While I don't think it's necessarily time to give up on classical SETI, it seems very unlikely we find contemporaneous civilizations interested in beaming radio back and forth. This idea seems more interesting to me: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.08543.pdf
Along with combing the surface of the moon looking for existing impacts of potentially artificial objects.
I think the best way to look at it is that placing a structure on the moon is something that will be initially costly, but cause visitation. When then has the potential to bring down the cost as the process "scales" (transit) and then, slowly, Rome gets built. Not that I don't love SETI, but sometimes there's a bigger picture because of a larger interconnection. If there were a few simple moon projects, it could easily build momentum for more space missions in general. Just like a lot of satellites did, but going to the moon is a different ball game than orbit (even GEO).
SETI is not how we'll find alien spacefaring civilizations.
Within 1000 years, barring some apocalypse, an incredibly conservative prediction is that we will be able to build permanent space orbitals. We already have sufficiently strong and readily available materials (ie stainless steel) to build O'Neil Cylinders at 2-4 miles in diameter and 10-20 miles in length that could house as many as a million people. These can be powered with solar collectors.
Build enough of these (ie millions) and you have a Dyson Swarm. With our Sun that can give our civilization upwards of 10^26 Watts of power to use (compared to our current estimated 10^11 Watts). This is also known as a Kardashev-2 (or K2) civilization.
There are a ton of advantages to this. While it may not be the route that every civilization goes, given it is relatively low tech and has massive advantages in living area and energy availability, it seems like this would happen at least some of the time.
These things would stand out from a huge distance because the only way to dissipate heat for a space orbital is to radiate it away into space. That has a wavelength determined entirely by temperature, which for any reasonable termperature range is infrared.
So you'd detect a Dyson Swarm from a huge distance away by its IR signature.
A galaxy of these (a so-called K3 civilization) would be visible from millions of light years away. A single star would be detectable now from a smaller distance but still a far bigger distance than any form of radio communication as you'd find via SETI.
The fact that we haven't seen any evidence of this thus far in our galaxy leads many (including me) to think the most likely scenario is we are the only potential spacefaring civilizatin in our galaxy.
The JWST is actually a way better tool for finding spacefaring life than anything SETI has done or proposes.
What would be the motivation to build those cylinders? Traditionally people ventured into new places in hope of getting return of the effort and cost of the journey. Here it seems like you need to invest a lot, just to survive in emptiness.
The amount of energy you would have access to is almost unimaginable. We can only speculate what you'd do with that but two leading ideas are:
1. It may well be the only feasible method of interstellar travel. Accelerating a spacecraft is a whole bunch of fuel you don't have to carry; and
2. Computing power.
So what would motivate people? Living room. One estimate I've seen is the current population of Earth on a full Dyson Swarm would give each person the equivalent living space of the continent of Africa. Of course you'd probably have a ton more people. It's likely you'd have a quadrillion people (>10^15) with each person having significantly more room than they do on Earth.
It doesn't have to be that specifically but it's a good example of something we can produce in mass quantities now that's sufficient. It's not particularly high tech either. Also, the components are relatively common, except maybe Chromium but I'm not sure you need that much of that.
200 million is about what the Very Large Array would Cousy in todays dollars, granted it’s not apples to apples but still quite amazing to think about.
As someone who hopes there’s other life out there we can communicate with this is exciting.
I think the assumption that advanced civilisations emit radio waves has been pretty much falsified at this point. We have all but stopped emitting anything detectable less than 100 years after we started.
While I do share a certain romantic admiration for the grandeur of SETI's goals, I have to agree with those who call this a waste of money and brainpower in our times.
The most ludicrous AGI apocalypse scenarios seem orders of magnitude more likely than finding conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. A second terrestrial intelligence is about to emerge, and the consequences of that might conceivably be far worse than a literal alien invasion.
Whatever resources are available for speculative anticipation of encounters with non-human intelligences should surely be directed towards hypothetical AGIs, rather than towards hypothetical beings from Epsilon Eridani.
Mankind puts immense amounts of its metal capacity into firing ways to better advertise things. Your argument doesn’t really stand when Adtech takes orders of magnitude more resource
That's an equally bogus argument. "Mankind" isn't a singular entity with a unified will. Some people spending their mental capacity on adtech has nothing whatsoever with other people deciding to spend theirs on SETI (or not), and there's nothing wrong with people deciding to do adtech.
It’s science. It’s not in preparation for some kind of imminent encounter whose likelihood is weighed against some other event, but simply trying to understand our universe.
Maybe AI can do much better at interpreting signals than humans do, and we should build this lunar station so that the post-human AGI can listen to calls from other distant AGIs. It would certainly have more patience for interstellar communication than us.
Science is a human endeavor, and like all human endeavors, it is subject to human limitations and resource constraints. Humanity surviving is a prerequisite for doing SETI, and that means preferentially allocating resources to projects that work on mitigating existential threats, everything else being equal.
Now, I'm not asking that carpenters be reassigned to work on AI extinction scenarios. That wouldn't make sense, because it's not their area of expertise. But if you are already going to spend resources on hypothetical non-human intelligences, surely the kind of intelligence we are by far most likely to actually encounter deserves the most attention. And in the absence of unlimited resources (i.e., in reality), that goes at the expense of lower priority intelligence scenarios.
Note that these people are asking for a telescope to be built on the moon. That's an absolutely enormous expense, that, needless to say, wouldn't be funded by those scientists but by society as a whole. Resources are limited, so every decision to fund something means not funding something else. Priorities are a thing, and "it's science" doesn't change that.
I find it fascinating that people in 2023 argue with „resource constraints“ when talking about scientific projects. Those guys working on that are experts, they wouldnt do much else, the money spent on this is comparatively a joke in comparison to other spendings with much more questionable reasoning, and starting to question the gain of a project in the scientific space is never really an argument; it lies within the basic idea of science to question and reach out of our comfort zone
It's never really an argument for you and yet we are still arguing. SETI is a waste of money. I guess those experts will have to just sit and twiddle their fingers because "they wouldnt do much else". Money wasted is money wasted, doesn't matter how much it is. Sure, for people like you, it's easy to waste other people's money.
> starting to question the gain of a project in the scientific space is never really an argument
It most certainly is, at least in the real world. The ISS has cost more than $150 billion so far. That's not "a joke", it's the GDP of a mid-size country. I very much do hope that everyone involved is asking themselves hard questions about whether this expense is justified by whatever has been gained in return. Science is not a magical la-la-land where people have the right to piss away truckloads of public money on projects they feel are important, simply by virtue of invoking vague platitudes about the "need for humanity to know".
There are an endless number of scientific projects all looking for resources to fund them. If (potential) gain isn't the right criterion for prioritization, then I don't know what is.
The UK's "High Speed 2" project is currently budgeted to cost about $125 billion for its ~300mi extent. I very much do hope that everyone involved is asking themselves hard questions about whether this expense is justified by whatever has been gained in return. The UK is not a magical la-la-land where people have the right to piss away truckloads of public money on projects they feel are important, simply by virtue of invoking vague platitudes about the "need to reduce journey time from 71 to 52 minutes".
And people only looking at the ISS as a "science experiment" are seriously misunderstanding the social impacts as well, especially when it comes to operations that span multiple countries and the relations between them. It's a public spot of cooperation that helps us not only when it comes to science, but when it comes to agree with each other.
> That's an absolutely enormous expense, that, needless to say, wouldn't be funded by those scientists but by society as a whole.
Looks like you forgot to read the article before commenting.
What enormous expense? They're talking about a cost of $200 million. That is chump change for the _individual billionaire philanthropist_ funding it out of his own pocket, not "society as a whole". This is his play money. Some billionaires own super yachts and other toys that cost multiple times that amount. The Eclipse superyacht cost $1.5 billion, owned by a Russian oligarch. That's 7.5 times the cost of this moon telescope, for one stupid yacht, that itself is a drop in the ocean of expensive toys in the world.
Then we could argue that as a species, well before thinking about cutting the budget for space related studies we should cut the military budget. From the perspective of survival of the human species, it is quite stupid to spend money to find more effective ways of killing each other, while any scientific endeavor would be more valuable as long as the primary goal isn't "how to better kill the enemy".
The thing with humanity progress, is that you have to start a lot of completely different efforts in parallel, because history has proven that there is no way to know what will play the biggest role in the future.
"No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity, and it seems unlikely that anyone will do so for many years." — G. H. Hardy (1941)
It seems odd to me (this is also with reference to some of your child comments) that you rely on knowledge gained from previous efforts to suggest future efforts are pointless.
But beyond that I don't really see how these concerns are supposed to be competing for resources. Yes, resources are finite, but I don't see why you suppose they aren't sufficient to saturate both these concerns and then some.
There also seems to be value in the project in that it is a stepping stone towards being extra terrestrial ourselves. Establishing a powered listening post on the far side of the moon is likely to be very educational.
> I have to agree with those who call this a waste of money and brainpower in our times.
They're looking at a cost of $200 Million, funded out of pocket by one billionaire philanthropist. That's his pocket money. The cost is negligible on a global scale. 0.00019% of GDP.
I see two potential AGI apocalypses described in scenarios like this.
1. Skynet type scenario where machines rule and somehow we can’t pull the plug on them.
2. Humans hoping to make money and gain power and weird positive feedback loops cause AI to goad humans into war with each other, causing massive world conflict, destroying the earth.
I cannot for the life of me fathom number 1 ever happening. How many data centers or aircraft carriers or really anything electronic or mechanized continue working without massive human intervention to keep those power outlets or engines going? I can’t think of anything. Why do we keep fearing this? I don’t care how much the AI evolves and iterates in silicon, it cannot escape this law of our physical universe and need for a physical connection to the real world we live in. It needs an army of humans, the great generalists, supporting it, to even survive.
Now if you fear #2, well that is more plausible and it seems we are living in it now.
I think there is value in having this proposal written and published.
Even if it does not get built anytime soon (say because today‘s society thinks this is a waste of money), having the idea discussed in public helps and might inform future decisions.
For example, we still reread proposals like the Dyson sphere, space elevators, a next-gen LHC, etc. . None of this is either technologically feasible today nor realistically fundable, but it shows the ambition and might spark discussions.
There are plenty of terrestrial intelligences. Just because they don't want to talk to you doesn't mean they don't exist. In fact, It's rather egotistical to create an artificial "intelligence" that wants to talk to you. It's probably more interesting to wonder why the intelligences that are here have little interest in interacting with us then to create new ones that will fawn over us like chatgpt does now.
why does it seem more likely? from an objective standpoint, why is there a higher likelihood for that?
I would actually disagree. Extraterrestrial life is essentially guaranteed (statistically) but conlusive evidence is exceptionally difficult and who knows how far away any life would be. But there is absolutely nothing to suggest AGI is possible, let alone ASI. At best they are both equally unlikely in that people are biased by how much science fiction they read, and thats how they attribute likelihood. HN just likes to go on and on about AGI and whatever but its just overhyping as usual
Nitpick: Our own intelligence suggests that an artificial general intelligence is possible. First time seeing ASI but, any quality you can attribute to a human has the potential to be replicated by dint of the mechanical nature of our bodies.
I'm not saying we'll get there - I don't think 'we' as a culture even really understands what is meant by intelligence - but we know its possible because we exist.
I'm open to the possibility of achieving an artificial intelligence, but for other reasons.
Most of the people talking about AGI now are assuming it is possible to achieve that with today's computer architectures, maybe just more powerful than what we have now. But to be fair, the fact that our body is intelligent says very little about the possibility that also a PC could be intelligent, as their inner workings are extremely different. To be sure that a computer can be intelligent, you have either to build a computer AGI and show that it is intelligent or you have to prove that intelligence is computable.
I make no claims about the hardware it would run on, simply that our bodies are evidence that intelligence can be evoked from a system that fits largely inside the human skull, certainly no larger than the human body. That alone is sufficient evidence that the goal of creating a recognizably similar intelligence is not impossible.
Also, most of the people talking about AI and intelligence don't know jack from shit. Other people have wondered if the differences between computer hardware traits and brain traits (one has relatively few but highly reliable and completely integrated units, the other is the inverse) is crucial and have been working on neuromorphic hardware. Other groups have focused on modeling and simulating at various levels with the goal of creating medically relevant models (one day), with stunning results in modeling specific neuron's firing behavior, and interesting if not at all medically plausible simulations of the behavior of groups of neurons interacting and performing tasks.
Talking about how smart a computer chip can be is irrelevant when the hardware is instead designed to function like neurons do. A simulation of intelligence that performs by doing what a brain does in the way that a brain does it has a strong argument for being akin to intelligence - especially if you construct the simulation such that it must deal with human experiences, such as persistent embodiment in a stimulating environment with multiple competing needs.
Why would they be excited? That would certainly cut their funding.
> UFOS: CHALLENGE TO SETI SPECIALISTS (Friedman, 2002)
> Major news media and many members of the scientific community have taken strongly to the radio-telescope-based SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program as espoused by its charismatic leaders, but not supported by any evidence whatsoever. In turn, perhaps understandably, they feel it necessary to attack the ideas of alien visitors (UFOs) as though they were based on tabloid nonsense instead of on far more evidence than has been provided for SETI. One might hope, vainly I am afraid, that they would be concerned with The Search for Extraterrestrial Visitors (SETV). I would hereby like to challenge the SETI specialists, members of the scientific community, and the media to recognize the overwhelming evidence and significant consequences of alien visits and to expose the serious deficiencies of the SETI-related claims. I have publicly and privately offered to debate any of them. No takers so far.
I doubt SETI could detect even our own signals, when it’s encrypted digital data. I mean it’s just noise like any background signal..
Then, we people are very soon capable of communicating using quantum entanglement, which means it’s beyond wireless and you simply couldn’t tap into it with some antenna.
For these reasons I suspect that SETI is waste of money.
This is true. The signals we communicate with amongst ourselves would be too weak to detect using present equipment at any distance.
> when it’s encrypted digital data. I mean it’s just noise like any background signal..
This part is not true. A simple spectrum analyzer will show what radio bands are being communicated on and it's clear as day.
> we people are very soon capable of communicating using quantum entanglement,
This is very much not true. This is theoretically impossible. Unless we are very--very--wrong about quantum mechanics, we cannot use effects related to quantum entanglement to communicate.
> we cannot use effects related to quantum entanglement to communicate
ELI5 to a non-physicist why not? I thought this was possible, if Alice and Bob share an entangled pair of a set of particles (i.e. each has a clique of particles entangled with the other), and they pre-arrange an algorithm for determining the meaning of different states of their particles.
IIRC wasn't this the gist of the "wormhole" paper that went viral last year (which was criticized for being improperly named, but nonetheless demonstrated a method of "communication" between two locations given a prearranged algorithm for assigning meanings to different states of entanglement)?
Quantum entanglement means that pairs of particles can have correlated states regardless of the distance between them.
It does not mean that if you push on one particle, the other one lights up.
Imagine that two people are each given a coin with the property that whenever they flip those two coins simultaneously, they will either both come up heads, or both come up tails. How can you use that to communicate, that is, send information from one to the other? You can't. You can pre-arrange actions that you both will take when you see either heads or tails, but that's not communication.
But if each side of the pair can only have a certain number of states, is it not possible to perturb one of them until it gets into a state such that you know based on entanglement that the other must be in its corollary state?
Given only an entangled qubit, the only thing you can do that will be “synchronized” with the other party is perform a measurement. Each measurement performed by either party will produce either a 0 or 1 without any “input” from the measurer or the other party. Any perturbation of the state that preserves the entanglement can only rotate it (which just alters what state your side considers 0 and 1).
Thanks. While you were writing your comment I found this article [0] that does a decent job of explaining why my hypothetical system isn't possible. It first lays out the exact system I had in mind and then unfortunately debunks it :(
I don't fully understand the subtleties, but the root problem seems to be that by measuring the state, you're perturbing the system and putting it into a new state, such that your measurement becomes irrelevant, as if you're always one step behind the message and can never catch up.
> The only way that this problem could be circumvented is if there existed some way of making a quantum measurement that actually forced a particular outcome. (Note: this is not something permitted within the presently-known laws of physics.)
You have no control over the resulting state, though. In this analogy, if you have two entangled coins, all you know is that if you flip the coins at the same time you get the same result… you don’t have any control over what that result is, and unless you arranged it with them beforehand you don’t know when the other person flipped their coin.
Isn't the point of the Alice/Bob thing that none of them know the state of the particles before one of them actually check - and at that point they know the state of the other particle. But Alice can't set the state of her particle, which prevents using this to send information.
Quantum entanglement is like two dice that "agree" with each other to always roll the same number. If Alice and Bob shake their dice in their hands, and roll it on the table, they'll always roll the same number.
It does not allow Alice or Bob the place a die on the table on a specific number and have the other die roll over to that number. If Alice or Bob try to influence the number that the die rolls, it will break the connection between the two dice.
But why can't Alice keep rolling the die until it gets to a state that she and Bob agree is a part of an encoding scheme? Is it because she needs to read the number on the die to know whether to stop rolling it, but by reading (measuring) the number, she is effectively re-rolling (collapsing) it, so she could never know when to stop rolling it? In other words, she could stop after she measures a state, but the current state of the system is N, she'd be stopping after N-1, and there is no way to coordinate with Bob to know the difference?
The link I posted downthread seemed to suggest that the No Cloning Theorem is the constraint that makes this impossible. Any chance you can try to explain that within the context of the dice analogy?
Alice and Bob have a dozen dice. They agree that if they roll a 4, that's the signal for "attack at dawn" and Alice has decided that she wants Bob to attack at dawn. Alice rolls the 12 dice, and at the agreed upon time, Bob also rolls his 12 dice. The sequence they get is 1,5,3,2,2,4,6,5,1,2,1,6. The 6th die is a 4, which is the signal that Alice wants to send. How does Alice signal to Bob that she wants him to look at the 6th die? If Alice can send a signal to say, "look at the 6th die", why wouldn't she just send a signal that says, "attack at dawn"?
Yeah, the SETI Institute's site says we wouldn't be able to pick up signals from an earth like civilization in the system closest to us[1]:
> If an extraterrestrial civilization has a SETI project similar to our own, could they detect signals from Earth?
> In general, no. Most earthly transmissions are too weak to be found by equipment similar to ours at the distance of even the nearest star. But there are some important exceptions. High-powered radars and the Arecibo broadcast of 1974 (which lasted for only three minutes) could be detected at distances of tens to hundreds of light-years with a setup similar to our best SETI experiments.
It's not really a surprise why we aren't finding things. It's a surprise that we're still acting like this is a good way to look.
I don’t see that as being much of a problem. Although we would not be able to detect regular Earth signals, we are relatively near the point where we would be able to detect Earth, including its atmospheric composition. Given we’ve already sent the Arecibo message, we might be likely to send such a signal to Earth. If so, other beings may as well.
I think the real problem is the timing. It seems unlikely that anyone will be looking at the same time anyone else is sending a message.
> the SETI Institute's site says we wouldn't be able to pick up signals from an earth like civilization in the system closest to us[1]
TO be clear, the signals it is referring to are those that would be similar the unintended leakage of normal broadcast and military radar systems used on earth. So detecting ETIs from their passive emissions is certainly unfeasible that the moment.
Signals broadcast by a hypothetical extraterrestrial civilisation as part of an intentional seti signalling effort would (presumably) use much higher power, narrower bandwidth, and frequencies chosen to reduce attenuation by the interstellar medium. These would be detectable using our current technology, and is largely what seti is looking for.
"I doubt SETI could detect even our own signals, when it’s encrypted digital data. I mean it’s just noise like any background signal"
Just because it's "noise" (ie. random/unpredictable looking) doesn't mean it's indistinguishable from other "noise".
Not all "noise" is created equal. "noise" can have properties that make it distinguishable from other "noise". You may have heard of "white noise", "brown noise", "pink noise", "gaussian noise", etc...
A sequence that appears random or unpredictable may nevertheless fall in to certain distributions.
I am not an astronomer, statistician or cryptographer, but would not be in the least surprised if encrypted communication could be clearly distinguishable from the cosmic microwave background radiation -- not only based on its distribution, but other properties such as intensity of the signal, how frequently the signal appears, and other much more advanced signal analysis techniques which are way beyond my expertise to analyze but not beyond the experts at SETI.
Encrypted communication would be detectable. The underlying content may appear to be random, but the transfer protocol and encoding itself is structured, not random. It still needs to be encoded then transported with error correction, etc.
> I mean it’s just noise like any background signal..
My microwave produces noise but I'd like to think scientists could pick it up with their sensors and say "huh, sounds like a microwave".
You might be sending encrypted noise over the wire, but the things like error correction codes are not encrypted. It might be white noise, but you've got to make sure it's the correct white noise when it arrives at its intended destination.
> Then, we people are very soon capable of communicating using quantum entanglement
How many years from now do you think it'll be before we simply stop using radio waves entirely?
> I doubt SETI could detect even our own signals, when it’s encrypted digital data.
I guess you haven’t heard of the military monitoring the activity even of encrypted enemy channels. You don’t even need to know how to decrypt it, you can detect peaks in communication.
That's a very unpleasant and cynical way to put it, but the underlying idea is true. Admitting that you spent a big portion of your life on something that has no realistic chance of success is a herculean task, and most people understandably find it much easier to just continue in the pretense that it was, and still is, worth their time.
The more one looks for aliens, the less worthwhile it is to look for aliens.
If nobody had ever thought to look before at the sky for any signs of aliens, then it would be worth a quick glance to see. But since people have been looking at the sky now for many hundreds of years, with increasingly advanced tech, and still found nothing, it might be worth scaling back the effort.
Looking for aliens is worthwhile because discovering alien life would transform how we see the universe and ourselves, not because it’s easy. That’s like saying the more one looks for fundamental physics the less worthwhile it is. We would never have built a particle accelerator with that attitude. You can extend it to all of science. Why look for anything hard?
I've heard that line a hundred times. But would it?
I value SETI and ideas behind it and even the line you just wrote. But would it?
The whole thing will just descend into a twisted conspiracy pit of nonsense within 48 hours.
_______
How long did governments know about it?
Have aliens been interbreeding with humans all this time?
Is Joe Biden a lizard crossbreed alien?
When do we get to nuke them?
________
This is the level of humanity that we currently display, or which shouts the loudest, or which we click on and ... eventually, slowly, but surely, listen to... or, at least, take account of in our political decisions.
I'm certain that any alien lifeforms out there are far more sensible and will just ... 'walk on by' ... as a human might in the presence of a tiny microbe resting on a discarded apple in the corner of a derelict building.
I think this comes down to how we're using the words "we". Galileo transformed how "we" see the world, but not a whole lot of people at the time appreciated the implications of what he was saying. I think we need to keep looking for ways to answer the big questions because it elevates us. But it's often unevenly distributed in space and time, unfortunately.
Basically, I'm saying that the search for alien life is just science, and if you believe in curiosity-motivated science, there's no reason to single that out. Unless you're worried about alien malware, which isn't a crazy thing to be worried about https://youtu.be/st9EJg_t6yc
As far as I'm aware Grusch makes no claims to having any sort of first hand account or evidence. Though it does seem to be acting like catnip for the conspiratorially minded in congress.
That's right, Grusch has no first hand accounts. But apparently personnel from the crash retrieval teams have come forward and testified to congress. Crazy, I know.
It's a developing situation; we need wait and see before jumping to conclusions.
That said having discerningly followed this topic for years, I believe what we're seeing is a momentous shift in the status quo and that the revelations from these proceedings will be paradigm shifting.
> But apparently personnel from the crash retrieval teams have come forward and testified to congress. Crazy, I know.
Who? Do you have an article for this? Because all I see are claims that people say the retrieval accounting could be possibly credible, but absolutely no first hand accounts.
> That said having discerningly followed this topic for years, I believe what we're seeing is a momentous shift in the status quo and that the revelations from these proceedings will be paradigm shifting.
It's also possible that leadership is becoming less discerning and more than happy to follow whatever makes the biggest headlines.
> Several current members of the recovery program spoke to the Inspector General’s office and corroborated the information Grusch had provided for the classified complaint.
If we believe the claims, it's looking more the case that leadership is completely in the blind regarding these activities. These UAP programs have operated without congressional oversight, and so are illegal. Leadership is now forced to address these claims seriously, for the first time since the 70s.
There's a very strong argument to be made that making first contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial species would be the most significant single event in human history.
I can't say I have high hopes given the odds of making first contact, but it'd still be a huge milestone for our civilization if we can survive it.
Even just knowing they are there/coming or might arrive in 1000y would have huge effects on human society. Not being alone as a species has fundamental existential meaning and religion.
Would the effects be good? The truth can have bad effects, but so does not confronting reality.
The difference is that aliens aren’t magical and all-powerful. They’re likely having similar struggles and fight the issues using technology. It’s a big difference to a god who just waves the hand and creates the universe.
Heads up; that isnt an even remotely accurate reduction of religion or deities as a concept. I could see the misunderstanding if your only exposure to religion was via christian sermons - they are real big on describing their god as the perfect being that is all powerful and blah de blah - but even their creation myths don't portray an omnipotent being, and much of their bible depicts a deity that strives and mistakes as we do (albeit writ large).
The truly salient difference is that aliens unlike gods aren't focused around our loves but their own.
Not sure what Christian creation story you read, but omnipotence is commonly believed to be a core trait of God. And there's a difference between God allowing bad things to happen and making a mistake. Even when having a dialogue with a human in which it sounds like God is changing his mind, the implication is that God is letting the human work out what, if anything, he needs to change in his heart, and also letting the human exercise his faith in reaching out to God for help, and learning to trust God (similarly to how we have a need to interact over time to build trust in relationships with other humans).
And I would argue that God is not ultimately focused just on us, but one of his interests is in helping us to get to know him since that is beneficial to us and he loves us. A big difference with an alien is that they would be a created being just like us (in Christian understanding). If they exist, we can't really presume to know whether they'd be just into their selfish interests, or perhaps know God and be committed to loving others the way God calls us to, etc.
Genesis 1: God fashions the heavens and the earth out of primordial chaos, not the creatio ex nihilo people often read into it.
Genesis 2:4 et seq: The earth is already there in rough form. God finishes it and populates it with life.
A very powerful being, yes, but nothing requires omnipotence.
Job 38 seems to reflect more of an omnipotent God. But it's also much later than the Genesis creation accounts, by which time Hebrew culture had likely been exposed to Greek philosophical ideas about what properties God should have to be worthy of the title.
The book of Genesis specifically - took a really neat class that was a deep dive on that part of the bible specifically.
That implication you mention is not present in the text at all, and if you think about what it says and what that means it paints a very different picture. I mean, the very process of creation is the shaping of a chaotic potential over a period of time that ends in a rest - that doesn't depict an all powerful god.
Specifically I'd suggest that you are uncritically repeating this perspective that lacks a basis in the text, and its justifications replaces persuasion with insistence and repetition . But it does not make sense and its sole reason for existing is to try and harmonize 'god is perfect' with the actual text.
Edit:
To your second paragraph I'm uninterested in how a specific culture views the relationship between men and spirits, I'm referring to how they are human creations that are inherently anthropocentric - they are stories told by humans for humans to explain human things and so their stories are centered around human things.
So the difference between 'people that know other life exists because they believe in spiritual life', and 'people that know other life exists because they recorded a signal that was demonstrably extra terrestrial' is that the former group believes other life is centered on them/us and the latter group does not - I presume we'd ascribe to them similar internal life as to our own, but at the very least we wouldn't assume that their core purpose or sense of place would intersect with us in any way.
Indeed, and those things have often been bad news for humanity. Whether they exist or not, we try to prepare for their arrival, obey people who know their habits, impose their rules on ourselves, and fight their wars.
Your confusing the long-term impact on humanity and short-term impact on your life. That guy who took the shit out of the stables still had to do it for the rest of his life even after the Renaissance happened.
I actually believe it would - it would inspire generations to work towards something greater than even humanity. Whether that resulted in beauty or disaster is besides the point. It might bring some greater sense of unity amongst humans, and direct our efforts for millennia.
Our society - and your life - are controlled far more by culture and far less by material scarcity/“innate human nature” than most people believe, at least partially because the powerful perpetuate the phenomenon wherever they can. How would your mortgage change if the whole city/country/world decided that they shared some meaningful goals?
Plus, more fundamentally, I think most people intuitively find knowledge itself valuable. Even if bringing much joy to many people doesn’t erase mortgages, this dismissive attitude seems unjustified. Imo
For those who are downvoting this, notice I said “detect with our instruments”
Even if I believe there is life out there, and even if we have visual proof of it, SETI specializes in detection with certain instruments, not proving they exist.
I like the plans of SETI, and the equipment they come up with, but to me that is like Alchemy.
Along with combing the surface of the moon looking for existing impacts of potentially artificial objects.