What's it good for?

There are essentially three different systems in the brain. 1. Fast thinking neural nets (emotions), systems that integrate sensory signals and put out a signal that indicates something else. We can't 'see' inside these systems, we can only believe their outputs are appropriate or not. 2. Slow thinking memory that uses language and ideas to make estimates and calculate future possibilities. 3. You. The thing that decides what to think about. We know almost exactly how systems 1 & 2 work .[1]  We've given out several nobel prizes for these topics. We reproduce them in the lab and we make them better every day. We use artificial versions of them to make our lives easier every day. (Have you used Google search lately?) And they'll continue to get smarter, faster and more reliable. We also recognize that system 2, which relies on language, is what makes us most diffrerent fromt he rest of the species on this planet. However, we have little idea of how sy...

Why don't we see any aliens? A significant problem is the vastness of space. Despite piggybacking on the world's most sensitive radio telescope, Charles Stuart Bowyer said, the instrument could not detect random radio noise emanating from a civilization like ours, which has been leaking radio and TV signals for less than 100 years. For SERENDIP  [A3] and most other SETI projects to detect a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization, the civilization would have to be beaming a powerful signal directly at us. It also means that Earth civilization would only be detectable within a distance of 100 light-years. [89] "With available instruments we are unlikely to detect Earthlike planets or civilizations," Airieau said. "This sort of detection will not come within our realm for another few decades." c. 1998. The only thing that overcomes the vastness of space is the vastness of time.  The best way to detect alien civilizations is to send something to wh...