Is SETI Worth It?

njdube sent in this Space.com story about the money behind SETI that opens, "It's a risky long shot that burns up money and might never, ever pay off. So is searching for intelligent creatures on unseen worlds worth the candle? After all, aren't there better ways to use our monies and technical talents than trying to find something that's only posited to exist: sentient beings in the dark depths of space?"

Comments

S.E.T.I

[imstanny]

SETI - The result of having failed to find intelligent life on Earth.

Re:S.E.T.I

[BadAnalogyGuy]

OJ is futher along in finding the real killers than SETI is in finding intelligent life.

Re:S.E.T.I

[wwwrench]

Too true.
I think SETI is really a waste for a completely different reason. And it's basically this: what should we do if we actually did find life out there? And the sensible answer is: hide. Seriously, the chance that contact with space aliens will bring us benifits is tiny. If they have the ability to visit us, then the far more likely scenario is that they will exploit/conquer us. You just have to look at our own history of contact between various cultures to figure that out. And in this case, it would be far worse, because the difference in technology, culture would be far greater than that between say, Europeans and indigenous people in North America/Australia.

So, is it sensible to spend money looking for creatures which if we find them, we should ignore? Better to spend the money figuring out how to hide!

Re:S.E.T.I

[afaik_ianal]

Haven't you seen any sci fi movies? To be intelligent enough to travel across space, they must be willing to shower us with gifts of love and candy*.

(*) "Love and candy" in alien worlds usually takes the form of nukes and anti-matter bombs, but that's beside the point.

Re:S.E.T.I

[bmo]

"You just have to look at our own history of contact between various cultures to figure that out. "

I got a +5 funny before for mentioning this, but the only reason why we didn't _eat_ the conquered on a massive scale was that we recognized the conquered as our own species and have taboos about it.

What's to stop a sufficiently advanced civilization, outside of biochemical compatibility, from viewing us as "the other white meat" with fava beans and a nice chianti.

"Look. I tell you what. Those who want to can eat Johnson. And you, sir, can have my leg. And we make some stock from the Captain, and then we'll have Johnson cold for supper."

--
BMO

Re:S.E.T.I

[fyngyrz]

This is true, but it's only because it's a binary solution set. Until or unless SETI finds a transmission, it will have made no progress in finding one, only in not finding one.

However, once it finds one, numerous benefits accrue; some certain, some with varying degrees of probability.

First of all, we learn that we're not alone, that we're not unique. Numerous modes of thinking posit that we are alone, or not, and those modes will receive solid underpinnings instead of speculation. This has general value for future inferences, even for current inferences where confirmation agrees. Like most of science, where this may lead may not be immediately obvious, but again like most of science, the odds are high that it will lead somewhere productive. And this consequence is certain. For instance, it would mean a great deal to me to have something I consider to be extremely likely but impossible for me to personally confirm, confirmed by objective facts.

Second, it will have identified one of two things for us: Either we have revealed a civilization that is just going through radio and is feeling pretty confident about itself and others, or it will have revealed a civilization that is much further along, and is interested in contact. The former would be a pretty huge co-incidence, because broadcast radio is inefficient (witness our going to cable to preserve bandwidth, optical to increase it, satellite to ground to bolster reliability and coverage, various beam methods like lasers and tight focus radio to save energy and achieve reliability), so the odds strongly favor the latter - the 100 year or so window we used broadcast radio is closing as we consider this today. So most likely, we'll have found life that is much further along than we are technologically, and looking for other life. It isn't a huge stretch to assume that such a find would come hand in hand with new technology for us. After all, if they want us to hear them, either they want to talk, or they want to get rid of us. It seems like a lot of work to try to get rid of things you don't even know are there, doesn't it? Inefficient. And it doesn't fit the mold... if they're worried about us, then letting us know they are there in such a way that they can't tell if we know or not is imprudent. So again, the odds fall on the side of life that can and is willing to benefit us.

Third (and we're getting lower on the probability scale here, but still) the transmission itself may contain immediately useful information for us. It could be anything. Make widgets like this. Don't go to the 3rd planet of Beta Centauri. Cut it out with the nukes, assholes. Efficient space drive drive works like so. Your Aishwara Rai, can we buy her? 42.

Lastly, and least likely, we could be handed a paradigm shift. Antigravity. FTL travel of any flavor. Additional physics. How to clean up our atmosphere. Things we cannot even vaguely imagine.

All of these things only require reception. If we add transmission back to a known source of an intelligent signal, now we're talking interaction. That could be wild as well.

There may be gold mines for linguistics; for biology; for physics and all the sciences that are really corners of physics (chem, electronics, nuclear, etc.)

And in the meantime, SETI does something else for us. It serves as a focal point for a certain type of hope, a bright optimism, that I would really rather not see go away.

So if you really want to cut funds, I suggest that the place to do it is in funding, oh, I don't know, how about a certain war in the middle east? Maybe quit funding the "drug war" against our own citizens? Either of those would benefit most people (not arms manufacturers or those in the jobs that have sprung up for our most recent go at prohibition, of course, but I guess I don't really give a darn about those particular people for some reason.)

Sure would be nice that if we did find other life, that we weren't quite so involved in trying to kill and/or re

Re:S.E.T.I

[MaskedSlacker]

This isn't really an accurate characterization. A more correct way of stating it would be to say that all biological activity on this planet is characterized by reproductive rates exceeding what the available resources can sustain--leading to conflict over said resources. That realisation, courtesy of Thomas Malthus, is really the foundation of Darwin's theory of evolution (well, that and the notion of trait variation and heritability of traits, but whatever).

Re:S.E.T.I

[ultranova]

And aliens would have the same psychology as we do?

Actually, in all likelyhood... yes.

Any advanced alien race must be a pack-forming species. The reason is simple: a race of loners would never manage to get culture going, since that requires communication between individuals. It would never reach the stars; in fact it would never even reach metal-working.

Living in a pack puts certain demands on psychology. Pack members can't just pursuse their own interests, but must take each other into account, if the pack is to function. In other words, pack-forming animals have an evolutive pressure towards morality. This pressure is made ever stronger the higher technology rises, because any misbehavior is likely to result in far direr consequences when the misbehaving person has access to bombs than if he only had access to stone clubs. That is the real reason why the current society is nicer than, say, the Roman Empire: we aren't nicer people, we simply don't have a choice.

People always go on about how aliens can be totally incomprehensible to us, but that is just plain untrue. They operate on the same reality, under the same laws of physics and logic, as we do. If they are succesfull enough to reach the stars, then their psychology must conform to those laws; and that makes it similar to ours. Self-preservation, reproduction, social interaction: those are the things any succesfull intelligent species must base their psyche on. There may be more, of course, but these are the absolute minimum concepts all alien minds must have.

Re:S.E.T.I

[Digital Vomit]

Ah, the old "religions will crumble if we find intelligent life elsewhere" bit.

How interesting it would be if we finally make contact with an alien race and the first thing they ask us is whether or not The Creator has sent a "Messiah" to us yet.

Hey, it worked in Star Trek

[danbert8]

Didn't you see First Contact? As soon as we find aliens, world peace occurs. Can't you please think of the children?

The first trolls failed to RTFA

[ducomputergeek]

It's written by Seth Shostak, who has been one of the people involved with SETI for a number of years and is in favor of continuing the research. Last time I checked SETI is now a non-profit that uses donations to fund their research. If that's what people want to donate their money to and think it is worth while, then let it continue.

The problem is that SETI is broken.

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

The truth of the matter is that we have no serious SETI effort.

All current SETI activity is built on the assumption that someone is trying to talk to us. Our detection capability is pretty much limited to an alien civilization already knowing we exist and directing extremely powerful, focused broadcasts directly at Earth.

Basically, given our current SETI programs, we couldn't detect Earth's civilization even if we were in the next star system over. We leak a lot of signals, but over vast interstellar distances these signals are weak, can be lost in background noise, and would require a huge antenna or array of antennas to receive. In other words, the we depend on aliens having their own SETI that is vastly more advanced than our own.

A real SETI project would cost many orders of magnitude more, and would require radio telescopes many orders of magnitude more sensitive than we have now. We're talking something on the level of making a crater miles across and making it into a radio dish. Arecibo is puny in comparison to what we need.

Blanketing an area the size of Rhode Island with a dish array might also work (though it would have to be very, very precisely controlled).

Any serious SETI effort that hopes to find someone that doesn't know we're here already and wants to talk to us will cost many many billions of dollars.

Entertainment vs. SETI vs. Coffee vs. whatever

[justsomecomputerguy]

There are soooo.... MANY other things we could could spend three million a year on.

And in fact WE DO!

HUNDREDS of Millions a year on Video Games, Movies, Sporting events

HUNDREDS of Millions a year on "Gourmet" Coffee.

Not to mention how much is spent on Drugs, Sex and Rock and Roll.

Instead of that we could be spending that on medical research, feeding the poor, funding education, etc...

BUT we don't. So, as long as we're "letting" truly HUGE amounts of money be spent by society on "mindless pursuits", why not let a small section of society spend a RELATIVELY SMALL amount of money on a totally useless, wasteful, studid, wonderful, amazing search for life on other planets.

So, unless and until the majority of society is willing to de-fund ALL the sports, entertainment, gourmet coffee, (keep inserting names of more "non-essentials" here) hands off SETI!

Reminds me of....

[edwardpickman]

This reminds me of a running argument I have with my retired father. He complains about NASA being a waste of his tax dollars while he sits in front of a satelite TV. Refuses to see the irony.

Meta to discussion: who is this "we" you speak of?

[phunctor]

I'm depressed that nobody is challenging the paradigm that "we" should decide whether SETI or anything else for that matter is "worthwhile". The mere effort presumes the existence of one true value system that trumps all others. Jihad, anybody?

How about Bob and Carol spend their money on SETI, Ted spends his on protein folding, and Alice spends hers on beer? Because it's their money and their choice.

"Should" expresses a moral judgement. When collectivists use it they are advocating, in the end, unlimited social violence against those who will not comply. Pol Pot wan't bugfuck crazy, he was just consistent.

--
phunctor

Compare the costs (and formatting!)

[Dukaso]

Let me put it like this:

SETI costs us, at most, $5,000,000 a year to fund.
The war against Boogiemen, in Iraq alone, is costing us ~$116,750,000,000 a year to fund.
SETI's lifetime cost thus far has been 115,000,000 (assuming 5million/year. 5mil is the most it costs per year, 4 million the least)

Mathtime! 115,000,000 / 116,750,000,000 = 0.000985010707

Yes, the lifetime cost of SETI has been but 0.000985010707% of the cost of ONE YEAR in Iraq.

.001% of the cost of one year of a bullshit war to fund a search for proof that we're not alone in the universe?
Hell yes.

Hell
Yes

Hell
Fucking
Yes

Sources:
http://www.space.com/searchforlife/seti_faq.html
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html

Re:Meta to discussion: who is this "we" you speak

[donaldm]

If you RTFA the Government donation "was" prior to 1993 was approx 3 cents for every person in the US. After 1993 Government spending on SETI is "zero", so all monies donated to SETI is by private individuals. There are many ways of contributing, one would be to donate money, the other donate a portion of your PC clock cycles and therefore electricity which someone will have to pay for eventually. In some way this is like "Folding at Home" except there are more perceived tangible results to be had but you still have to make a decision to provide the service, however like SETI no one forces you. Basically it is your choice your money and the Government is not involved.

Re:Madlibs!

[darthflo]

if we took the 600 billion (approx.) so far spent on space and instead spent it directly on research, how would it compare?

We would've probably gotten more. But there's another question:
If we took the trillions ($800bn spent on Afghanistan and Iraq alone, estimates range up to $2.4tn (some $8'000 per American citizen) for Afghanistan and Iraq in a ten-year window) spent on Bushes and instead spent it directly on research, how would it compare?
As opposed to the space programme, no great discoveries should and are expected. It's pretty hard to even find a reference point for comparison as the only direct effect of the U.S' government's warmongering seems to be anti-americanism throughout the world (including most intelligent americans ). It's four times as expensive in an I-don't-know-how-much shorter timeframe. Seriously, if you're concerned about what's being done with your tax money, rage against the military, not science funding.