Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Scientists pursue system to explain facts that slip through the cracks

"In each of these areas -- physics, biochemistry and social science -- the theories are mature and largely uncontroversial. Each discipline has its own language and its own separate machinery. Rarely is a scientist an expert in more than one area, because the worlds and languages are so different.

"This means that we can't answer complex questions that depend on more than one field." (Via The Anomalist.)

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is a textbook victim of specialization. In the case of seeking out ETs, we've forfeited the search to a highly specified and rigidly defined group that wields the political might to tell us what is and what is not possible for reasons more political than scientific. In exchange, we're served up hypothetical alien civilizations that are little more than high-tech caricatures of our own, burdened by the same trivialities and condemned to a planet-bound existence because of the presumed expense of space travel.

The idea that we're being visited now, or have been visited in the remote past, is subject to particularly stringent scrutiny; if SETI were a nation-state and not a research effort, it would almost certainly be totalitarian, its populace communicating aberrant ideas through ill-financed samizdats and subject to humiliating public trial if discovered.

Seth Shostak is watching you.

3 comments:

Mac said...

So why are SETI groups so vilified by the pro ETH/Mars artifacts crowd??

Because planetary SETI is an imminently testable inquiry. If we wanted to, we could go to Mars and put the question to rest. Consequently, planetary SETI might fail to provide confirmation of ET intelligence.

Radio SETI, on the other hand, is *not* imminently testable; it's essentially "wait and see." So the last thing self-styled gurus like Shostak and Tarter want is to set themselves up for a fall that might cast their own pet approach in a bleak light.

There are other reasons, of course. But I think this is one of them.

Mac said...

Actually Mac was more explaining why the "pro ETH/Mars artifacts crowd" is vilified by the SETI radio astronomers crowd! (Maybe this was what was originally meant anyway.)

Your guess is as good as mine!

And yes, I was talking about a manned mission -- moreover, one with some archaeological expertise.

Mac said...

Gordon--

Have I ever condemned radio SETI? Hell, I've even done my part and run SETI@home.

Don't misunderstand: Radio SETI is worth doing, but its leading lights would like nothing more than to dispense with other avenues of research, including the search for artifacts on other planets and the study of UFOs (whatever they are).

And I see no evidence that they are in _any_ position to threaten the manned space program.

They're not. I simply meant that a blow to planetary SETI -- assuming for sake of argument that we took it seriously enough to mount a manned Mars mission in the next 20 years (and as far as things like this go, that *is* "imminent") -- could derail radio SETI's "rah-rah" approach to funding if it failed to find any alien artifacts.

Man on the street: "Well, scientists thought there might be alien stuff on Mars and it turns out they were full of it. Why should we finance pie-in-the-sky searches for radio signals?"