The problem here is that we have a sample size of one planet. Now, to address the other part of the conversation, this is not a bad planet - it is chuck full of interesting organisms and other phenomena. But just as interesting as these things are, things on other planets (even non-living but complex, that bias is *my* minor pet peeve) have the possibility to be just as fascinating, contingent upon their existence. Now I agree that social programs are important - we should ensure the well-being and ultimately enjoyment of every organism on this planet (no species excluded) and the environment that supports them. However, that does not mean that stargazing and a spirit of exploration is misguided - after all, the ethic behind that is that behind Science and the hacker/maker movements, which I think nobody would seriously argue are solely bad. It is a fallacy that as a species we need to stop doing one activity to focus on another, because they are not in competition. People will do what they will do. As to whether there is life to find, regardless of whether we will find it, I do not buy 'look at these large numbers, it must be certain' because we simply have no experience with this kind of thing to either deduce or induce the existence and nature of extraterrestrial life. For example, we seem to assume that human-like things like communications technology are, if not inevitable, then not uncommon among a hypothetical alien species. The fact is, it just might never occur to a species, or they might not evolutionarily be in a place that requires or precludes such an attribute. Also, since we have no universal definition of life, we cannot claim to say what conditions it is impossible to live in, making such constructs as Goldilocks zones useful as a metric for comparison (to hypothetical alien species) only. If we want to know, we have to go - which seems pretty much impossible physically, from our current perspective. So SETI attempts to do this with a more passive approach. From what I have seen, for the most part SETI scientists are down-to-earth (excuse the pun) people who do not pretend that SETI is perfect, just one more thing that could be done. If this seems a little jumbled, it is because I am still arranging these thoughts. [EDIT: Checking the three messages sent since I started composing this draft, I see I am a bit late to a shift in tone...] -Arlo James Barnes
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