
The Big Alien Theory - jonbaer
http://thebigalientheory.com/
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nkurz
There was also discussion yesterday:

    
    
      The Big Alien Theory (thebigalientheory.com)
      126 points by miralabs 16 hours ago | 125 comments
    

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11353239](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11353239)

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javajosh
If I read this correctly, the argument is that a) intelligent life could be
anywhere from 50kg (a chimp) to 500kg (a small elephant). Since humans are at
the low end of that range, and assuming an even distribution across the range,
then most other intelligent life is physically larger than us. (There is a
tangent relating to population density in there, too).

It's a clever argument. But to be honest I don't think we understand enough
about how intelligence arises (consciousness) to really put a bounds on the
physical size of species. For example, there is no evidence that any dinosaur
was intelligent - why not? Additionally, it seems likely to me that over time
humans will virtualize and inhabit different kinds of bodies, probably smaller
ones, and that this could be a typical progression for intelligent biological
species that don't annihilate themselves.

But most importantly, there doesn't seem to be any real utility to the
argument, even if it were sound. I mean, let's say the author is right - so
what? Okay, the average intelligent alien is bigger than us. What does that
have to do with anything? How does it help us contact them, visit them,
understand them? The only application I can think of is as material for
certain kinds of science fiction authors' in-story expositions.

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static_noise
Yes, this arguing is totally pointless in a logical sense.

1) We have no evidence for or against it.

2) Even if we knew - it wouldn't matter at all to us.

It's like arguing about the style of gods beard or how to get rid of
undetectable demons.

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dmichulke
TLDR;

A random individual on earth is more likely to live in a country with large
population.

Likewise, a random individual in space is more likely to live on a planet with
large population.

Using this type of reasoning, the author shows that the human (earth) is
probably part of a bigger group of species (planets) of similar size.

Therefore, we can expect most alien individuals to be of similar size to
humans and alien planets to be of similar size to earth.

~~~
static_noise
But only if alien life exists (we don't know) and shows the same distribution
characteristics (we have no clue).

The reasoning, while consistent in itself, is based assumptions pulled from
thin air.

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jcoffland
The silly loaded dice metaphors in this article are too much. No matter how
you spin it our one data point of humans on earth is just one data point and
it doesn't tell us any more than that unless you also know that life elsewhere
is similar to life here. But we don't know that.

