{"id":194527,"date":"2024-08-14T03:22:38","date_gmt":"2024-08-14T08:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/do-seti-optimists-have-a-fine-tuning-problem"},"modified":"2024-08-14T03:22:38","modified_gmt":"2024-08-14T08:22:38","slug":"do-seti-optimists-have-a-fine-tuning-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/do-seti-optimists-have-a-fine-tuning-problem","title":{"rendered":"Do SETI Optimists Have a Fine-Tuning Problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/do-seti-optimists-have-a-fine-tuning-problem2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"\"><p> Abstract: In ecological systems, be it a garden or a galaxy, populations evolve from some initial value (say zero) up to a steady state equilibrium, when the mean number of births and deaths per unit time are equal. This equilibrium point is a function of the birth and death rates, as well as the carrying capacity of the ecological system itself. The growth curve is S-shaped, saturating at the carrying capacity for large birth-to-death rate ratios and tending to zero at the other end. We argue that our astronomical observations appear inconsistent with a cosmos saturated with ETIs, and thus SETI optimists are left presuming that the true population is somewhere along the transitional part of this S-curve. Since the birth and death rates are a-priori unbounded, we argue that this presents a fine-tuning problem. Further, we show that if the birth-to-death rate ratio is assumed to have a log-uniform prior distribution, then the probability distribution of the ecological filling fraction is bi-modal \u2014 peaking at zero and unity. Indeed, the resulting distribution is formally the classic Haldane prior, conceived to describe the prior expectation of a Bernoulli experiment, such as a technological intelligence developing (or not) on a given world. Our results formally connect the Drake Equation to the birth-death formalism, the treatment of ecological carrying capacity and their connection to the Haldane perspective.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From: David Kipping [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.arxiv.org\/show-email\/88fcde37\/2407.07097\">view email<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Abstract: In ecological systems, be it a garden or a galaxy, populations evolve from some initial value (say zero) up to a steady state equilibrium, when the mean number of births and deaths per unit time are equal. This equilibrium point is a function of the birth and death rates, as well as the carrying [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-information-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}