Provocative radio transients and base rate bias: A Bayesian argument for conservatism

Most searches for alien radio transmissions have focused on finding omni-directional or purposefully earth-directed beams of enduring duration. However, most of the interesting signals so far detected have been transient and non-repeatable in nature. These signals could very well be the first data points in an ever-growing data base of such signals used to construct a probabilistic argument for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. This paper looks at the effect base rate bias could have on deciding which signals to include in such an archive based upon the likely assumption that our ability to discern natural from artificial signals will be less than perfect.

• Publication year

  2012

• Venue

  Acta Astronautica

• Publication date

  2012-11-30

• Fields of study

  Physics, Engineering

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.actaastro.2013.05.012arXiv 1211.7338
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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