Editorial Response , Nov 2006

 

 

Searching for Extraterrestrial Idiots?

by Dr. Alexander Zaitsev, IRE, Russia ([email protected])

 

This short note is in response to Peter Backus' editorial "Three SETI Myths," on the SETI League web site at www.setileague.org/editor/myths.htm. Dr. Backus identifies Myth # 4:

"SETI is Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence"

I have long been a proponent, practitioner, and advocate of deliberate Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or METI. See, for example, my Guest Editorial "Transforming SETI into METI," online at www.setileague.org/editor/metitran.htm It has been suggested in a friendly fashion by Michael Michaud (see www.setileague.org/editor/actvseti.htm), David Brin (see www.setileague.org/editor/brin.htm), the authors and apologists of the Rio and San Marino Scales (see iaaseti.org/smiscale.htm), and others, that sending deliberate messages to probable Aliens is a dangerous and foolish adventurism. It could be, they suggest, that SETI scientists have yet to detect signals from our cosmic neighbors, precisely because the extraterrestrials recognize the dangers of transmission. In short, my colleagues contend, one must be an idiot to risk transmitting into space.

If only idiots transmit, then by implication, those of us on Earth who propose or practice METI must be idiots. Still, we continue to practice observational SETI, hoping some other civilization will transmit our way, the possible risks notwithstanding. So, from my colleagues' arguments, does it not follow that the true interpretation of the SETI acronym is:

"Search for Extraterrestrial Idiots"?

 

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