SETI again and again and again

On Jul 22, 2006, at 21:45 UTC, Douglas May wrote:

> I stated that it would be more useful to describe a civs age from
> their earliest ancestor, or from the beginning of life on their
> planet, rather than just from when they began living in cities, or
> writing, or traveling in space.

Yet your own arguments demonstrate that this is NOT more useful:

> However, if you say the two civs (or lifeforms or whatever you call
> it) are 4 billion and 4.1 billion years old respectively, its much
> less obvious which is more advanced.

Exactly. Therefore, it is not nearly as useful a thing to say. What matters is when a civilization starts settling other stars, because that's when the exponential growth starts.

In addition to being not useful, describing a worldful of single-celled organisms as a "civilization" is also contrary to the standard meaning of the word. Words are useful for communicating only to the extent that we all agree what they mean; to take a word and start using it to mean something else only causes confusion.

> I choose to believe that there are other civilizations out there,
> despite the fact that there is no evidence of them.

But based on your abuse of the language, I interpret this to mean that you believe there are other planets with life out there. I agree -- I just don't believe any of them (in our galaxy) harbor *civilized* life.

> Either way, I hold out little hope of actually meeting or hearing
> from aliens in my lifetime. I doubt SETI will find them, anytime
> soon. But I wish them luck anyway.

Agreed (except that I still hold hope of finding out about them in my lifetime, but perhaps thousands of years from now -- I'm more optimistic about my lifetime than most).

Best,
- Joe

Joe Strout -- joe@...