SETI Institute suspends search for aliens • Hacker News Board

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#41

Post by patio11 » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 9:48 AM UTC

worldvoyageur wrote: post #2

This is sad to read, but perhaps an opportunity in disguise. It is a risk for any firm to be highly dependent on one customer for most of its revenue and SETI appears to have been highly dependent on US government funding. It is dangerous to make conclusions based on a newspaper article, but it seems they found $50 million in private donations way back when to build the network. Now they can't find $2.5 million per y…

SETI doesn't sell search for life, SETI sells "I have donated money to SETI." After you understand this, it is the Rosetta Stone for non-profit fundraising. (And the enduring support for the space program among geeks, which is non-profit spending using other people's money that actually funds military hardware R&D.)

There are many people who buy Ferraris to be the kind of person that buys Ferraris, rather than to drive. Seriously, there are like magazines you can buy so you can aspire to one day not driving a Ferrari.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#42

Post by noibl » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 9:52 AM UTC

worldvoyageur wrote: post #2

This is sad to read, but perhaps an opportunity in disguise. It is a risk for any firm to be highly dependent on one customer for most of its revenue and SETI appears to have been highly dependent on US government funding. It is dangerous to make conclusions based on a newspaper article, but it seems they found $50 million in private donations way back when to build the network. Now they can't find $2.5 million per y…

  > The quote: "if everybody contributed just 3 extra cents on their 1040 tax 
    forms, we could find out if we have cosmic company." suggests that the 
    organization is focused on government funding, rather than individual donors

It also suggests that the problem of finding intelligent life is basically a financial one.

s/we could/there is a very slim chance that &/

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#43

Post by mcorrientes » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 10:07 AM UTC

I feel really sorry about it and I hope they'll make it.

Maybe they should consider writing more appreciated applications.

They could write more applications which involve people for the AI search.

I don't know what could reduce time to find AI, but I would bet SETI could get many volunteers if they just would provide a social network application (e.g. facebook).

There must be more than just calculation distribution.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#44

Post by dazzawazza » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 10:10 AM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #39

demallien wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discovering another instance of intelligent life would be one of the most profound transformational experiences that we could have as a species. I would think that there would be more than one billionaire out there that would like their name to be associated with such a discovery.

I'm rather bullish on matters of space exploration, but I'm pretty skeptical about just how profoundly transformational a SETI discovery would be. If there were such a discovery, it would be beset by difficult-to-imagine communication challenges, not the least of which is a years- or decades-long delay between sending a signal and receiving any response. There have also been some cogent arguments that it might be in…

I think the transformation would be similar to the psychological change our species went through when it saw earth from space for the first time.

Putting it simply for the first time it would be us and them where us is our species rather than the us that happen to be on an arbitrary lump of earth, speak the same language or worship the same god.

It could be the next psychological development stage for our species as it grows up. I'd like to have my name associated with that.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#45

Post by dkersten » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 10:17 AM UTC

thangalin wrote: post #18

urbanjunkie wrote: post #4

Although I think the seti@home project was one of the groundbreaking distributed/crowdworking projects, my personal opinion is that the actual search for ETI is a waste of time (not factoring in any advances in science/engineering that have been derived from the project). I'm a firm believer in the most common solution to the Fermi Paradox ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox ) - ie there's nothing else out t…

I ran Seti@Home for years; after I found out about Folding@Home, I switched over; disease research yields short- and long-term benefits. http://folding.stanford.edu/

Exactly, using that computing power for folding@home would have been much more beneficial, IMHO.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#46

Post by xnerdr » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 10:24 AM UTC

robryan wrote: post #37

xnerdr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be reluctant to invest more in an investment that has never paid off. They're searching for signs of life. Signs found so far = 0. Thats a pretty bad ROI.

Sure with that kind of short term thinking we will never get anywhere. It is far to early to call the investment a failure, in relative timescales it would be like calling a new school a failure because it had a bad first day.

Let's say we get a signal. Then what?

Even if we do find a signal, there is no payoff. The money is better invested elsewhere, then, once we are better able to capitalize upon a signal being found, then, we should invest in finding one. Right now, its premature.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#47

Post by arethuza » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 10:31 AM UTC

xnerdr wrote: post #35

worldvoyageur wrote: post #2

This is sad to read, but perhaps an opportunity in disguise. It is a risk for any firm to be highly dependent on one customer for most of its revenue and SETI appears to have been highly dependent on US government funding. It is dangerous to make conclusions based on a newspaper article, but it seems they found $50 million in private donations way back when to build the network. Now they can't find $2.5 million per y…

I'd be reluctant to invest more in an investment that has never paid off. They're searching for signs of life. Signs found so far = 0. Thats a pretty bad ROI.

Actually quite a lot of research has no apparent practical payoff - it's still worth doing though.

Edit: Or the results of the research can be completely serendipitous products that are only tenuously related to the original research - my favorite example of this being the best known product of high energy physics research.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#48

Post by crocowhile » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 10:35 AM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #45

thangalin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran Seti@Home for years; after I found out about Folding@Home, I switched over; disease research yields short- and long-term benefits. http://folding.stanford.edu/

Exactly, using that computing power for folding@home would have been much more beneficial, IMHO.

BOINC was actually developed to support SETI@HOME. Without the pulling power of SETI who knows if you had all the others spinoffs. As for many other kind of research, space research often brings very unexpected innovations.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#49

Post by metageek » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 10:41 AM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #39

demallien wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discovering another instance of intelligent life would be one of the most profound transformational experiences that we could have as a species. I would think that there would be more than one billionaire out there that would like their name to be associated with such a discovery.

I'm rather bullish on matters of space exploration, but I'm pretty skeptical about just how profoundly transformational a SETI discovery would be. If there were such a discovery, it would be beset by difficult-to-imagine communication challenges, not the least of which is a years- or decades-long delay between sending a signal and receiving any response. There have also been some cogent arguments that it might be in…

We're already being loud. We've been leaking radio transmissions into space for the past century.

Re: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens

#50

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 26, 2011, 10:41 AM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #47

xnerdr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be reluctant to invest more in an investment that has never paid off. They're searching for signs of life. Signs found so far = 0. Thats a pretty bad ROI.

Actually quite a lot of research has no apparent practical payoff - it's still worth doing though. Edit: Or the results of the research can be completely serendipitous products that are only tenuously related to the original research - my favorite example of this being the best known product of high energy physics research.

[deleted]