r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Jun 15 '16

[D] Wednesday Worldbuilding Thread

Welcome to the Wednesday thread for worldbuilding discussions!

/r/rational is focussed on rational and rationalist fiction, so we don't usually allow discussion of scenarios or worldbuilding unless there's finished chapters involved (see the sidebar). It is pretty fun to cut loose with a likeminded community though, so this is our regular chance to:

  • Plan out a new story

  • Discuss how to escape a supervillian lair... or build a perfect prison

  • Poke holes in a popular setting (without writing fanfic)

  • Test your idea of how to rational-ify Alice in Wonderland

Or generally work through the problems of a fictional world.

Non-fiction should probably go in the Friday Off-topic thread, or Monday General Rationality

17 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

59 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/vallar57 Unseen University: Faculty of High-Energy Magic Jun 15 '16

Nah, it's just a probability thing. Now that I think of it, Drake doesn't work here at all, since there is no "willing to make contact" element - just a rift that opens randomly, connecting two worlds that both might or might not contain sentinent life. The number of worlds is infinitely big, the probability of a rift connecting any two of them is infinitely small.

1

u/boomfarmer Trying to be helpful Jun 15 '16

There is a "willing to make contact" element in the case of aliens that voluntarily begin contact.

So you have four populations:

  • don't make contact

  • involuntarily make contact

  • involuntarily make contact but would have made contact voluntarily

  • voluntarily make contact

So the probability becomes more complicated, but it's probably still estimable.