Stephen Hawking - Aliens

Well most of the idea behind searching for other life, in my eyes, is that if we find other life elsewhere, we find other places which can support life. I definitely think our focus should be on figuring out how we can get at least some of us off of this ball of dirt.

Interesting. I've never thought about looking for aliens from a utilitarian standpoint before. But if the rationale in looking for aliens is a search for hospitable planets, why spend money on something we've had absolutely no success at so far rather than learning how to terraform a planet, which we might be able to do in small, incremental steps, where each step has some sort of tangible result.

You're right though, past that there isn't really any value in finding other life, unless it is advanced enough that we can learn from it in some way. But honestly, I think the same could be said about any sort of space exploration, and a lot of science and research in general.

I think theoretical scientific research, even the research that is not eventually productive, can make a legitimate claim for public money and support. Since science by its nature investigates the unknown, we don't have the foresight to know which fields will be productive and which won't. I think we have to invest across all fields that are considered viable. Something useful will invariably turn up after a while. Seeing as we've had absolutely no success in finding aliens, I don't think the SETI program can make those same claims.

That said, I am, and probably always will be, a SETI supporter.

why spend money on something we've had absolutely no success at so far rather than learning how to terraform a planet, which we might be able to do in small, incremental steps, where each step has some sort of tangible result.

Well if you wanna fix out planet AND save money, have everyone suddenly turn off all electrical power plants. We'll suddenly all fall to pieces, and only to sane people, who have the brain power to actually live without watching the next episode of Lost will... live. Suddenly, nothing's poluting anything, the world repairs itself (seriously, it's practically programed to fix itself, we just damage it too much, too fast). It's all a matter of us suddenly stopping or not.
I think.

Well if you wanna fix out planet AND save money, have everyone suddenly turn off all electrical power plants. We'll suddenly all fall to pieces, and only to sane people, who have the brain power to actually live without watching the next episode of Lost will... live. Suddenly, nothing's poluting anything, the world repairs itself (seriously, it's practically programed to fix itself, we just damage it too much, too fast). It's all a matter of us suddenly stopping or not. I think.

KA thinks that it's a good thing to get off this rock. I agree with him, and we were discussing the merits of different approaches to accomplish that. To that effect, you completely missed the point.

In fact, you missed the point of this conversation so hard, you deserve the following:

FAIL!

Stay in school nubface.

But to comment on your post, I agree -- we should work on fixing this planet. You go too far in my opinion, though.