Searching for Extraterrestrials

Melvin Konner (“The Search for Extraterrestrials Could Make Monkeys Out of All of Us,” Science/Medicine, April 16) believes we should not institute a search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) because if they find us, they will eat us--or at least do bad things to us. He says that extraterrestrials are malevolent and that this is the sure teaching of evolution.

But, evolution has also brought forth compassion, parental love, altruism, and cooperative behavior. It might be that advanced civilizations that have had long periods of time to deal with the kind of technological adolescence that bedevils us might have developed into much more benign beings than those he fears. However, the fact is that not only don’t we know about whether extraterrestrials are kind or vicious, we don’t even know if there are any extraterrestrials.

It is kind of Konner to assert that I.S. Shklovskii and I, in our 1966 book “Intelligent Life in the Universe,” “proved” that intelligent life exists. But all we did is to make a plausibility argument. The only way to know is actually to look. But looking is not sending. SETI would not give our existence and position away.

If Konner is worried about malevolent extraterrestrials finding us, then he should direct his attention to those institutions of our society that do give us away--military radar and commercial TV, which carry the news of a new form of intelligent life on Earth out to the stars at the speed of light.

CARL SAGAN

Pasadena