Summary:
The most memorable bit of information I learnt was about the Drake equation. In the interview, Alyssa posed: "what do you do when you write down an equation where you don't know the values of all of the 7 terms?" Jill replied that whenever the arrow bars are in the exponent of the term, that would be a problem that yields to observation. I think this is a really beautiful concept in that even when you have a model, which is an equation here, you still need to build in room for externalities, such as observation. This links to the David Laibson's interview I watched last week where he mentions that despite his years and expertise in economics, there is so much unpredictability that cannot be modelled.
Question:
I was so intrigued by the Drake equation that I did some research on my own. I learnt that the Drake equation states the number of civilizations with which humans could communicate is the product of the mean rate of star formation, fraction of stars that have planets, mean number of planets that could support life per star with planets, fraction of life-supporting planets that develop life, fraction of planets with life where life develops intelligence, fraction of intelligent civilizations that develop communication and mean length of time that civilizations can communicate. One question I would've asked Jill was whether she believes a simple unweighted product is the right way to go about predicting this, and if not, how she would consider assigning weights.
Video link: https://www.labxchange.org/library/items/lb:HarvardX:68789c56:lx_simulation:1