Why’s that, you ask?
Several reasons, really. First, although it’s not exactly a hot public policy topic, it will certainly become one if we ever actually find anything. But that’s hardly where the importance of the topic ends.
Much more interesting to me at least is that SETI can serve as a springboard for discussing all kinds of important concepts in public policy. Our contributors this month — David Brin, Robin Hanson, Jerome H. Barkow, and Douglas Vakoch — have talked about the open society, cost-benefit analysis, evolutionary psychology, the hubris of experts, the narcissim of small differences, and even Pascal’s Wager (and what’s wrong with it).
So… lots of interesting stuff, particularly for libertarians who are interested in public policy.
