumptions come to mind when exempting the possibility of a galaxy full of life: it could be the vast majority of civilizations that exist are in a state of development similar to our own (or nearly all of them, possibly); while on the other hand, the vast majority are being cloistered, fearful of venturing out, of showing themselves, of leaving a foot print, for fear of retaliation or some intractable encroachment. Not an exhaustive list of possibilities, by any stretch, though certainly some of the more prominent ones.

I am glad he's finally starting to talk like this. My first message i received after February 2022, was we must come together. It has taken a few years to wonder what it meant. I always had the "thought it was to bring together experiencers & the scientists. To help everybody think outside the box to help discover & share potential information in that box, toss it all around to see if more can be uncovered & find missing links together to move better towards our journeys with the others out there.

This is the best explanation about alien life probability i have ever heard. well done.

Enviably clear thinking and well explained. Love it

The reason why this topic is so speculative is because we lack the data. When Fermi posed his question, and later when Drake put it into an equation, we didn't know if any other stars had planets. Now we have data points on that variable. I suspect that we'll have nearly all of the other variables dialed in by the end of this century.

David Kippingk is the best thingk on the internet. This was really well explained and makes perfect sense. Well done!

OP I've actually clicked on your video exactly because it was not a clickbait thinking this must be legit good. I wasn't disappointed!

I cannot believe that we are alone in such a huge universe

...not two and a half minutes into this video I'm already pausing to consider the implications after realizing where it's going. I don't know how I never quite considered this before myself, but... it might just mean we really are alone.

I’m of the belief that even if there are aliens they’re too far away for us to ever detect, communicate or physically interact with

Brilliant treatment of this subject. As you pointed out, the alone vs teaming gambit assumes that all simple life will eventually develop technology but what if that's not the case. We might have a galaxy teaming with squirrels and janitors sweeping floors, that leave no technological signatures.

Wow very compelling video. I was disappointed too once I understood it. I guess that's one point for the anthropic principle.

I saw a silver disk up close when I was a kid with my grandparents that suddenly vanished. I'm 100000% confident we're not alone.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this subject

I littéralement, went through that advertisement, just be be proper mindset for this video. Minty

You know I've always liked cool worlds videos but damnit you got my head spinning this time keep me up all night thinking about this one

This seems very well thought out. Thanks.

What if it is not physically possible for a galactic colonization to exist in the first place? that's the one thing I never see questioned in these theories. What I mean is, what if the maximum speed available to a mortal being is so slow that it makes interstellar travel both futile and pointless? Maybe you can get to other stars, but by the time you get the technology to do so, you already got the technology to create the resources that you initially would think you would only get from colonizing other stars. Another thing is, why do we assume that entire galactic colonization is the natural course of the average civilization? Don't dyson spheres theorize against this? If a civilization can manipulate the power of their own sun and system and regenerate it at will then there is basically no need to go out but rather to go in. Maybe the natural course isn't to expand outwards but inwards into a simulated universe. Maybe the average height of civilization takes place in a type 2 civilization with all of its inhabitants gathering infinite energy from their regenerative star and sleeping living in a sort of matrix where everything is just better or more psychologically convenient, with no reason to expand onto other stars, idk.

Wow didn't realize how young Jaynes was. 😮

The size and age of the cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home, the Earth. And then. Theres the Gorn

One hypothetical I think about often is this - if we imagine another civilization somewhere in our galaxy who have evolved to the same level of technological development as us, and assume they have the same curiosity about alien life as we do, our physical proximity to one another would play a major factor in their ability to detect us. We've been using radio waves to transmit communication signals for just over 100 years - there'd be no indication of our existence for them unless they were within a 100ly radius of Earth. The odds that life and even intelligent life may be high, but the odds of us being in the right time and place of actually detecting it may be low. SETI has monitored radio signals for what, 50 years? But if another intelligence in our galaxy ever had developed radio technology, they would have to be at exactly the right time and exactly the right distance from Earth in order for us to detect it. We also have to think about how much longer we will be using that tech... mabe in another 50 years we move on and harness some new tech, like gravity waves, or subspace, like Star Trek, lol. Or we wipe ourselves out in the next decade in WWIII via nulcear extermination. Any technoculture out there would have to be pointing their instruments in exactly the right place in the sky, at exactly the right time, within a relatively exact span of distance from us.

I always thought of the Drake equation not as an exercise in mathematics but as a distillation of scientific variables. In a science experiment, you generally want to measure the results of changing a single variable while holding the others constant. This cannot be done with any of the variables in Drake's equation, so what it's going to do is give you models. It's not a way to answer the question of how many intelligent civilizations exist; it's a method to build comparable hypotheses. For example: I could say, "I believe orange trees exist because there is orange juice in my refrigerator." You could reply, "I don't believe orange trees exist because oranges are heavy, and they'd surely break the branches of a tree holding them." Your answer does not move the needle on my orange juice-related hypothesis, nor does mine address whether the branches of a tree could hold a heavy orange. We don't have a common framework of pertinent factors to put through the scientific method. IMHO, the Drake equation, if approached from the right angle, is one of the most effective examples of making theoretical sciences more tangible. Some sciences suggest to you exactly how things are, and others tell you how to gather the smaller pieces that lead to those bigger answers.

One thought I have been entertaining recently is that there are four technological planets that form a mini galactic federation. But they are on the opposite side of the galaxy from us and so they will take at least 100,000 years before we can see them.

My intuition is that advanced intelligent life such as we are, rarely occurs within a single Galaxy, but with so many galaxies out there, it seems certain to have happened elsewhere at some point in time. I wonder if we could be placed in the center of the "S" curve and discuss all the keys that got us there. Our goldilocks zone planet, with our "heavy moon", and our long history of punctuated equilibrium. Why not simply refine the Drake Equation? It's a good structure for rational improvements. "Simply".... Thank you for this wonderful presentation. You are truly one of the highlights of the age. Cheers, mate.

There must be disclosure for this conversation to move forward in any meaningful way.

One professor who taught at Warsaw Polytechnique used to say that a good equation should be shorter than half inch long. And voila!

why is it so inconceivable to posit that we are the FIRST civilization in the universe?

The answer may be this: 1. Take the image from @<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="621">10:21</a>, and keep that in mind as the rate of existence. 2. Multiply each value by X, where X is the probability that we can detect that civilization. 3. If X is low, then the entire right side of the graph becomes more likely. Is it possible that X is low? Yes for a few reasons: A. As civilizations become more advanced, aren't they progressing towards producing less impact on their environment? Maybe advanced civilizations are difficult to detect because those civilizations intentionally hide themselves. Maybe they are inadvertently hiding themselves out of a desire to preserve their environment. B. As civilizations become more advanced, they may fear being detected due to detection leading to possible immediate annihilation out of another civilization becoming afraid. The only way to prevent that is a single civilizations being so much more advanced that they become the "parent" to the fighting kids. This system could mean that it's galactically illegal to intentionally contact civilizations that meet some particular criteria. C. As civilizations become more advanced, they have further reach and expansion, but why do we claim to know all the possibilities for where they advance towards? Who can reasonably say that expansion occurs outward in the x, y, and z coordinates and not to coordinates we currently cannot travel towards? D. A serious application needs to be applied towards the simulation theory, which uses a similar argument: If simulations exist such that recognizing them as simulations are impossible from within the simulation, then it's more likely that we are in one than not. Just because something is more or less likely does not mean that it's more or less correct. A person with a rare disease still has that disease, regardless of how rare it is. Basically, we cannot apply probability to the process of discovering truth.