ET and Religion?

(Once a product manager myself) -- I think you should review current research on the main ideas behind innovation.

See "The Innovator's Dilemma" - Christensen

It turns out that in order to innovate, catch the next wave instead of getting left behind, the worst thing you can do is listen to your customers. Not immediately intuitive is it? Yet as you observe the technology disruptions, and who did what to whom, it becomes obvious why.

In addition, the whole idea of actual facts and data is just about impossible in emerging markets. Since the market is emerging, there is no data yet, most people still do not know what they need.

Now if you are talking about incremental refinements to an existing product, these issues do not apply, and listening to customers is the best thing you can do. However, since strategy is long term thinking, and you coined this part of the discussion on terms of business strategy, I think you were thinking of the former innovation view?

Alex

I'm going to ignore the Global Warming parts, except to say that it's very easy to pick out bad science decades (or centuries) after the dust has settled and the victors have been declared. Sometimes the establishment is doing the good science and the dissenters the bad, it's just those incidents are less likely to make the history books.

I'm more interested in the SETI thing. In a couple of paragraphs, Crichton totally misrepresents the scientific method for his own rhetorical ends, and in doing so undermines pretty much everything else he has to say.

Crichton starts with a really dodgy definition (faith == religion), and goes downhill from there. We take things on faith every day. We walk to the shops with the faith that they will be open. A religion is a faith that one takes on as a personal philosophy. Religion is a faith that changes the way you view the world, and most importantly, the way you live your life. A Jew will not eat pork because it is forbidden by God. A Buddhist shuns meat because avoiding killing brings you closer to enlightenment. A SETI researcher may go to work every day to try to find aliens, but does it change what he has for breakfast?

By Crichton's definition, any science is religion. You start with a hypothesis, (faith) then you conduct experiments to prove whether it's true or not. If you're lucky, you'll already have a certain amount of experimental data that fits your hypothesis better than the hypothesis it's supplanting, so you have a foothold towards becoming an accepted theory. There's still no proof, though. Was Relativity a religion before we actually started smashing atoms? Were all the people building particle accelerators members of a bizarre Einsteinian cult? No, that's just what you do when you have a hypothesis that sounds plausible, and you want to find out if it's true or not.

SETI have a hypothesis. It's a really sketchy one, as the numbers are not known, but the Drake equation provides a basis for the possibility of intelligent alien life. It doesn't prove such life exists, it just describes a situation in which it would occur. It provides a basis for study.

The prime directive of the scientific method is falsifiability. We have theory X. What experiment can we perform that will prove that theory wrong? In the case of SETI, the theory is actually "That there are no alien intelligences", and SETI are seeking to falsify that theory by conducting experiments that could find evidence that some exist. Do some, or indeed many SETI scientists hold a (possibly even religious) belief that aliens exist? Almost certainly. But this means nothing to the SETI project itself, so long as the experiments are performed in a rigorous manner.

Of course, the problem with falsifiability is there's really no end to it. You can't prove something true, you can only prove that nobody's found it to be false yet. The longer that a theory remains unfalsified, the more weight it gains. After 40 years of searching, one could say that the theory that we are alone in the universe holds substantial weight. And indeed, most sane people do not worry too much about aliens in our day to day lives. It doesn't change what we have for breakfast.

On the other hand, our methods of detection are getting better steadily. The mammoth computing task undergone by SETI@Home would not have been possible a decade ago. If we were performing the same experiments over and over again with the same methods, it would be cause for concern. As far as I can see, we're not. We're finding new ways to falsify the theory and testing them.

The question then becomes whether the theory is worth testing in the first place. If we did start being able to listen in on alien broadcasts, what would we really gain from it anyway? This brings us into the realm of the religion of scientific enquiry itself. The overwhelming belief since the Enlightenment has been that science in itself, the increase of human knowledge, is beneficial. Some biologist studying the migratory habits of the Lesser Spotted Owl seems totally worthless, but we support it as a culture because _science_ has risen over the last two centuries to be the dominant religion. We believe that even if the direct benefits seem worthless, the collateral benefits of pure research are worthwhile in the long run.

Alex, I don't think you completely got my drift. When I mentioned herd behavior, I was talking about end users of technology - IT shops. You should always listen to your customers/end users - you just have to filter what they say through a lens of practicality in some cases. In the case of IT shops, producing tools for end users who actually bring in revenue - mindless trend following for the sake of trend following - something IT shops have been very guilty of - is not only stupid, it's bad business.

James,

I think I do follow your drift, in that you reply:
You should always listen to your customers/end users

This is exactly what innovators must not do. I cannot give you much of a synopsis of Christensen's book here, but try this.

Disk drives - pick a generation (I will use 5 1/4, but there is a similar story for them all (see the book)). The leaders in 5 1/4 were not the leaders in 3 1/2. Why? Because the customers were different companies. By listening to the 5 1/4 customers, they learned that what 3 1/2 brought to the table was inadequate, not meeting their needs, they had no interest. 3 1/2 brought lower density in a small form factor. Current 5 1/4 users wanted more density and had no need for small form factor. So they learned that it was not a good idea, not what their customers wanted. Meanwhile the upstarts with 3 1/2 had of necessity to find new markets. They then gained such an unassailable lead in the 3 1/2 technology, it was too late for the 5 1/4 people to catch up. And pretty soon the technology of 3 1/2 caught up with the density needs of the 5 1/4 market, and they took that over.

You missed Crichton's entire point. The examples he gives are just that - examples. What he's trying to say is that "consensus" means little in the scientific realm. He pointed out the reaction to Lomborg as an example of that. As I said in my post - put aside your personal politics and simply read the article as an argument. The examples are not his point.

Michael Crichton's autobiography shows how anti-science he is (and all of his fiction as well). SETI is looking for evidence of intelligence, not having faith that intelligence is out there.... it's not praying, it's searching, you can't "prove" something right or wrong without looking for evidence.

In the book "Innovators Dilemma", we learn that listening to your customers almost always results in being "trapped' in incremental improvements of the existing products. In the book "Innovators Solution", we learn that observing your customers can sometimes help you identify new and unexpected uses for your products -- for example, milkshakes not as a part of a meal, but as a way to make the commute to work more interesting.

As to SETI, Crichton ignores one minor point: we know at least one thing about the Drake equation - that not one of the factors involved can be zero. There exists at least one planet in the galaxy where sentient life, technically able to communicate over interstellar distances, has evolved. And there exists such a thing as an "informed guess" - it's called extrapolation. Only, sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. It's just not trustworthy. Otherwise, he's quite correct. Scientific truth does not depend on the consensus of scientists, but on facts. And the examples he cites all show that the facts of a matter eventually prevailed over the false consensus of scientists, although it may be argued that this process often takes much too long and that it is indeed frightening that "official science" often upholds and defends theses which are later shown to be non-factual. So, we really haven't progressed much from the Dark Ages, where Church dictated Truth. Never trust a scientist on his word alone. Check and recheck the facts, as Crichton proposes. ~winterblue~

As to SETI, Crichton ignores one minor point: we know at least one thing about the Drake equation - that not one of the factors involved can be zero. There exists at least one planet in the galaxy where sentient life, technically able to communicate over interstellar distances, has evolved. And there exists such a thing as an "informed guess" - it's called extrapolation. Only, sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. It's just not trustworthy. Otherwise, he's quite correct. Scientific truth does not depend on the consensus of scientists, but on facts. And the examples he cites all show that the facts of a matter eventually prevailed over the false consensus of scientists, although it may be argued that this process often takes much too long and that it is indeed frightening that "official science" often upholds and defends theses which are later shown to be non-factual. So, we really haven't progressed much from the Dark Ages, where Church dictated Truth. Never trust a scientist on his word alone. Check and recheck the facts, as Crichton proposes. ~winterblue~

As to SETI, Crichton ignores one minor point: we know at least one thing about the Drake equation - that not one of the factors involved can be zero. There exists at least one planet in the galaxy where sentient life, technically able to communicate over interstellar distances, has evolved. And there exists such a thing as an "informed guess" - it's called extrapolation. Only, sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. It's just not trustworthy. Otherwise, he's quite correct. Scientific truth does not depend on the consensus of scientists, but on facts. And the examples he cites all show that the facts of a matter eventually prevailed over the false consensus of scientists, although it may be argued that this process often takes much too long and that it is indeed frightening that "official science" often upholds and defends theses which are later shown to be non-factual. So, we really haven't progressed much from the Dark Ages, where Church dictated Truth. Never trust a scientist on his word alone. Check and recheck the facts, as Crichton proposes. ~winterblue~

As to SETI, Crichton ignores one minor point: we know at least one thing about the Drake equation - that not one of the factors involved can be zero. There exists at least one planet in the galaxy where sentient life, technically able to communicate over interstellar distances, has evolved. And there exists such a thing as an "informed guess" - it's called extrapolation. Only, sometimes it works, sometimes it fails. It's just not trustworthy. Otherwise, he's quite correct. Scientific truth does not depend on the consensus of scientists, but on facts. And the examples he cites all show that the facts of a matter eventually prevailed over the false consensus of scientists, although it may be argued that this process often takes much too long and that it is indeed frightening that "official science" often upholds and defends theses which are later shown to be non-factual. So, we really haven't progressed much from the Dark Ages, where Church dictated Truth. Never trust a scientist on his word alone. Check and recheck the facts, as Crichton proposes. ~winterblue~

Sorry for the multiple posting. I got an error each time and thought it hadn't gotten through. Should have checked, though. ~winterblue~