It's a
risky long shot that burns up money and might never, ever pay off. So is
searching for intelligent creatures on unseen worlds worth the candle? After
all, aren't there better ways to use our monies and technical talents than
trying to find something that's only posited to exist: sentient beings in the
dark depths of space?
This is a
question that surfaces more often than dead fish. "Why should my precious
dollars be used for SETI when there's so much suffering in the world?"
It deserves
an answer.
To begin
with, allow me to get a technical misunderstanding off the table. As many
readers know, SETI is not paid for with your tax dollars. At least, not if you're
in the United States (where most SETI is conducted). Since 1993, when Congress
killed the NASA
SETI program, the search for signals from other societies has been funded
by private donations. To be candid, even before that date, the amount of tax
that was SETI-bound was only about three cents per year per citizen. But let's
not argue whether that was a heavy burden or not: the facts are, it's currently
zero. If you don't want to contribute to SETI, then it costs you nothing.
That small
truth hardly silences critics, however. They look at SETI donors, and wonder
aloud why these folks don't write those checks for medical research, foreign
aid, or other humanitarian programs. In other words, the critics' plea is that
we put all our money where our collective mouths are.
Well, such
a circumstance has never been the case, and never should be.
A cursory
glance at history shows that, even when people are routinely dying of hunger in
the streets, some fraction of any civilized nation's resources have gone to
seeking new things, or creating new things. Donors and patrons will always
spend some monies on activities that, when analyzed on the crassest, basest level
is "useless for society." They do that for lots of reasons –
burnishing their image, love of Bulgarian ballet, or maybe just a desire to
save fresh-water otters. But that's beside the point: if you give money to the
local heart association, maybe it's because you're thoroughly altruistic. Or
perhaps, deep down, you figure it might help you or your family in the long run.
Either way, it's a good thing from society's standpoint.
Yes, but
isn't "good" relative? Shouldn't there be a cost-benefit calculation
here? Shouldn't philanthropists opt for the most effective project, in terms of
societal improvement? That may sound good, but even aside from issues of free
will, that argument leads to a terminally murky battle on what's important and
what isn't. And sometimes what's unimportant today can become very important
tomorrow.
Consider
some examples. In Italy at the start of the 17th century, Medici
family members Ferdinand and Cosimo proffered a regular allowance to an
ambitious academic from Padua, Galileo Galilei. The guy found spots on the Sun
and moons around Jupiter. You could have bought some meals with that money
instead. But Galileo's work turned our worldview upside down by showing that
Copernicus was right. I'm glad he got the florins.
Two hundred
years later, Emperor Joseph II of Austria ponied up some coins to fund Wolfgang
Mozart. Was this a good idea? Mozart was just writing music, for goodness sake.
You can't eat music (unless you're a goat). But I can feast on it, and I do.
Then there
are SETI's analogs from the first years of the twentieth century: the multiple
attempts to pierce the heart of Antarctica and reach the South Pole. The
principal men who led these forays into the lethal landscape at the bottom of
the world – Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen – did so for approximately the same
reasons that motivate anyone with ambition: career advancement, glory,
adventure, or simply to prove that they had the right stuff in the white stuff.
But we're not talking about their motivation: we're asking why anyone
would fund these guys. All three had donations from individuals. James Caird, a wealthy Dundee jute manufacturer, gave Shackleton a hefty hunk of change; steel magnate William
Beardmore funded Scott on his first expedition; and Lincoln Ellsworth, son of
an American industrialist, wrote checks for Amundsen.
There's hardly any mystery about why these
private citizens would send explorers to realms that offered only frostbite and
a bit of national pride in return. Yes, they were in it for the image building
– the celebrity that would rub off on them if their boys brought back the bacon
(only Beardmore
seems to have expected to make a profit.) But these sponsors, like their proteges, were also driven by
curiosity – an inherent interest in exploration, in learning about the unknown.
They wanted to know what was out there. For these folks – people who couldn't
breach the frontiers themselves – it was exploration by proxy.
So, and
perhaps too obviously, it's not inevitably about financial return. But it's
also not always about new cures, new products, or even the alleviation of
suffering. As Richard Feynman once said about physics, "it's like sex. Sure,
it may give some practical results. But that's not why we do it."
And really,
I think the same is true of the quest to find a signal from the stars. Funders
of SETI are not putting their boodle on the table for commercial or national
advantage. They're not hoping we'll be able to proselytize the aliens, nor do
they await an opportunity to beat their chests with satisfaction if we find
them. And while there's always the possibility that we'll learn wonderful
things from an interstellar transmission, SETI speaks to a quintessential human
need even without that carrot – the quest to know. More to the point: to know
how we fit in. What is our part in the enormous cultural tapestry that we
suspect threads the star fields of the Galaxy?
Are we
truly biologically or intellectually special? One radio whistle from the cosmos
would answer that question. Even if a discovery deflates our egos, it's still
something that would be incredibly interesting to know. Ignorance is not bliss
– it's only ignorance. When Copernicus argued that our view of an
Earth-centered universe was parochial and wrong, he cracked a door in a stuffy
house. SETI could blow out every window in the place.
As
technologist Paul Allen said while commissioning the first elements of the new
telescope that bears his name, "I like to call SETI the longest of
long shots. But if this array picks up a signal, that would be an amazing thing
– a civilization-changing event."
Surely, that's
worth the candle.
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