SETI@home sent me a letter attempting to get me to return to their fold, so I sent them one back:
SETI people;
Sorry, but I have become morally opposed to the goals of SETI@home. Here is the reason why:
If by any chance we were able to detect and locate intelligent life elsewhere in our galaxy, some bone-headed moron would seek to contact or at least send a powerful "here we are" signal in that direction. They could not be stopped. We simply don't have that much self discipline in our species.
People simply don't pay attention to nature and what it has to teach us. I'm not talking about human-nature, I'm talking about nature-nature. We reached this "pinnacle" of evolution and achievement by dominating this planet and its resources to the point where we are comfortable enough to search for life elsewhere. Well, it is my strong belief that we really don't want to find an advanced civilization or an advanced species, because what we are likely to find is another dominant species, and more than likely that means an advanced predator. This isn't science fiction - this is nature.
We simply have to consider how a species achieves success in their environment. The way we humans always have achieved success and the way every creature you will see on the nature channel achieves success is in one of three ways: 1) Become the dominant predator, 2) Reproduce faster than the environment or predation can kill off your kind, and 3) Become less accessible to predation by being swifter, hiding or staying out of reach of predators. Of these three, the greatest success has always been option #1.
Consider also how we humans reached our successes over the last few eons; slavery, wars and the threat of wars, theft of land and resources from others incapable of defending those lands and planetary resource abuse. If this path worked for us, what gives mankind the right to think that this same path doesn't work for other species? If we ever achieve the technology to contact an advanced alien species we had better brush up on our predation skills, we may need them.
In the mean time; I know I cannot dissuade you from your search so I won't even try. I do however thank you for the good work you have done to forward the cause of distributed computing. Presently my computers are busily helping to advance medical and scientific research in large part due to your group's historical efforts. I cannot wish you success, for I fear that space is not empty, but I do wish you well.
Steve Lux
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Originally Posted by NeoGen
