Born 1973 in Georgia, USA (current location: El Cerrito, California; family origins: Poland, Italy)
Species: Humanoid
Occupation: Computer Programmer at an Animation Studio
Hobbies: playing music (electronic, industrial, metal, punk, goth), computer hackery, photography and videography, drawing and painting, writing, electronics, wine tasting
Beliefs: rationalist; skeptic; pragmatic humanist; analytical centrist
I run SETI@home because I feel that no CPU cycle should ever be wasted (and
I find it disappointing that SETI@home lets the system idle process take 42%
of the CPU time). Computers are relatively expensive to construct and operate, so they may as well be put to good use whenever running. I recycle cans and bottles and such, so why not spare CPU cycles? I am also a proponent of zero population growth, nuclear, ethanol and garbage-to-gas power systems (but not solar or wind, because they are too inefficient), solar water heating, crop rotation, hemp, and anything else that has a real scientific basis for being called an alternative to current patterns of resource wastage. Reactionary environmentalism leads to stupid decisions as much as other dogmas, so I'm only interested in resource management strategies based on sound thinking and research.
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I am willing to consider the possibility that extraterrestrial life exists
or else I wouldn't spend any of my CPU cycles on this project. I am not
sure it is the best chance we have of discovering if there are ETs, but it
is an inexpensive one that we can contribute to, so it's worth a shot. The
statistical liklihood of ETs of some form seems pretty high based on
recent discoveries of water and protobiotic molecules off-Earth, and the
sheer magnitude of other star systems. However, the quantity of star systems
which makes it seem so likely that there's something to find makes it quite
difficult to know where to look.
A benefit of discovering extraterrestrial life would be that it would
shatter some very arrogant and destructive dogmas that humans have about
their supreme specialness in the grand scheme of things. That alone would be
worth as much as any sci-fi technological or scientific benefits that ETs
may or may not bestow upon us should they exist.
A danger of such a discovery is that we'd discover a society with an
equal or greater proclivity for war than ourselves, and equal or greater capacity for it... or that we'd find a fragile ecosystem and ruin it, or that
we'd be the fragile ecosystem that got wiped out by the alien carelessness or microbes or all the other dangers that we've already discovered by mixing ecosystems and mixing human industry with ecosystems here on earth.
Should we send a beacon?
Humans have already sent out 50 years worth of EM signals, plus a few
long-distance space probes. If any directed signals were to be sent, how
would we choose candidate systems given that we're still trying to figure
out how to identify likely conditions for life to evolve? It would be a
shot in the dark. I'd rather see space exploration dollars continue going
to radio telescopy, and also to manned spaceflight with the goal of making "generation ships" and human colonization of
other (unoccupied) planets.
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