Do you agree that an alien race with radio is likely to have possessed it for longer than we have?
No, I wouldn't even agree to that..there is nothing that would lead me to believe that an alien race within communication range of earth has had radio technology longer than we have.
You keep changing the subject. I'm not talking about all alien races within communication range of earth. I'm talking about alien races with radio technology.
Suppose I just turned 17, and I have had my driver's license for 1 month. Is it safe to say that a typical person with a driver's license has probably had it longer than I have? Answer: yes, because of all the people out there with licenses, only a small fraction obtained them in the last month. I'm not talking about all people, or all people within driving distance of my home. Only those with driver's licenses.
Likewise, I'm not talking about all alien races, or all alien races within communication distance of earth; only aliens who already have radio. How many of them obtained it in the last 200 years, rather than in the 10 billion years before that? Unless you have reason to believe otherwise, it seems overwhelmingly likely to me that the fraction would be very small.
On the off chance that you actually believe this, I'd just like to point out that I have made an effort to explain myself very thoroughly, while you have merely asserted repeatedly that some miraculous yet undisclosed statistics indicate that you are correct.
I hate to make enemies, but if you refuse to discuss this in a rational manner, without glib one-sentence replies or appeals to the authority of your magic statistics, I see no alternative.
What are these "statistics" you keep referring to?
Statistics is a branch of mathematics, if you go to college you generally get a decent introduction to statistics. As I pointed out before, your statements show an obvious ignorance of statistics.
No, numbnuts, I mean what are the numbers that you're using? How did you decide that "statistically, the odds of there being aliens more advanced than us are the same as there being aliens less advanced than us"?
You're making it very hard for me to believe you're not trolling me. I can't imagine you actually think I don't know what statistics are.
Listen. I think your claim is that any given alien race is equally likely to be more or less advanced than we are. I agree with that statement. I'm making a different statement. Read carefully: I'm saying that any given alien race with radio technology probably has had it longer than we have. You keep referring to "statistics" which is absurd because we don't have any statistics on alien races. We haven't found one yet.
So put up or shut up. Stop waving your hands and make your point or I'll be forced to conclude you don't have one.
As I said, statistically, the odds of there being aliens more advanced than us are the same as there being aliens less advanced than us in regards to radio communication and otherwise.
What are these "statistics" you keep referring to? There are no statistics on alien races because we haven't yet even encountered a single one. What statistics are you talking about?
there is nothing that would lead me to believe that an alien race within communication range of earth has had radio technology longer than we have.
You are telling me you would expect that half of all radio-possessing races discovered radio in the last 200 years, and the other half discovered it before that. Given that the universe is something like 10 billion years old, that means that the rate of radio discovery, among races that currently possess it, has been 50 million times more rapid in the last 200 years than in the previous 10 billion years.
Do you have some explanation for this extraordinary explosion of recent activity?
The only explanations I can think of are:
Coincidence. I find this highly unlikely.
There is some common element among all alien races that they all required the same amount of time to discover radio. I find this level of uniformity highly unlikely, given the variations among creatures even on our own planet.
Races that discover radio tend to destroy themselves after possessing radio for an average of less than 400 years. Obviously we have no evidence either way on this one.
??
To me, it seems overwhelmingly likely that most radio-possessing alien races would have had it longer than we have.
Yeah yeah, it's the same old story. I think everyone who has really thought about LOC has had the same idea. The truth is that plain old lines-of-code is the most effective measure of software development.
The problems you are trying to solve really are not problems in practice. Most files don't have many blank lines. Comments take just as long to write as any other code, and arguably deserve to be counted. Statements broken among multiple lines usually indicate that the author thought they were complex enough to warrant multiple lines, and therefore they probably deserve to be counted that way. Et cetera.
And above all else, I don't think people consider a difference in 50% in LOC to be significant anyway, so there's no point worrying about whether people put the curly brace on a separate line. If you ever see someone say that system X is simpler because it has 25kLOC instead of 30kLOC, then you ought to mention that this could be attributed to differences in coding style.
In short: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I once had a code counter that went one step farther than you suggest: it simulated the effect of a very high-quality language-specific data compression algorithm, and computed the entropy of a piece of code. I'm not sure the results were any more valid than any other metric.
Not to mention that you are using human intelligence as the metric for all intelligence.
Ok, I think I see where you are coming from. I am equating how advanced a civilization is with time elapsed since the invention of radio. Granted, there are many other ways to measure "advancement".
Do you agree that an alien race with radio is likely to have possessed it for longer than we have?
I only wish you had expressed yourself more clearly in the first place instead of resorting to calling me ignorant.
Having radios doesn't mean they are more advanced than us. We've had radios for a long long time..
Are you seriously suggesting that a couple of centuries is a long time? Good grief man. I'm speechless.
Anyway, my point still stands that none of this has anything to do with how long it takes for life to evolve.
Had we received transmissions from aliens 50 years ago, we probably could have replied, and I'm sure you'd agree that we are somewhat more advanced now than 50 years ago.
So you are concluding that there is a good chance the aliens are technologically behind us? That's a hell of a leap.
A race with radio must be no more than a couple of centuries behind us, but could be thousands or millions of years ahead of us. Think about it.
Have a close look at the sentence you quoted, and you'll see that the amount of time it takes for life to evolve is not relevant. Hint: only aliens with radios are under consideration.
Besides, considering the size of the galaxy, 90 light years is very, very close. I think it's clear that's all he was saying. He wasn't implying that we could drop by for a visit.
LOC is a good measure of the effort involved in a project, and the complexity of the code base, but not anything else. Particularly, it certainly doesn't indicate how much functionality the code has.
So I consider LOC a metric to be minimized. For a given project, the less code the better, within reason.
I think you double power every 6db. I forget exactly why. It has something to do with the fact that power is proportional to the square of something or other.
The amount of stuff I have forgotten in just 4 years after getting my BASc in Engineering is just staggering.
Re:Check out my new weapon of choice
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I truly wish this was just whining and I could choose not to be affected that way, because believe me, I would in a heartbeat, but it's not a choice.
Wait until you have a baby. Chronic sleep deprivation really helps you sleep through just about anything.
Funny thing is, I still wake up in a heartbeat when the baby makes a noise.
It's much easier than tacking into the light. You just aim the mirror at a 45-degree angle to the sun, to reflect the solar wind toward your direction of travel, and you'll slow down into an elliptical transfer orbit that takes you toward the sun.
Navigating the solar system is not about flying toward or away from the sun. It's about speeding up and slowing down, and letting orbital mechanics do its job.
You would think that physicists should have solved simple problem like this by now. After all, how difficult can this be to prove in a fairly simple experiment on earth?
I see two possible explanations:
Everything would be so much easier if the bumbling idiot physicists had smart people like you to tell them what to do.
They have already done what you proposed, and it worked, so now they want to try it for real in space.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny sig.
Sorry, my mistake.
Sheesh. Please see this.
That name would corrspond to "C+1". "C++" corresponds to "ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING COBOL".
Dude, C++0x is not the proposed name of the language.
Popular CDs are cheap. I don't think you can get "anything" for less than $16.
Suppose I just turned 17, and I have had my driver's license for 1 month. Is it safe to say that a typical person with a driver's license has probably had it longer than I have? Answer: yes, because of all the people out there with licenses, only a small fraction obtained them in the last month. I'm not talking about all people, or all people within driving distance of my home. Only those with driver's licenses.
Likewise, I'm not talking about all alien races, or all alien races within communication distance of earth; only aliens who already have radio. How many of them obtained it in the last 200 years, rather than in the 10 billion years before that? Unless you have reason to believe otherwise, it seems overwhelmingly likely to me that the fraction would be very small.
I hate to make enemies, but if you refuse to discuss this in a rational manner, without glib one-sentence replies or appeals to the authority of your magic statistics, I see no alternative.
You're making it very hard for me to believe you're not trolling me. I can't imagine you actually think I don't know what statistics are.
Listen. I think your claim is that any given alien race is equally likely to be more or less advanced than we are. I agree with that statement. I'm making a different statement. Read carefully: I'm saying that any given alien race with radio technology probably has had it longer than we have. You keep referring to "statistics" which is absurd because we don't have any statistics on alien races. We haven't found one yet.
So put up or shut up. Stop waving your hands and make your point or I'll be forced to conclude you don't have one.
Do you have some explanation for this extraordinary explosion of recent activity?
The only explanations I can think of are:
-
Coincidence. I find this highly unlikely.
-
There is some common element among all alien races that they all required the same amount of time to discover radio. I find this level of uniformity highly unlikely, given the variations among creatures even on our own planet.
-
Races that discover radio tend to destroy themselves after possessing radio for an average of less than 400 years. Obviously we have no evidence either way on this one.
-
??
To me, it seems overwhelmingly likely that most radio-possessing alien races would have had it longer than we have.The problems you are trying to solve really are not problems in practice. Most files don't have many blank lines. Comments take just as long to write as any other code, and arguably deserve to be counted. Statements broken among multiple lines usually indicate that the author thought they were complex enough to warrant multiple lines, and therefore they probably deserve to be counted that way. Et cetera.
And above all else, I don't think people consider a difference in 50% in LOC to be significant anyway, so there's no point worrying about whether people put the curly brace on a separate line. If you ever see someone say that system X is simpler because it has 25kLOC instead of 30kLOC, then you ought to mention that this could be attributed to differences in coding style.
In short: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I once had a code counter that went one step farther than you suggest: it simulated the effect of a very high-quality language-specific data compression algorithm, and computed the entropy of a piece of code. I'm not sure the results were any more valid than any other metric.
Do you agree that an alien race with radio is likely to have possessed it for longer than we have?
I only wish you had expressed yourself more clearly in the first place instead of resorting to calling me ignorant.
Anyway, my point still stands that none of this has anything to do with how long it takes for life to evolve.
So you are concluding that there is a good chance the aliens are technologically behind us? That's a hell of a leap.A race with radio must be no more than a couple of centuries behind us, but could be thousands or millions of years ahead of us. Think about it.
Have a close look at the sentence you quoted, and you'll see that the amount of time it takes for life to evolve is not relevant. Hint: only aliens with radios are under consideration.
Besides, considering the size of the galaxy, 90 light years is very, very close. I think it's clear that's all he was saying. He wasn't implying that we could drop by for a visit.
So I consider LOC a metric to be minimized. For a given project, the less code the better, within reason.
Anyway, it wasn't really a serious suggestion. I was just explaining what I took to be the original comment's point.
You're not getting it. Why use graphic files to display text in the first place?
The amount of stuff I have forgotten in just 4 years after getting my BASc in Engineering is just staggering.
Funny thing is, I still wake up in a heartbeat when the baby makes a noise.
Thanks. I wasn't aware of the distinction--I thought the radiation was just another part of the wind.
Navigating the solar system is not about flying toward or away from the sun. It's about speeding up and slowing down, and letting orbital mechanics do its job.
Are you talking about the story with the race, where they go behind the planet for a while and lose all propulsion, etc? Cool story.
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Everything would be so much easier if the bumbling idiot physicists had smart people like you to tell them what to do.
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They have already done what you proposed, and it worked, so now they want to try it for real in space.
I'll let you decide which one is more feasible.