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[PATV] Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 5, Ep. 23: Funding XCOM (Part 1)
We have little idea about the capabilities of a potential extraterrestrial adversary/competitor, and making appropriate weapons/defenses is mostly guesswork. We could make assumptions based on our own conceptions of how interstellar science would be used for war, but we’ll just build those to kill each other when we can. No special program is needed. If, in the near future, they show up with FTL, or even STL with easy lift capacity and long duration starships, we should be grateful if they don’t just send gray bombs, designer diseases, human-be-gone-rays, or some sort of advanced weaponized social media. We might discover some tactics or weapons that are effective due to quirks of their people, but we have no way to know them.
However, our cultures already fund programs to prepare us for the myriad of possibilities involved with encountering extraterrestrial life. Many, though not all, of these projects are designed to encourage thinking outside our standard biological, intellectual, cultural and technological norms. This ability to conceive of varied motivations, reactions, technological capabilities and cultural imperatives is one of the best preparations, particularly when combined with our own technological evolution, we can make for any future ET encounters. Most of these attempts at preparing humans for the impact of other forms of life, culture and technology are commonly termed “Science Fiction”.
Ok, had to make an account to make this point, but an earth-like exoplanet was found/discovered sometime last year. I cannot remember the designation, but it's discovery was well covered in the news media an on the internet. I think I remember them saying that it was approximately 34 million light years away though, much more then your estimate of 18 million.
Any civilization with the wherewithal to conduct an interstellar war would wipe it's ass on us so hard it's not even funny. All they would need to do is skip over to the asteroid belt, pick a few big ones, drag them onto courses that would see them slam into the earth, and then tell us they're only going to stop them once we've finished surrendering.
No spaceships entering the atmosphere to shoot us with lasers, no mecha stomping around duking it out with the army, no dogfights, no nothing.
Ok, had to make an account to make this point, but an earth-like exoplanet was found/discovered sometime last year. I cannot remember the designation, but it's discovery was well covered in the news media an on the internet. I think I remember them saying that it was approximately 34 million light years away though, much more then your estimate of 18 million.
Their estimate was 18 thousand not 18 million. And they're talking about earthlike planets discovered inside our galaxy.
I have to point out that the old idea of "A big gas planet shielding us from meteors" has been largely dis proven, as it is far more likely for it to redirect meteors out of there normal orbit into ours. Mostly from the Asteroid belt.
I could point out that this equation presupposes evolution and general models of solar formation, and we have little to no experimental way of verifying these and instead are building theories around historical data, creating lines that fit when additional new data could well just blast them. But that's my opinion which could well be faulty and would prematurely end the conversation.
Instead I'd like to point out that 7.5 civilisations seems a lot and that the equation does not factor in one major component: time. What is interesting is not how many civilisations exist at any point in time, but instead how many civilisations we should be able to detect at any given point in time. So what we should be looking at is not how many civilisations exist in the universe, but how many civilisations exist or have existed in the past who sent out transmissions and whose transmissions have reached earth within the last 110 years.
18,000 light years is a fair distance away, but that doesn't matter if that civilisation transmitted 18,000 years ago. Frankly such a 18,000 light year spherical space should be well populated with signals if intelligent life was possible 18,000 years ago and 7 broadcasts were released every 100 years or so.
The only problems you run into then are whether the signal levels are sufficient against background noise to be audible, and how well such a signal could be deciphered at the other end into something resembling intelligent transmissions. You could look at current radio telescope resolutions for the former, and repetition should make the intelligent transmissions easy to spot against random background noise (assuming everyone's yelling GO AWAY over and over to any potential alien conquerors and not just releasing random noise themselves).
Even with 110 years of capture time, 7.5 civs at a time still seems like a lot of electrical noise out there assuming we're nowhere near the front of the intelligent queue considering the "setbacks" we've had. Given that we've not found evidence of an alien civilisation yet, either that number should be lower to match expected optimal evolution-to-intelligence time (or I'm overestimating equipment sensitivity), or the assumption that this evolutionary process can happen again is flawed.
In human history, whenever a more advanced civilization met a lesser one, the greater has always wiped out the lesser.
So, here's hoping that if some extra terrestial beings come knock on our planets door, they don't pay attention to earths history, and actually want to talk not wipe us out. I hope that with the advancement of technology to actually traverse the cosmos, they'd reach some sort of quorum on enlightenment? Or maybe we're the 1st species they've ever contacted and are REALLY excited to talk to us....
There is a theory that states that intelligence is a self defeating genetic trait. By that i mean we wipe ourselves out because we are so intelligent. Just think how habitable this planet would have been if the cold war had turned hot. maybe that's why we have'nt met anyone else?
Of course, then you need to ask "if they've colonized their corner, and gotten here, why would we be a target, and if we are, how could we hope to defend?"
I mean, really, look at, say, a modern nation vs something on Earth, say, 200 years ago. Now, really? late 1700s countries would stand zero chance of holding off a time travelling attack from modern day, given the rapid advance in technology, even if they got ahold of some modern weapons.
We currently have no clue about how to go about practical space travel for people over long distances. Heck, Mars, our closest neighbor, is almost laughable for human visitation in person right now. Definitely worth looking into, but the times involved pose some serious issues when it comes to a human crew. Something we could probably do, but it's not gonna be a habit.
Heck, if aliens visited, could we even communicate with them? Would our level of intelligence even register to them? Would we be anything more to them than the equivalent of an ape who learned sign language is to us? "Oh, these chimps can use rudimentary tools, they're quire intelligent for beasts." "Oh, these humans can formulate complex mathematical theories in their heads, they're like our 3 year olds."
Our ideas and assumptions about the nature of intelligence tend to be rather human-centric. Now this does make sense, because, well, we're capable of conceiving what we're capable of conceiving, and what's beyond that might literally be inconceivable (I think that word means what I think it means). But it makes it difficult to imagine what sort of beings might be truly alien.
I'm not the biggest authority on any of this and what I'm saying may be taken with a generous helping of salt but as a person who has thought a lot about such possibilities, let me give my 2 cents on this.
I'm beginning on an incredibly negative but nonetheless, let's face a very important fact i.e. the Drake equation is a metric ton of bullshit. Not only is there absolutely no research, no hard data, no observational backing or any sort of statistics backing this lump of crap AT ALL. Why? Simple. We have never even seen or observed in any form ANY other lifeforms which can be considered "living" in any sense except for the creatures observed in our own little blue speck. Our planet's life has evolved from very specific conditions which has led us to believe that it is those rules which bring about life. ON THE CONTRARY, it is with these set of conditions that life came about and NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. The very existence of SETI is built upon such a presumptuous and incomplete understanding of life that it is now a tax-dollar-pit where money simply goes to humour people whose hobbies have led us to no known forms of progress. I'd like to think that life is something far more beautiful and complex which evolves DESPITE the nature of our planet than evolving GIVEN a set of rules. To say that only a planet with an atmosphere at this distance from the sun with such-and-such conditions as seen on ONLY our planet is outlandish and has only served to swell the god complex humanity as a whole possesses.
Why is it not possible for life to evolve on a gas giant? Because of "inhospitable" conditions? Maybe there're lifeforms out there requiring no form of sustenance at all. Maybe a civilisation with telepathic capabilities negating the need for any form of communication. Maybe an entire intelligent civilisation has already evolved on an asteroid. Maybe the kind of aliens we see in moves already exists and has just not been found yet. WHO ARE WE TO DECIDE WHAT LIFE IS AND ISN'T?
This is an exercise in futility simply because we know SO LITTLE of the universe and the mysteries of life. Frankly, put that budget into saving us from asteroids. Now THAT is a very real and pressing threat. And let's hope the first contact is more benevolent than belligerent. Even if they do turn out to be "evil", I think I'll put my faith in the thousands of nukes we've hoarded over the last few years.
I agree with giving the money to the blowing up space rocks defense system.
There are really only two scenarios here. Either the civilisation can travel at light speed, or they can travel faster (space/time manipulation I guess).
If they are still constricted to light speed, we will hear them coming. They're not going to jump straight from radios to space travel, so we should see the burst of data coming from their home planet (and them us if they're not dead by the time it gets there), long before the first scout ship finds our planet at the edge of their system conquest.
If they can travel at faster than light speeds, we're pretty screwed no matter what we do.
Better to invest in blasting rocks with a system that can also target other bodies intercepting our planet's orbit, rather than trying to counterattack someone who can teleport us out of our system entirely (or something equally horrid - Now you're thinking with Portals).
Science is fun and I personally enjoy crunching numbers. That said, I'm a bit curious as to why EC would spend an episode on this topic, let alone more than one? Now I respect that it is your show to do with as you wish and I have an indescribable level of appreciation for what you do with the show to help the industry, bridge the gap between all the facets of the industry, and just plain enhance our appreciation by helping us to understand all the things about it that we might not have consider.
Anyways, much respect. Just wanted to voice my disappointment that the week's wait led to a off-topic endeavor and I'll have to wait another two weeks to get some more classic EC goodness.
James? (being the writer of the show) What happend to games man? Seriously i was looking forward to a wonderful analysis of the global games industry. Instead i got this.... Not bad but really id appreciate a little more focus on one topic before going on another tangent.
I actually really enjoyed the video, just wanted to give a quick comment on your 90% number for intelligent life that develop technology. One thing often overlooked is that the intelligent life needs to be able to utilize tools to develop technology, which may not always be the case. Dolphins, for example, do not have the limbs capable of manipulating tools, so no matter how intelligent they may get, they would likely not be capable of developing technology on their own.
While I always love addressing this subject and the Fermi Paradox in particular is fascinating, extraterrestrial theory really isn't what I come here for. Frankly, none of you guys are experts on the subject, you're not addressing it as well as I've seen it addressed elsewhere, and most importantly it's not what I always love to see here — intelligent, high level ludology that's presented in an elegantly compressed format.
I was hoping by the title that this subject would be about funding XCOM: Enemy Unknown and the great risk that entailed, resurrecting what was thought to be a dead genre and modernising it, and what resurrecting genres mean for the games industry, what we can learn from it. That subject would have been original, fascinating, and well within your knowledge base to address; indeed, as would any of the dozens of concepts you've been hoping to address at some point but never gotten around too. I really hope these two episodes don't represent a broadening of the subjects you guys want to address, because you do best playing to your strengths, and carrying on filling this nearly empty niche of high-level ludology in a remarkably accessible and compressed format.
tl;dr: Please don't make this video a trend. I miss my Extra Credits dose of ludology :-(
At 5:50 "That estimate assumes that a civilization occupies (only) one solar system [..]"
Technically, there is only one "Solar System"; our own. That name alludes to the star in the center of our system (named "Sol" in Latin). You should have said "star system"... but, then, we have to deal with systems with more than one star (like in the classic game Little Big Adventure), so... Let's leave it at that.
Not that extra terrestrial life isn't interesting, and not that you don't discuss it clearly, but I've got a bazillion channels on Youtube to learn about everything besides video games, and I've only got ONE EC to talk to me about video games. Out of ideas for shows? How about analyzing the games like Civ or Tiny Wings?
The thing that always stuck to me about the in-game X-COM is that it's not really all that well funded at the beggining. The base of operations is small, the staff is not very populous and its military personnel are all rookies. Even when the alien threat is out in the open, governments seem to rely mostly on their regular military forces, and support for X-COM only increases as it shows its effectiveness (both in funding and in qualified soldiers).
For all those complaining about EX not doing a "game" episode: you're missing the point. They said in the beginning of the video that a game made them start thinking about this particular subject and they began to run with it. A video game about fighting off alien invaders made them consider the place of humanity as a civilization in the galaxy and how other civilizations might contact us. Even if you don't like it, you have to accept that games will give rise to discussions on the deeper meanings addressed in the game and I applaud EC for bringing up the topic. It would be the same as Fallout sparking a discussion on nuclear warfare, or Bioshock causing a debate on genetic manipulation or mental conditioning.
I'm just speculating here, but this episode might be to get some of their science cred back, after the "science requires faith" debacle last month.
It's also pretty likely that this may be filler: there's no way the EC guys can be out of material. There's the horror settings idea from two weeks ago, the Global Games series started last week, mailbags never run dry, and there are at least a dozen episode ideas which were shown in those "future episode topic" slides back in the first (and/or maybe second) season.
Lost interest when the phrase "we've yet to find a habitable exoplanet" hit. I can't really put a lot of faith in a video that doesn't at least do a quick google search before founding intellectual debate.
The technology estimate might be a bit off.
Technology as we know it requires a number of elements that are believed to only be formed in supernovas. The current belief is that our solar system is on it's second life cycle and that in the first life cycle there was no life because it was a bit too turbulent and hot. There was a supernova and a reformation culminating in a re-ignition of a new sun.
It's completely possible for life friendly planet to not have the material resources to for technology, and much more common that the technology resources needed to be found in uninhabitable solar systems.
not trying to rain on your parade, and I'm not even certain that the above is in any way correct (how could we know?) just thought I'd fill in a little science knowledge I picked up along the way.
The technology estimate might be a bit off.
Technology as we know it requires a number of elements that are believed to only be formed in supernovas. The current belief is that our solar system is on it's second life cycle and that in the first life cycle there was no life because it was a bit too turbulent and hot. There was a supernova and a reformation culminating in a re-ignition of a new sun.
It's completely possible for life friendly planet to not have the material resources to for technology, and much more common that the technology resources needed to be found in uninhabitable solar systems.
not trying to rain on your parade, and I'm not even certain that the above is in any way correct (how could we know?) just thought I'd fill in a little science knowledge I picked up along the way.
Awesome Crash Course plug at the end! Their world history course was probably the most consistently entertaining educational content I've seen on the internet. Also, Chemistry is shaping up to be pretty awesome as well!
Lost interest when the phrase "we've yet to find a habitable exoplanet" hit. I can't really put a lot of faith in a video that doesn't at least do a quick google search before founding intellectual debate.
You understand that you can't google "habitable exoplanet" in order to discover one, right? You need, like, telescopes and stuff. It's not that the EC guys couldn't be bothered to google NASA, it's that nobody has yet found a habitable planet outside of our solar system. A couple have been found that might arguably be within the habitable zones of their respective stars, but they're too big to be considered good candidates for hosting Earth-like life.
As interesting as I found this episode I came in expecting a discussion on the in game funding mechanics of XCOM. Interesting episode nonetheless. It seems like the expectation of electromagnetic communication may be a hindrance to the equation.
I can understand why some people might be disappointed about the fact that this isn't discussing video games and the industry, but don't forget this isn't the first time EC has gone off of the game topic, much of what drew me into the show wasn't just the discussing of the industry but the branches off into other topics as well. When you think about it, this is important stuff to the video game industry, from Space Invaders to Mass Effect we have games about the eventuality of meeting other intelligent life in the universe (most of the time killing them when we do), in my opinion this episode is still relevant. For many decades mankind has put serious effort into understanding the galaxy around us, including the possibility of other intelligent life. And while much of it is still just science fiction, how much of the technology and knowledge we have today would have been considered science fiction centuries or even decades ago? To me SETI and theories about extraterrestrial life may not be on the mark, we might not have ANY solid evidence to prove or even know if they do exist, but what I do know is it is a start to finding out. It could be years, decades even centuries before we find out, but I don't believe that should stop us from trying to find out anyways, to attempt to make sense of the galaxy might be well out of our reach right now, but if we aren't asking the questions and trying to figure it out now will we ever?
I can understand why some people might be disappointed about the fact that this isn't discussing video games and the industry, but don't forget this isn't the first time EC has gone off of the game topic, much of what drew me into the show wasn't just the discussing of the industry but the branches off into other topics as well. When you think about it, this is important stuff to the video game industry, from Space Invaders to Mass Effect we have games about the eventuality of meeting other intelligent life in the universe (most of the time killing them when we do), in my opinion this episode is still relevant. For many decades mankind has put serious effort into understanding the galaxy around us, including the possibility of other intelligent life. And while much of it is still just science fiction, how much of the technology and knowledge we have today would have been considered science fiction centuries or even decades ago? To me SETI and theories about extraterrestrial life may not be on the mark, we might not have ANY solid evidence to prove or even know if they do exist, but what I do know is it is a start to finding out. It could be years, decades even centuries before we find out, but I don't believe that should stop us from trying to find out anyways, to attempt to make sense of the galaxy might be well out of our reach right now, but if we aren't asking the questions and trying to figure it out now will we ever?
I have to take issue with a couple of your choices for the parameters. In particular, I suspect that the odds of life developing from single-celled to organisms to more complex organisms is far less likely than you have supposed, so I think your value for "probability to go from life to intelligent life" should be much smaller. It seems like simple organisms like bacteria can exist in a much more diverse set of environments than will support complex organisms, so in practice the odds of going from bacteria to intelligent life is probably vanishingly small.
There are also issues with the stars in our galaxy, and I think you overestimate the number of planets that might be habitable. We need to toss out planets around stars that are too big, bright, hot, cold, old, or short lived to make the development of life reasonble, and then toss out any planets in areas of the galaxy that have too high a radiation flux, and so on. I'm sceptical that binary stars could support habitable planets as well because of the gravitational effects and so on, and a large fraction of stars are binary stars, but it's a lot harder to detect planets in a binary system so there's not a lot of data to go on. All in all, the figure of 5% for habitable planets seems unreasonably large to me, and I'm interested to know where it comes from and how it was computed.
There's also a basic problem with the Drake equation: it discounts the length of time it takes for life to develop, advance, and achieve technological sophistication. There's no particular reason this should be tied to the rate of star formation (you wouldn't expect life to start developing right away after the first stars are formed) and it doesn't seem too likely that the time delay we experienced on our own planet (~2.5 Gyrs from life to complex life and another 500 Myrs to intelligent life) is a fundamental feature of the development of advanced civilizations. It might take an average of 5 billion years to develop intelligent life, in which case we might be the only civilization around at the moment just because we're the first one to develop.
I don't think that funding X-COM would be a remotely useful idea. Even if there are alien civilizations out there:
1) Interstellar travel is really really expensive. This makes it somewhat implausible that we would ever need to defend ourselves from an extraterrestrial attack.
2) If we *did* get invaded by aliens, in all likelihood they will have vastly better technology than we will and that X-COM will have no measurable impact in protecting us.
Now it may still be useful to have people making preparations for a first contact (though we already have SETI). It just seems like a waste of money to have people preparing to fight them. And even sillier to not just use our pre-existing militaries, given that we already spend so much money on them.
Posts
However, our cultures already fund programs to prepare us for the myriad of possibilities involved with encountering extraterrestrial life. Many, though not all, of these projects are designed to encourage thinking outside our standard biological, intellectual, cultural and technological norms. This ability to conceive of varied motivations, reactions, technological capabilities and cultural imperatives is one of the best preparations, particularly when combined with our own technological evolution, we can make for any future ET encounters. Most of these attempts at preparing humans for the impact of other forms of life, culture and technology are commonly termed “Science Fiction”.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
No spaceships entering the atmosphere to shoot us with lasers, no mecha stomping around duking it out with the army, no dogfights, no nothing.
Their estimate was 18 thousand not 18 million. And they're talking about earthlike planets discovered inside our galaxy.
34 million is WELL outside that.
STEAM
Instead I'd like to point out that 7.5 civilisations seems a lot and that the equation does not factor in one major component: time. What is interesting is not how many civilisations exist at any point in time, but instead how many civilisations we should be able to detect at any given point in time. So what we should be looking at is not how many civilisations exist in the universe, but how many civilisations exist or have existed in the past who sent out transmissions and whose transmissions have reached earth within the last 110 years.
18,000 light years is a fair distance away, but that doesn't matter if that civilisation transmitted 18,000 years ago. Frankly such a 18,000 light year spherical space should be well populated with signals if intelligent life was possible 18,000 years ago and 7 broadcasts were released every 100 years or so.
The only problems you run into then are whether the signal levels are sufficient against background noise to be audible, and how well such a signal could be deciphered at the other end into something resembling intelligent transmissions. You could look at current radio telescope resolutions for the former, and repetition should make the intelligent transmissions easy to spot against random background noise (assuming everyone's yelling GO AWAY over and over to any potential alien conquerors and not just releasing random noise themselves).
Even with 110 years of capture time, 7.5 civs at a time still seems like a lot of electrical noise out there assuming we're nowhere near the front of the intelligent queue considering the "setbacks" we've had. Given that we've not found evidence of an alien civilisation yet, either that number should be lower to match expected optimal evolution-to-intelligence time (or I'm overestimating equipment sensitivity), or the assumption that this evolutionary process can happen again is flawed.
So, here's hoping that if some extra terrestial beings come knock on our planets door, they don't pay attention to earths history, and actually want to talk not wipe us out. I hope that with the advancement of technology to actually traverse the cosmos, they'd reach some sort of quorum on enlightenment? Or maybe we're the 1st species they've ever contacted and are REALLY excited to talk to us....
Or are we gonna eat high tech death rays?
I mean, really, look at, say, a modern nation vs something on Earth, say, 200 years ago. Now, really? late 1700s countries would stand zero chance of holding off a time travelling attack from modern day, given the rapid advance in technology, even if they got ahold of some modern weapons.
We currently have no clue about how to go about practical space travel for people over long distances. Heck, Mars, our closest neighbor, is almost laughable for human visitation in person right now. Definitely worth looking into, but the times involved pose some serious issues when it comes to a human crew. Something we could probably do, but it's not gonna be a habit.
Heck, if aliens visited, could we even communicate with them? Would our level of intelligence even register to them? Would we be anything more to them than the equivalent of an ape who learned sign language is to us? "Oh, these chimps can use rudimentary tools, they're quire intelligent for beasts." "Oh, these humans can formulate complex mathematical theories in their heads, they're like our 3 year olds."
Our ideas and assumptions about the nature of intelligence tend to be rather human-centric. Now this does make sense, because, well, we're capable of conceiving what we're capable of conceiving, and what's beyond that might literally be inconceivable (I think that word means what I think it means). But it makes it difficult to imagine what sort of beings might be truly alien.
I'm beginning on an incredibly negative but nonetheless, let's face a very important fact i.e. the Drake equation is a metric ton of bullshit. Not only is there absolutely no research, no hard data, no observational backing or any sort of statistics backing this lump of crap AT ALL. Why? Simple. We have never even seen or observed in any form ANY other lifeforms which can be considered "living" in any sense except for the creatures observed in our own little blue speck. Our planet's life has evolved from very specific conditions which has led us to believe that it is those rules which bring about life. ON THE CONTRARY, it is with these set of conditions that life came about and NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. The very existence of SETI is built upon such a presumptuous and incomplete understanding of life that it is now a tax-dollar-pit where money simply goes to humour people whose hobbies have led us to no known forms of progress. I'd like to think that life is something far more beautiful and complex which evolves DESPITE the nature of our planet than evolving GIVEN a set of rules. To say that only a planet with an atmosphere at this distance from the sun with such-and-such conditions as seen on ONLY our planet is outlandish and has only served to swell the god complex humanity as a whole possesses.
Why is it not possible for life to evolve on a gas giant? Because of "inhospitable" conditions? Maybe there're lifeforms out there requiring no form of sustenance at all. Maybe a civilisation with telepathic capabilities negating the need for any form of communication. Maybe an entire intelligent civilisation has already evolved on an asteroid. Maybe the kind of aliens we see in moves already exists and has just not been found yet. WHO ARE WE TO DECIDE WHAT LIFE IS AND ISN'T?
This is an exercise in futility simply because we know SO LITTLE of the universe and the mysteries of life. Frankly, put that budget into saving us from asteroids. Now THAT is a very real and pressing threat. And let's hope the first contact is more benevolent than belligerent. Even if they do turn out to be "evil", I think I'll put my faith in the thousands of nukes we've hoarded over the last few years.
There are really only two scenarios here. Either the civilisation can travel at light speed, or they can travel faster (space/time manipulation I guess).
If they are still constricted to light speed, we will hear them coming. They're not going to jump straight from radios to space travel, so we should see the burst of data coming from their home planet (and them us if they're not dead by the time it gets there), long before the first scout ship finds our planet at the edge of their system conquest.
If they can travel at faster than light speeds, we're pretty screwed no matter what we do.
Better to invest in blasting rocks with a system that can also target other bodies intercepting our planet's orbit, rather than trying to counterattack someone who can teleport us out of our system entirely (or something equally horrid - Now you're thinking with Portals).
Anyways, much respect. Just wanted to voice my disappointment that the week's wait led to a off-topic endeavor and I'll have to wait another two weeks to get some more classic EC goodness.
I was hoping by the title that this subject would be about funding XCOM: Enemy Unknown and the great risk that entailed, resurrecting what was thought to be a dead genre and modernising it, and what resurrecting genres mean for the games industry, what we can learn from it. That subject would have been original, fascinating, and well within your knowledge base to address; indeed, as would any of the dozens of concepts you've been hoping to address at some point but never gotten around too. I really hope these two episodes don't represent a broadening of the subjects you guys want to address, because you do best playing to your strengths, and carrying on filling this nearly empty niche of high-level ludology in a remarkably accessible and compressed format.
tl;dr: Please don't make this video a trend. I miss my Extra Credits dose of ludology :-(
Technically, there is only one "Solar System"; our own. That name alludes to the star in the center of our system (named "Sol" in Latin). You should have said "star system"... but, then, we have to deal with systems with more than one star (like in the classic game Little Big Adventure), so... Let's leave it at that.
It's also pretty likely that this may be filler: there's no way the EC guys can be out of material. There's the horror settings idea from two weeks ago, the Global Games series started last week, mailbags never run dry, and there are at least a dozen episode ideas which were shown in those "future episode topic" slides back in the first (and/or maybe second) season.
Technology as we know it requires a number of elements that are believed to only be formed in supernovas. The current belief is that our solar system is on it's second life cycle and that in the first life cycle there was no life because it was a bit too turbulent and hot. There was a supernova and a reformation culminating in a re-ignition of a new sun.
It's completely possible for life friendly planet to not have the material resources to for technology, and much more common that the technology resources needed to be found in uninhabitable solar systems.
not trying to rain on your parade, and I'm not even certain that the above is in any way correct (how could we know?) just thought I'd fill in a little science knowledge I picked up along the way.
Technology as we know it requires a number of elements that are believed to only be formed in supernovas. The current belief is that our solar system is on it's second life cycle and that in the first life cycle there was no life because it was a bit too turbulent and hot. There was a supernova and a reformation culminating in a re-ignition of a new sun.
It's completely possible for life friendly planet to not have the material resources to for technology, and much more common that the technology resources needed to be found in uninhabitable solar systems.
not trying to rain on your parade, and I'm not even certain that the above is in any way correct (how could we know?) just thought I'd fill in a little science knowledge I picked up along the way.
You understand that you can't google "habitable exoplanet" in order to discover one, right? You need, like, telescopes and stuff. It's not that the EC guys couldn't be bothered to google NASA, it's that nobody has yet found a habitable planet outside of our solar system. A couple have been found that might arguably be within the habitable zones of their respective stars, but they're too big to be considered good candidates for hosting Earth-like life.
Can we fund some kind of deathray project?
There are also issues with the stars in our galaxy, and I think you overestimate the number of planets that might be habitable. We need to toss out planets around stars that are too big, bright, hot, cold, old, or short lived to make the development of life reasonble, and then toss out any planets in areas of the galaxy that have too high a radiation flux, and so on. I'm sceptical that binary stars could support habitable planets as well because of the gravitational effects and so on, and a large fraction of stars are binary stars, but it's a lot harder to detect planets in a binary system so there's not a lot of data to go on. All in all, the figure of 5% for habitable planets seems unreasonably large to me, and I'm interested to know where it comes from and how it was computed.
There's also a basic problem with the Drake equation: it discounts the length of time it takes for life to develop, advance, and achieve technological sophistication. There's no particular reason this should be tied to the rate of star formation (you wouldn't expect life to start developing right away after the first stars are formed) and it doesn't seem too likely that the time delay we experienced on our own planet (~2.5 Gyrs from life to complex life and another 500 Myrs to intelligent life) is a fundamental feature of the development of advanced civilizations. It might take an average of 5 billion years to develop intelligent life, in which case we might be the only civilization around at the moment just because we're the first one to develop.
1) Interstellar travel is really really expensive. This makes it somewhat implausible that we would ever need to defend ourselves from an extraterrestrial attack.
2) If we *did* get invaded by aliens, in all likelihood they will have vastly better technology than we will and that X-COM will have no measurable impact in protecting us.
Now it may still be useful to have people making preparations for a first contact (though we already have SETI). It just seems like a waste of money to have people preparing to fight them. And even sillier to not just use our pre-existing militaries, given that we already spend so much money on them.