| Personal background |
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I have had more different occupations than anyone I know. I am interested in everything.
I currently reside near Vancouver, British Columbia which is Canada's westernmost province.
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I run SETI@home mainly because, like purchasing a lottery ticket, it serves to make the dream more real. I presume that life exists elsewhere in the universe. I rather doubt that we will be in direct communication with any extraterrestrial life forms in my lifetime though. Even so, I do think that it is remotely possible that the SETI search may uncover indications that such life does indeed exist. Other than the satisfaction of curiosity, there will be little practical benefit from our first contacts. Any species of life we encounter will be quite different than any we may have imagined so far. Perhaps even different than we CAN imagine. (Or perhaps absolutely identical.) Benefits will accrue slowly over time. As humanity encounters other civilisations, they will form a spectrum of benevolence, from the helpful, through the indifferent, to the hostile. How will we deal with each? Are we capable of handling even the helpful at this stage of our social evolution? I rather think not.
It would be the height of arrogance for humanity, in our current chaotic state, to transmit a beacon. Perhaps when we have something to offer other civilisations a beacon would be appropriate. We need to overcome our own evils before we deliberately contact others on whom to inflict them. Even if we has some universal Good Thing to offer, and set up a beacon and successfully contacted another species would our help aid or damage those we contacted? Anyone attracted by our beacon would also fall somewhere on that spectrum of benevolence. The beacon should not be lit until we are confident we can handle at least the middle three standard deviations of the expected curve.
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