whileyouweresleeping:

“I could be totally wrong about everything. But we could also do nothing and I think that’s pretty silly.”

— Jill Tarter, director of the SETI Institute*, breaks it down for the Times who just asked whether she ever has any doubts about their mission.

— From London.

*Well fancy that, I just discovered SETI stands for Signals of ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence.

Actually it’s Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.

About ten years ago, the topic of SETI came up in an email conversation. My then-boss’s husband said something like this: “Passive SETI [in which we just scan the skies for signs of intelligence] is OK, since it may someday tell us how long we have until we get invaded and slaughtered. Active SETI [in which we send out signals hoping that some intelligent life will respond] is probably the worst idea humanity has ever come up with, because every example in recorded history of two civilizations of vastly different levels of technological advancement meeting for the first time has resulted in the genocide or enslavement of the less-advanced by the more-advanced. What do you think are the odds of finding another intelligent species that is less advanced than we are?”

I’ve been kind of unenthusiastic about SETI since that conversation.