Profile: Phil Davies

Personal background
I'm Phil Davies and I was born on 8th July 1947 - Roswell Day, I believe?!
I'm married to Rosemary (the photo shows us on Safari in Kenya) and we have
two boys, Alun and Owen.

I took early retirement in early 2000 having worked at Rolls-Royce aero-engines
and then EDS for 33 years - all of it in IT. Since then we have been trying to make
ends meet(!), walking, tidying up the house/garden and doing a bit more travel around
the British Isles than we used to. Casual bird-watching is our joint hobby.
Retirement was justified by seeing 3 new species in the first week, just by
casually strolling around the local park.

I have been interested in 'Space' since I was a boy - an interest stimulated by
the IGY, clear unlit skies where I lived in South Wales and then Sputnik and
Explorer. I was an avid reader of SF - especially 'hard' SF a la Asimov, Clarke
but have recently found little time except for Stephen Baxter and Greg Bear.

Musically, we have enjoyed a renaissance of live gigs at a local pub and like
blues and techno - Chicken Shack one week and then Ozric Tentacles the next!

What else? I'm an ileostomist,an atheist, a Fellow of the BIS and one of my
lifelong ambitions was realised when I saw STS 95 launched.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I actually believe that SETI is a very long shot, but that we should try.
My personal feeling is that life, (or the building blocks for life), is everywhere, but that advanced life is uncommon and that intelligent life is rare. If it wasn't, I believe it would be obvious in some way. Perhaps it is, but we just don't understand it. The idea that life arose on Earth is pure parochialism or geocentrism.

Why is intelligence rare? Because it's not necessary for survival, and may even be a hindrance in the longer term. Intelligence will (probably) take a long time to evolve and the universe is hostile - more hostile than we care to think. We are short-termists - it can be easy to imagine a benign universe when relaxing on the verandah, a cool beer in your hand - but the universe isn't benign, not on evolutionary time-scales.

I think if contact is ever made, it will have a profound effect on us - for example, what if they are similar to us but behave in a way that is deeply offensive to us?
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