Estimate the number of robot civilizations

[Loki]

I would suggest that Richard Dawkins (or any other competent evolutionary biologist) does not "assume" any such thing, lest they be laughed out of science.

Mind you that sentence is more coherent than the rest of your post.

I'm out of this one.

[Darwinsbulldog]

Originally Posted by the_gelf

I used the word estimate in the thread title : P

Most formulas (read:all) are derived in the same way.

That's why science is full of hypotheses, but few become laws or ratified theories.

Similar practice is used by Richard Dawkins to piece together evolution. He looks at animals that exist today, and assumes that similar animals existed in the past that later developed more advanced versions (such as eye evolution). He can't provide empirical data because it simply does not exist any more.

Similarly, the Lenski experiment is referred to as a hypothesis for large scale cell macro-evolution, and earthquakes are a precursor hypothesis to plate tectonics. These came about through speculation of possibilities. They aren't proved in the same way a mths formula of 1+1=2 is proved (it's not actually proved, just accepted as a lemma to enable mathematical fluency/ literacy - but proving 1+1 is nothing else but 2 is required)

Proving whether a robot civilization exists or not is not important - predicting what the effect of a robot civilization would have on the observable universe (if any) is far more interesting - and if there is one, can we design an experiment to observe it? What frequency would it use to communicate? Would it need to have been genesised from a thrid generation star's planet?

Hmmm,...several serious problems here....I can see I will have to go over the definitions of science, hypothesis, theory, fact, law. Book marked for later.

[DanDare]

Originally Posted by Loki

Why would a civilisation with "no technological boundaries" necessarily be "ideal conflictless"?

Is a non-sequitor, much like Asimov's laws of robotics. "Robots shall not harm humans" is nonsensical as it doesn't follow from anything other than wishful thinking, there is no physical basis to suggest such proscription would have any hold on machine intelligence greater than "thou shall not murder" has on humankind, works most of the time as it reinforces self-interest yet breaks down with monotonous regularity.

The numbers one gets out of the Drake Equation (which is entirely speculative by itself) depends entirely on the numbers one puts in. Quantitative answers for many of the variables are not available requiring the use of guesses. Guesses are not valid in empirical science.

GIGO - Garbage in-Garbage out

Bad science is bad science.

I strongly disagree here Loki. The purpose of the Drake Equation is not to plug in numbers and get an answer. The purpose is to define what numbers we need to discover and confirm before an answer can be found (assuming we don't contact some little green men in the meantime).

Its a definition of a bounded probability space. As we have discovered more and more exoplanets we have started refining values in the early elements of the equation. If we had discovered no exoplanets then that would have closed off the equation and told us that seeking ETI was futile. Instead it has shown that the question is still reasonably open.

While we firm up our knowledge about the distribution of planets and their gross characteristics the next step is to determine if there are any Earthlike planets with the chemical signatures of life or life capable environments.

[DanDare]

Proving whether a robot civilization exists or not is not important - predicting what the effect of a robot civilization would have on the observable universe (if any) is far more interesting - and if there is one, can we design an experiment to observe it? What frequency would it use to communicate? Would it need to have been genesised from a thrid generation star's planet?

I don't think the presence of a large scale robotic civilisation could be distinguished from the presence of a large scale "natural" civilization. In either case you would expect to see changes in the nature of some stars or cluster of stars that comes from macro scale use of stellar energy. I think that the evidence we have so far is that there are probably no large scale civilisations in the observable universe capable of using significant fractions of stellar energy.

[the_gelf]

Originally Posted by Loki

I would suggest that Richard Dawkins (or any other competent evolutionary biologist) does not "assume" any such thing, lest they be laughed out of science.

Mind you that sentence is more coherent than the rest of your post.

I'm out of this one.

Not sure why you are getting snarky about the discussion, I was quite enjoying your input, but i'll leave it at that.

[Loki]

Seems I'm not alone;

The problem with the Drake equation, why it falls into the GIGO category, lies with the parameters. There is no way to tell if the values we assign to the input parameters are garbage or not. Given the impossibility of assigning justifiable values to them, we can treat them all as garbage (though we can argue about which values stink more). All probabilities found using the Drake equation are therefore, to some extent, invalid (even if you accidentally guessed the right values). Some are more reasonable than others, but all the answers the Drake equations spits out still suffer from GIGO.”

I suspect if we ever manage to quantify the variables enough to use them with any confidence, and they are indeed independent, and they are indeed meaningful in any way, we will already have had the answer via other means. To my mind this qualifies the Drake Equation as Quasi-science.

Yeh, sorry about the snark gelf, just don't want to go down the route of having to go over the things that annoy me about that post. For example the Lenski experiment is an example of evolution, no more and no less. The term "large scale cell macro-evolution" is meaningless afaict.

[the_gelf]

Originally Posted by Loki

Yeh, sorry about the snark gelf, just don't want to go down the route of having to go over the things that annoy me about that post. For example the Lenski experiment is an example of evolution, no more and no less. The term "large scale cell macro-evolution" is meaningless afaict.

I think me interpreting Dawkins' book in my own words does it a disservice when he spends about 200 pages on the same phenomena that I try to sum in a few sentences. Poorly phrased when I'm dodging work :P

What I should have taken the time to say was:

"extrapolates the observations of evolution in the Lenski experiment to apply to all others forms of life, where every cell in the host has a chance to change, rather than just the one changing in one-celled bacteria. This is supported by the observation of the wide variety of dogs (which have a common ancestor approximately 10000 years ago in a wolf), kale/romanescu/cauliflower plant, the production of the common dessert bananas and Belyaev's silver fox experiment, to name a fraction of examples where evolutionary theory has been applied and tested"

[owheelj]

I agree with Loki (hence my earlier answer). Even if you're going to argue that the purpose of the Drake Equation is to find out what we need to know, it's still pointless because until we actually find evidence of any kind of life outside of Earth, the equation is useless, and once we have that evidence, that's much more exciting and worth investigating than speculation about the total amount of life in the universe. It really is like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's also nothing like the Higgs boson, or the evolution of eyes, and those other examples. There's clearly huge amounts of evidence for those things, especially the evolution of eyes. Genetic evidence, comparative anatomy evidence, fossil evidence - as well as all the evidence for the workings of evolution generally, which means we need to try to understand the evolution of eyes in the context of how we understand evolution to work. For the existence of extraterrestrial life (robotic or biological) we have nothing at all. Their existence can't be viewed as a possible explanation for any evidence we do see - it is a hypothesis conjured from thin air.

[DanDare]

I think we are still talking at cross purposes here. The Drake equation and speculating about robot civilizations are not science projects. They are political projects. The Drake equation came out at a time when nobody thought it was even worthwhile looking for life elsewhere. Drake's aim was to show that the search was reasonable, not to prove anything. Speculating about robot civilisations is fun and inspiring.

If you are of the mind set that there is no point looking for ETI then the Drake equation demonstrates that there are ranges of values for the elements that result in positive outcomes and those values are not known to be incorrect. Given how hostile scientific organisations have been toward even trying to look for life elsewhere I think the equation served its purpose.

[the_gelf]

Originally Posted by owheelj

I agree with Loki (hence my earlier answer). Even if you're going to argue that the purpose of the Drake Equation is to find out what we need to know, it's still pointless because until we actually find evidence of any kind of life outside of Earth, the equation is useless, and once we have that evidence, that's much more exciting and worth investigating than speculation about the total amount of life in the universe. It really is like debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's also nothing like the Higgs boson, or the evolution of eyes, and those other examples. There's clearly huge amounts of evidence for those things, especially the evolution of eyes. Genetic evidence, comparative anatomy evidence, fossil evidence - as well as all the evidence for the workings of evolution generally, which means we need to try to understand the evolution of eyes in the context of how we understand evolution to work. For the existence of extraterrestrial life (robotic or biological) we have nothing at all. Their existence can't be viewed as a possible explanation for any evidence we do see - it is a hypothesis conjured from thin air.

All science was once "conjured from thin air"

All maths (especially inductive and imaginary) is conjured from "thin air".

Do you have the same disagreements with gravity waves and imaginary numbers? They are in the same boat, and neither have been observed.

When a scientist observes that amino acids are known to form into RNA molecules, and those amino acids are observed elsewhere in the universe, galaxy, local cluster, solar system, do you disagree with him?

In the same light, do you disagree with the application of cepheid variables, or the Hubble constant replacing parallax, or the validity of using Christoffer notation on a physics problem? Each of these concepts have a degree of certainty, and a degree of uncertainty - the questions to ask yourself is why you trust some, but not others.

You trust that g=9.8, but have you measured it yourself?, you trust a car will start, but have you designed a closed circuit magnetic induction coil to test this actually works? What is it about certain scientific facts that qualify to you as trustable and not trustable, or is it entirely subjective?