No idea regarding the alien intelligences

Excerpt from e-mail between me 'n me pal:

 

pal: That's a pretty hefty document (Alien Mindscapes—A Perspective on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by Nathalie A. Cabrol.- my parenth.) . I don't know if my frontal lobes are up to the task. I feel as though I forget every paragraph to make room for the next!

 

me: I struggle too. It's fulla science-speak..It's all expressed so formally. I skipped to the end and read the conclusion (I''ll read it all when I'm feelin' up to it, I suppose). From this I gather that it's the approach they want to broaden to include life and/ or intelligence-as-we-don't-know-it. All that being said they're still talking about a signal etc. which is part of the old paradigm, if you ask me! But anyhoo...they could just as easily have said: 1. We have discovered no sign of alien intelligence, 2) we're going to use every science and technology possible to discover if we're alone or not, 3) the aliens may be so different that conventional anthropomorphic search models and the like are limiting in the 'search'.

 

me: Simple! : ))

pal: NASA, I think intelligent life no longer exists in my head.
Beam me up.

 

me: Kzapp! Now you can relax! : )

 

me: Since I don't know what else to say: [    ?    ] [   : )  ] which is better, perhaps, than [        ]?

 

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random not from e-mail:  Ya dang aliens, where are you hiding! No conception of ye so why bother trying to form conceptions regarding ye!! Wanting to know if ye exist - this may be anthropocentricism itself!