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A review by rick2
Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth by Avi Loeb
5.0
This book slaps. Like, brought Avicii back from the dead to headline Coachella 2021, slaps. Like, found out your state is legalizing marijuana in the same year that the Grateful Dead and Phish are doing a weeklong concert in your town. Instilling a renewed sense of childhood wonder. The way Aloe Vera is on sunburn, this book is to the mind.
Starting with the negatives because they’re sparse. The single major drawback to this book is that it’s explaining very complex mathematical physics for laypeople. As such it’s difficult to really evaluate the credibility of the author without relying on heuristics. The guy works at Harvard. Did research at Princeton. I’m guessing he’s more than your average kook, but I’ve taken it nowhere near the number of physics or mathematics classes to understand the fine points of what is being talked about. My guess is that there are under 100 people in the world who finally could refute the mathematics of what is going on behind the scenes. So most of the math and science here goes straight over my head. I was about halfway through before I realized that the light sail he’s talking about on Oumuamua, is not the same light sail he was talking about shooting a laser at to propel away from earth in earlier chapters. I was very confused as to how the laser powered light sail could be used in a scenario where there were no lasers. Google tells me it has to do with electrons, guess they workout or something.
There are also some analogies and rhetorical bits that rubbed me the wrong way. For example, towards the end of the book the author talks about occam‘s razor and how simple is better than complicated, giving us a reminder not to overfit your model. He gently chides Aristotle for creating tortured mathematics to justify a heliocentric view of the world. Then like three pages later he goes on talking about his black hole equation and how he still needs to “fine-tune the mathematics.” I’m convinced this is a case of my ignorance making me look the fool, I just found this type of thing to be more confusing than anything. Help a mathematical toddler out. Thankfully, most of the similar quabbles I have with the writing are ultimately inconsequential to the general sweep of the book. These fall into what I consider to be more personal frustrations than global indictments of the quality of the book.
The rest of the book is a highly successful IPO of knowledge on three major points.
One, holy fahkong shit is science cool. Do you know that feeling you had as a little kid learning about dinosaurs, lasers, Norse Mythology or any sort of other thing that made you go “oh wow, awesome!” And then proceed to spend the next three months of your little life learning everything about them? This book is that for adults. I’d read a bit, then start googling whatever sweet concept this guy was talking about and end up in a Wikipedia hole deeper than the one I tried to dig as a kid when I was obsessed with big trucks and whether or not I could find China.
Two, a reminder to not gatekeep scientific research because it’s ultimately detrimental to science and society as a whole. This book has one of the better systematic criticisms of deficits in our current science research and post graduate world that I’ve seen. The author discusses how he is not your typical candidate for high-level Ivory tower funded research. But due to a series of fortunate mentors and lucky breaks he was able to contribute significantly to the small corner of the astrophysics universe that he lives in. I thought the personal bits were very well written and humble. Should be a must read for that reason alone for people considering doctorates or going into research.
Third. Dude, aliens. Heck yeah. I thought the book was fantastic in the way it was not solely focused on extraterrestrial aliens. But the author builds a pretty compelling case to point out why it’s possible that evidence associated with Oumuamua could lead us to conclude that we have been visited by some form of alien *something.
Read this book. Geek out and enjoy yourself. Astroarchaeology. That’s a thing this guy talks about. Searching for ancient alien civilizations as a field. Space-mothaflunking-archaeology. Where was this book when I was a lost undergrad trying to figure out what to work on with my life? I could have ended up whatever the equivalence to the British appropriating historical artifacts from Egypt is to the galaxy.
Starting with the negatives because they’re sparse. The single major drawback to this book is that it’s explaining very complex mathematical physics for laypeople. As such it’s difficult to really evaluate the credibility of the author without relying on heuristics. The guy works at Harvard. Did research at Princeton. I’m guessing he’s more than your average kook, but I’ve taken it nowhere near the number of physics or mathematics classes to understand the fine points of what is being talked about. My guess is that there are under 100 people in the world who finally could refute the mathematics of what is going on behind the scenes. So most of the math and science here goes straight over my head. I was about halfway through before I realized that the light sail he’s talking about on Oumuamua, is not the same light sail he was talking about shooting a laser at to propel away from earth in earlier chapters. I was very confused as to how the laser powered light sail could be used in a scenario where there were no lasers. Google tells me it has to do with electrons, guess they workout or something.
There are also some analogies and rhetorical bits that rubbed me the wrong way. For example, towards the end of the book the author talks about occam‘s razor and how simple is better than complicated, giving us a reminder not to overfit your model. He gently chides Aristotle for creating tortured mathematics to justify a heliocentric view of the world. Then like three pages later he goes on talking about his black hole equation and how he still needs to “fine-tune the mathematics.” I’m convinced this is a case of my ignorance making me look the fool, I just found this type of thing to be more confusing than anything. Help a mathematical toddler out. Thankfully, most of the similar quabbles I have with the writing are ultimately inconsequential to the general sweep of the book. These fall into what I consider to be more personal frustrations than global indictments of the quality of the book.
The rest of the book is a highly successful IPO of knowledge on three major points.
One, holy fahkong shit is science cool. Do you know that feeling you had as a little kid learning about dinosaurs, lasers, Norse Mythology or any sort of other thing that made you go “oh wow, awesome!” And then proceed to spend the next three months of your little life learning everything about them? This book is that for adults. I’d read a bit, then start googling whatever sweet concept this guy was talking about and end up in a Wikipedia hole deeper than the one I tried to dig as a kid when I was obsessed with big trucks and whether or not I could find China.
Two, a reminder to not gatekeep scientific research because it’s ultimately detrimental to science and society as a whole. This book has one of the better systematic criticisms of deficits in our current science research and post graduate world that I’ve seen. The author discusses how he is not your typical candidate for high-level Ivory tower funded research. But due to a series of fortunate mentors and lucky breaks he was able to contribute significantly to the small corner of the astrophysics universe that he lives in. I thought the personal bits were very well written and humble. Should be a must read for that reason alone for people considering doctorates or going into research.
Third. Dude, aliens. Heck yeah. I thought the book was fantastic in the way it was not solely focused on extraterrestrial aliens. But the author builds a pretty compelling case to point out why it’s possible that evidence associated with Oumuamua could lead us to conclude that we have been visited by some form of alien *something.
Read this book. Geek out and enjoy yourself. Astroarchaeology. That’s a thing this guy talks about. Searching for ancient alien civilizations as a field. Space-mothaflunking-archaeology. Where was this book when I was a lost undergrad trying to figure out what to work on with my life? I could have ended up whatever the equivalence to the British appropriating historical artifacts from Egypt is to the galaxy.