What you’re looking at there is an attempt to visualize the results (so far) of a workshop run last year in Stockholm that attempted to define the boundaries of a “safe operating space” in which the ecosystem of the planet can operate without veering towards catastrophe. The 28 scientists worked out nine categories that they were comfortable setting some safe… Read more →
Tag: aliens
Yes, that explains it.
You may recall that we’ve discussed the Drake Equation here before, and also Nick Bostrom’s efforts to amend it with what I called a Doom Constant. Well it turns out that a very plausible answer to the Fermi Paradox that doesn’t involve either post has been suggested by a cartoon over at Abstruse Goose. I don’t know that the cartoonist… Read more →
“Long Weekend” Bag of Links
I put it in scare quotes because I am a member of the global information economy, and apparently what that means is that I have to take some meetings on those holidays that are merely national in scope. Yes, I am a grumpy about this. Well, honestly I’m mostly grumpy about having to be up in time for an 8AM… Read more →
Yes, I just made up the term “Doom Constant”
Remember Nick Bostrom? And remember the Drake Equation? Well, the two have met, as illustrated in MIT’s Technology Review this month, in Bostrom’s article, Where Are They. Bostrom suggests, although he doesn’t put it in these terms, that the reason we haven’t met the aliens yet is that Drake’s equation is missing a Doom Constant that models some sort of… Read more →
