How smart are SETI@homers?

Andrew Nowicki wrote:
When a reasonable person fails to attain his
goal, he either abandons the goal or tries
a different method of attaining the goal.
An idiot is usually defined as someone who
responds to failure by doubling his efforts.

NASA is an ossified bureaucracy, but they are
not idiots. When their big SETI program failed,
they abandoned it. SETI@homers ignore their
failures and have little if any interest in
modifying their search method. Worse yet, they
seem to believe that some extraterrestrial
civilizations have been sending powerful
microwave beams toward the Earth for millions
of years. Why would the extraterrestrial tax
payers support such an effort? If we ever
receive their message it will say something
like: "Life is absurd. Have a happy suicide."

Do you think ET congressrats (perhaps literally) are different from
ours and actually care what taxpayers think?

--
Why does England need Blair when they could save the
money and take orders directly from Bush?
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3133

So Columbus should have turned back after say 200 or 2,000 miles?

"Andrew Nowicki" wrote in message
...

Please don't feed the troll...

Andrew clearly thinks that he was being clever with his comments. What he
was actually being, was a complete arse. If he has no interest then why is
he in such newsgroups?


"Andrew Nowicki" wrote in message
...
When a reasonable person fails to attain his
goal, he either abandons the goal or tries
a different method of attaining the goal.
An idiot is usually defined as someone who
responds to failure by doubling his efforts.

NASA is an ossified bureaucracy, but they are
not idiots. When their big SETI program failed,
they abandoned it. SETI@homers ignore their
failures and have little if any interest in
modifying their search method. Worse yet, they
seem to believe that some extraterrestrial
civilizations have been sending powerful
microwave beams toward the Earth for millions
of years. Why would the extraterrestrial tax
payers support such an effort? If we ever
receive their message it will say something
like: "Life is absurd. Have a happy suicide."

What the SETI@home system has shown us, is that there are no earth-like(in
terms of electromagnetic broadcast) inhabited system within a distance of
about 400 light years. There are no alien civilisations deliberately
beaming messages aimed at us within about 5000 light years.

This means we know with reasonable certainty that the local 0.000000001
percent of our galaxy does not contain an earthlike civilisation at this
moment in time.

And people consider that as *proof* that extraterrestrial life doesnt
exist?????

Thats like looking at a square inch of the tarmac in your driveway, and
basing on the shorage of whales visible in your sample the conclusive proof
that whales can not possibly exist!

In infinite wisdom Marvin answered:
What the SETI@home system has shown us, is that there are no earth-like(in
terms of electromagnetic broadcast) inhabited system within a distance of
about 400 light years. There are no alien civilisations deliberately
beaming messages aimed at us within about 5000 light years.

This means we know with reasonable certainty that the local 0.000000001
percent of our galaxy does not contain an earthlike civilisation at this
moment in time.

And people consider that as *proof* that extraterrestrial life doesnt
exist?????

Interesting. So far you are the only one to use the word "proof".

You can't respond to what others post so you invent arguments you think
you can rebut.

Let me ask you this. Whether ET civilizations exist or not, what do you
think our changes of detecting them are?

Say we search for 10,000 years, do you think this will increase our
chances?

Thats like looking at a square inch of the tarmac in your driveway, and
basing on the shorage of whales visible in your sample the conclusive proof
that whales can not possibly exist!

You can tilt at all the windmills you feel it necessary to construct,
but if you ask me, you should feel really stupid for doing so.

Proof is for mathematics.

Evidence is for the real world, and unless you are a UFO buff, their
ain't any and there is no reasonable expectation that any SETI search
will generate any. I consider negative evidence as worth having, but
not as an infinite resource sink.

So my question is, what's the point? Don't we have better uses for
our resources?

How much are you willing to spend? How much of your own money have you
spent?

Rich

"Rich" wrote:

So my question is, what's the point? Don't we have better uses for
our resources?

How much are you willing to spend? How much of your own money have
you spent?

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilber...-20040507.html

Personally, I've backed off -- it seems more ethical to help out United
Devices. It's taken a while to realize it but I don't think I'll ever see
the bunny ears aligned just right -- I'm tired of watching snow.

I don't regret the time spent though... if it weren't for SETI at Home I'm
guessing there'd be no United Devices.

Mike

From: Rich
Evidence is for the real world, and unless you are a UFO buff, their
ain't any and there is no reasonable expectation that any SETI search
will generate any.

What's "reasonable" when we have so little information to go on at
present? Is it reasonable to look a while, or to give up alrady without
even looking any reasonable amount? How can you really be sure there's
no reasonable expectation? Do you know something the rest of us don't
know?

I consider negative evidence as worth having, but not as an infinite
resource sink.

I agree. The question is, giving competing uses for the resources we have
at our disposal, what is the best distribution of uses? (See later below.)

So my question is, what's the point? Don't we have better uses for
our resources?

(See later below.)

How much are you willing to spend? How much of your own money have you

seti@home is basically using compute resources on people's home
computers that otherwise go completely to waste, so except for a few
people who consume electricity because otherwise they'd turn their
computers off at night but now they keep them on, seti@home doesn't
consume any resources there, it's free! Only the radiotelescope time
has any significant cost, and that's a small cost too.

Please suggest other worthwhile uses for the compute power.
Factoring large numbers is not a good idea, because that would
basically violate somebody's privacy by cracking their
public-key cryptosystem. Harassing many many people by floods
of e-mail containing viruses/trojans is already being done and
needs to be stopped. What other ideas do you have instead?
It has to be something that requires only a little bandwidth to
download a work unit input data file, then consumes many hours of CPU
time, then requires only a little bit more bandwidth to upload the
result of that work unit.

In infinite wisdom answered:
From: Rich
Evidence is for the real world, and unless you are a UFO buff, their
ain't any and there is no reasonable expectation that any SETI search
will generate any.

What's "reasonable" when we have so little information to go on at
present?

I disagree that we have little information.

Is it reasonable to look a while, or to give up alrady without
even looking any reasonable amount?

Define "a while".

How can you really be sure there's no reasonable expectation?

Either you have a reasonable expectation, or you do not. But one
requirement for 'reasonable' would seem to be a reason. I deny that
you can create ET by the sheer force of your logic, and assert that
any 'reason' must have some observational backing. There is as of
yet no observational backing.

Do you know something the rest of us don't know?

You have the arrow pointing the wrong way, either you have evidence
of ET, and hence a reason behind your 'reasonable expectation', or
you do not. So if you have some positive evidence, feel free to post
it, or post any other evidence that your expectation is reasonable.
So far all I've seen is emotional arguments and logical arguments,
and of course, the ever-present belief argument.

I consider negative evidence as worth having, but not as an infinite
resource sink.

I agree. The question is, giving competing uses for the resources we have
at our disposal, what is the best distribution of uses? (See later below.)

I deny that our spending today is tied in any way to 'resources'.
Govt spending is twice tax receipts and every dollar above tax
receipts is borrowed. Well over 50% of every tax dollar goes to
just paying the interest on the massive federal debt, and every
State is also running at a debt.

We are on a runaway train, and when it crashes, SETI will die along
with everything else.

So my question is, what's the point? Don't we have better uses for
our resources?

(See later below.)

How much are you willing to spend? How much of your own money have you

seti@home is basically using compute resources on people's home
computers that otherwise go completely to waste,

I don't necessarily see a home computer that's turned off as a waste
of resources, and I've seen estimates that a significant percentage
of the electrical power used is to power PCs.

so except for a few
people who consume electricity because otherwise they'd turn their
computers off at night but now they keep them on, seti@home doesn't
consume any resources there,

A few computers?

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/totals.html

Current Total Statistics
Last updated: Fri May 14 06:13:07 2004 UTC

The amount of work done by SETI@home participants, broken down according
to various criteria. These pages are updated every four hours, except
for the domains page which is updated daily.

PLEASE NOTE:

1. Due to potential security problems user email addresses are not
being shown - you can, however, now have your user name link to a URL
that you specify. See the Account Change page to do so.
2. Personal stats are updated immediately. The pages below are
regenerated, at best, every four hours. And due to a currently
overloaded server, processing group/domain stats sometimes takes days.
3. The number of users in the past 24 hours represents the number of
NEW users, not the number of users who have connected within 24 hours.


Total Last 24 Hours
Users 4992198 1255

---

Note, that's 1255 new users in the last 24 hours, as of today.

And the average WU time for the new users is listed in the same
table as 7 hr 16 min 17.3 sec.

So let's see, for the new users alone in the last 24 hours, we
have about (1255*7*0.11= $966) in electricity costs alone.

it's free!

No, it's not free at all, we have around a thousand dollars
electric costs incurred by the new users alone in the last
24 hours. The total electric bill for SETI has to be pretty
large. Roughing it again from the table, we have
(4,992,198 WU * 12HR/WU * 0.11 $/KW hour = 6,589,701.36 ).

That's 6.6 million dollars, more or less, in electric costs
alone.

Only the radiotelescope time
has any significant cost, and that's a small cost too.

I thought SETI was getting a free ride, piggybacking on normal
telescope operations.

Please suggest other worthwhile uses for the compute power.

You've changed the subject completely now. The discussion was
never about "worthwhile uses for the compute power." There are
several other distributed computer projects however, some in
factoring (http://www.mersenne.org/), some let you donate your
computer time to corporations who will profit from it. I
actually did this one for a bit till I found out what it was.

Factoring large numbers is not a good idea, because that would
basically violate somebody's privacy by cracking their
public-key cryptosystem.

Is that what www.mersenne.org is all about? Wow.

No wait, I just found a site listing distributed projects.

http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed...-projects.html

Seems there's a lot more than when last I checked. I assume
you are referring to DES crack.

http://www.aspenleaf.com/distributed...l#helpcrackdes

- MD5CRK is attempting to prove that the MD5 encryption
- algorithm is insecure by finding a collision: two inputs
- which can produce the same digest (encryption method). No
- one has ever found a collision in the MD5 hash, so finding
- one could be a big discovery. This project estimates it
- should find its first collision after 5 billion work units,
- then possibly many more collisions after that. This site
- is also available in German .

Seems they describe the project slightly differently than you
do.

Harassing many many people by floods
of e-mail containing viruses/trojans is already being done and
needs to be stopped.

That's hardly a compute intensive operation, or one done with
donated computer time (unless you know something I don't).

What other ideas do you have instead?

I'm not sure there is any really productive use, unless you
are writing your own applications or stories. Computers are
tools, and any tool can be used or misused.

It has to be something that requires only a little bandwidth to
download a work unit input data file, then consumes many hours
of CPU time, then requires only a little bit more bandwidth
to upload the result of that work unit.

That makes it simple to run perhaps, but it does not make it in
any way a "worthwhile uses for the compute power." That would seem
to be a judgment call. You can make it for yourself, but I would
think you would be standing in thin ice making such a call for
others.

Rich

"R" == Rich writes:

R You have the arrow pointing the wrong way, either you have evidence
R of ET, and hence a reason behind your 'reasonable expectation',

Of course, if we had evidence of ET, there'd be no point in having an
argument about whether looking for ET was justified.

I presume you mean, Is there any reasonable expectation that ET might
exist, thereby justifying a search?

R or you do not. So if you have some positive evidence, feel free to
R post it, or post any other evidence that your expectation is
R reasonable. So far all I've seen is emotional arguments and
R logical arguments, and of course, the ever-present belief argument.

We know planets are widespread. More than 5% or 10% of solar-type
stars have Jupiter-mass planets. Serious selection biases against
finding lower-mass planets, but from the current census it appears
that there are more lower-mass planets than Jupiter-mass planets.

We know of at least two Earth-mass extrasolar planets.

Ergo, it is reasonable to expect that Earth-mass planets are
widespread.

A number of organic molecules, some quite complicated, have been found
in interstellar space and comets and are expected on other solar
system bodies (notably Titan).

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. The earliest microfossils appear to
be about 3.5 billion years old, and there is geochemical evidence
suggesting that life was present 3.8 billion years ago.

While we admittedly do not understand the origin of life, one
reasonable (and fairly widely accepted) interpretation of these data
is that life can originate easily, even under potentially quite harsh
conditions.

We do not know if intelligent life or transmitting civilizations
can/will develop once life has originated. That's the point behind SETI.

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