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SETI scientists to devise plan for lunar listening station

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Re: SETI scientists to devise plan for lunar listening station

#51

Post by mynonameaccount »

RicDan wrote: post #44
p-e-w wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science is a human endeavor, and like all human endeavors, it is subject to human limitations and resource constraints. Humanity surviving is a prerequisite for doing SETI, and that means preferentially allocating resources to projects that work on mitigating existential threats, everything else being equal. Now, I'm not asking that carpenters be reassigned to work on AI extinction scenarios. That wouldn't make sense…

I find it fascinating that people in 2023 argue with „resource constraints“ when talking about scientific projects. Those guys working on that are experts, they wouldnt do much else, the money spent on this is comparatively a joke in comparison to other spendings with much more questionable reasoning, and starting to question the gain of a project in the scientific space is never really an argument; it lies within th…

It's never really an argument for you and yet we are still arguing. SETI is a waste of money. I guess those experts will have to just sit and twiddle their fingers because "they wouldnt do much else". Money wasted is money wasted, doesn't matter how much it is. Sure, for people like you, it's easy to waste other people's money.

Re: SETI scientists to devise plan for lunar listening station

#52

Post by epicureanideal »

p-e-w wrote: post #39
TechBro8615 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we cannot use effects related to quantum entanglement to communicate ELI5 to a non-physicist why not? I thought this was possible, if Alice and Bob share an entangled pair of a set of particles (i.e. each has a clique of particles entangled with the other), and they pre-arrange an algorithm for determining the meaning of different states of their particles. IIRC wasn't this the gist of the "wormhole" paper that wen…

Quantum entanglement means that pairs of particles can have correlated states regardless of the distance between them. It does not mean that if you push on one particle, the other one lights up. Imagine that two people are each given a coin with the property that whenever they flip those two coins simultaneously, they will either both come up heads, or both come up tails. How can you use that to communicate , that is…

You could flip the coin at different time intervals like short and long dashes in Morse code.

Re: SETI scientists to devise plan for lunar listening station

#53

Post by localplume »

p-e-w wrote: post #32

While I do share a certain romantic admiration for the grandeur of SETI's goals, I have to agree with those who call this a waste of money and brainpower in our times. The most ludicrous AGI apocalypse scenarios seem orders of magnitude more likely than finding conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. A second terrestrial intelligence is about to emerge, and the consequences of that might conceivably be…

why does it seem more likely? from an objective standpoint, why is there a higher likelihood for that?

I would actually disagree. Extraterrestrial life is essentially guaranteed (statistically) but conlusive evidence is exceptionally difficult and who knows how far away any life would be. But there is absolutely nothing to suggest AGI is possible, let alone ASI. At best they are both equally unlikely in that people are biased by how much science fiction they read, and thats how they attribute likelihood. HN just likes to go on and on about AGI and whatever but its just overhyping as usual

Re: SETI scientists to devise plan for lunar listening station

#54

Post by midasuni »

p-e-w wrote: post #32

While I do share a certain romantic admiration for the grandeur of SETI's goals, I have to agree with those who call this a waste of money and brainpower in our times. The most ludicrous AGI apocalypse scenarios seem orders of magnitude more likely than finding conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. A second terrestrial intelligence is about to emerge, and the consequences of that might conceivably be…

Mankind puts immense amounts of its metal capacity into firing ways to better advertise things. Your argument doesn’t really stand when Adtech takes orders of magnitude more resource

Re: SETI scientists to devise plan for lunar listening station

#55

Post by Yajirobe »

p-e-w wrote: post #32

While I do share a certain romantic admiration for the grandeur of SETI's goals, I have to agree with those who call this a waste of money and brainpower in our times. The most ludicrous AGI apocalypse scenarios seem orders of magnitude more likely than finding conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. A second terrestrial intelligence is about to emerge, and the consequences of that might conceivably be…

This argument is along the lines of ‘why do grandmasters waste their time on chess? They should direct their brainpower to things that really matter’

Re: SETI scientists to devise plan for lunar listening station

#56

Post by robga »

p-e-w wrote: post #46
RicDan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it fascinating that people in 2023 argue with „resource constraints“ when talking about scientific projects. Those guys working on that are experts, they wouldnt do much else, the money spent on this is comparatively a joke in comparison to other spendings with much more questionable reasoning, and starting to question the gain of a project in the scientific space is never really an argument; it lies within th…

> starting to question the gain of a project in the scientific space is never really an argument It most certainly is, at least in the real world. The ISS has cost more than $150 billion so far. That's not "a joke", it's the GDP of a mid-size country. I very much do hope that everyone involved is asking themselves hard questions about whether this expense is justified by whatever has been gained in return. Science is…

> The ISS has cost more than $150 billion so far.

The UK's "High Speed 2" project is currently budgeted to cost about $125 billion for its ~300mi extent. I very much do hope that everyone involved is asking themselves hard questions about whether this expense is justified by whatever has been gained in return. The UK is not a magical la-la-land where people have the right to piss away truckloads of public money on projects they feel are important, simply by virtue of invoking vague platitudes about the "need to reduce journey time from 71 to 52 minutes".

The ISS seems like a bargain.

Re: SETI scientists to devise plan for lunar listening station

#57

Post by mnky9800n »

p-e-w wrote: post #32

While I do share a certain romantic admiration for the grandeur of SETI's goals, I have to agree with those who call this a waste of money and brainpower in our times. The most ludicrous AGI apocalypse scenarios seem orders of magnitude more likely than finding conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. A second terrestrial intelligence is about to emerge, and the consequences of that might conceivably be…

There are plenty of terrestrial intelligences. Just because they don't want to talk to you doesn't mean they don't exist. In fact, It's rather egotistical to create an artificial "intelligence" that wants to talk to you. It's probably more interesting to wonder why the intelligences that are here have little interest in interacting with us then to create new ones that will fawn over us like chatgpt does now.

Re: SETI scientists to devise plan for lunar listening station

#58

Post by mnky9800n »

p-e-w wrote: post #32

While I do share a certain romantic admiration for the grandeur of SETI's goals, I have to agree with those who call this a waste of money and brainpower in our times. The most ludicrous AGI apocalypse scenarios seem orders of magnitude more likely than finding conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. A second terrestrial intelligence is about to emerge, and the consequences of that might conceivably be…

Maybe complain about military expenditures or corporate subsidies first?

Re: SETI scientists to devise plan for lunar listening station

#59

Post by bombolo »

epicureanideal wrote: post #52
p-e-w wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quantum entanglement means that pairs of particles can have correlated states regardless of the distance between them. It does not mean that if you push on one particle, the other one lights up. Imagine that two people are each given a coin with the property that whenever they flip those two coins simultaneously, they will either both come up heads, or both come up tails. How can you use that to communicate , that is…

You could flip the coin at different time intervals like short and long dashes in Morse code.

You're still flipping a coin… how is this communication?

Re: SETI scientists to devise plan for lunar listening station

#60

Post by NavinF »

miika wrote: post #14

I doubt SETI could detect even our own signals, when it’s encrypted digital data. I mean it’s just noise like any background signal.. Then, we people are very soon capable of communicating using quantum entanglement, which means it’s beyond wireless and you simply couldn’t tap into it with some antenna. For these reasons I suspect that SETI is waste of money.

> we people are very soon capable of communicating using quantum entanglement

How much do you wanna bet? Do you have a specific bitrate and year in mind?

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