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If larger aliens means smaller populations of aliens, would that mean that there are fewer possibilities for einsteins to come into existence? If einsteins are
by bostonsre 5y ago
If larger aliens means smaller populations of aliens, would that mean that there are fewer possibilities for einsteins to come into existence? If einsteins are less likely, I could see the rate of growth of civilizations being slower, but no real intuition of whether or not that would make much of a difference in the long term.
- thisiscorrect 5y agoDoes this assume that the likelihood of each alien to be an "einstein" remains constant with size? It seems like a larger being which can support a larger brain might stand a better chance to develop higher thoughts.
- teruakohatu 5y agoLarger brains don't necessarily mean higher cognitive function. Humans have smaller brains than African elephants and many dolphin and whale species.
- fighterpilot 5y ago"Necessarily" is a standard that's too strict and binary. The relevant question is to what extent brain size facilitates and is correlated with intelligence. It doesn't seem to be irrelevant. Large brains are correlated with higher IQ within humans. Also, humans' intelligence came about with an almost doubling in brain volume over two million years. Across very different species there is a weaker correlation but it still seems to be positive. Whales and dolphins are far smarter than ants. Octopuses seem to be an outlier in that respect. I think it's fair to say that the probability of an "Einstein" is positively correlated with body mass, and therefore negatively correlated with population density, at least up to a point (whether that correlation turns negative beyond a point can be debated).
- baja_blast 5y agoBird brains, such as parrot and crows so that brain size is not everything. A crows brain is smaller than a chimps in overall size and body:brain ratio, yet crows show more complex social behavior, problem solving and tool use (despite not having hands). Bird's brains are much denser than mammals, so it's less size and more number of neurons, and the complexity of how these neurons are networked.
- admax88q 5y agoOutliers do not invalidate a correlation.
- FredPret 5y agoMaybe dolphins/whales and elephants are in fact smarter than us but are stuck underwater with no fire and no tech tree or on land without opposable thumbs
- booleandilemma 5y agoI feel like we’d be communicating with them by now if that were the case. The dolphin-socrates would have a YouTube channel campaigning for dolphin rights or something, via a human translator and camera crew. Our world would look like that Netflix movie “Bright”, with multiple intelligent species living and working together. (The movie was bad by the way)
- FredPret 5y agoWhile that would be awesome, these foreign intelligences might have too little in common with our wiring to communicate in any way. Also, we’ve been shaped by our tools since day one, and these animals use little or no tools.
- cetalingua 5y agoMotivation could be an issue. What if they do not want to communicate with us? What if we are too slow for them? Dolphins produce burst pulses that have interclick interval of just few milliseconds. We cannot even hear these individual clicks and for us the burst pulse sounds like a creaky door. But they, supposedly, can hear individual clicks. We do not understand or use echolocation, they do, so their "dolphin-socrates" probably would have their own allegory of the cave that is not based on what individuals can see.
- pmoriarty 5y agoThis reminds me of Douglas Adams writing about how "on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on--whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man--for precisely the same reasons."
- ncmncm 5y agoIdiots are radically more common, so we are probably idiots. Aliens will be smarter.
- yumraj 5y ago> If larger aliens means smaller populations of aliens, Why is that? If aliens are 10X larger than humans, but their planet is also 10X larger in surface area and resources, why can't the population be similarly large? Also, isn't it similarly likely for some aliens to be on average smarter than us, due to some freak of evolution, and some to be dumber.. Genuinely curios if I'm missing something.
- bostonsre 5y agoI'm not exactly sure, but I think the author is asserting that planets are likely not to be much larger than ours [1] and if that is the case, larger aliens means they require more space and that puts an upper bound on population size (e.g. the example he gives is if there were as many humans as there were ants, then together all humans would require more energy than what hits earth from the sun). [1] http://thebigalientheory.com/#planets http://thebigalientheory.com/#planets
- edgyquant 5y agoWouldn’t it be the inverse? A larger planet would have smaller creatures due to higher gravity, thus the need to expend more energy for a similar relative size?
- yumraj 5y agoGood point. But that defeats the OP’s point no? Large planet, smaller aliens means a lot more of them and so on…
- notshift 5y agoIt doesn't matter, because as soon as a civilization figures out AGI or safe genetic modification they will no longer have to rely on the genetic lottery to produce genius.
- imtringued 5y agoAssuming a finite population there is always a smartest member in that population.