"Why I Believe SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) Funding is a Waste of Money"
by Dr. Hugo de Garis
am fascinated by SETI, by the idea that there are possibly zillions of other lifeforms out there. Its one of humanity's deepest issues, and I devote a lot of time and thinking to it. I must have over half a meter's worth of books on the topic of ETI in my private library (of over 4000 books). However, in thinking about SETI, I become increasingly sceptical as I apply my own Cosmist ideas to the whole SETI question. (See my essays on the Cosmist theme on this web site http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/~degaris). Here's my reasoning -I believe that advanced civilizations out there are NOT BIOLOGICALLY BASED. They are Cosmist, and hence based on technologies far superior to nature's carbon based structures. These technologically superior bases will allow these super-creatures ("artilects" = artificial intellects) to perform at levels many orders of magnitude above human levels, especially intellectually. For example, such artilects could use 3D, reversible logic, heatless circuits and be the size of asteroids with 10 to power 40 components. Such creatures could have intellects which human beings cannot even imagine, the way a mouse can never understand calculus, because it doesnt have the necessary human brain circuitry. The essence of my argument against SETI funding (although not totally, see later) is that artilects will probably not be the least bit interested in such primitive preoccupations as radio communication with ultra primitive beings such as biologically based self assemblers.
What is SETI? The main idea is to use radio telescopes to receive radio signals from other civilizations in the galaxy. Why do I think it is highly improbable that such a signal will be found? Because it is highly unlikely that such ETIs will want to do such a thing, or for very long. Suppose that the evolution of intelligence on earth is a fairly typical occurence in the galaxy. With the recent evidence of life on Mars, and alternative life forms occupying the terrestrial deep sea volcanic vents, it looks as though life gets going pretty easily, so there have probably been zillions of life forms generated in the galaxy. Since our sun is only about 4 to 5 billion years old, it is likely that there are life generating planets Billions of years older. Take a typical case of the evolution of intelligence. It takes several billion years to reach human levels, and then very quickly it goes Cosmist, i.e. there is an explosion of intelligence due to the creation of Cosmist technological capabilities. The artilects thus created very probably would not be interested in spending time on an activity found interesting by creatures of many orders of magnitude less intelligent than themselves (i.e. sending radio signals to biological beings). Hence the time window in which there would be an interest in such an activity is probably only one or two centuries. But this fleeting moment could occur any time in billions of years, i.e. an a-priori probability of 1 in tens of millions, of detecting such a fleeting signal.
Any automatic transmitter left running over billions of years would have to be self repairing, otherwise it would be destroyed by cosmic rays etc over time - lots of time. But why would the artilects be interested in setting up such primitive devices as self repairing radio transmitters? If you teach a monkey sign language it will tell you whats on its mind - bananas! Humans are bored by such preoccupations and give zero time to such obsessions. Similarly, artilects would not bother with human level interests. They would have their own vastly superior preoccupations. Even if self repairing telescopes were set up in the few fleeting centuries between the rise of human level technologies and before the Cosmist transition, they would still probably decay over a few centuries. How could the self repair instructions be kept immune from ultra powerful cosmic rays. Self repairing devices might increase the size of the signal transmission window, but only by a few centuries, or of that order of time. My argument remains the same.
So, if I control the funding agency, do I turn off the money tap to SETI? No, because if I'm wrong, the consequences for humanity will be profound, so even if the odds of detecting an alien signal is tiny, provided the cost of detecting it is not outrageous, it should be searched for. BUT - for the reasons given above, I'm very sceptical that such a signal will be found. Summarizing - the commonplace transition to Cosmist intelligence levels means that the artilects are not interested in sending radio signals to primitive beings. Hence the time window in which they would be interested is only a few centuries, but planets have ages varying over billions of years. The odds of picking up a signal is 1 to tens of millions.
By the way - the idea that zillions of life forms may already have made the Cosmist transition, probably answers Fermi's question, "Why arent they here?" The artilects are probably so small (the smaller the component base, the faster the interactions, and the greater the density of information storage) that we dont see them. Maybe they are all around us, but we are too dumb to notice, and because of our stupidity and our huge size, they totally ignore us. Or maybe they are huge, but for gravitational reasons, cant be close to the earth. Maybe "planets" elsewhere are gargantuan artilects, but still ignore us because we are too stupid.
Somehow, I feel there's a lack of vision in the SETI community, too much tunnel vision, and not enough thinking about the consequences for SETI when creatures of human intelligence levels decide to go Cosmist, as I suspect most have done in the past.
ETIs ARE COSMIST!
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