Are the SETI kooks still at it?

Llanzlan Klazmon:
faith = accepting a proposition without evidence. Get it. Looking for
evidence of something implies that you do not have faith.

Davoud:
Your definition is faulty. You might as well get used to this:
/everyone/ has faith. A scientist looking for evidence of something has
faith that it /may/ be findable. She has /faith/ in her
instruments/technique/mental abilities. She even has faith in her
unproven theory; otherwise she wouldn't be seeking evidence to support
it.

Likewise, anyone who expects to live to see tomorrow has faith. There
is no evidence that any one of us will see tomorrow, though there may
be evidence to the contrary for certain individuals -- the very ill and
the very old, for example.

Llanzlan Klazmon:
Look up equivocation fallacy. You are using a different meaning of the word
faith. Stepping out to cross the road after looking and listening to check
that no vehicles are approaching can be called an act of faith. But it
based on past experience, observation and the expectation that the world
works in a consistant way. This has nothing to do with the term faith as
used in the religious sense.

This is a matter of opinion, not of fact. You can put as fine a point
on the definition as you wish, but it's all faith. I don't think that
religious faith -- believing in the unproven and possibly unprovable --
is in any way distinct from the examples I gave. And it certainly isn't
different from faith that there are other intelligences in the
universe, which is unproven and possibly unprovable.

Speaking of which, I have no problem with privately funded SETI, but
I'm with the majority on this one -- I don't want my tax dollars
funding SETI; there is much more important science to be funded. I have
very little /faith/ in the chance of success. As for the idea that
there /could/ be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, as far as
I know this is true. SETI is a perfect racket for the /SETI/ /faithful/
, because they can justly claim that there is hope until every place in
the universe that could support intelligent life has been inspected.

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

Brian Tung wrote:
Martin Brown wrote:
We would never have discovered pulsars without the advent of large
phase switched aerial arrays. A signal trace of regular pulses from the
Crab nebula pulsar that was initially labelled LGM after it was shown
to be keeping sidereal time .....

BTW, the pulsar Bell discovered was in Vulpecula, not Taurus.

Ooops! Yes - so it was.

30Hz would not have shown up at all on a chart recorder.

Cheers,
Martin Brown

Martin Brown wrote:
BTW, the pulsar Bell discovered was in Vulpecula, not Taurus.

Ooops! Yes - so it was.

I made the same exact mistake in one of my essays, so I remember it
now.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
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Tim Killian wrote:
Llanzlan Klazmon wrote:

Faith in the religious sense means accepting a proposition as true without
supporting evidence. Looking for evidence supporting a proposition is L-A-
C-K of F-A-I-T-H. The real reason you hate the idea of SETI is the fear
that it would actually succeed. Your entire superstitionist paradigm would
be destroyed by such a discovery.

Klazmon.

And there in lies the problem. The book burners of the US religious
right theocracy seek to destroy all science that might challenge the
"omnipotence" of their insecure and jjealous God (the one who faked the
universe to look much older than it's 6000 years).

Faith in the general sense (no religious overtones needed) is a
presumption of truth in knowledge, and the belief that efforts of the
faithful will be rewarded in a broader revelation of that truth. Saying
that SETI is a faith-based exercise does not imply that SETI researchers
are in any way religious or spiritual, but most people will agree that
some strong presumptions are involved, generally a no-no in science.

If they had faith they would not need to do the experiment at all. They
could just announce that they "knew" it to be true. Alleged alien
abductees and UFOlogists are in this camp.

SETI is a scientific experiment. They will either get a positive result
one day or they will go on looking forever (or until they decide to
give up in disgust). I reckon looking for green (or other coloured)
slime on other solar system bodies with atmospheres is a much better
bet for finding non-terrestrial life.

The other prospect is to detect planetary atmospheres by spectroscopy
with enough resolution to detect out of equilibrium conditions that are
the characteristic signature of life. Scientific instruments with the
required light grasp and resolution are already on the drawing board.
Mars also deserves a retry with modern analysis techniques. The Viking
experiments were very crude by comparison to what we can do now.

It's humorous to me that many here on saa vehemently deny the element of
faith that is plainly obvious in the SETI work. Why the anger and
denial? I think we can all agree that SETI is a harmless diversion,
science's version of Wiccans dancing nude in a meadow.

You are terrified that they might succeed. That is why you protest so
much.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Rich wrote:
Brian Tung wrote:
Rich wrote:
Anyone who has looked at the math for this knows it is a foolish waste
of time, given current technology. Maybe in 500 years we'll be in a
position to scan process at a high enough speed to "find" something.
Not now.

The mathematics says no such thing. The mathematics is a fairly
straightforward application of Little's Result, but with most of the
variables having very loose bounds. Therefore, it cannot be used to
conclude anything with much certainty, positive or negative.

So assuming there is a continious signal coming from "A" source, how
long at the current rate until someone finds it, given the current
technology?

A continuous signal would not stand out so much from the natural
background unless it was very narrow band, but something that was
modulated with a TV frame rate would probably be caught by existing
pulsar surveys (assuming it was at a detectable level).

ATNF survey at Parkes currently leads the field in this with one new
pulsar discovered on average for each hour of dedicated observing time
on the scope.

http://www.csiro.au/news/mediarel/mr1998/mr98259.html

And there is no harm in letting the SETI people plough through the same
raw datasets using different wider search parameters in the hope of
finding any artificial signals that the more tightly constrained pulsar
search would miss. Whole sky pulsar surveys with the big dish
instruments and phased arrays have been going on since 1967. Over 1000
pulsars have been found to date and they are getting increasingly
fainter detection limits.

The SETI search problem happens to be amenable to a distributed
computing approach where participants process a smallish package of
data and pool their results. Their algorithms are pretty much optimal
now so only using bigger aerials can help in future.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Martin Brown wrote:
Tim Killian wrote:

Llanzlan Klazmon wrote:


Faith in the religious sense means accepting a proposition as true without
supporting evidence. Looking for evidence supporting a proposition is L-A-
C-K of F-A-I-T-H.

Ridiculous, and betrays a serious lack of knowledge regarding the
history of either philosophy or religion.


The real reason you hate the idea of SETI is the fear
that it would actually succeed. Your entire superstitionist paradigm would
be destroyed by such a discovery.

Klazmon.


And there in lies the problem. The book burners of the US religious
right theocracy seek to destroy all science that might challenge the
"omnipotence" of their insecure and jjealous God (the one who faked the
universe to look much older than it's 6000 years).

And another voice jumps in to scream "heresy!" This debate has so little
to do with religion that I wonder if you don't have some sort of a minor
psychosis that forces you to see theists under every bed, like
communists in a bygone era. I haven't heard *any* religious folks
condemning SETI as anti-scriptural. That's not to say that they're not
out there - it's just that they're not driving this question. I'm not a
fundamentalist or a bible thumper of any variety. I just think that the
odds of SETI's success are so long as to make it a virtual waste of
time. I also notice an almost religious determination to continue the
program among people who oughtta know better.

And by the way - your pronouncements of the dangerous religious state on
this side of the Atlantic are frankly annoying at times. We have a very
nice constitution (which y'all lack in the UK, by the way) that prevents
the religious nuts here from doing too much damage. The overwhelming
majority of religious people in the US pay their taxes and don't steal
from each other. Big deal. The impact of their theology on our political
structure is an unfocused concern over morality. That's not a problem
unless you're a weirdo.


It's humorous to me that many here on saa vehemently deny the element of
faith that is plainly obvious in the SETI work. Why the anger and
denial? I think we can all agree that SETI is a harmless diversion,
science's version of Wiccans dancing nude in a meadow.


You are terrified that they might succeed. That is why you protest so
much.


Oh, bull. Killian's metaphor is uncomfortably apropos.

Rich wrote:
I remember back in the 1990s they were using computers with spare
processing power to analyze signals to look for extraterrestrial life.
I read the Drake Equation and wonder, how do you have a scientific
theory when EVERY term in an equation is an unknown variable?
I hope NASA, etc, never put any money into this rubbish.

1. Do yourself a favour and google the "WOW! signal". It was a
'perfect' alien signal but it didn't repeat. Imagine it was real!

2. The SETI Institute is privately funded and as far as I know, US tax
dollars are not used for SETI searches.

3. There were and will be a lot of spin-off discoveries made from doing
searches for alien signals.
Seti@home data led to some unplanned discoveries related to the
distribution of hydrogen in the galaxy.

4. Do not limit your thinking to radio signals only. Projects exist
that look for optical signals like lasers.
One day we might even detect artificial alien structures using
sensitive infra-red detectors.

The point is - although the galaxy is not blaring with alien beacons or
radio stations, we should still try and detect electromagnetic emissions
of artificial origin. If we don't, we will never know the truth.

As suggested in another post, have a look at the Planetary Society's
website for more info (see link below).

I keep an open mind. Never say never.


--
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28° 12' E
GMT+2

Join the Planetary Society
http://www.planetary.org

Arnold:
The point is - although the galaxy is not blaring with alien beacons or
radio stations, we should still try and detect electromagnetic emissions
of artificial origin. If we don't, we will never know the truth.

The corollary is that if we /do/ , we will /surely/ know the truth. Do
you believe that?

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

Davoud wrote:
Arnold:
The point is - although the galaxy is not blaring with alien beacons or
radio stations, we should still try and detect electromagnetic emissions
of artificial origin. If we don't, we will never know the truth.

The corollary is that if we /do/ , we will /surely/ know the truth. Do
you believe that?

No. If we do, we may one day know the truth. There is always a chance
we'll never know the truth. That's the corollary, and I think any
rational SETI proponent would acknowledge that.

Or did you mean to write a strictly stronger statement? If so, I for
one can't divine your intent in doing so.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html

Davoud wrote:

Arnold:

The point is - although the galaxy is not blaring with alien beacons or
radio stations, we should still try and detect electromagnetic emissions
of artificial origin. If we don't, we will never know the truth.


The corollary is that if we /do/ , we will /surely/ know the truth. Do
you believe that?

My point (belief) is - if you don't try, you won't succeed.

Unless of course alien space ships just show up in orbit tomorrow and
they are visible to everyone everywhere.


PS : Belief vs faith? Now that is topic for another thread!


--
25° 45' S
28° 12' E
GMT+2

Join the Planetary Society
http://www.planetary.org