Only if you hit the transmit button.

And that's why they won't find anything, IMHO. Anyone who spends five minutes thinking about the consequences of deliberately transmitting interstellar beacon signals will conclude that the only safe, sane thing to do is STFU.

At the same time, no advanced civilizations will be using coherent RF communications that stand out from the noise floor, because it makes little sense to keep doing that once your civilization understands information theory.

Still, SETI was an undeniably cool thing to try, and I'm glad they did. Lots of other cooperative-computing tasks grew out of the same idea as the article mentions.

▲

abtinf 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why not just credit the dark forest for this idea?

▲

pavel_lishin 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Anyone who spends five minutes thinking about the consequences of deliberately leaving your house will conclude that the only safe, sane thing to do is stay the fuck inside.

	▲	traviswingo 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This reads like a Douglas Adams quote
	▲	dylan604 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		We tried that in 2020. It didn't really work out that well as most people were physically unable to stay the fuck inside.
	▲	bulbar 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Having it safe to go outside is the very point of a society. Outside of this safety Bubble there's a strong tendency for conflict and war. Only after two cruel world wars and a prolonged cold war, the western world got their shit together and decided 'enough of that'. And even that doesn't seem to hold much longer, so it seems we will only have managed to live peaceful among each other without an immediate conflict with somebody (cold war) for roughly 30 years. If aliens are remotely like us, they shouldn't know about us.