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Just in case anyone didn't bother reading the article - SETI is not calling off all of their searches, just shutting down one of its main radio arrays in Mounta
by javanix 15y ago
Just in case anyone didn't bother reading the article - SETI is not calling off all of their searches, just shutting down one of its main radio arrays in Mountain View. Their other time-shared operations sound like they'll continue.
Not really sure why people feel like misrepresenting articles like this all the time, but this is one of them.
- kordless 15y agoI think they piggyback on top of the Arecibo scope, but don't get to choose where to point it.
- T-hawk 15y agoThe article misrepresents itself. "Said SETI Director Jill Tarter, 'that a time when we discover so many planets to look at, we don't have the operating funds to listen.'" It's a pretty naked sympathy appeal for money. "Honestly, if everybody contributed just 3 extra cents on their 1040 tax forms", etc. Anyone around here familiar with the "Iron Law of Bureaucracy" coined by Jerry Pournelle? For every sufficiently large organization, self-preservation and expansion inevitably crowd out the organization's ostensible purpose. SETI's primary purpose is not to find extraterrestrial intelligence. SETI's primary purpose is to ensure the continued existence of and wages paid to SETI. Actually finding the aliens is a secondary goal. (I am not ragging on SETI in particular here, that happens for every bureaucracy. The primary purpose of NASA is to get NASA and its contractors hired and paid, not to explore space. The primary purpose of TSA is to get TSA workers hired and paid, not to secure airways. The primary purpose of unions in education is to get themselves hired and paid, not to educate. These organizations do accomplish their stated goals to some and varying degrees of success, but never at any cost of imperiling their own demesne.)
- joeguilmette 15y agoIf they dont have any funding its going to be kind of hard to accomplish goal #1, right?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mrleinad 15y agoThe primary purpose of NASA is to get NASA and its contractors hired and paid, not to explore space You're joking, right? So you're saying that the purpose of everything is to make money, not to make what those enterprises were built to do in the first place? No wonder capitalism is the root of almost all our evils nowadays.. I feel really sorry for you.
- hackerblues 15y agoIs this not a reasonable suggestion? Any organisation which is unable to ensure its financial survival will by definition go extinct and so be unable to achieve anything else.
- mrleinad 15y agoThere's a huge difference between saying "ensure financial survival" and "their primary purpose is to get paid". One puts money above everything. The other considers it a mean for a higher purpose. Can you tell the difference?
- brc 15y agoYou are extremely correct. It gets even worse for large NGOs without direct government funding - organisations like greenpeace are said to spend 40% of their funds advertising to get next years donations. I don't know if that is urban legend or plain false, but it seems quite plausible. It's also very true for a lot of startups - too much of the founders time is spent ensuring the startup gets more access to funds. It's a terrible trap to get into, and circumvented only by bootstrapping to a revenue phase.
- mhartl 15y agoIt's worth noting in this context that the SETI Institute is a private organization, not a government agency.