Rationally Speaking #47 - SETI

Rationally Speaking Podcast

New York City Skeptics

Society & Culture, Skepticism, Science, Philosophy

4.6 • 787 Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2011

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, solid science, pseudoscience, or something else, as Massimo argues in his book "Nonsense on Stilts"? What are the theoretical foundations and empirical evidence that justify a multi-decade research program, and what are its chances of succeeding? Have we learned anything thanks to SETI? Also, if the universe is infinite, what problems does this pose for utilitarian ethics?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Rationally speaking is a presentation of New York City skeptics dedicated to promoting critical thinking, skeptical inquiry, and science education.
0:22.4	For more information, please visit us at NYCCEceptics.org.
0:35.3	Welcome to Rationally Speaking, the podcast where we explore the borderlands between reason and nonsense.
0:40.7	I am your host, Massimo Piliuchi. And with me, as always, is my co-host, Julia Galev.
0:45.4	Julia, what are we going to talk about today?
0:47.4	Massimo, our topic today is SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
0:57.2	We're going to talk about whether it's solid science, pseudoscience, or something else,
1:03.1	and about some of the philosophical and scientific questions that SETI raises.
1:08.2	Sounds good.
1:09.1	Well, it's not pseudoscience, is it? What do you think?
1:12.1	Those were your words. I was quoting you there. Well, I was raising the question, but I think we
1:19.0	can get the pseudoscience out of the way, right? I mean, it's not in the same ballpark as, say,
1:22.6	I don't know, astrology or UFOs, although UFOs is kind of related as a topic.
1:28.3	Right.
1:29.4	So you covered this topic in one of my favorite chapters, actually, from your book,
1:34.0	Nonsense on Stilts, in which you talk about SETI as one of several sort of gray area murky
1:40.9	borderline cases of science.
1:43.9	And I mean, my off-the-cuff take was that it's not,
1:49.3	it's sort of a category error to ask whether it's science because it's not actually making
1:53.2	empirical claims, it's simply looking for something. So I'm used to evaluating the sort of
2:00.7	scientific status of empirical claims about the world,
2:04.0	like how substantiated are these claims?
	...

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