Things that fit together according to the scientific paradigm are what I use to speculate on the design of intelligent aliens. Living things need an atmosphere. A planet needs a certain minimal amount of gravity to maintain an atmosphere. Intelligent creatures need a large brain. The carrying capacity of a skeleton increases with the square of the linear size of an animal. The weight it must carry increases with the cube of the linear distance. A brain needs to be fairly large so between the gravity and the necessity for a large brain, alien size needs to be near where we are -- too small and not enough brain. Too big and too much weight for bones. They likely have lungs due to the same sort of thing. The necessity for oxygen increases with the cube, the area to transport oxygen increases with the square. They need to gather oxygen from a surface area larger than their ordinary surface area allows. Evolution conserves across different time scales. Animals like us have coverings that c
[Note: Prompt (below reply this time because too big) not exactly as illustrated because it took a couple of tries to straighten out GPT-4s lazy (literally) interpretation first time out. This post illustrates these things: (1) Reply is dependant on the history of the conversation, the skill of the person making the prompt, random chance, and how GPT interprets the style. In this case, the request to write in the style of a Pulitzer shows how that aspect of the prompt colors the text, and also that bombastically ornate Pulitzer style stuff is not actually great writing.] [ChatGPT-4 Reply] As we cast our gaze upon the digital horizon, an unprecedented challenge emerges. Experts increasingly regard this as not only remarkably complex but also fraught with potential danger, a situation so delicate that addressing it risks exacerbating the very threat it poses (Bostrom, 2016). The omnipresent, silently evolving systems that underpin our online world have now breached the threshold of human