Is SETI a bit of a waste of time?

The earth is billions upon billions of years old, and life forms have existed here for almost as long, and only in the last 100 years have we really developed the technology to send radio waves in to outer space hoping for a response from some ‘other’ intelligent life.

I have always thought, however, that if there is other intelligent life out there, they would either be incredibly primitive compared to us, or light years ahead of us (technology wise). What are the chances that they just ‘happen’ to be around about the same as we are, technologically? Capable of sending back a radio message, and that’s it?

If there is life out there, they would be either way ahead of us and have made themselves known by now (or choosing not to show themselves), or a long way behind us and have no hope of responding to our radio messages.

Are those pretty logical assumptions?

{shrug}

You can make lots of perfectly logical assumptions which are all completely different from each other and which will therefore lead to completely different conclusions. If SETI is supposed to be a scientific endeavor, then ultimately it doesn’t come down to “logical assumptions” but to evidence, which is what SETI programs are attempting to gather.

Here are a couple of links that partly discuss some of the practical benefits of the SETI program. The first is easier to read but gives vaguer info than the second. Neither is super informative, and both are kind of touchy-feely but they do show that the SETI program makes positive and practical contributions.

Without checking out Asylum’s links, I always thought that SETI was a bit of a lottery. But, y’know, we could beat the odds. Gimme another bucket of dimes.

I think Michael Crichton said it in his book Sphere: in human history, civilisations which discover each other have hardly ever got on well - European invasions of North America, Australia and Africa all leap immediately to mind. So, I am not really looking forward to news that we have discovered the existence of another alien civilisation. They might have better guns than us.

It’s a good point. But all SETI does is passively listen (or soon, look) to scientifically attempt to answer the question whether other intelligent life exists in the universe. For those who saw the movie “Contact”, you know that our ambient Earthly noise has already been broadcast to the universe for several decades now. That will reveal our presence (or the two deliberate signals we sent in the past), not SETI. Consider SETI as intelligence gathering. :slight_smile:

Anyway, SETI is not that expensive, it’s privately funded, and it is working on one of the Big Questions. I say it’s worth the try. IMHO, humans are explorers. SETI suits us.

Of course, “light years” is distance, not time. :wink:

Mathematician John Casti agreed with the OP in his book Paradigms Lost. He argued that it’s incredibly unlikely that the SETI Project would ever find any ETI.

Here’s an interesting link I found using Casti’s name, but I’m unclear about who wrte this.http://www.winternet.com/~gmcdavid/html_dir/fermi.html#top

Those who feel the lottery is a “stupid tax” should probably also feel that SETI is a waste of resources.

I disagree. I think the search for intelligent life off earth is very important. I think we’ve all heard the “even if 1% of those had…” speech, and if you aren’t motivated by such a speech then what else is there to tell you?

I think it is very unlikely that we’ll find anything either, but it certainly seems plausible that we will find something as technology here improves, and if I had the money I’d happily donate to SETI. As it stands I donate to projects which promote travel in our solar system. Can’t win 'em all, I guess.

I see SETI as having very low risk of success, but with success can come huge rewards. I think its relatively low cost is justified by the possibly massive return.

In Sagan’s book Contact, he makes the point that, on Earth anyways, the super-agressive societies tend to wipe themselves out. Therefore, any alien civilization that has survived for millions of years longer than us will hopefully have made this same discovery.
Of course, both cases are using small numbers of observations (Earth) to make conclusions about large systems, but here’s hoping ol’ Carl was right.

As to the OP, I think SETI is useful. True, it may never yield anything, but if it does, it will be the the answer to probably the oldest question in human history.
And as Phobos said, it’s privately funded and (realtively) cheap. Not a bad combo

So long as SETI tries out new technologies, then I’m game for it. Its ort of fun, and looking at radio waves emenating from around the galaxy is quite useful froma theoretical science perspective.

This seems to be assuming that SETI is primarily about sending signals, when in fact it’s primarily about listening to see if any civilisation is trying to make itself known.
(I think it most unlikely that they would have made themselves known by popping over for tea and cakes due to the difficulties that even a very highly advanced civilisation is going to face in trying to cross such vast distances)

You should look into the Drake equation. This is the analysis that Sagan and many others turn to when asking what are the probability factors in finding ETIs. Some of the factors are pure S.W.A.G.s, like the assumption that any planet that is capable of supporting lifeforms will. Also, the assumption is that technologically cabable lifeforms will develop radio technology.

Me, I think it’s a waste of time, but happily admit that I could be wrong… By-the-by, I’ve never, ever bought a lottery ticket either… perhaps that was a mistake…

That would be true, if all that SETI offered was financial gain.

Instead, it has the potential to answer one of science’s most profound questions.

If there was a lottery whose prize was the answer to a question as profound as, “Is there other intelligent life in the Galaxy,” I’d pony up a buck every week.

The point behind the lottery being a tax on stupid people is that there are much more reliable ways to get a return on a dollar. If a million people each put a dollar into a bank every week, then on average they’ll end up with more money than if the same million people spent a dollar on Powerball each week.

However, with our current technology, if we want to answer the question, “Is there intelligent life outside of Earth,” there is no more cost-effective way to answer that question than to search for a signal with radio telescopes.

It would be the greatest tragedy in history if there was a message that we were technologically capable of recieving, and we weren’t bothering to listen.

I think Podkyne hit the nail on the head with:

This is a wonderful truth. I completely agree.

For those of you who may think it is a waste of time, think of this. The Universe in all its magnificence is only marginally understood. We may think we know there was infact a big bang and we may think we know the universe is expanding and may one day contract, but as a scientist, empirical evidence overrides theory…in all instances I can think of…

Carl Sagan said it as well. It is a mathematical improbability that we are the only ones in the entire universe. And I think one must understand that seeing the universe as a finite entitiy or a place with an end, is fooling themselves. Our Galaxy could be the size of an electron making up an atom of an even smaller particle in a grander scheme.

With this, if you all visit the Berkley home page or even Aricevo (sp?) homepage you can download a SETI screen saver that actually allows your home computer to calculate bits of raw data from SETI and then send it back when it is done, then you start again and get another slice of data. The graphics are wonderful and the knowledge that your bit of data might hold the key, is a nice thought whilst looking at your screen saver…check it out.http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

Are there any plans to launch a search for intelligent life on Earth?

A corollary to Podkayne’s Lament would be that SETI is only a waste of time until it finds something.

Then, it’s the most important thing ever.

Hmmm.

Low cost, high potential payoff, as has already been said.

There are people who don’t believe that having vulcanologists monitor Mount Rainier is cost effective. Of course, there were people who thought the same thing about Mount Saint Helens.

The potential benefits are quite literally unmeasurable at present. We don’t know the likelihood of getting results. (When I was born, we had had radio for only about five decades; it’s doubled its lifetime within my own, and I’m not about to croak yet. How long does a civilization use electromagnetic transmissions? We have absolutely no clue, just that ours has about a century of use in.

Contemplate the variety of information that such contact would bring. What assumptions about the world are we making because that’s how we’re set up to sense the world, and what could we learn from beings who detected or conceptualized differently than we?

How so? I don’t mean this to be cheeky, but what possible difference could it make to know that another intelligent civilization was out there? What would you do with this revelation? How would it change life as we know it?

It’s a bit like winning the lottery, but not knowing how much money was in the kitty and finding out that the money (however much it was) is tens or hundreds of light years away…

It could be argued that the SETI project has already been of benefit; the pioneering SETI@home project, although of course it has yet to detect the little green men, has certainly opened many people’s minds to the possibilities of distributed computing.

Well, in an abstract philosophical sense, it would change our view of the Universe and our place in it. It would complete the “Copernican Revolution”–we used to think that Earth was the center of the Universe, and that Earth was about as old as anything and people had been around from nearly the beginning of everything. Then we found out Earth’s not the center of the Solar System. Later, we found out the Sun’s not the center of our galaxy, either. And our galaxy is only one of many, and not particularly distinguished. The Universe existed for billions of years before the Solar System did. Life on Earth was around for a very long time without producing humans. The dinosaurs dominated this planet for a much longer period than we primates have so far been able to–and dinosaurs were a comparatively recent chapter in the history of life on Earth.

But as far as we know, Earth does have one last set of inter-related things which make it special. As far as we know, it’s the only place with life, and the only place which has ever had life, and the only place which has or has ever had intelligent life. SETI could conceivably destroy all those claims to uniqueness in one stroke. (Other things, like Mars exploration or probes to Europa, could possibly refute the first couple of claims of Terran uniqueness, but almost certainly not the last.)

Conversely, if we carry out SETI programs for long enough and don’t ever find anything, we may have to conclude that this planet and our species are special after all. This too would be a discovery of major philosophical importance.

As far as more practical benefits go, who knows. Quite possibly the only results would be those scientific and philosophical ones, but I guess an advanced civilization might send us the blueprints for all sorts of neat-o new technological toys. That’s probably not the most credible reason for carrying out SETI, though.