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| Personal background |
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| I am a resident of the free city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. I am a Java middleware consultant. I am 32 and essentially still searching for that elusive meaning of it all. I am married and have two mostly wonderful children. While I am not trying to teach myself non linear dynamics, I am trying to read (mostly classics and non fiction) or programming some odd problem that I would like to personally solve (like programming mathematica to solve fermat's last theorm or something along those lines). To most people, my way of life would generally be considered quite boring as it involves very little excitement beyond the excitement of exploring ideas and imagination. However I have a passion for toy trains, aeroplane models and collecting antique books and magazines. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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Does E.T.I exist? I feel that with each passing day that Setiathome comes up blank, the propability of intelligent life else where diminishes just a little (maybe more). And I have started wondering why this would be so. Maybe we are focusing on the wrong part of the spectrum, maybe the size of the search space is too vast, maybe we just dont have the ears to differentiate a beacon when we hear it.
I have started wondering about the possibility of setiathome not finding a signal. What would that mean? On one extreme, it could mean that we are the first instance of an intelligent life - form. I cannot image our universe being so asymmetric as to allow only one place for intelligence to evolve. The other extreme could be found in the answer to the famous question, "why is the universe mathematical?" Could it be possible that there are many classes of mathematics and because of this, a species that evolve one form of it cannot really communicate to another species that specializes in an another unless it discovers/invents a meta-mathematics? Then there are all kinds of possible reasons in between. I think it will be a while before we know which one is nearer the mark. Nevertheless, the first extreme would be the most reasonable as it is the most efficient. I personally would take a position at the other extreme as it seems the crazier of the two.
Running setathome will allow us to pose these questions. I think you will agree that setathome not succeeding is just as important as it succeeding. if setiathome fails, ignoring the boost the neo-theologians/creationists would receive, the more skeptical of our species can the begin fathoming the reasons why it did fail. |
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