RE: seti@home is SORTA WORKING

Rob Harris Cen-IT (Rob.Harris@bournemouth.gov.uk)
Mon, 12 Jul 1999 13:11:22 +0100

> The weakest part of this theory is the assumption that although the
> universe is full of SIs they are not here in the solar system. It seems
> very implausible that they would have left our solar system untouched for
> all time.
>
Intelligent barnacles sat on a rock on some remote coastline might say the same ("why haven't SI's (humans) altered our rock?)

Why the hell would we ? Even if there was some reason why we might want to change the configuration of pieces of rock, we surely wouldn't get to EVERY piece of rock, and considering the vast number of solar systems in this universe alone, this makes the rock on earth analogy a massive probability in comparison. Also, what makes you think that any changes would be detectable by humans - we might even detect some "artificial" properties, but as you point out, they can't be distinguished from untouched systems reliably as we don't have enough data. So we just create theories that either involve SI's or not, that best fit the data we have. Ultimately, these human theories will ALL turn out to be slightly or totally innaccurate, we'll find out in the future, when we have sufficient understanding to say for definite. Wouldn't you agree?

Rob.



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