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I think some commenters are forgetting how science is done. Just because you are researching X does not mean your only output is X. An investment into SETI is

• lovemenot 7y ago
  Some wonderful fiction quoted here. Let me quote another great fiction writer: “Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” ― Douglas Adams
• koheripbal 7y ago
  Additionally, of all the pure science research we do with public money, the discovery of alien intelligence would have probably the greatest impact on human day-to-day life. Many of the other commenters seem to believe the research would fail. .... something we obviously cannot possibly know without doing the research. The only thing prior SETI research has demonstrated is that no one is purposely beaming a signal right at us. ...which is actually pretty informative. ...after all, being totally alone in the universe seems somewhat less plausible than the opposite.
  • oefrha 7y ago
    > greatest impact I would use “biggest” to remove the ambiguity. The impact wouldn’t necessarily be positive; we’ve had enough movies to remind us that. I can’t think of another area of research where there’s a significant chance that the eventual outcome is completely uncontrollable. Btw, I’m a high energy physicist and I totally believe there are other intelligent beings in the universe, simply because I don’t think we’re special. We’re just dusts in the who happen to be able t peek a little into the laws of the universe, that’s all. (As a aside, despite all the particle accelerator generating black hole nonsense, my field is pretty safe for humanity.)
  • goatlover 7y ago
    We don't have to be totally alone, we just have to be rare enough that there's no detectable civilization in range at this time. If you multiply the probabilities of complex, intelligent life evolving that happened to be broadcasting signals into space a few decades to centuries ago (depending on how many light years away they are), then it's a reasonable conclusion that what we're looking for is rare. If the closest ETs are 20,000 light years away, would we ever find out about them? Space is vast and time is deep. We could have missed the most recent civilization in range of detection by a million years.
    • Retric 7y ago
      > multiply the probabilities of complex, intelligent life evolving that happened to be broadcasting signals into space a few decades to centuries ago We have no idea what those probabilities are. Planets where often assumed to be rare until we started looking for them.
      • goatlover 7y ago
        They're not going to be 1, so you're multiplying fractions. Start with us being the only radio broadcasting life out of 3.5 billion years of species on this planet, or how long it took to get to multicellular life on a relatively stable world with only occasional mass extinction events that doesn't turn the planet into a Mars or Venus.
• ekianjo 7y ago
  > High risk with the highest reward. What could fundamentally change humanity more than definitively finding intelligent life out there? That's kind of ridiculous when you look at the odds. It's like saying playing the lottery every single day is a good investment because it's potentially high reward when in fact you are just basically fooling yourself. There is probably close to zero chances that there is any kind of intelligent life living in our proximity (i.e. anything that could be reachable by human means), and even if there is any kind of life out there, what do we do with it if we can't travel there and directly observe it? Also, the reason the odds are against it is that galaxies are violent places and the Earth has been lucky to have been relatively stable climate for a very long time, enabling the development of life. I would bet that Earth-like planets may have the seeds for life elsewhere but get routinely massively disrupted in some fashion by external factors. In any case, resources are limited, and there's sufficient abundance of projects with more tangible real-world applications that will be prioritized for good reasons. > Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu Science-Fiction is just that: Fiction. I hope we don't make investments or bets based on fantasy novels.
• abdullahkhalids 7y ago
  Fundamental physics or esoteric math are funded for several reasons, one of which is that they engender humbleness in society. These fields are among the most intellectually demanding of all, and by trying to do these difficult things, what we should learn as a society is that we are not done and we don't know it all, and can't do it all. SETI particularly has this extra humbleness benefit, because it reminds us as a society that the journey that began from earth at the center of the universe, and is currently halted at, humans are unique in this universe, is not over. If we stop doing SETI, as a society, our egos will flare. If don't stop, we will forever be in the shadows of possible alien intelligences who could be far more intellectually advanced than us. By doing SETI, we also are reminded that our science, and our viewpoint of the world is from a very human point of view, a very limited view, that could bear expanding.
  • mattkrause 7y ago
    > Fundamental physics or esoteric math are ... most intellectually demanding of all Trying to rank the sciences by "hardness" is silly and counterproductive. Biology gets blown off as "stamp collecting", but it turns out to be frightfully hard in its own way. Look at this "map" of biochemical pathways from Roche: http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1 http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1 It's a stupendously complicated dynamical system! This is just part of it, and measuring each arrow requires clever ideas and a heroic amount of work. Imagine how tricky psychology, which deals with the aggregate result of billions of these systems in the body and brain, must be--and the poor sociologists!
    • Mike98345 7y ago
      Physicists study relatively simple fundamental particles. Biologists study the most complex structures in the known universe. Instead of understanding one particle, you're trying to understand structures of quadrillions of particles in an arrangements of mind boggling complexity. Yes you're right. In some ways biology is much harder than physics.
    • abdullahkhalids 7y ago
      I specifically said "_among_ the most intellectually demanding". Also, I was just listing too commonly known fields that are both difficult and economically useless. There are many other fields with problems as difficult as math/physics, but those like biology are economically useful. Which is why public+private funding for biology is, rightfully, many times that of fundamental (not applied) physics/math.
• throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
  > High risk with the highest reward I don’t understand people who think this way. Let’s imagine there is definitely an alien and we find it. Assume it follows a similar tech trajectory as humans. If we find it in the millions of years of pre-civilization we got nothing. Probably don’t even notice it. If we get it the thousands of years before communication tech, we also get squat. If we get it in the couple hundred years between comm tech and the present, we maybe can do something? If we go beyond the present either they have killed themselves, or they’re inconceivably more advanced than us and the idea that we found them before they found us is kind of laughable. The probability that we’re the first civilization to have “found” them is laughable. By all means, space and communication tech is interesting. Go make it. If finding aliens would have some philosophical value to you, go look for them. But to think that they’re likely to change society seems weird.
• thefounder 7y ago
  >> What could fundamentally change humanity more than definitively finding intelligent life out there? Achieving "relative" immortality
  • pozdnyshev 7y ago
    Amazing that we can justify a search for little green men but not that everyone deserves healthcare