I think SETI is a waste of time, but in an interesting way. Better SETI than many other things people do to fool themselves (or to get funding). I seriously don't think there is life anywhere else in the solar system, but I don't doubt there are life elsewhere in the universe. And I don't think we humans should find any extra-terrestrial life soon. My rational is such: I am sometimes quite pessimistic about human beings as a whole (I am locally optimistic and globally pessimistic), so I think humans in this century do not deserve to make discoveries that big--of finding life elsewhere. It would be too easy, and we are not ready. We have recently evolved to become too dependent on and blinded by the power of science and technology, and have ignored many other aspects of being human. Am I too radical? I don't know. But hey, I think there is a not-so-slight possibility that some ancient (or future, but time traveled) civilizations built stuff underneath (or even above!) the surface of Mars, but because of our limited imagination (and consciousness) we are unable to notice them right now. I also think there is a very likely possibility that we are living among the beings from elsewhere, and they have been trying desperately to make themselves known to us, but somehow we are looking for them in the wrong dimensions and ignoring their clues. Something like that. If I weren't so lazy, I would write my ideas into a sci-fi.

my friend Dave's artwork: