The Flake Equation
by Jeff
Image text: Statistics suggest that there should be tons of alien encounter stories, and in practice there are tons of alien encounter stories. This is known as Fermi's Lack-of-a-Paradox.
This obviously is a made-up equation for the comic which is a spin off or reference to the Drake Equation which was previously referenced in this xkcd comic as well. The Drake Equation is an equation devised to calculate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy.
Here's the variable names:
WP = World Population
CR = Crazy
MI = Misinterpreted
TK = Tell _?
F0 = Immediate friends
F1 = Next level friends
DT = Details
AU = Audience
Fermi's Paradox is the contradiction between the high estimation of extraterrestrial life in the universe outside of earth and the lack of hard evidence of such life. As you can see, the image text represents the lack of a paradox because the assumption and the actual facts are exactly the same.
March 24th, 2010
Could be…
TK = Talk
March 24th, 2010
Or Talk Constant.
March 24th, 2010
I meant “Tell Constant”
March 24th, 2010
“Even with conservative guesses…” is an introduction often used when discussing the original Drake Equation.
“… anyone who wants to believe!” is most likely a reference to the X Files.
“I want to believe” is some sort of slogan of Agt. Mulder. He often quotes it and also has the famous poster in his office (which exists in 3 distinct versions in a quick Google search, strange).
Anything on the “Flake” though?
March 24th, 2010
“Flake” is slang for a person who is kind of out there, not very mainstream, often with strange ideas or unreliable.
March 25th, 2010
And in this case, a wordplay reference to the Drake equation.
March 25th, 2010
Ah. Didn’t know that one, thx!
March 27th, 2010
The artist/author perpetuates the myth that only crazy morons report seeing UFOs. The opposite is the truth. If he had bothered to read any of the hardcore studies which have been conducted on the subject (project bluebook special report 14, the Condon report, Dr. Sturrock’s “The UFO Enigma,” NICAP’s two volume study, the GEPAN report by a group in the french space agency, or Dr. J Allen Hynek’s “The UFO Experience,”), he’d realize that it isn’t particularly funny at all, only condescending, arrogant, and rude. This would be like me talking to a physist about quantum mechanics and telling him how stupid it is; I know nothing about quantum mechanics beyond what I have heard in the mainstream press. I have never studied it. What business do I have in saying such rude and condescending things about it to an expert in the field? I don’t see why it’s supposed to be intellectually acceptable, even welcomed, for people to have this kind of an attitude towards the UFO subject, particularly when, like the author of that comic, they’ve never spent any time studying it. This comic only shows how ignorant the author is when it comes to the study of UFOs. It’s insulting and stupid.
April 3rd, 2010
The comic doesn’t pertain to UFO sightings, only specifically to “alien sightings”. It only ridicules people who insist that “unidentified” objects are aliens. Project Blue Book concluded that there was inadequate evidence that any of the UFOs were anything but ordinary objects, astronomical phenomena, or the products of deliberate fabrication or failing sanities.
And no, it’s not like telling a physicist how stupid quantum theory is because quantum theory is a legitimate, recognized scientific field of study. I-saw-an-alien-last-night is not; that’s why ridiculing it is considered “intellectually acceptable”.
November 20th, 2010
I don’t get it. To me it seems to say exactly the opposite: there is no Fermi paradox — statistically it’s very probable there is extraterrestrial life and some of it found it’s way here, and statistically it’s very probable that there are actual alien-human interactions.
It’s only our inability to cope with scary truth (they’re here but either our elites don’t want as to know it, or they don’t want us to know it, or both) stops this from being irrefutable, commonplace truth.
That’s how I read this commic, at least.
April 3rd, 2010
You have clearly never read project blue book, Doug. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Moreover, not all UFO researchers claim that it’s an alien phenomenon. There is enough evidence to show beyond any reasonable doubt that UFOs represent a genuine enigma. Aliens? I don’t know.
April 5th, 2011
T_K = Tell constant. in mathematics, k is commonly used as such.