Funding for the sciences is always welcome; it's going to be interesting to see what SETI does with this money.
Seeing this news makes me wish more donors donated to science at the department level, or to every lab in a given department. Money is so incredibly tight in Academia that the entry level job (being a graduate student) typically gives people around minimum wage or less for five years to make a life with. This is an absolutely terrible incentive for attracting some of the best and the brightest to enter the funnel of knowledge production workers (e.g. grad students, post-docs, researchers, and professors.)
I don't know how this can be fixed systemically, but donors could help change the incentives and improve the quality of science for all.
As an adversarial opinion on this, I don't think that good science is bottlenecked in any way by a dearth of grad students. Conversely, society probably already has enough of the "best and brightest" in academia, and it should do more to funnel them to other, more directly practical, endeavors.
Interesting point; thanks for providing the opposite opinion. It's not that no one is applying to grad school, it's that brilliant, creative people with good job prospects are being "pre-diverted" away from the sciences.
For everyone who complains about the quality of the scientific literature, the replication crisis, the golden quarter, I think part of it ultimately stems from the way the funnel is set up.
Those problems are real, but they aren't caused by a lack of the best and brightest in the sciences. The problems are structural due to misaligned incentives. Intelligence isn't particularly correlated with ethics or conscientiousness.
All issues are definitely influenced by systemic incentive issues for sure.
But is not graduate school in some broad sense competing with the likes of startup accelerators et al.? Don't get me wrong, I think that's a good thing in the abstract. But 5 years of minimum wage while working for someone who likely has paltry managerial skills, with the prospects of an increasingly shaky academic job market. My point is that it's too bad for society that the competition is so drastically one sided.
> I don't think that good science is bottlenecked in any way by a dearth of grad students. Conversely, society probably already has enough of the "best and brightest" in academia
As an adversarial opinion on _that_, what seems to have happened is that the "best and brightest" filter in academia is further filtered to "those who also have the well-off family background to support that". See also the Victorian "gentleman scientist".
Sure, this filter does serve to cut down on the numbers, but I can see problems with using this filter, e.g. the effect on those excluded, and the biases that it will introduce. I would not call it a good thing on the whole.
It's also worth mentioning that many in the academic pipeline leave for Tech or Finance. My point is that the grad students are the ones who go on to become the professors who direct the research our society relies on.
It should be dumped into a trust fund, an endowment that will fund some low level SETI in perpetuity. The goal should be to free SETI from having to worry about funding from one year to the next. Funding such projects needs to be measured in decades, not dollars.
Tax-exempt organizations need to spend 10% of their endowments every year in order to keep their status, pretty much for this reason (avoiding perpetuities).
More seriously, endowments are for specific purposes specified by the donor. Most of the time, this money cannot be spent on anything else, regardless of "need."
They should do it! Desptite centuries of archaeological research we still don't really know how the pyramids were built. A real world test of the various possible techniques would answer a lot of questions. Plus when they're finished maybe the Goa'uld will show up to resolve the SETI issue.
As someone who works in a department that was essentially founded via a gift from some very generous donors, it has been enormously impactful in the nature of our positions, how we approach science, etc. All of them for the better.
The donor class often has very stupid or industrially motivated ideas about what kind of research should be done. In the former case, you're mostly just adding another idiot to your list of pseudobosses. In the latter case, what's really happening is that the rest of the funding is now going to end up subsidizing some private research endeavour. This is a form of capture, and should basically be avoided.
The current state of the system for graduate students is bad, but it is not improved by allowing private investment.
> people who are very good at making money make stupid investments?
Absolutely, particularly when the "investment" is a donation to charity or a university that's more to assuage guilt or plaster a name for posterity than it is for any return.
People that do end up with a great deal of money aren't always the sharpest crayons in the sun - many have luck and good advisors.
No, Walter, it is you who created a false representation of what noqc said when you replied to their comment saying "people who are very good at making money make stupid investments?"
> people who are very good at making money make stupid investments?
Just because someone makes a lot of money doesn't mean they are intelligent or did so upon their own virtue. And it doesn't necessarily mean they're good at investments and capital allocation.
>> it is not improved by allowing private investment
> wow. Maybe we shouldn't allow things like inventing semiconductors, jet engines, television, etc.
An incredibly sizable portion of technological development in the U.S. in the past 100 years is due to government (i.e., public) funding, not private funding.
> An incredibly sizable portion of technological development in the U.S. in the past 100 years is due to government (i.e., public) funding, not private funding.
Never mind semiconductors, jet engines, television, internet phones, AI, electric cars, engines, steel making, typewriters, the whole textile industry, telephones, CDs, electric guitars, autotune, cameras, need I go on?
> Just because someone makes a lot of money doesn't mean they are intelligent or did so upon their own virtue. And it doesn't necessarily mean they're good at investments and capital allocation.
Maybe read biographies of Musk, Jobs, Gates, Bezos, Buffet, Rockefeller, Walton, Sears, etc., then tell me how stupid they are.
I've talked with many professors on the selection committees. They want the best, especially for competitive programs. All of the researchers I've talked with are keen on training the next generation of researchers.
I've never met Franklin Antonio, but for the ones that don't know, he co-founded Qualcomm, and I assume he made most of his money that way. He died last year, casue of death was uncertain. [0]
Wikipedia somehow separates him from the "original" seven founders, though: [1]
> Qualcomm was created in July 1985by seven former Linkabit employees led by Irwin Jacobs. Other co-founders included Andrew Viterbi, Franklin Antonio, Adelia Coffman, Andrew Cohen, Klein Gilhousen, and Harvey White.
It seems that he's been a long-time supporter of SETI.
Glad that this money will go towards scientific research.
EDIT: the source cited by Wikipedia [2] actually includes Franklin Antonio among the original seven founders:
> The company was founded in 1985 by seven communications industry veterans -- Franklin Antonio, Adelia Coffman, Andrew Cohen, Klein Gilhousen, Irwin Jacobs, Andrew Viterbi and Harvey White.
I worked with Franklin for a short while in the late 90s. He was an intimidating, if fair person. Very little tolerance for bs or people who wanted to look good. But if he asked you something and you didn't know the answer he was fair if you just said so (which I had to do on at least one occasion). Did not know he passed, or that he was involved with SETI. I remember reading in a local SD paper a few years ago that he gave quite a bit to a local charity for the homeless. He was a very independent thinker, so not so surprised that he might make some unconventional choices in how he gave away his money.
I think the "other" in the Wikipedia articles refers to that the six listed (Andrew Viterbi, Franklin Antonio, Adelia Coffman, Andrew Cohen, Klein Gilhousen, and Harvey White) are in addition to the "leader" Irwin Jacobs, not that they are in addition to seven unlisted founders.
I really hope they don’t just continue to use the same methods by crunching data, they need to create different little startups and come up with something creative to find these things
Assuming ET’s output the same technological garbage like radio waves as we do is such a short sighted view of the universe. Assuming alien life is talking on Walkie-talkies or sending radio transmissions between ships like it’s 1944 is simply dumb science. We should invest the money into better methods of observation and discovery rather than AWS data lakes.
No cloud! Too expensive! (my opinion comes being a brief stint as a contributor in data taking for the CMS detector at the LHC. Accelerator ran, threw off data, which went into storage for ad hoc analysis by project collaborators; all data released into the public domain and freely available)
The real problem with previous efforts for finding extraterrestrial life wasn't the technology, it was the lack of competition plus the open ended and uncertain goal. A seed rounds of $50M should be given out to two groups of competing researchers: One group tries to find evidence of extraterrestrial life, and the other group tries to find evidence of the abominable snowman in the Tibetan mountain ranges. The first group to make a discovery takes home the remaining $100M and settles the SETI vs. Yeti debate once and for all.
A standardized robotic platform for automated solar system image collection- high resolution images of every single surface in the solar system. They would operate and report back any unexpected features over the next 100 years.
“The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.”
The much more likely expanation of the Fermi Paradox is that even if intelligent life is fairly common, the universe is so big (and expanding exponentially), that there simply is no way for these populations to notice each other much less visit each other.
From rational point of view (history of Indians, general history) and philosophical point of view (great filter) it is safer to keep quiet.
A lot of scientists got killed by their own inventions. And active Seti should be banned since very few can bring doom on others - without even asking them if they agree for that. Did anyone from the active seti community ask for consent? Nope. They know most people would be against it. UN and governments should be too. Although if they were some assholes would start doing it just in spite.
are they famous last words? are there specific examples of indigenous people that were decimated due to actively seeking out contact? (genuinely asking, not super familiar with the history here, though i'm under the vague impression that most contact has not been active in this sense)
> Assuming ET’s output the same technological garbage like radio waves as we do
That's a very tiny window in time, and after that the bulk of the comms goes optical or to satellites using far lower power levels than your typical radio or TV station. Ironically the first thing ET might be able to hear and what we might be able to hear from ET's is "CQ CQ ... ".
I've been idly wondering if it's worth it to apply to YC next batch with the idea of launching dozens of 550AU missions for solar-gravitational-lens HD photographs of nearby exoplanets. I've been wondering a lot recently about our visibility to potential life out there; they may well be watching Earth in HD since we can imagine how we might do that too. So I think a great step would be launching a bunch of long missions that will eventually return us HD video of exoplanets within like 200 ly or more distant maybe. That will reveal a lot of info about close-by worlds and may produce copious evidence for life on other planets.
Would be very expensive, take a few decades at least, and the profit comes from...governments? Haha not sure about that yet. Might have to pitch it as a planetary defense company and also build tech to zap asteroids etc.
Basically, NASA is doing the great hard science obviously, but is outdone in pacing and tech by SpaceX and other startups; NASA plans to send 1-5? 550 AU missions eventually. But they're in no rush. I want to rush it.
Yeah it’ll take a lot of money for sure. Needs new propulsion like nuclear thermal or something to get to target distance in our lifetimes.
Would be very expensive but I think cheaper per mission, if you start off with a plan to send a lot of them.
Might take in full some tens or hundreds of billions. YC I am aware will not fund on that level haha, but maybe they would have an eye for wanting to start it off.
>Needs new propulsion like nuclear thermal or something to get to target distance in our lifetimes.
Here's a cool video describing solar sails that are supposed to be able to accelerate up to a final velocity of 22 AU/year, which get things to 550AU in 25 years.
Guaranteed seems very strong claim to aay about education of future generation and what could they do about particular field. The only thing that might warrant usage of this word is if you have a time machine, but obviously you don't.
I think the point is that "education" as a field is so heavily infested with parasites and grifters that it can easily eat extra $200M and then have nothing to show for it.
As opposed to Seti, who will have something to show for it?
I really find it difficult to believe that 200m into science education funding will make less of an impact on the chances of finding alien life than directing it at Seti.
$200M, even narrowed to "science education", will turn into couple bullshit grants, and/or a deal with a commercial vendor to upgrade computers at some facility, and/or (most likely) a new sports stadium, because US universities for some reason love to spend ridiculous amounts of money on sports facilities.
Point being, education is a very large field, with a very large capability to burn money in operational expenses, spending it all on doing a little bit more of the same thing it's already doing.
SETI, in contrast, is a small, underfunded corner of STEM R&D, at the bleeding edge of astrophysics, signals processing and a bunch of other fields. Pouring $200M there has a much greater chance of pushing some actual research or technology development, with gains flowing back to society and economy (including to science education). SETI has much less space for grifters, and it's much easier to spot money going the wrong way.
Or, in short, a cup filled with water will make more visible impact when poured into a portable bottle, than when poured into a lake.
California has some of the best funded public schools in the country. California has some of the smartest technologists and inventors in the world. California has mostly crappy public schools. Clearly adding money has very low marginal utility in the current educational marketplace.
Where is the financial incentive beyond the seed funding here? Big scientific efforts like this have always been well-suited to government funding, or in some cases industrial R&D by a big established group with a separate profit center. When you have a project with a 20+ year time horizon for any meaningful progress, I just don’t think the capitalist model is going to yield fruit.
I agree with your other point that data crunching is not necessarily going to help. Low-power RF emission from lightyears away will be well below the noise floor. Some more innovative, speculative approaches would be a better use of that money, even if they all lead to dead ends.
Probably by using fleets of diverse AI agents as startups to organize, research, simulate/prototype, refine, and propose novel ETI detection systems. This approach is already used in other domains, after all.
Whether it's a good angle, I don't know. But it's a perfectly reasonable one, methinks.
Their financials show a budget of about $25M a year last three years, with $17M in assets in 2022. So this will be an enormous one-time increase but presumably spending will be spread out. Nice chunk for an endowment.
I just began reading it with my 10yo daughter. The beginning discusses how Fermi raised the important question "where are they?", and we just started on how the Drake equation provides a set of smaller, more obtainable questions to answer.
Not knowing much about non-profits, I wonder if donations this large ever create
political problems for the recipient?
Like I imagine tons of people will be hitting them up for pet projects of varying quality after this announcement.
Though looking at Wikipedia, they have been around since 1984, with many high profile donors, so maybe they are institutionally able to deal with huge variations in budget?
SETI received ~$28m in donations and contributions in 2022, according to their tax filings [1]
As mentioned in the press release, contribution will be used at least in part as an endowment, providing perpetual funding for ongoing programs.
Also, it is my understanding that large philanthropic gifts, particularly from estates, often come in the form of non-cash assets such as stocks or other financial instruments. So probably not a $200m check, but a very nice nest egg to fund SETI projects for decades to come.
I think past a certain size it doesn't matter, but my small church let me know that it would be ideal if a gift could be split across two tax years to avoid them hitting some kind of threshold that would trigger an audit they'd have to then pay an accountant a bunch of money to deal with.
I offered since my bank had already pitched me on establishing a charitable gift fund that would allow me to claim the tax credits this year but disburse the money to registered charities in the future.
I've worked for a few medium-sized non-profits that fund research. Getting lots of money once you're already established has no downsides. You probably already have a contingency plan for how to spend it, and if not you and your board establish a new process for calling for and approving projects. It's not rocket science (sorry - I don't want to appear dismissive of your post - I just couldn't resist that joke).
So it looks like it is around $100M for a Falcon Heavy launch. What kind of satellite can be built for $100M? Put one at L4 with a radar/mm-wave receiver, and have another on Earth for your phased array, to have a pretty large synthetic aperture / high resolution? Or maybe partner with someone on a lunar crater radio telescope on the far side of the moon?
Interesting. They have been operating since 1984 - thats almost 40 years.
It would be interesting to read what achievements they made so far. Especially, did they find any sign?
The scientific journey of our place in the cosmos is a humbling one.
- Many thought Earth was at the center of the universe. First we found it circled the Sun.
- Next, we found our solar system was nothing special in the Milk Way Galaxy, and the Milky Way was nothing special in the universe.
- Many thought humans were distinct from other animals. Then we discovered that all animals just evolutionary descendants of some primordial cells.
The journey cannot stop. The search for extraterrestrial life might succeed or it might not. But what it does is that it humbles us. It reminds us that we must not be the only life in the Universe. Only by searching for that life can we truly acknowledge our humble position in the cosmos. And counter the arrogance of the Homo Sapiens.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it a lot and we've had to ask you this multiple times before.
Imagine game theory implications of all countries agreeing to something like this, monitoring to make sure they actually do this and eventual fraud that will take place. No thank you.
That's yes thank you from me - the game-theoretic implications of such scenario being successfully pulled off, would allow us to solve climate change and poverty and peace next.
Mutual consensus among multiple - say, at least 5 - nations chosen for maximum mutual hostility, that leads to proportional reduction of military spending by sum of 10% of world's total military spending, done honestly and in a way that doesn't alter the balance of power.
I.e. the kind of coordination game theory decrees as effectively impossible. Were such event to happen, whatever mechanism drove it could be used to reduce emissions and implement effective climate change mitigations pretty much on the spot. And if it generalizes as solution to coordination problems, it would literally solve all major issues plaguing humanity to date.
What if we could all just teleport anywhere we wanted at any time, instantly!? Like most things of this sort, unfortunately, we exist in the real world where such a naive fantasy will stay as just that; a naive fantasy.
Is it so naive to believe that eventually, we as humans can eventually overcome our stone age instincts and stop slaughtering each other on a big enough scale to necessitate some amount of militarism?
I for one would be greatly disappointed if we could not achieve that eventually. In today's age, I agree that it's hardly possible, there are simply too many parts of the world without sufficient education or still in the grip of authoritarianism or religious fanatics, but once we've overcome that, it should surely be possible eventually?
... eh, maybe I'm just naive. But as MLK so nicely put it, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice, and I'd really like to believe that.
The world is interconnected, especially science. Just sticking with medical imaging, a lot of work done in astronomy has crossed over and had direct impact on medicine. CT scans are one example (algorithms and code from astronomy), and if you've had lasik or been to an optometrist with one of those machines that automatically spits out a prescription (adaptive optics), you've benefited from technology developed for astronomy.
Money spent on one area doesn't mean the resulting innovations or knowledge stay there, they cross over and enrich other areas.
If SETI wants to make an impact, they should first do more work to disprove the hypothesis that there are small voids within the Earth's crust housing small grey hominids in a breakaway civilization who primarily live in simulated environments, sending UFOs to the surface out of the ocean. It's far more likely we'll find them down there hiding from us than we'll find intelligent life walking around on the surface of planets orbiting natural stars. The former comports with a variety of reports of "extraterrestrials" while the latter contradicts most reasonable assumptions of the game theory around extraterrestrials, if they exist at all.
Seeing this news makes me wish more donors donated to science at the department level, or to every lab in a given department. Money is so incredibly tight in Academia that the entry level job (being a graduate student) typically gives people around minimum wage or less for five years to make a life with. This is an absolutely terrible incentive for attracting some of the best and the brightest to enter the funnel of knowledge production workers (e.g. grad students, post-docs, researchers, and professors.)
I don't know how this can be fixed systemically, but donors could help change the incentives and improve the quality of science for all.