| Personal background |
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| Computer science student at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. My primary interest lies in artificial intelligence (that is, making machines be able to adapt to unforeseen circumstance based on built-in as well as acquired knowledge, among other things). As a former mathematician, I like the maths most computer science students wince at, which goes well along with operations research but also cryptography and scientific computing. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I do firmly believe that extraterrestrial life exists, simply because it would be "an awful waste of space" otherwise, right?
Now there has to be some notion as to what we should call "extraterrestrial life", too. Perhaps we won't find other humanoids. What we are looking for here (we as in all the people joining SETI@home) is some sign of extraterrestrial intelligence... Intelligence? Now we'll need to define that, too. A suitable approach would be to say we're looking for manufactured signals, such that are not likely to be produced by natural wave-emitting sources.
So all in all, we're looking for some foreign species capable of creating something we, humans, can detect using whatever devices we have been able to produce so far. I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic as to the outcome of such project as SETI@home. I believe it is better to do this than nothing at all; however, there is no telling for sure whether we are on the right track at all.
I believe it is a good thing to know whether extraterrestrials, those "little green men" depicted in many a sci-fi novel, do indeed exist. Benefits, dangers -- I do not believe they come with discovery, I think they are there whether we know of them or not.
@\|:-) |
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