I believe there are other intelligences out there. Considering how big our galaxy is and the number of exo-planets already found. Incidentally...if the number of 'possibles' are all confirmed that number goes well past the two thousand mark. SETI could find a new home were it tied to what's already ongoing. It could aid the Keppler telescope as it searches for other earths. It could also be of use when the James Webb Telescope is launched in 2018. Doing it that way allows SETI to stick around a bit longer. Who knows....

Crap!

I forgot the Tardis! 

Beer and pizza to whoever noticed that.

Paaaaaaaaaaarty!!

Actually, it matters because SETI is looking for stars that are emitting a total amount of radio waves that is statistically significantly higher then they should. If you find one you either discovered an alien civilization or a previously unknown astrophysics phenomenon.

Noise is undetectable. Its coherent repeating signals which are obviously artificial in nature which we are looking for.
The problem is that highly compressed signals lose their "obviously artificial" status and instead become indistinguishable from white noise. 

Irrelevant. Yes, SETI is looking for extra terrestrial signals not signals made by humans... but what they are looking FOR is based on the signals humanity produced for a period that lasted under 100 years.

Smell alien lifes? Is this your idea of a joke?

No....it's my idea of demonstrating just how fatuous the argument is that Radio transmission/emission detection is a waste of time.

Remember....the first to lose composure loses totally.

Ridiculous.

Noise is the very real bane of radio communication.  It is the reason communications have sought to move beyond 'AM' frequencies.  It's TOO EASILY 'detected'.

I still maintain SETI is NOT looking for an alien's equivalent of the BBC .... they are looking for detectable radio EMISSIONS which CANNOT be explained as 'natural' phenomenon.....in other words - artifice.  

THAT 'may' include Yoda calling Luke in his fighter.....or it may not.....

Or ET phoning home.

These two statements are contradictory because they reference two different techniques.

Noise is completely detectable.  It just isn't DECIPHERABLE, which is not the same as being undetectable.  A technique that simply looked for an excess of radio emission (for example, by comparing the amount of radio emission to what would be expected from a Planck distribution) wouldn't care if they are looking at a highly compressed signal that "looks" like white noise or if that signal was obviously artificial.  It's still going to pick it up.

Now if you are looking for obviously artificial signals, then the ability to tell the difference between signal and noise is important.  But if you want to argue that alien radio emission will gradually become less decipherable, you are basically assuming that alien technology will follow the same trends as human technology.  Which is quite an assumption.  You are also assuming that aliens won't be trying to communicate with us, like when we sent out signals to various stars with the Aricebo telescope back in the day.

I don't think that its unreasonable to spend what amounts to a very small amount of money on the chance that one of your assumptions is wrong.

SETI employs multiple techniques. More then just these two.

If they invented radio, they will invent file compression and directed transmissions as means to increase the efficiency of communication and make better use of a limited resource (frequency)

Nope, I never said it will be less decipherable (it will be, but as long as we know its really a signal we could apple all the worlds computers to it and crack it). The first part is what I am saying. SETI is looking for obviously artificial signals and once signals get sufficiently efficient then it is no longer obviously artificial. Due to a variety of technical reasons.

And I am not so much "arguing" it as quoting experts.

Yes, which was my point.

You discount the ability to detect radio emission because certain types of communication are difficult to differentiate from noise.  But that argument isn't compelling if SETI is also using techniques which are relatively agnostic when it comes to differentiating between signal and noise.

Now, I'm not saying that the points that you bring up are irrelevant.  But you can't completely discount the ability to detect aliens based on those arguments.  You can simply point out that specific SETI techniques have strengths and weaknesses.

There are some contradictions here.

SETI uses a variety of techniques (as you say).  Some of those techniques look for obviously artificial signals.  Some of them don't care whether the signal looks artificial.  The methods have different strengths and weaknesses, so you can't completely dismiss them all like you do.  For example, the argument that its a waste of money because its difficult to tell signal from noise doesn't completely work because SETI uses other techniques which don't care about that (as you yourself point out when arguing another point).

I agree that they will almost certainly invent compression.  But will they use it?  By stating with certainty that they will assumes a huge number of things.  It's not hard to come up with a number of scenarios in which such technology wouldn't be heavily used - just because humans use that technology doesn't mean that aliens would.

No, because BOTH become ineffective. SETI uses multiple algorithms and each one of them is ineffective in detecting modern human emissions

The algorithm looking for obviously artificial signals is ineffective because improvements in efficiency based on elimination of carrier waves and higher compression, making the data indistinguishable from white noise.

The algorithm looking at quantity of noise is ineffective because quantity of noise decreases as efficiency of directed communication increases.

There is no contradiction here.

That specific technique (look for unnaturally high quantity of white noise) is ineffective because white-noise quantity decreases as efficiency of communication improves.

I am not dismissing them, I am explaining exactly why they are flawed. You need to actually poke a hole in my argument.

Not all aliens are the same... You could have in an infinite universe a tiny percentage of civilizations will never make use of such techniques. (although you would need some extraordinary measures and situations to enforce such)

But I would say that its highly implausible and as such the vast majority of sentient life out there will make use of such technologies.

So, so many assumptions about almost everything.

So far the "assumptions" you keep on claiming I made have all been cases where you assumed I made assumptions based on which facts I chose to present.

And one by one (when you named them) I have refuted that. Why don't you point out some of my "assumptions" and why they are wrong? Because you can't thats why.

Assuming that alien technology itself, as well as the use of that technology, follows the same trend that human technology and usage did.

Assuming that alien technology itself, as well as the use of that technology, follows the same trend that human technology and usage did.

Also, so?  The amount of signal will likely increase even as the amount of noise decreases.  What really matters in this case is signal+noise.

I've shown that you are completely reliant on the assumption that what is obvious to humans is also obvious to aliens.

This is clearly not the case.  Just because such and such a technique is an obvious thing for humans to do to make use of limited resources does not imply that the same thing is obvious for completely alien intelligence.  There are any number of reasons why the natural progression of technology would be different between humans and some kind of aliens.

You are also completely discounting the possibility that a single alien civilization would try and contact us.  Like we tried to send signals to aliens in the past.

Ultimately, all I'm arguing is that there is a reasonable probability that SETI could detect aliens.  I don't think it's likely that they will to be honest.  But even if there is a 1% chance of detection in the next 50 years, I still think its a good use of money given the price tag.  It's basically a risk/reward analysis, where the reward is very high.

Oh, cool.....you've met some then?

Makes the whole 'need' for SETI utterly redundant....