My point, repeated or not, has nothing to do with Crichton. It has everything to do with whether or not you understand how equations work.

All you need to do is simply type the proportionality constant(s) associated with Drake into the little white box. I promise I’ll be convinced then.

I’ll stop now, with the suggestion that people actually read up on the subject instead of believing Crichton’s third-hand account. A good place to start is Paul Davies’ book The Eerie Silence, or the many resources available at the SETI institute web page (http://www.seti.org/)

Really? How? Teach me.

Personally, I think it’s a basis for a full-beer conversation, which I know I would enjoy, but it contains not a single known fact.

neo hit the key points, but it’s worth pointing out that you keep repeating the same thing without offering evidence for old arguments or new improved arguments. Speculation may be a wonderful way to start a scientific endeavor, but science does not end there.

The SETI folks are doing the right thing by engaging in research. I doubt they make any particular use of Drake’s equation.

I could devise an equation to determine the color of the sky on planet Q67W3E in galaxy R8T96Y4 that is ZP million light years from earth but it would be meaningless. I have no way of knowing anything about Q67W3E. Since I have no values to plug into a single variable in my imaginary equation I can not compute the possible colors of the sky on Q67W3E.

Instead, I will simply state that the color of the sky on Q67W3E is tunxcer on Tuesdays and lkgimsvb on Thursdays and on all other days its aldksjheiim.

It is mumbo jumbo. You could write a similar formula for the search of unicorns in the world. Just because you have some idea that unicorns might require food and water and you know approximately how much land mass is on earth that might cater`to this, the equation reveals ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Well except a bias for someone who desperately wants unicorns to be thought to exist without any evidence whatsoever.

Crichton’s attitude is that since all the terms of the equation aren’t known, the whole SETI enterprise is so much mumbo-jumbo. That’s simply wrong and Crichton does himself no favors by saying so.

Here’s another analogy, a bit closer to reality: suspect profiling. Suppose you’re a Homeland Security officer. You know that terrorists tend to be young, male, and Muslim. You don’t know the exact age ranges, and you don’t know what fraction of Muslims are radical, but that’s a basis for making your search.

Now most of us think it’s crazy for DHS to refuse to use profiling because it would mean innocent Muslim men would get searched. But that’s exactly the same logic Crichton is using: if the result isn’t known exactly, the whole profile (or equation) is meaningless.

The Parker Equation would be as follows: N is the number of old women with red dresses and warts on their noses walking past your house. We can define N = O * R * W * H, where O is the number of old women in your town, R is the proportion of them who wear red, W is the proportion with warts on their noses, and H is the fraction whose daily walk takes them past your house.

It doesn’t have any “predictive” power, but it tells you the things you need to know in order to make it predictive. That’s what the Drake Equation was designed to do.

Crichton seems to think that because Frank Drake wrote out his equation, SETI is based on fiction. The analogy with the Parker Equation would be that since we don’t know the number of women who wear red or have warts, there are no old women at all. That does not follow.

I think a lot of commenters are defending Crichton because they agree with his conclusions about climate science. I agree with him on that as well, but I think the SETI example is a terrible one, and only weakens the argument.

The message is the good old days can not return. To me this means we have to keep moving forward holding true to the values we hold that survive the test of time while being open to new information and knowledge. If we stand still we become ossified statues eroded by water and wind.

“I started out down a dirty road
Started out all alone
And the sun came down as I crossed the hill
And the town lit up, the world got still.

I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings.
Coming down is the hardest of things.

The good old days may not return
The rocks might melt and the seas may burn.
I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings
Coming down is the hardest thing.

Some say life will beat you down
Break your heart and steal your crown.
Started out for god knows where
Guess I’ll know when I get there.

I’m learning to fly around the clouds
But what goes up, must come down
I’m learning to fly, but I ain’t got wings
Coming down is the hardest of things.”