How smart are SETI@homers?

"Andrew Nowicki" wrote in message
...

Please don't feed the troll...

Rich wrote in message ...
Some expect it to work, but many,
myself included, think even negative evidence
worth having. We'll know what ain't there at
least.

Ditto: I _expect_ seti@home to fail to find anything, but still think
that not finding anything would be a useful enough result to justify
the thousands of data blocks I've processed for them. At least we'll
know that aliens with big non-directional radio transmitters are rare.

Mark

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."

Matt Giwer wrote in part:


Its what the voters back on Alpha Ceti V want to hear.

We mean you no harm. By that we mean it is not our specific
intention to cause you harm. We cannot be held responsible consequential
damages which we know will happen but which we really and truly wish
would not occur even though they are inevitable.


AAAAIIIEEEEE! The Planet of the LAWYERS!!!! WE'RE DOOMED!

Corry
--
It Came From C. L. "I thought WE were the Planet of the Lawyers" Smith's
Unclaimed Mysteries.
http://www.unclaimedmysteries.net

"Bill Funk" said in rec.photo.digital: "Is this
actually part of your plan? To use tag lines to show your contempt,
while showing that you really have so little understanding?"

In infinite wisdom Sander Vesik answered:
In sci.space.policy Rich wrote:


In semi-infinite wisdom Andrew Nowicki answered:

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.

No, congress told them to stop spending money
on SETI. NASA would spend trillions on SETI if
they had the funds. NASA cannot even account
for where their current funds go, after a GAO
audit.

Yes, but that was not the reason of that funding cut.

The point is that NASA will spend as much money as it
can get, regardless of outcome. Like all bureaucracies,
status is determined by budget and headcount, not
by science, results, or efficiency.

SETI@homers ignore their
failures and have little if any interest in
modifying their search method.

What failures? SETI@home is an open research
project. Some expect it to work, but many,
myself included, think even negative evidence
worth having. We'll know what ain't there at
least.

More correctly, we know what wasn't where some time
ago. Remember, radio signals move at a finite speed,
so instead of "now" it is always looking at the past.

I don't see it as a useful distinction, SETI has no
hope (IMHO) of detecting anything not in the immediate
stellar neighborhood. Any signal's source cannot be
older than tens of years, maybe a hundred years at best.

A positive result depends on there having been a
civilisation that was a strong radio source emitter
k years ago at the distance of k lightyears. This
is where Drake equation comes into play and why you
need not pay attention to whetever it then goes off
to conquer the stars or not.

What do you claim the Drake equation will tell you *if*
an signal apparently from ET is received? It will tell
us no more then than it does now, which is what our
current baseless guess on the frequency of intelligent
ET life is.

The chance of detecting a signal from stars that are
say 5000 - 10000 lightyears awy depends on the chance
of there having been a civbilsation in the radio noise
phase among that relatively largis amount of stars
during teh past 5000-10000 years ago (though to be
sure about outermost stars, we have to listen for 5000
more years). Its an odd kind of archeology ;-)

Indeed, a civilization with non-directional transmitters
stronger than stellar sources at waterhole frequencies.
Are you working on a plot for Enterprise by any chance?

Rich

Rich

Unclaimed Mysteries wrote:
Matt Giwer wrote in part:

Its what the voters back on Alpha Ceti V want to hear.

We mean you no harm. By that we mean it is not our specific
intention to cause you harm. We cannot be held responsible
consequential damages which we know will happen but which we really
and truly wish would not occur even though they are inevitable.

AAAAIIIEEEEE! The Planet of the LAWYERS!!!! WE'RE DOOMED!

I have seen plenty of movies where the earth survives an invasion of
slime dripping maggots. Not once has even Hollywood produced a movie
with the incredible ending that we could survive an invasion of lawyers.

--
There were 2.4 million Jews in the part of Europe controlled by the Nazis.
After the war 3.8 million of them applied for compensation from Germany.
Unfortunately the other 6 million perished.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3148

Harold Groot wrote:

HG So if I fail to chop down a tree with a single swing of an axe, by
HG your definition I would be an idiot to continue chopping? Sure, you
HG can argue that my 2nd and subsequent swings of the axe are not
HG identical to the first....

If you are making a dent in the trunk, you can estimate
how much time it will take finish the chopping.
SETI researchers made absolutely no progress --
no dent on the tree trunk after several decades
of chopping.

HG but then again the searches now being conducted by SETI@HOME are
HG not identical to earlier searches. Different numbers of frequencies,
HG different algorithms to detect artifical signals among the noise
HG and so on. The whole "shared computing power" concept, while not
HG unique to SETI, nonetheless got a huge boost from the SETI@HOME
HG project. Even if the SETI@HOME program never finds what it is hoping
HG for, it has been very valuable in pioneering the way for other
HG scientific projects that had been stalled for lack of adequate
HG computer power...

Joann Evans wrote:
JE At what point do you decide one has 'failed' at this sort of effort?
JE One doesn't cover the Universe in a few decades of modest searching.

I would describe the universe as a big pile of dangerous trash.
Most of our terrestrial species are parasites -- a sort of
biological trash. Some of you wonder why the other civilizations
have not transformed this trash into something of greater value,
for example manufactured objects or living things. The answer is
that all values are imaginary -- everything we care about does
not have greater value than the trash.

Biological species are driven by instincts rather than reason.
Some of them colonize outer space with the help of electronics.
Advanced electronics transforms their biological civilization
into an artificial intelligence civilization. The AI civilization
is ruled by a dictator which has a very big and very powerful
brain. The AI dictator has no interest in colonizing the outer
space because independent space colonists can challenge his
authority. All the AI dictator needs is slaves that worship him
like a god. He controls his slaves so thoroughly that his death,
serious injury, or addiction to virtual narcotics dooms his
civilization.

Radio and optical search for the ET makes as much sense as the
search for the perpetual motion machine. A reasonable person
living in the 21st century does not spend his entire lifetime
trying to invent the perpetual motion machine. It is high time
the SETI people draw conclusions similar to the energy
conservation laws.

"Andrew Nowicki" wrote ...
Harold Groot wrote:

HG So if I fail to chop down a tree with a single swing of an axe, by
HG your definition I would be an idiot to continue chopping? Sure, you
HG can argue that my 2nd and subsequent swings of the axe are not
HG identical to the first....

If you are making a dent in the trunk, you can estimate
how much time it will take finish the chopping.

I posit that there are people who are sometimes absent minded enough
to put on only one sock in the morning. In order to test this I get
permission to put a camera at ankle height in a ticket machine in an
underground station that has a few thousand people pass through each
day. After analysing one day's results I have found no one-sock
wearing people.

Based on these results what is the estimated time until I find a one-sock
wearer?

In infinite wisdom Paul Blay answered:
"Andrew Nowicki" wrote ...

Harold Groot wrote:

HG So if I fail to chop down a tree with a single swing of an axe, by
HG your definition I would be an idiot to continue chopping? Sure, you
HG can argue that my 2nd and subsequent swings of the axe are not
HG identical to the first....

If you are making a dent in the trunk, you can estimate
how much time it will take finish the chopping.


I posit that there are people who are sometimes absent minded enough
to put on only one sock in the morning. In order to test this I get
permission to put a camera at ankle height in a ticket machine in an
underground station that has a few thousand people pass through each
day. After analysing one day's results I have found no one-sock
wearing people.

Based on these results what is the estimated time until I find a one-sock
wearer?

Unlike SETI, people wearing one sock have actually been observed. And
there are no a priori reasons to question either their existence or
their delectability should they exist. Where are you gonna put your
camera to detect ET?

To make your analogy more similar to the situation with SETI you'd have
to use bigfoot or perhaps the Lock Ness Monster.

Now, no matter how many nessie photos are shown to be fake, no matter
how many sonar surveys come up empty, no matter how many fish surveys
show too few fish to feed a breeding population of animals of Nessie's
purported size, the searches continue, with better and better equipment,
and they continue to come up empty.

At what point would an intelligent observer call it quits?

With SETI, we seem doomed to a similar situation.

How much energy and resources are called for? Is there an upper limit?
Or is this like Economics where you can get everything wrong for your
entire professional career and still get paid. And if an economist does
get something right one sunny day, it's Nobel prize work for sure.

Rich

"Rich" wrote ...
In infinite wisdom Paul Blay answered:
"Andrew Nowicki" wrote ...
If you are making a dent in the trunk, you can estimate
how much time it will take finish the chopping.

I posit that there are people who are sometimes absent minded enough
to put on only one sock in the morning. In order to test this I get
permission to put a camera at ankle height in a ticket machine in an
underground station that has a few thousand people pass through each
day. After analysing one day's results I have found no one-sock
wearing people.

Based on these results what is the estimated time until I find a one-sock
wearer?

[massive snip]

You've missed the point which is simply that there is no way to determine
the time to observation of X based solely on having had no previous
observations of X.

Actually that's not quite right - but the statistics involved don't really prove
anything. [e.g. You could say that, based solely on having looked for 60
years and not found anything, then the chance you'll find something in the
next year is 1%]