| Personal background |
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Location - Malibu, California
Occupation - Investment management
Education - Princeton, undergrad; University of Chicago, MBA
Age - 30
Seti is running on - 3 computers in my office at work, 2 at home, and 1 at my fiance's office |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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There is life out there. It's not even a matter worth debating. Given the literally billions or trillions of stars in the universe, and therefore the even greater number of planets, to assume that Earth is some kind of cosmic singularity is incredibly naive.
It's also a little naive to assume that "they" look something like "us". Or something like what Hollywood has protrayed them to look like. Or, that they are all-knowing, more advanced, peaceful, and happy to meet us.
Although I run the Seti software in the hopes that we might meet an advanced, benevolent race someday, I am 99.999% sure that humankind will want to / have to / need to obliterate whatever we find. Given the natural need of life, especially intelligent life, to expand, humans will try to colonize any planet we find that is capable of supporting us, and "they" will undoubtedly try to do the same to Earth.
Here on Earth, we wipe out harmless whales, buffalo, birds, and thousands of other creatures because it suits our needs of expansion or food production. Can you imagine what would happen if we came across a form of life that is capable of fighting back or resisting our expansion? To assume that anything but total war would result immediately is, again, naive.
The movie "Independence Day" came closest to getting it right: In that film, the "aliens" tried to do to Earth precisely what WE have been doing to Earth throughout human history -- namely mindless expansion, natural resource exploitation, and the enslavement or elimination of any species or other human race that stood in our way.
While I'll keep my fingers crossed that we find a more advanced civilization that shares technology with us or acts in a paternal fashion (I AM generally an optimist), the realist in me fears that we might not be happy with what we find out there. |
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