SETI Comments, November 12, 2000

These are some comments about the Search For Extra-terresterial Life (SETI) program. This program is featured in the book and movie "Contact" by Carl Sagen. According to accounts I have seen this was started out of an attitude that existed in the early 20th century that life was common, some sources even expected to find life on all planets. This was funded by the Federal Government from its inception until about 1992.

In this paper I hope to explain why I think that it is inevible that this project will fail, and why I support it 100%.

First, the failure. There are two possibilities. Either intelligent life exist elsewhere or it does not. If it does not, then I needn't spend any time explaining why this project will fail---it will fail because there is no life.

Much of what I have read regarding the origins of life, however, tend to indicate that the latter is more likely the case. That is, it is more likely that some form of intelligent life developed outside our earth than that it didn't.

In any event, I hope this is the case. The reason is that we have really blown this planet. As a species, homo sapiens are much to prone to violence, to the point where a simple communications error could result in the end of life here. I recall the cliquet, when ask if we should look for intelligent life on other planets, the reply is "I'm still looking for intelligent life on this planet." The current situation regarding the use of military might to solve political problems is, indeed, not the work of an intelligent life form.

Assuming that the life exists, there is a problem. First, there is the problem of contact. That is, such life must exist on other planets arround other stars. Therefore, it would take a minimum of 4 years for any signal to reach earth. When communication is made with a robot on Mars, the communication could take an hour round trip. This being the case, conversation as we know it would not be possible. Similarly, and much more pronouncely, conversation with the stars would be out of the question.

Therefore, any conversation that we would happen upon would be very one-sided. That is, we would have to assume that the "intelligent life form" being detected would be doing all the "talking." However, this would mean that we would have to be able to, not only intercept the conversation, but would have to determine that that is what it was.

Intercepting the converation may be a bit more difficult than you might think. Consider that radio waves were discovered about 100 years ago. Since people, even limiting it to civilized people, have been arround for about 5000 years (much longer if you don't require the "civilized" part). Therefore, our planet has been sending out radio signals for about 1/50 of the time that civilization have been arround. Put another way, our searcher would have to test 50 planets with civilized life on them before finding one that is sending out radio waves.

I can just hear people saying, "But we will continue to send out radio waves forever." Will we? Currently, people are getting more and more of their news and entertainment via cable and internet, rather than broadcasting. Internet signals can be sent out in a fashion that is so encoded that it would be impossible to tell the difference between that signal and background noise unless one has the proper key. What would this sound like to a civilization that might be listening? Static, I suspect.

Also, people could say that they would hear "patterns." The problem is what patterns? First, a lot of natural phenomina generate regular patterns. Just look closely at a sunflower, or at any snail shell. These are patterns generated by strictly natural processes. Patterns do not equat to intelligent life.

Also, whose pattern? In my dissertation I referenced a number pattern that went, "1, 2, 4, 16," (a good IQ test question, "What is the next number in the sequence?") "65384, ..." (I quit listing it here, as the next number it too big for me to consider typing out.) Whose pattern? Could I not have noted that this is 2^0, 2^1, 2^2, 2^4, so the next number should be 2^6, or 64. After all, the exponent follows the pattern that the difference between one exponent and the next is one less than a Fibonoci number. A pattern usually has many, many continuations.

It might be interesting to have a question on a phylosophy test, give a random sequence of 4 numbers, and ask the student to supply the next number in the sequence. Of course, any number supplied would result in full credit. The only students to miss the question would be those who didn't answer it. (I think someone could even make a case for "car" as the next number. Problem left to the reader, make that case.)

As sufficient as this might seem for the failure of the SETI project, there is another reason which is much more to the point. Again, I quote the cliquet, "I'm still looking for intelligent life on this planet." The truth is that homo sapiens, as a species, are very arrogent. That is, we assume that we have a monopoly on intelligence on this planet.

In reality, the only reason for this is that people define intelligence as being, "like people." (Actually, I should qualify this. It is really "like mythical ideal people.") That is, other species are not considered intelligent only because they are other species.

A year or so ago I had the opportunity to listen to a speech, and read some books, by Jane Goodall. In there she related that when she started researchers stated that animals should not be studied as having a personality. Of course, no researcher before her had seen any animals with personality only because they were not looking. That is, researchers could not see the intelligence of animals only because they assumed animals lacked any intelligence.

I currently live with a cat, many birds, and fish. I recall a "conversation" I had with one of the parrokeet once. I had just changed their feeding dish, and they didn't like it. (Parrokeets hate change.) The complaints were constant, and clear.

Although conversations with fish are more difficult due to the difference in the media, it is still possible to communicate. For example, I announce I am ready to feed the fish by showing the fish food, which they recognize. They will announce that they are ready to eat by coming to the surface with their mouths open.

Other examples abound. Consider Koko, a gorilla who was taught sign language. Or the parrot that was taught to speak and recogonize many words. The point is that people have not recognized this intelligence when it was right there, they could see it, feel it, and react to it, but they could not recognize it. In each of these cases cited, the species has existed on the very planet we live on, and therefore have many similar experiences. I think it arogence indeed that we should expect to be able to recognize intelligent life on other planets if it was staring us in the face.

I suspect it is more likely that we might (only might) recognize intelligent life on other planets if they announced themselves in a big way.

(One could ask, if the life is there, why have they not announced themselves. The reason is the relative isolation of old Sol. From here it is about 4 light years to the nearest star. I have been told that in most places in the galaxy, that distance would be more like half a light year. If, indeed, an intelligent species were to start looking for life, it is only natural that they start in the more densely "starred" portion of the galaxy, and that search could take literally forever.)

Now, having given my reasons for believing that the SETI project will fail, I will now give my reasons for supporting that project.

The first, to be honest, is a recognition that I may be wrong. It would be nice to be able to believe that I am always right, but, to be honest, experience teaches me otherwise.

Keep in mind that the SETI project is a project that cannot fail. That is, there is always going to be more experiments, more observations. After every star in our galaxy is examined for the possibility of intelligent life, then we will have to start over again because our technology will have advanced to the point that we will see how foolish our attempts were, for we will see that intelligent life would not use the system of communications we had devised.

A second reason for supporting this research is base more on Columbus. In science, the number of times that someone has (figuretively) started trying to sail to India only to fail due to a new continent being in the way, is very large. SETI is try to sail to India, but I see that there is much good that could come out of this even if it fails.