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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. So Robert, Yes,

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Speaker 1: I want you to do a little experiment with me.

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Speaker 1: All right, let's do it. Put yourself in the shoes

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Speaker 1: of a paranormal phenomenon investigator. Okay, okay, somebody with some judgments,

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Speaker 1: some authority. You're not necessarily a skeptic or true believer,

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Speaker 1: maybe somewhere between Molder and Scully and you old scolding

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Speaker 1: older sculder exactly. You are Sculder, and you have just

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Speaker 1: been caught by security guards while raiding the file cabinets

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Speaker 1: of a secret evidence room chock full of alien conspiracy documentation,

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Speaker 1: and before you can get a good look at all

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Speaker 1: these autopsy reports and heavily redacted witness Affidavid. You've pulled

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Speaker 1: the security guards who caught you. They lead you down

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Speaker 1: the hall, this long dark hall, to the office of

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Speaker 1: a bald man with a goatee and a green Paisley

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Speaker 1: bow tie, obviously a major player in the shadow government. Yes,

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Speaker 1: that's what the bow tie signifies. So Paisley bow Tie

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Speaker 1: stares you down, and he says, Okay, hot shot, you

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Speaker 1: think you know a lot about aliens. Well, I've got

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Speaker 1: a test for you, and if you pass the test,

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Speaker 1: I'll let you in on the whole conspiracy and you

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Speaker 1: can know everything. But if you fail, you're going to

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Speaker 1: spend the rest of your career at a weather station

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Speaker 1: in the Arctic Circle. Okay, so the stakes are pretty

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Speaker 1: high here, right, So he pushes a short stack of

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Speaker 1: staple documents across the desk towards you and gestures for

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Speaker 1: you to peruse them at your leisure. And here's what

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Speaker 1: he says. One of these five accounts is true. The

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Speaker 1: other four are lies. Pick the right one and you pass.

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Speaker 1: So you flip through the documents. They tell this first

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Speaker 1: person account of a young woman who was abducted by

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Speaker 1: aliens while hiking on the Appalachian Trail, And in all

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Speaker 1: five accounts, the abductee is lifted off the ground in

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Speaker 1: this beam of strobing violet light and sucked into the

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Speaker 1: interior of an alien spacecraft, where she meets a group

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Speaker 1: of aliens. They take a blood sample, They check our

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Speaker 1: blood pressure, maybe do a cheek swab cotton swab on

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Speaker 1: the inside of the mouth, very on the level. Everything

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Speaker 1: is very professional, yes, uh, and then the next morning

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Speaker 1: she wakes up in the forest with vague memories. Now,

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Speaker 1: the only difference in the five accounts is how the

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Speaker 1: aliens are described physically. So, in one account they're tall,

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Speaker 1: about seven to eight feet tall, beautiful humanoids with smooth

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Speaker 1: skin and pure white eyes. In another one, they are short,

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Speaker 1: stout humanoids about three to four feet tall, covered in

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Speaker 1: thick black body hair from head to toe, with curling

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Speaker 1: tusks extending for the lower jaw. Okay, so so far

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Speaker 1: we have elves and we have dwarves to choose from. Gotcha? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: pretty much? Okay. Then you've got eight legged, crab like

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Speaker 1: animals with a brittle exoskeleton, two pairs of grasping claws,

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Speaker 1: one larger pair and one smaller pair of claws, and

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Speaker 1: compound eyes. The whole creature is approximately the size of

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Speaker 1: a cargo van. Giant crab. Gotcha. Then you've got small

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Speaker 1: blobs about one meter cubed of thick beige putty that

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Speaker 1: seemed to move as though guided by intelligence, and they

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Speaker 1: interact with onboard machinery and communicate psychically with the abductee.

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Speaker 1: Each one moves about on the spacecraft on four long

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Speaker 1: stilts on the underside of the putty, and occasionally they

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Speaker 1: excrete small puddles of sludge resembling muddy snow onto the

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Speaker 1: floor of the cabin, and these puddles are promptly removed

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Speaker 1: by room by like robots that emerge from the vents

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Speaker 1: whenever needed. And then in the fifth account there are predators.

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Speaker 1: They just straight out predators from the dreadlocks, the wrist blades,

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Speaker 1: the mask predators. Okay, so which one is the true account?

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Speaker 1: M Now this is an interesting quandary to deal with

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Speaker 1: because on one level, like just knowing what I know

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Speaker 1: and what I actually believe about encounters with aliens, and

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Speaker 1: in any kind of paranormal experience, I would I would say,

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Speaker 1: I would want to pick the thing that could that

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Speaker 1: that that matches up with our expectations more in our

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Speaker 1: popular minds that concerning aliens. So in that regard, I

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Speaker 1: would tend to either go with predators or or perhaps

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Speaker 1: the the eleven creatures, because they're kind of matches there

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Speaker 1: the grays right. Okay, so you're saying you're more likely

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Speaker 1: to see these show up in fiction, So so that

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Speaker 1: this seems like if one were to have a paranormal experience,

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Speaker 1: if one were to have an hallucinatory experience, um, your

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Speaker 1: mind would would be more likely to pick from those

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Speaker 1: two buckets of alien content. However, wait, hold on, so

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Speaker 1: wait are you assuming the abduct team made this whole

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Speaker 1: thing up? Yeah? That my My first response to this

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Speaker 1: would be, all right, this, this individual has had a

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Speaker 1: paranormal experience that feels very real to them, but is

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Speaker 1: ultimately uh, but is ultimately not supernatural. It's ultimately is

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Speaker 1: all about their mind uh making sense of some sort

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Speaker 1: of um, you know, abnormal experience. But so she actually

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Speaker 1: just kind of like got dizzy from walking too much

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Speaker 1: one day, passed out and dream you know, she's or

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Speaker 1: she's been awake for an extended period of time. However,

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Speaker 1: if i'm if, I'm going to get outside of that

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Speaker 1: mindset and get in the mindset if someone's actually act

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Speaker 1: actively assuming as same one actually happened, assume one of

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Speaker 1: these is actually legit. I would probably go with the blobs,

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Speaker 1: because the blob idea, as as you laid it out here,

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Speaker 1: feels weird enough, unique enough, inhuman enough, and departed enough

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Speaker 1: from our more mainstream ideas of what alien life who

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Speaker 1: consists of so I would think that one sounds out

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Speaker 1: there enough to actually be out there. You know, I

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Speaker 1: wondered myself because I was trying to decide after I

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Speaker 1: wrote these which one is more plausible. And I also

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Speaker 1: felt like the blobs. But maybe that's just because I

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Speaker 1: used the deceiver's tactic of adding interesting details like the

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Speaker 1: stilts and the and the sledge pooping on the floor

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Speaker 1: that seemed to make things more believable. If you add

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Speaker 1: weird little details, yeah, you you embellished it enough to

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Speaker 1: where I I got a sense that there was actually

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Speaker 1: some sort of, h you know, a culture going on here.

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Speaker 1: If you were to subtract to those details, I wonder

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Speaker 1: if I might not drift towards the crab. You know,

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Speaker 1: I I love predators, but I might have to go

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Speaker 1: for the crab because the crab has two things going

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Speaker 1: for it. It's both weird enough and different enough from

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Speaker 1: humans to be sort of conceivable as as outside the

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Speaker 1: realm of normal standard abductee imagination. But it's also familiar

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Speaker 1: enough that I can see biology creating that. I'm not

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Speaker 1: quite sure that the chemicals available in the universe would

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Speaker 1: create sentient blobs. Maybe that would, but I'm not sure.

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Speaker 1: I know that the chemicals in the universe can create

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Speaker 1: things like crabs, yes, And I guess my reluctance to

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Speaker 1: go with the crab is that it's essentially a giant crab,

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Speaker 1: that it's essentially just something very terrestrial that it's just

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Speaker 1: been u spaced out a little bit, you know. But

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Speaker 1: there's one feature of the giant crab that might actually

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Speaker 1: be a selling point, depending on how much credence you

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Speaker 1: give to a recent paper that came out that's sort

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Speaker 1: of like the inspiration for this episode, which is that

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Speaker 1: the crab is the size of a cargo van. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And this is a paper we're gonna get to in

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Speaker 1: a little bit, but it actually did some statistical calculations

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Speaker 1: to try to determine one particular aspect of what alien

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Speaker 1: bodies are going to look like in that aspect's size,

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Speaker 1: because obviously there are countless additional questions regarding the possibility

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Speaker 1: of life elsewhere in the universe, but this particular study

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Speaker 1: that we'll look at deals exclusively with just the size

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Speaker 1: of the organism. Yeah, and well in the numbers you

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Speaker 1: would expect and what their planets look like. But the

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Speaker 1: one takeaway about the alien bodies themselves is the size.

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Speaker 1: But I thought that was an interesting thing to address

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Speaker 1: because actually, in fiction we've seen a vast sort of

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Speaker 1: range of imagination in how large aliens can be expected

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Speaker 1: to be. Obviously, the most common are your human sized aliens,

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Speaker 1: because they are there are human actors playing them. That's right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's always the concern, right if you're and

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Speaker 1: and it is understandable if you're dealing with you want

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Speaker 1: to get a really cool sci fi idea out there,

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Speaker 1: and you want to discuss it, and you want to

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Speaker 1: shoot it in a way that actually, uh comes under budgets.

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Speaker 1: Under budget, It's far easier to just put somebody in

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Speaker 1: a guerrilla suit than put a microwave on their head

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Speaker 1: and call it an alien robot. Yeah, the what was

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Speaker 1: his name? I think I have it in my Roman

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Speaker 1: Roman Extension x J two. Yeah, folks at home, if

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Speaker 1: you haven't seen Robot Monster, it's a classic. It's pretty fun.

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Speaker 1: I mean I like to think of it as um,

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Speaker 1: you know, kind of like a biospace suit worn by

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Speaker 1: some other organism that just happens to look like a

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Speaker 1: gorilla costume with a like a TV set on its head.

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Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting, but yeah, we have countless examples, like

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Speaker 1: Star Wars and Star Treker are particularly just loaded with

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Speaker 1: humanoid roughly human size alien species, the track being the

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Speaker 1: most scandalous in its way because it's because we you know,

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Speaker 1: it's just like a ripple on the forehead makes this

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Speaker 1: species and this entire you know, this entire strain of

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Speaker 1: evolution different from this one, or sometimes just give them

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Speaker 1: different clothes. That's enough. And then, of course there is,

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Speaker 1: in my opinion, the greatest and most scientifically plausible vision

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Speaker 1: of alien life ever created, which is Cone Heads. Yes

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Speaker 1: you are now are you yourst referring only to the

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Speaker 1: original Saturday in Life skits or the Oh no, I'm

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Speaker 1: including the films. Yeah, the film includes lots of relevant details. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we we learned about their mating practices and so well.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Those might have been the sketches too,

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Speaker 1: I haven't seen all of them. I remember they had

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Speaker 1: a great stop motion creature in the film. It actually,

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Speaker 1: yeah they did. I think it was claymation. It was

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Speaker 1: this Ray Harry Housing kind of thing. I don't know

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Speaker 1: who actually created it, but it was pretty awesome. There's

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Speaker 1: a monster towards the end. I can forgive just about

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Speaker 1: any film if it has a cool stop motion creature

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Speaker 1: in it, I am right there with you. You ever

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Speaker 1: made it to the end of Howard the God, I

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Speaker 1: was just thinking about Howard the Duck, like that's literally

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Speaker 1: the only thing that I remember about it is that

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Speaker 1: at the end um the dude of the mustache turns

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Speaker 1: into this awesome, like weird technically creature and and it's

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Speaker 1: it's glorious the dark overlord of the universe. Yeah. But

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Speaker 1: then of course we've also got aliens that have been

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Speaker 1: imagined to run rather to the small side, which I

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Speaker 1: think is kind of interesting. Often if you hear the

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Speaker 1: actual abductee stories, so you go back to that scenario

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Speaker 1: we had at the beginning, I think most likely you're

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Speaker 1: going to hear that people were abducted by the gray aliens, right,

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Speaker 1: which you're typically pretty small, right, Yeah, generally got two

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Speaker 1: to four feet tall, and you're in varying accounts. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is this is sort of the alien mythos that

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Speaker 1: has sees the popular consciousness, and so they're these short, smooth,

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Speaker 1: gray things with large black eyes, big heads. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: it's since it's the idea that's in the popular consciousness.

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Speaker 1: People have these paranormal experiences and they tend to draw

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Speaker 1: from that that bucket of content, if you will. Um

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Speaker 1: outside of the grays though, the average ewalk stands about

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Speaker 1: three ft tall a little over depending on the you

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Speaker 1: know they ran. You have your your wickets, but then

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Speaker 1: you also have those bigger, sort of chunkier monkeys. You know.

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Speaker 1: I do wonder exactly how small and actually intelligent organism

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Speaker 1: could run. Indeed, I mean in our science fick and

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Speaker 1: you see, uh, such creatures as the virus, the flood

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Speaker 1: from Doctor Who, or the thing from John Carpenter's two Masterpiece,

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Speaker 1: where every cell of the shape shifting organism is itself

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Speaker 1: an individual organism with its own survival instake. And that's

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Speaker 1: how they end up discovering who has been replaced by

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Speaker 1: the thing sticking the hot wire and the blood and

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Speaker 1: seeing if the blood tries to escape. Yeah, yeah, they

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Speaker 1: take a blood sample from each one, and if your

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Speaker 1: blood tries to defend itself, that's not a good sign. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And that's uh, that's if not a space faring species,

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Speaker 1: at least a species intelligent enough to steal the space

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Speaker 1: faring technology from another species. Yeah, so it could perhaps

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Speaker 1: co opt the intelligence of a host species, if even

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Speaker 1: if it's not particularly intelligent or conscious itself. But certainly

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Speaker 1: when we look at terrestrial models, and we'll be coming

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Speaker 1: back to this again and again, um, it's it's hard

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Speaker 1: to find any examples of a particularly small all life

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Speaker 1: where you can say, oh, well, there you go, that

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Speaker 1: that could be a space faring species on its own. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But of course this paper we're about to talk about

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Speaker 1: in a minute doesn't say that aliens run small. It's

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Speaker 1: ays that they run large. And we've got no shortage

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Speaker 1: of large aliens. You could run all the way up

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Speaker 1: to probably some Kaiju monsters, right, Oh yeah, yeah, the

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Speaker 1: let's see. Uh I was looking around and there are

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Speaker 1: a lot of Kaiju monsters to consider, Um, how many

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Speaker 1: of them are actually aliens though? Yeah, because yeah, a

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Speaker 1: number of them have more terrestrial origins. I found one,

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Speaker 1: in particular, a hundred and thirty foot tall millenniums from

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Speaker 1: god Zilla two thousand UM millennium which came out and

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Speaker 1: uh I, it seems like various other Tohoe properties in kaiju,

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Speaker 1: and certainly when you get into um like power rangers

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Speaker 1: and whatnot, right. I mean, they're always battling some sort

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Speaker 1: of giant creature. And but doesn't that take a magic

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Speaker 1: wand to make the monster grow? Well? Yes, but if

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Speaker 1: you look at them, magic wand is some form of technology.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, it gets kind of complicate. But but

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Speaker 1: even then you have other examples of really huge alien

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Speaker 1: life and sci fi. Um. You know, Old Cathulu stood

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Speaker 1: hundreds of meters tall, and he, of course was an

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Speaker 1: extraterrestrial creature. What about the native inhabitants of Arakushea, the sandworms, Uh,

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Speaker 1: they are They at least had been measured up to

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Speaker 1: four d fiftys long, but there were speculations that in

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Speaker 1: the polar regions of Iraqis they might reach seven hundred

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Speaker 1: or even a thousand meters. So that's uh, upwards of

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Speaker 1: three thousand, hundred and eighty feet long. That's pretty big.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure why, but intuitively I find it more

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Speaker 1: plausible that a giant land dwelling animal would be worm

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Speaker 1: like and sort of horizontal, rather than like a upright

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Speaker 1: two legged kaiju monster. Yeah, I think that. Yeah. The

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Speaker 1: larger to get when you start looking at the limits

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Speaker 1: of morphology, um, Like the human model is just gonna

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Speaker 1: fall upon part if you just try and wave the

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Speaker 1: magic wand at it right. And then then of course

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Speaker 1: you've got your aliens that are just basically huge humans, right,

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Speaker 1: the engineers of Prometheus, they're about seven ft tall. Um,

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Speaker 1: there are the oh did you ever see Fantastic Planet?

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Speaker 1: Actually haven't? Oh yeah, nineteen three wonderful animated film, and

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Speaker 1: you have these these enormous blue humanoid drugs uh stand

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Speaker 1: about three nine ft tall, and they keep little human

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Speaker 1: homes as pets. So they are these little naked humanoids

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Speaker 1: that they they kind of dress up in like weird

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Speaker 1: kind of cute, kind of sexy doll costumes and just

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Speaker 1: keep them as pets. It's a creepy, fabulous film. But

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Speaker 1: but they had another extra large critter there. Um, there's

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Speaker 1: a tin foot tall species and E. N. M. Banks

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Speaker 1: culture series uh known as the Darians. And they're also

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Speaker 1: a three legged uh species, which is interesting. I think

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Speaker 1: that's interesting because fun fact, did you know that there's

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Speaker 1: no such thing as a three legged animal anywhere on Earth? Um,

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Speaker 1: not a single side of the dogs you see, but right, well,

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Speaker 1: and naturally occurring three legged animals. So there are some

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Speaker 1: things that sort of actual like a tripod by using

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Speaker 1: back legs and balance with a tail or something. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: some things like a kangaroo or something might sort of

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Speaker 1: use a tail sort of like a leg, But there's

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Speaker 1: no such thing as a three legged animal. That's kind

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Speaker 1: of a strange fact about the way life emerges on Earth.

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Speaker 1: If you go millions of years back, you see certain

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Speaker 1: particular body plans emerge, and one of those body plans

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Speaker 1: is the four legged body plan that informs all reptiles

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Speaker 1: and mammals. But you didn't have an ancestral three legged

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Speaker 1: body plan to grow into animals that survived today. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the the sort of stand the standard models become set

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Speaker 1: in stone evolutionarily, and uh and and yeah. So if

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Speaker 1: you go back far enough, I feel I feel like

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Speaker 1: there there is an example or two of like three

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Speaker 1: eyes and very small creature. Really, I think one in particular. Um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: animals with odd numbers of features. That's weird, Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: it is rare. Generally you see the typical two legged,

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Speaker 1: four legged, two eyes. Yeah. Alright, so we've hinted that

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Speaker 1: this paper we're gonna talk about says aliens are going

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Speaker 1: to be rather large. What's the deal with this actual paper. Well,

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Speaker 1: in March, the cosmologist Fergus Simpson of the University of

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Speaker 1: Barcelona published this paper pre published on archive called the

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Speaker 1: Nature of Inhabited Planets and their Inhabitants, which is a

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Speaker 1: great name for a scientific paper. And so what was

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Speaker 1: his reasoning? How did he come up with the idea

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Speaker 1: that aliens are going to be on balance rather big?

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Speaker 1: Well for starters, he uh largely employs Bayesian statistics, which

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Speaker 1: is a model based on Bay's theorem. So the way

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Speaker 1: of calculating probability of things, like if anyone out there

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Speaker 1: is familiar with what a Nate Silver, right, Yeah, who's

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Speaker 1: who's made a name from self predicting things like presidential elections,

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Speaker 1: Like he used his Bayesian logic and in crunching the

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Speaker 1: numbers on the statistical possibilities of varying outcomes, and that's

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Speaker 1: scarily good at predicting the future. Yeah, yeah, And it's

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Speaker 1: this is the same model that that Simpson employees here.

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Speaker 1: So as we as we mentioned, his work concerns the

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Speaker 1: statistical probabilities of inhabited planets, how many aliens would be

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Speaker 1: on those planets, and then the size of those uh,

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Speaker 1: those aliens, what would be the sort of standard model

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Speaker 1: and uh and in determining the number of individuals UM

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Speaker 1: that would most likely live in a given civilization, he

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Speaker 1: came up with fifty million or fewer individuals. While any

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Speaker 1: given alien in our universe would likely be from a

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Speaker 1: high population world in the same way that most people

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Speaker 1: on Earth are going to be just statistically Chinese, Indian,

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Speaker 1: or American, um, very few worlds would host either a

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Speaker 1: small number or or a large number of individuals. Right.

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Speaker 1: So the idea is that if you randomly select a

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Speaker 1: human from anywhere Earth, it's more likely they'll live in

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Speaker 1: China or the United States, one of the most populated countries.

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Speaker 1: But if you randomly select the population of a country,

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Speaker 1: you're more likely to select a country that's near the

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Speaker 1: Median somewhere in the middle. That's you know, like Canada

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Speaker 1: or some you know, not particularly huge, not particularly small. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like imagine all the nations of the Earth,

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Speaker 1: and each nation is its own planet, some large, some small,

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Speaker 1: and then the larger ones have higher populations. Yeah, okay.

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Speaker 1: So he also argues that a planet supporting extrastraustrial life

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Speaker 1: is likely to be smaller than Earth closer to the

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Speaker 1: size of Mars. Yeah, and he assumes that about fifty

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Speaker 1: percent of Earth's diameter is there, you know, in the

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Speaker 1: lower limits. Smaller than that, and it becomes difficult for

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Speaker 1: the gravity of the planet to hold onto the atmosphere

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Speaker 1: in water, right, So you see, Mars is pretty much

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Speaker 1: at the limit it's about of Earth. And Mars actually

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Speaker 1: already has that problem because Mars has almost no atmosphere.

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Speaker 1: Asphere is like one percent of the thickness of Earth's,

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Speaker 1: so that's another factor to take into account. He also

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Speaker 1: says that each individual alien would be more likely to

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Speaker 1: live on a big planet, as those worlds can clearly

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Speaker 1: support more individuals. Kind of again, it sounds like an

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Speaker 1: overstatement of the obvious, but it's an important one to

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Speaker 1: get out there. So his basic prediction when you boil

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Speaker 1: all this down again to figuring out trying to figure

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Speaker 1: out how many worlds are gonna be um inhabited, and

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Speaker 1: then how many uh individuals are gonna live in those worlds,

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Speaker 1: and he says that most of these creatures are going

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Speaker 1: to be big. Nearly seven hundred pounds three ms, the

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Speaker 1: size of a terrestrial bear. Um the exact number that

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Speaker 1: he ends up spouting in the piece is six pounds

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Speaker 1: or three ms um. So we're talking half the creatures

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Speaker 1: in the universe are going to weigh more than the bear.

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Speaker 1: Half are gonna weigh less, but the bear sized extraterrestrial

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Speaker 1: is going to be the standard model. It's if if

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Speaker 1: outsiders from another universe peered into ours, according to this paper,

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Speaker 1: they would say, hey, this is that uni verse where

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Speaker 1: bear sized creatures with well bear sized creatures do live,

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Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And then that's the thing. It is

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Speaker 1: something that matches up with why, yeah, why isn't the

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Speaker 1: bear the dominant species on Earth already? Well, perhaps it is,

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Speaker 1: and we're just kind of being selfish, but well, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, there are a number of you know, you

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Speaker 1: get into arguments and just discussions about why humans evolved

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Speaker 1: to the point where we have all of this, you know,

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Speaker 1: this great intelligence and then on top of that intelligence,

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Speaker 1: technologies and culture, right, and a lot of it comes

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Speaker 1: down to our need to use our brains to uh,

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Speaker 1: to score our next meal, to use our our our

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Speaker 1: intellect because we don't have clause. We don't have we

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Speaker 1: don't have if we had bear strength, we'd be dumb

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Speaker 1: because we wouldn't need to be smart. Yeah. I think

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Speaker 1: the thing is that the bear is just The bear

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Speaker 1: doesn't need to be super intelligent, because the bear can

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Speaker 1: do things like like hibernate through the winter. The bear

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Speaker 1: can care things part with its clause, it can it

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Speaker 1: can stand up for itself against pretty much anything on

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Speaker 1: Earth except for the technology assisted human. Yeah. So I

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Speaker 1: thought this paper was interesting. I gotta admit I read

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Speaker 1: it twice and I still don't fully understand the statistical

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Speaker 1: argument that's being made. I've read some commentary on the

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Speaker 1: paper where some experts consultant said that they agree with

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Speaker 1: the math of what he's doing, saying that the statistical

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Speaker 1: calculation is is pretty much sound, but he might be

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Speaker 1: not taking into account lots of factors that could change

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Speaker 1: things dramatically, such as just physical conditions that give rise

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Speaker 1: to life on planets, things like gravity, or some of

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Speaker 1: just the basic facts we observe about how certain life

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Speaker 1: forms make their living in different environments on Earth. And

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Speaker 1: this leads into one of the criticisms we read from

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Speaker 1: the seat researchers Seth show Stack. Yeah, and particularly he

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Speaker 1: was I was thinking about the likelihood of of of

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Speaker 1: large creatures actually, uh, you evolving too, where they would

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Speaker 1: have advanced intellects and also technology. He pointed out that

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Speaker 1: larger creatures are likely to reside in the water, where

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Speaker 1: the advent of technology just might not happen. Um, because

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Speaker 1: you're a large creature, you're gonna you know, all this mass.

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Speaker 1: The buoyance of water helps you to stabilize it, right,

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Speaker 1: And think of a blue whale. You wouldn't have a

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Speaker 1: blue whale on on land. Right. And then if you

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Speaker 1: are a very large animal, lika blue whale, like an elephant. Whatever, Um,

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Speaker 1: are you going to need to advance like humans develop

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Speaker 1: these technologies? Develop this an advanced intelect to win food?

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Speaker 1: Probably not because you're big, You're content, You're you're station

414
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Speaker 1: in life is achieved. You're you're a You're you're this

415
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Speaker 1: blue whale just grazing through the ocean. You're an elephant

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Speaker 1: pushing over anything you need to eat and just consuming it.

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Speaker 1: You don't need technology if you're a filter feeder. Right,

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Speaker 1: So you have to ask yourself this and this organism

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Speaker 1: that we're trying to imagine, why does it need to

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Speaker 1: start externalizing its abilities and and dipping into tool use

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Speaker 1: and dipping into more complicated systems. Yeah, and of course

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Speaker 1: that could lead to the broader question of how are

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Speaker 1: we characterizing intelligence, Like is intelligence necessarily technological intelligence for

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Speaker 1: some purposes? That is what we're talking about, because sometimes

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Speaker 1: when people talk about encountering alien species, they're talking about

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Speaker 1: the kind that would send radio signals where you could detect,

427
00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:25,359
Speaker 1: or the kind that would visit Earth in spacecraft, in

428
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:28,200
Speaker 1: which case you're not going to be dealing with aliens

429
00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:31,200
Speaker 1: that might be intelligent in some kind of strange social way,

430
00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:34,360
Speaker 1: but that don't build machines. Yeah, we kind of get

431
00:24:34,359 --> 00:24:38,119
Speaker 1: into this this anthropomorphic bias here, and almost kind of

432
00:24:38,119 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 1: a Captain Kurt kind of bias where it's like, it's

433
00:24:40,240 --> 00:24:44,439
Speaker 1: only alien life if it's like us, um, can I

434
00:24:44,520 --> 00:24:47,240
Speaker 1: kiss it? I? Can I kiss it? Can I seduce it? Right?

435
00:24:47,280 --> 00:24:50,040
Speaker 1: Because you know, an alien visitor Earth might would look

436
00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:52,760
Speaker 1: at something like a dolphin or even something arguably like

437
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:55,439
Speaker 1: an octopus and say, well, this is a highly intelligent creature.

438
00:24:56,359 --> 00:24:58,760
Speaker 1: Do they do these either of these species? Do they

439
00:24:58,800 --> 00:25:01,040
Speaker 1: build things? Do they have a language? Do they have

440
00:25:01,840 --> 00:25:05,600
Speaker 1: culture as humans think of it? Well? No, uh, I

441
00:25:05,680 --> 00:25:08,480
Speaker 1: mean for starters there in the water, which, to show

442
00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:13,640
Speaker 1: sticks point unlikely that technology is going to emerge. It's

443
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:17,640
Speaker 1: hard to build an integrated circuit underwater, right, and uh, yeah,

444
00:25:17,960 --> 00:25:22,600
Speaker 1: intelligence doesn't necessarily mean the advent of technology. Well, I

445
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 1: think we should take what we've looked at so far

446
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:28,359
Speaker 1: and see if we can draw some broader conclusions about

447
00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 1: what alien life is actually more likely to look like.

448
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 1: Is there anything we can actually say on this subject

449
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:38,600
Speaker 1: or is it all just speculation? Is there anything we

450
00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:43,159
Speaker 1: can base our assumptions on? You know, I'm currently reading

451
00:25:43,560 --> 00:25:48,600
Speaker 1: Ian M. Banks culture novel Accession, which has a fabulous

452
00:25:49,119 --> 00:25:52,800
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial creature and it called the the Affront. An extraterrestrial

453
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 1: species called the Affront and their space faring. They're kind

454
00:25:56,000 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 1: of like a a gas world um cephalopod creature, but

455
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:03,760
Speaker 1: they're also really sadistic and awful in their own way.

456
00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:07,359
Speaker 1: So they the culture in this novel, which is like

457
00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:13,040
Speaker 1: a far future post singularity um humanoid culture for the

458
00:26:13,040 --> 00:26:15,240
Speaker 1: most part. Uh, they spent a lot of time like

459
00:26:15,280 --> 00:26:17,119
Speaker 1: trying to figure out the Affront like they want to.

460
00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:21,480
Speaker 1: They want to push the Affront, encourage them to be

461
00:26:21,640 --> 00:26:24,680
Speaker 1: less awful and uh and and get along better with

462
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:27,720
Speaker 1: their neighbors instead of just constantly enslaving or wiping out

463
00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:31,200
Speaker 1: other species, and so they have to ask themselves, well,

464
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:34,240
Speaker 1: you know, why are the affront warlike? And they look

465
00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 1: to their evolution in uh, you know it advanced hunting

466
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:39,920
Speaker 1: practices where they work together as a group to to

467
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:42,240
Speaker 1: to hunt their prey, and they say, well, if they

468
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:44,440
Speaker 1: hadn't done that, if that hadn't been a part of

469
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:47,360
Speaker 1: their evolutionary is since, then perhaps they'd be more peaceful.

470
00:26:47,400 --> 00:26:49,800
Speaker 1: But then on the other end of the that argument

471
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:52,840
Speaker 1: is if they hadn't had that that hunting nature and

472
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 1: that warlike aspect of themselves, they might not have evolved

473
00:26:56,720 --> 00:26:59,840
Speaker 1: to this level. And either So now one thing I'm

474
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:03,560
Speaker 1: orious about you said, you said that they're sadistic. Did

475
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:06,639
Speaker 1: you actually mean that they're sadistic as in terms of

476
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:09,040
Speaker 1: taking pleasure in the pain of others or is it

477
00:27:09,080 --> 00:27:11,680
Speaker 1: just that they're kind of like numb to our concerns

478
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:14,560
Speaker 1: and desires. Oh no, No, they're they're awful like they're

479
00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:17,200
Speaker 1: they're they have this big hunting spirit. They'll have these

480
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:21,320
Speaker 1: dinners where they'll they'll all be eating a particular type

481
00:27:21,359 --> 00:27:23,280
Speaker 1: of animal and then they'll be a fighting pit in

482
00:27:23,280 --> 00:27:25,680
Speaker 1: the middle of the table where that same type of

483
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: animal is alive. Fighting each other and they're betting on it.

484
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:31,399
Speaker 1: And then they also have a little miniature harpoons that

485
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:34,119
Speaker 1: they throw across the table at other dinner guests to

486
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:36,679
Speaker 1: try and snag some of their food and drag it

487
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:41,120
Speaker 1: over to their play. Okay, so they're kind of like predators. Yeah, yeah,

488
00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:43,840
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of like a more humorous predator because

489
00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 1: there they strike me. They have kind of like an

490
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:49,560
Speaker 1: Oliver read quality to them, like they're they're kind of

491
00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:54,879
Speaker 1: like big drunken louts that also developed uh, space faring

492
00:27:54,880 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 1: technology and occasionally sing yes, yeah, yeah, I can I

493
00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:01,200
Speaker 1: can definitely imagine in building out. Well, yeah, I think

494
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:03,959
Speaker 1: that brings up an interesting point, which is that, of

495
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:08,240
Speaker 1: course our evolution informs what type of creature we are,

496
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:11,600
Speaker 1: and we can probably safely assume that that's going to

497
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:14,440
Speaker 1: be true no matter where you go in the universe,

498
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 1: Like you can go to other planets, you can probably

499
00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 1: even go to other galaxies, and while lots of local

500
00:28:21,840 --> 00:28:24,200
Speaker 1: conditions might be different, there are a couple of things

501
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:27,640
Speaker 1: you can depend on when looking at alien life. One

502
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:30,119
Speaker 1: of them is that the physics of the universe are

503
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:32,639
Speaker 1: going to be the same, So all the same basic

504
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 1: physical laws, and the presence of the same basic chemicals

505
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:39,800
Speaker 1: might be in different quantities, but still the palate, the

506
00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:42,200
Speaker 1: color palate is the same. Yeah. And then the other

507
00:28:42,240 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 1: thing is evolution. We can probably safely assume that whatever

508
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 1: life forms are out there, they come about and gain

509
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:53,960
Speaker 1: complexity through the process of evolution. By one would have

510
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: to assume by something like mutation, something that encourages change

511
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:01,320
Speaker 1: with replication, and then something like nat real selection some

512
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:04,160
Speaker 1: form of evolution at least until they reached the point

513
00:29:04,200 --> 00:29:08,160
Speaker 1: where they have advanced technology and then are either creating

514
00:29:08,160 --> 00:29:12,040
Speaker 1: their own life or creating mechanical life that then recreates

515
00:29:12,120 --> 00:29:14,520
Speaker 1: organic life. Sure. And then of course there's the argument,

516
00:29:14,560 --> 00:29:17,719
Speaker 1: which I probably support, that we're much more likely to

517
00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:21,400
Speaker 1: encounter alien technology than we are to encounter aliens themselves.

518
00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:23,959
Speaker 1: Like when we meet aliens, we're not going to meet them,

519
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 1: We're going to meet their robots scouts. And that that

520
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: lines up very much with with Banks's vision of the culture.

521
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:32,560
Speaker 1: Is that really you keep referencing these books. I've got

522
00:29:32,560 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 1: to read them. They're they're pretty great. I I strongly

523
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:36,800
Speaker 1: recommend them. Anytime anybody writes into us and says, hey,

524
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:39,560
Speaker 1: what's some good you know, thought provoking and fun sci

525
00:29:39,600 --> 00:29:42,560
Speaker 1: fi banks. This stuff is great, except I'm currently like

526
00:29:42,600 --> 00:29:45,360
Speaker 1: two percent into Dune for the first time. I've got

527
00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:47,160
Speaker 1: to finish that first. Oh yes, well, that's a that's

528
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:49,600
Speaker 1: a that's that's indeed a great book. Well, I think

529
00:29:49,640 --> 00:29:53,280
Speaker 1: we should look at some of the principles of Earth

530
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:57,720
Speaker 1: life and ask the question of can we assume, based

531
00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:00,080
Speaker 1: on the things we've already stated, that the physics going

532
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 1: to be probably equivalent and life comes about through evolution.

533
00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:06,560
Speaker 1: Can we assume that these principles are going to be

534
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:11,640
Speaker 1: present in the aliens we observe coming from other solar systems,

535
00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:14,840
Speaker 1: other planets, and maybe even other galaxies in the far future.

536
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:17,280
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I think is interesting

537
00:30:17,360 --> 00:30:22,120
Speaker 1: is how many animals in nature exhibit some form of symmetry. Now,

538
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 1: whether that's bilateral symmetry like us, if you folded us

539
00:30:26,200 --> 00:30:29,400
Speaker 1: in half, we would be roughly equivalent. Then the other

540
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:32,360
Speaker 1: thing would be radial symmetry, and that's something like an

541
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:36,440
Speaker 1: apple pie. Basically it extends out along the radius. And

542
00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:39,680
Speaker 1: you can think about a jellyfish like it's symmetrical looking

543
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: from the top down, like if you saw it a

544
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:45,760
Speaker 1: person in half, you could counted the rings if you will.

545
00:30:45,880 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 1: If you will, there would be radial symmetry. Yeah, and

546
00:30:48,560 --> 00:30:51,600
Speaker 1: symmetry is approximate. Of course, the sides rarely match each

547
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 1: other exactly, but they roughly match each other. And it's,

548
00:30:55,160 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 1: in my opinion, pretty easy to see why evolution might

549
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:02,720
Speaker 1: tend towards symmetry because it's easier. I mean, it's easier

550
00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:05,200
Speaker 1: to make half of a person and then just copy

551
00:31:05,320 --> 00:31:08,120
Speaker 1: that half than it is to come up with different

552
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:12,000
Speaker 1: halves of body plans for the same individual. Yeah. I mean,

553
00:31:12,040 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 1: one thing you have to always keep in mind with

554
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 1: evolution is that evolution is essentially lazy. Evolution is it's

555
00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:21,160
Speaker 1: the path of least resistem exactly, Like even just thinking

556
00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:23,400
Speaker 1: about the brain, Like one of the analogies I love

557
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 1: is the idea that the human brain is like a

558
00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:29,120
Speaker 1: a double scoop ice cream cone, so that we didn't

559
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:31,720
Speaker 1: when it's our brains evolved like just another scoop was

560
00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:33,840
Speaker 1: added on top of the existing scoop. It wasn't like

561
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 1: a complete overhaul of the system. Yeah. Yeah, And you

562
00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:39,480
Speaker 1: can see that in the brain actually, the different levels

563
00:31:39,520 --> 00:31:43,320
Speaker 1: the brain stem, the cerebellum, cerebrum kind of like extending

564
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:48,080
Speaker 1: up towards Godhood. I guess, you know, to where eventually

565
00:31:48,120 --> 00:31:50,200
Speaker 1: we get we get the angel brains that have the

566
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 1: ethereal particles floating above the skull, or just the cone

567
00:31:53,880 --> 00:31:57,000
Speaker 1: head brain. The cone head brain would be a wonderful example.

568
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:01,400
Speaker 1: So observing this principle on Earth very naturally leads us

569
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:05,719
Speaker 1: to assume that, Okay, if we see other aliens out there,

570
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:08,440
Speaker 1: they might be totally weird. They might have claws, they

571
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:12,720
Speaker 1: might be like crabs, they might be slimy lizard like organisms.

572
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:15,480
Speaker 1: They might have you know, weird you know, twenty ft

573
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:19,360
Speaker 1: long legs and huge pyramid heads. Who knows what they're

574
00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:23,640
Speaker 1: going to look like. But almost all visions include basic

575
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:27,120
Speaker 1: bilateral symmetry. If you fold the alien in half, the

576
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:31,520
Speaker 1: sides match. But is that a safe assumption. There are

577
00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:36,440
Speaker 1: animals on Earth that actually don't display external symmetry. They're

578
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:39,800
Speaker 1: they're asymmetrical on the outside. And one of the examples

579
00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 1: would be sponges. You've seen pictures of sponges. I mean,

580
00:32:43,200 --> 00:32:46,880
Speaker 1: sponges are animals, yet they don't necessarily match when you

581
00:32:46,920 --> 00:32:49,720
Speaker 1: fold them in half. They can have weird little nodules

582
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:52,400
Speaker 1: coming out on the side. So that, you know, they

583
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:55,880
Speaker 1: look more like a plant of some kind. Indeed, so

584
00:32:55,960 --> 00:32:57,840
Speaker 1: if we were if we were trying to imagine a

585
00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:01,520
Speaker 1: sponge based alien species, they might not have symmetry. Yeah.

586
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 1: Then again, sponges don't possess intelligence, and I guess we

587
00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 1: don't know if it's possible for something like a sponge

588
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:13,440
Speaker 1: to possess intelligence. We're back to the question of, well, well,

589
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:16,000
Speaker 1: the only creatures on Earth that have anything like intelligence

590
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 1: are basically symmetrical. You can fold them in half. Uh,

591
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 1: And so should we assume the same is true for

592
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:23,640
Speaker 1: the rest of the universe. Yeah, this is where we

593
00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:27,600
Speaker 1: get into that interesting discussion of On one hand, life

594
00:33:27,600 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: on Earth is our only model we can We only

595
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:35,000
Speaker 1: have terrestrial life when it comes to trying to extrapolate

596
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:37,720
Speaker 1: what life elsewhere in the universe would consist of. So

597
00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:39,720
Speaker 1: we we have to base it on this model. And

598
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:42,040
Speaker 1: we see symmetry here and we have to imagine it

599
00:33:42,360 --> 00:33:45,400
Speaker 1: that way elsewhere we see uh, we see the importance

600
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 1: of water and the evolution of life here, we have

601
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:50,680
Speaker 1: to assume that elsewhere, and and that's really the best

602
00:33:50,760 --> 00:33:54,280
Speaker 1: course of action. On the other hand, Uh, there's this

603
00:33:54,320 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 1: little thing called the Copernican principle, which states that there's

604
00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 1: nothing special or privileged about Earth or hu manity, which

605
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:03,040
Speaker 1: is sort of the um you know, sort of the

606
00:34:03,080 --> 00:34:06,760
Speaker 1: Fox News fair and balanced approach to cosmology, like in

607
00:34:06,800 --> 00:34:11,279
Speaker 1: trying to when thinking about the universe, try not to

608
00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:13,759
Speaker 1: have too big of a head about the importance of

609
00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 1: Earth and the human species. Right. Of course, the Copernican

610
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:21,120
Speaker 1: principle originally comes from like astronomy and cosmology, the idea that, hey,

611
00:34:21,280 --> 00:34:23,920
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily have to start with the assumption that

612
00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:26,239
Speaker 1: the Earth is the center of the universe. But it

613
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:29,800
Speaker 1: has been extended to a much more general principle beyond

614
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:32,239
Speaker 1: just saying we don't start with the assumption Earth is

615
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:34,880
Speaker 1: the center of the universe. Two, we don't start with

616
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 1: the assumption that whatever our position is as an observer

617
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:43,479
Speaker 1: is privileged. Yeah, it's we don't necessarily assume that we're

618
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:46,360
Speaker 1: looking from a unique vantage point. Yeah. It seems to

619
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:48,600
Speaker 1: me that the safe course of action, I think this

620
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 1: is the one that most cosmologist tint to to lean towards,

621
00:34:52,560 --> 00:34:55,680
Speaker 1: is use the Earth model of what life is like

622
00:34:55,960 --> 00:34:58,719
Speaker 1: when thinking about other worlds, but then also have the

623
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:00,799
Speaker 1: Copernic and principle. In the back mind, it's kind of

624
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:02,799
Speaker 1: like if you interact with people in your daily life,

625
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 1: treat other people like you would like to be treated,

626
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:10,080
Speaker 1: but then adjust accordingly as new information becomes available, bearing

627
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:12,759
Speaker 1: in mind that everybody is not going to have the

628
00:35:12,760 --> 00:35:16,720
Speaker 1: same case and preferences as you yourself. Yeah yeah. Another

629
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:19,240
Speaker 1: way of looking at this would be calling it something

630
00:35:19,280 --> 00:35:23,000
Speaker 1: like the mediocrity principle. This has been invoked in speculating

631
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:26,880
Speaker 1: about alien life before, and it's a sort of statistical argument.

632
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:29,399
Speaker 1: The idea is, if you're drawing a random sample from

633
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 1: a pool of objects, and you don't have information to

634
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 1: the contrary, the safest assumption is that the sample you

635
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:39,239
Speaker 1: select is typical or average, and in this case, the

636
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:43,120
Speaker 1: sample would be Earth. So that's our one sample. We've randomly,

637
00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:47,839
Speaker 1: not by choice, but by necessity, randomly selected Earth from

638
00:35:47,840 --> 00:35:51,120
Speaker 1: the pool of possible inhabitable planets. Is one ping pong

639
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 1: ball in the powerball and yeah, and so we've selected

640
00:35:55,719 --> 00:35:58,360
Speaker 1: this and it's Earth. Now we're looking at it. What

641
00:35:58,520 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 1: can we assume about its relationship to all the other

642
00:36:01,680 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 1: balls in the in the powerball thing? Well, the safest

643
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:09,279
Speaker 1: assumption is that it's pretty normal it's average. And of

644
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: course this becomes uh, this becomes kind of heartbreaking I

645
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:14,520
Speaker 1: guess at times for a top modelist as we continue

646
00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:17,719
Speaker 1: to get new information about various excep planets and and

647
00:36:17,719 --> 00:36:21,840
Speaker 1: how few of those ex planets are really earthlike in nature.

648
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:26,319
Speaker 1: But there's another interesting way of applying the sort of

649
00:36:26,719 --> 00:36:32,120
Speaker 1: averageness principle or the typicalness principle towards the universe, and

650
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:35,800
Speaker 1: some people have gone a lot farther with it, saying

651
00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:41,360
Speaker 1: that basically Star Trek got it right. Yeah, that essentially

652
00:36:41,440 --> 00:36:45,920
Speaker 1: the the universe is likely filled with other humanoid species

653
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:48,600
Speaker 1: if it's filled with animals, because if it has anything

654
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:50,960
Speaker 1: at all, then they're likely going to be humanoids. They're

655
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:52,960
Speaker 1: gonna be I mean, it kind of gets into the

656
00:36:52,960 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 1: whole territory that Stephen Hawking uh dipped into talking about, Well,

657
00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:00,120
Speaker 1: if there are other alien species out there, they're probably

658
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:03,960
Speaker 1: awful like us, right. Yeah. That that's the pessimistic way

659
00:37:04,000 --> 00:37:06,560
Speaker 1: of pointing it. But there could be the colder, more

660
00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 1: anatomical way of looking at it, which would mainly come

661
00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:12,960
Speaker 1: back to this one guy whose name I kept seeing

662
00:37:13,680 --> 00:37:17,360
Speaker 1: when this theory came up. It's the Cambridge paleontologists Simon

663
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:21,720
Speaker 1: Conway Morris, and he has argued that aliens are likely

664
00:37:21,800 --> 00:37:24,520
Speaker 1: to be a whole lot like us, so that intelligent

665
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:27,319
Speaker 1: aliens are gonna be a whole lot like humans, and

666
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:29,319
Speaker 1: that aliens in general are going to be a whole

667
00:37:29,320 --> 00:37:32,319
Speaker 1: lot like animals on Earth. And so in a two

668
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:36,480
Speaker 1: thousand five edition of the Journal Astronomy and Geophysics, Conway

669
00:37:36,520 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: Morris begins with this interesting question. He starts by looking

670
00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:42,840
Speaker 1: at this three hundred and twenty million year old fossil

671
00:37:43,680 --> 00:37:47,879
Speaker 1: from you know, carboniferous strata in Montana, and it's some

672
00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:51,600
Speaker 1: kind of weird water dwelling animal that made its living

673
00:37:51,640 --> 00:37:55,000
Speaker 1: in a giant lagoon millions of years ago. And he

674
00:37:55,040 --> 00:37:58,600
Speaker 1: describes it as quote vaguely fish like, but neither fish

675
00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:02,960
Speaker 1: nor like any other group of known animals. And so

676
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:06,200
Speaker 1: it's the strange thing that we just have nothing like

677
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:10,040
Speaker 1: it on Earth today. And he actually imagines a scenario.

678
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:14,799
Speaker 1: So three million years ago, this disgruntled alien bureaucrat is

679
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 1: visiting Earth and he's angry. He's kicking around on a

680
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:22,920
Speaker 1: beach in ancient Montana, and in frustration, he releases some

681
00:38:23,040 --> 00:38:27,399
Speaker 1: of his alien pets into Earth's ecosystems. Against all regulations,

682
00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:31,440
Speaker 1: the alien pet fish die, become fossilized, and millions of

683
00:38:31,520 --> 00:38:36,520
Speaker 1: years later human paleontologists dig up these weird fossils. This

684
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:40,279
Speaker 1: raises some interesting questions. One of them is, if there's

685
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:43,040
Speaker 1: intelligent life all over the galaxy, how come there's no

686
00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:46,400
Speaker 1: evidence that it has ever visited or colonized Earth in

687
00:38:46,440 --> 00:38:50,120
Speaker 1: the past. How come we don't have obvious fossils of

688
00:38:50,239 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 1: dead aliens in the fossil record. And then two, if

689
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:58,160
Speaker 1: we were to encounter aliens in the fossil record, how

690
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:02,080
Speaker 1: would we recognize them? M Well, I mean, one obvious

691
00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:04,640
Speaker 1: point that comes up is that it's it's fairly difficult

692
00:39:04,680 --> 00:39:08,080
Speaker 1: for a creature to enter the fossil record, particularly a

693
00:39:08,400 --> 00:39:12,920
Speaker 1: small number of of of visitors happened to drop by, right,

694
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 1: they could be their fossils could be out there right now,

695
00:39:15,360 --> 00:39:18,000
Speaker 1: and we might find them. We might never find them.

696
00:39:18,120 --> 00:39:23,080
Speaker 1: We might build a mall on top of their location. Yeah,

697
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:25,400
Speaker 1: they might have died in some arid climate that's not

698
00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:30,120
Speaker 1: conducive to fossilization. They didn't necessarily position they're dead right on, Like,

699
00:39:30,200 --> 00:39:32,879
Speaker 1: what are those the muddy banks that are Yeah, yeah,

700
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:35,120
Speaker 1: that's place the number of fossils have to be met

701
00:39:35,239 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 1: for for fossilization to take place, and you're far It

702
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 1: kind of gets down to the mediocrity principle, right, Yeah,

703
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:43,000
Speaker 1: you're you're far more likely to find fossils of particular

704
00:39:43,719 --> 00:39:46,799
Speaker 1: types of creatures, particular populations of creatures that live in

705
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:50,880
Speaker 1: the right environment, or apex predator fossils are fewer and

706
00:39:51,280 --> 00:39:54,480
Speaker 1: farther between. Sure, we have lots more fossils of like

707
00:39:54,680 --> 00:39:57,360
Speaker 1: sort of bottom dwelling ocean animals. I mean we have

708
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:01,520
Speaker 1: tons of those, because of course there were tons of

709
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:05,799
Speaker 1: so Conway Morris's point is sort of that we might

710
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:09,680
Speaker 1: not be able to tell if some aliens had landed

711
00:40:09,680 --> 00:40:13,280
Speaker 1: on Earth and become fossilized, because he argues that alien

712
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 1: life is going to be striking lee similar to Earth life.

713
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:19,120
Speaker 1: One of the arguments he makes is that all life

714
00:40:19,200 --> 00:40:22,400
Speaker 1: is likely to be carbon based, like like life on Earth.

715
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 1: He says it's basically a quote strong hunch among molecular

716
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:28,800
Speaker 1: biologists that any life in the universe is gonna have

717
00:40:28,800 --> 00:40:32,680
Speaker 1: a chemical basis that's really similar to terrestrial life to

718
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:34,799
Speaker 1: life on Earth. One of the things he points out

719
00:40:34,840 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 1: is that he says the fundamental operations such as primary

720
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:42,840
Speaker 1: metabolic cycles, possibly photosyn synthesis, and maybe d N A

721
00:40:43,000 --> 00:40:46,359
Speaker 1: and the replication of DNA just really don't have any

722
00:40:46,480 --> 00:40:49,279
Speaker 1: chemical alternatives that we can come up with. You you

723
00:40:49,360 --> 00:40:53,960
Speaker 1: can't mimic processes like this without a system that's pretty

724
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:56,560
Speaker 1: much the same as what we already have. Uh. And

725
00:40:56,560 --> 00:40:58,640
Speaker 1: then he he sort of goes on deposit that there

726
00:40:58,640 --> 00:41:02,919
Speaker 1: are general rules to evolution. He says that they're independent

727
00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:07,120
Speaker 1: of the quirks of your local ecosystem and the accidents

728
00:41:07,160 --> 00:41:10,480
Speaker 1: that would arise through you know, just random trial and

729
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:15,640
Speaker 1: error throughout history. He points out convergent evolution. What do

730
00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:18,000
Speaker 1: you know about converge and evolution? Oh, this, of course

731
00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:20,600
Speaker 1: is uh, for instance, the model to say, all right,

732
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:23,080
Speaker 1: you have birds that can fly, you have bats that

733
00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:27,440
Speaker 1: can fly. Yeah, these both of these, Uh, these lineages

734
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:31,200
Speaker 1: evolved flight separately. Yeah, they didn't get it from a

735
00:41:31,200 --> 00:41:35,040
Speaker 1: common flying ancestry. And so yeah, that's the ideas that

736
00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:41,279
Speaker 1: organisms arrive at these very similar biological solutions through completely

737
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:45,480
Speaker 1: different routes or from different starting points. Uh. Two people

738
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:47,680
Speaker 1: start on opposite sides of the globe, somehow they end

739
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:50,600
Speaker 1: up in the same place. One great example of this.

740
00:41:50,840 --> 00:41:53,720
Speaker 1: In addition to wings would be eyes, So not all

741
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:56,799
Speaker 1: eyes evolved from the same line. A squid has a

742
00:41:56,840 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: camera IE, and you have a camera I, But you

743
00:41:59,719 --> 00:42:02,560
Speaker 1: and squid did not both evolve from a common ancestor

744
00:42:02,640 --> 00:42:05,480
Speaker 1: with the primeval camera I. The humans and the squid

745
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:08,279
Speaker 1: do evolve from a common ancestor, but they've got their

746
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:11,279
Speaker 1: eyes in different ways. We know. The cephalopod was a

747
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:13,840
Speaker 1: great It's a great point because it reminds me of

748
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:18,239
Speaker 1: some information I've read before on arguments for octopy consciousness,

749
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:20,480
Speaker 1: which is actually a reason I don't I do not

750
00:42:20,560 --> 00:42:24,640
Speaker 1: eat octopi anymore, just because if you if you look

751
00:42:24,640 --> 00:42:27,800
Speaker 1: at the octopus and you try to judge its consciousness

752
00:42:27,800 --> 00:42:32,239
Speaker 1: based on human models, it doesn't pass the test, the

753
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:34,120
Speaker 1: test that we have that even the test that we

754
00:42:34,160 --> 00:42:36,520
Speaker 1: can give you know, a primate or even a dolphin

755
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:40,399
Speaker 1: are not going to apply to the octopus. But if

756
00:42:40,440 --> 00:42:43,680
Speaker 1: you if you look at the octopus brain, which has uh,

757
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:47,640
Speaker 1: you know, evolved separately from these other models of what

758
00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:51,200
Speaker 1: we think of is highly intelligent animals, uh, it itself

759
00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:56,520
Speaker 1: has a very advanced brain and could arguably could be conscious. Yeah,

760
00:42:56,560 --> 00:42:59,920
Speaker 1: I've had the same thought. If you ever watch octopuses

761
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:03,239
Speaker 1: is like play with toys. This is the thing they do.

762
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:07,359
Speaker 1: It's very strange and it's somewhat unsettling. You see a

763
00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:12,399
Speaker 1: weird kind of intelligence in them that you don't quite recognize.

764
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:14,879
Speaker 1: It's like hard to empathize with it, almost because it's

765
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:17,879
Speaker 1: so alien to human intelligence. Yet it's so different from

766
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:20,440
Speaker 1: what we think of as like fish, you know, this

767
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:24,440
Speaker 1: ocean dwelling kind of dull creature. Yeah, they play, they explore,

768
00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:29,279
Speaker 1: they they utilized tools in some cases we're going to

769
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:32,200
Speaker 1: of course, you ask yourself when they steal things from divers,

770
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:35,480
Speaker 1: steel things from divers. But but then you also have

771
00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:38,440
Speaker 1: to ask, could a creature like the octopus ever evolved

772
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:41,360
Speaker 1: to the point where it would develop technology, where it

773
00:43:41,520 --> 00:43:43,440
Speaker 1: developed some sort of culture in the way that we

774
00:43:43,480 --> 00:43:46,720
Speaker 1: think about it? And it is that even a fair question,

775
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:49,000
Speaker 1: because it again comes down to us taking this very

776
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 1: anthromomorphic sense of the universe and applying it to a

777
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:59,160
Speaker 1: creature that that emerged rather differently differently than we did. Yeah,

778
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:03,360
Speaker 1: totally so, Conway Morris. He basically has two main arguments

779
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:08,160
Speaker 1: for thinking that convergence, like convergent evolution, is a universal

780
00:44:08,239 --> 00:44:11,360
Speaker 1: of evolution, it's not just that we're witnessing convergence between

781
00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:16,040
Speaker 1: different species on Earth made of terrestrial biological building blocks,

782
00:44:16,040 --> 00:44:19,160
Speaker 1: but that we should expect to see convergence no matter

783
00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:21,279
Speaker 1: what planet you're looking at. Right. But it's basically the

784
00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:24,840
Speaker 1: argument is the basic shape of the evolution of life. Yeah,

785
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:27,840
Speaker 1: and so he says, one thing in this in favor

786
00:44:27,880 --> 00:44:31,440
Speaker 1: of this is the pervasiveness of convergence. It's all over

787
00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:34,200
Speaker 1: the natural world. You know, tons and tons of examples

788
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:36,960
Speaker 1: of it. It's at every level of resolution. So if

789
00:44:37,000 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 1: you zoom way into the tiny little gears and parts

790
00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:44,160
Speaker 1: that make bodies work, you can see it there. And

791
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:48,640
Speaker 1: he points out the enzyme carbonic anhydrace. He says that

792
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 1: accelerates the hydration of carbon dioxide by more than a

793
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:54,960
Speaker 1: million times, and he this is a quote. He says

794
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:56,920
Speaker 1: on Earth it plays a key role in processes as

795
00:44:56,920 --> 00:45:02,160
Speaker 1: desparate as photosynthesis, respiration, and by mineralization. And then of

796
00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:04,960
Speaker 1: course you see convergence at the larger level with things

797
00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:08,120
Speaker 1: like cameras and wings. And then of course he also

798
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:11,520
Speaker 1: says that it's the degree of similarity in complex, highly

799
00:45:11,560 --> 00:45:15,840
Speaker 1: integrated systems. So it's not just small individual components but

800
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:20,200
Speaker 1: large systems that have different things working together still seem

801
00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: to converge on pretty similar working models. An example of

802
00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:29,480
Speaker 1: this might be, for example, the brains of primates and corvids.

803
00:45:30,200 --> 00:45:32,880
Speaker 1: You ever noticed that, Huh? It's kind of weird that

804
00:45:33,840 --> 00:45:38,920
Speaker 1: human brains and crow brains can both come up with

805
00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 1: tool using technologies that seem to arise by pretty similar

806
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:47,160
Speaker 1: patterns of evolution and adaptation, yet their brain structures are

807
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:50,600
Speaker 1: radically different. I mean, one's bird and one's a primate. Indeed,

808
00:45:50,640 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 1: I think that's the pretty convincing argument, espect as long

809
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 1: as I try to disregard any star trek now in

810
00:45:56,600 --> 00:45:59,359
Speaker 1: there and rippled foreheads. But yeah, if you imagine any

811
00:45:59,480 --> 00:46:03,280
Speaker 1: any war, you have this, uh, this this complex system

812
00:46:03,320 --> 00:46:07,799
Speaker 1: of evolution taking place, varied models of life emerging. There's

813
00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:11,760
Speaker 1: going to be some model of life that it doesn't

814
00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:16,319
Speaker 1: have these extra bells and whistles anatomically to deal with

815
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:20,600
Speaker 1: acquiring food, protecting itself, carrying out its basic genetic mission

816
00:46:21,080 --> 00:46:24,960
Speaker 1: of species that has to depend more on ingenuity, um

817
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:28,680
Speaker 1: and tool use, and it's probably probably going to look

818
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:33,400
Speaker 1: something like us. It's going to be vaguely humanoid in

819
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:36,760
Speaker 1: form at least. Yeah, that's another sort of final position

820
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:38,800
Speaker 1: he arrives at that it's not just that our bodies

821
00:46:38,840 --> 00:46:41,440
Speaker 1: are gonna look similar to alien bodies, but that he

822
00:46:41,480 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 1: believes intelligence is pretty much a an inevitable consequence of

823
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:49,799
Speaker 1: life in the universe, that all things evolved towards some

824
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:52,800
Speaker 1: kind of human like intelligence. And in fact, there's the

825
00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:55,560
Speaker 1: I mean, the further argument is that any complicated system

826
00:46:55,680 --> 00:46:59,759
Speaker 1: moves towards intelligence, right, the emergence of intelligence? Right, Well,

827
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:01,680
Speaker 1: what what do you mean by that? Like? What other

828
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 1: than life? What do you mean? Um, I've heard this

829
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:10,000
Speaker 1: argument in terms of of of artificial systems, but that

830
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:12,640
Speaker 1: even even systems, And this is where he gets, you know,

831
00:47:12,680 --> 00:47:15,879
Speaker 1: kind of out there outside of biological life, that that

832
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:19,040
Speaker 1: the universe itself is a complicated is a complex system,

833
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:23,879
Speaker 1: and an intelligence must emerge from that system. Okay, so

834
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:26,840
Speaker 1: that if you have like a wave action acting on

835
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:29,920
Speaker 1: a bunch of different rocks, creating vortexes of current at

836
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:36,120
Speaker 1: the shoreline, eventually that start God exactly, I like that. Yeah,

837
00:47:36,239 --> 00:47:39,000
Speaker 1: I'm partially convinced. I'm not quite sure what I think

838
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:42,480
Speaker 1: about Conway Morris. He's obviously a smart and well respected scientist,

839
00:47:42,560 --> 00:47:45,200
Speaker 1: but I think a lot of people disagree with him

840
00:47:45,440 --> 00:47:48,879
Speaker 1: quite strongly on this argument. He makes one more thing

841
00:47:48,920 --> 00:47:50,840
Speaker 1: I wanted to end on I thought was interesting. Earlier

842
00:47:50,880 --> 00:47:54,440
Speaker 1: we mentioned the Ceti researchers Seth show Stack, and in

843
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:57,400
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven he gave an interview to Popular Science

844
00:47:57,440 --> 00:48:00,160
Speaker 1: where he said some things about alien body plant that

845
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:03,200
Speaker 1: actually some of them I found pretty interesting. One of

846
00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:05,840
Speaker 1: them was referring back to this thing about size that

847
00:48:06,040 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 1: inspired this episode. He was talking about the maximum size

848
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:14,000
Speaker 1: of aliens, and he was sort of arguing against these

849
00:48:14,120 --> 00:48:18,080
Speaker 1: gigantic world size aliens or even probably maybe even against

850
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:23,879
Speaker 1: the sandworm due definitely planet from Marvel would be right out. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no,

851
00:48:24,480 --> 00:48:26,960
Speaker 1: Because he says, if you keep making an animal larger,

852
00:48:27,120 --> 00:48:30,360
Speaker 1: its strength increases as a square of its size, but

853
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:34,080
Speaker 1: its weight increases as a cube of its size. So

854
00:48:34,120 --> 00:48:37,440
Speaker 1: as you keep scaling up, weight becomes too much for

855
00:48:37,520 --> 00:48:39,840
Speaker 1: even a strong animal. And according to him, this is

856
00:48:40,000 --> 00:48:43,600
Speaker 1: unlikely to be a problem specific to Earth. This is

857
00:48:43,640 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 1: a problem in physics and engineering that you would encounter

858
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:50,000
Speaker 1: on any planet. Yeah, and it's one of the reasons

859
00:48:50,080 --> 00:48:51,640
Speaker 1: why you start, if you start throwing a lot of

860
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:54,320
Speaker 1: science at King Kong. It falls apart. I mean literally,

861
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:57,440
Speaker 1: the monkey falls apart, right, it is not strong enough

862
00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 1: to lift its bones. Furthermore, I don't know if do

863
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:03,920
Speaker 1: you think the buildings that climbs would be strong enough

864
00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:06,880
Speaker 1: to support it? You know, I've never seen anyone crunch

865
00:49:07,120 --> 00:49:09,120
Speaker 1: that data. You know that we tend to focus more

866
00:49:09,200 --> 00:49:13,360
Speaker 1: on the structural engineering project. Yeah, are there what? What

867
00:49:13,520 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 1: buildings out there are essentially rampage proof? Another one, this

868
00:49:19,160 --> 00:49:23,080
Speaker 1: is a direct quote. Heads are a good deal. Yeah,

869
00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 1: he's a show stack. He thinks that heads are a

870
00:49:26,160 --> 00:49:28,960
Speaker 1: common feature that you'd find on alien land animals. And

871
00:49:29,000 --> 00:49:32,279
Speaker 1: I think his argument is really interesting. It would sort

872
00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:34,680
Speaker 1: of be the cup holder of the animal body plan,

873
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:37,319
Speaker 1: you know, like it's a car. You can't sell a

874
00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:39,360
Speaker 1: car without a cup holder. You can't have an you

875
00:49:39,400 --> 00:49:41,200
Speaker 1: can't have an alien without a head. Yeah, I mean

876
00:49:41,200 --> 00:49:44,480
Speaker 1: this is basically the sensory array of any organism. And

877
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:48,440
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I've actually looked into this before. Um in

878
00:49:48,680 --> 00:49:53,440
Speaker 1: uh doing various monster monster the weak monster science stuff

879
00:49:53,480 --> 00:49:56,440
Speaker 1: for the for the website. You know, you'll see like

880
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:59,040
Speaker 1: a two headed monster in fit in fiction, or you'll

881
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:01,600
Speaker 1: see a no headed mind stern fiction, and you ask yourself,

882
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:03,840
Speaker 1: was this possible. Is there anything in the natural world

883
00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:08,719
Speaker 1: that conforms uh to this model and uh and generally

884
00:50:08,760 --> 00:50:12,080
Speaker 1: that there isn't you get into like two headache organisms?

885
00:50:12,120 --> 00:50:16,000
Speaker 1: Why would it have two heads? And that seems counterproductive? Yeah,

886
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:18,399
Speaker 1: the best you could really get into is you don't

887
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:21,319
Speaker 1: want to debate about what your body is gonna do, right, Like,

888
00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:24,520
Speaker 1: the best you can get into is, essentially you could

889
00:50:24,560 --> 00:50:27,719
Speaker 1: have an organism with some of its sensory material on

890
00:50:27,719 --> 00:50:31,319
Speaker 1: one stalk and other sensory material on another stalk. But

891
00:50:31,719 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 1: other than that, there's just no evolutionary reason for two

892
00:50:34,600 --> 00:50:37,680
Speaker 1: heads or for a species to be conjoined by its

893
00:50:37,760 --> 00:50:40,360
Speaker 1: very nature. Well, show Stack makes a good argument actually

894
00:50:40,400 --> 00:50:44,279
Speaker 1: against even the sensory stalks because he he says that

895
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:47,280
Speaker 1: basically is a head. We're talking about a consolidated housing

896
00:50:47,360 --> 00:50:50,319
Speaker 1: unit for the primary sense organs, which in our case

897
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 1: would be things like eyes and ears, though that wouldn't

898
00:50:52,640 --> 00:50:56,000
Speaker 1: have to be sensing. The visible spectrum on any planet

899
00:50:56,040 --> 00:50:59,799
Speaker 1: would be whatever organs this alien uses to take an

900
00:50:59,800 --> 00:51:02,920
Speaker 1: in formation about its environment. And why why would the

901
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:05,480
Speaker 1: primary sense organs need to be on the head. Well,

902
00:51:05,520 --> 00:51:07,360
Speaker 1: it might seem kind of arbitrary at first, but I

903
00:51:07,719 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 1: like his reasoning, He says that heads put the input

904
00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:14,840
Speaker 1: devices right next to the central processing unit for rapid response,

905
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:18,000
Speaker 1: and he categorizes this in terms of response time, like

906
00:51:18,080 --> 00:51:22,200
Speaker 1: it's important to your survival that you be able to

907
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:25,359
Speaker 1: respond immediately to what you see. But I actually thought

908
00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:28,120
Speaker 1: of another thing about this. It seems like less likely

909
00:51:28,160 --> 00:51:31,680
Speaker 1: that you can have your vision impaired by damaging the

910
00:51:31,680 --> 00:51:34,960
Speaker 1: pathways of information exchange. So if you imagine the dude

911
00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:37,640
Speaker 1: from Pan's Labyrinth, what's that guy called has the eyes

912
00:51:37,680 --> 00:51:39,319
Speaker 1: in his hands? Oh, I don't know, it's like that

913
00:51:39,440 --> 00:51:41,960
Speaker 1: the paleman or something like that, and that might be it.

914
00:51:42,040 --> 00:51:44,200
Speaker 1: So he's so this monster has got eyes in his

915
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:47,440
Speaker 1: palms and he's walking around looking around with his hands.

916
00:51:48,280 --> 00:51:49,719
Speaker 1: On one hand, that seems kind of cool, like you

917
00:51:49,760 --> 00:51:52,120
Speaker 1: can peek around a corner with your hand. But on

918
00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:57,839
Speaker 1: the other hand, you could probably blind this guy by

919
00:51:57,840 --> 00:52:02,479
Speaker 1: injuring his arms. That's not something you'd want. Yeah, Also,

920
00:52:02,560 --> 00:52:05,160
Speaker 1: like how does he cut up peppers for dinner? You know?

921
00:52:05,239 --> 00:52:09,319
Speaker 1: I mean there's just a number of problems that stem

922
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:13,000
Speaker 1: from that. Yeah. Yeah, So you wouldn't want this long, exposed,

923
00:52:13,160 --> 00:52:16,800
Speaker 1: kind of vulnerable path of information exchange from your primary

924
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:19,719
Speaker 1: sense organs to the thing that needs to receive them. Yeah,

925
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:23,799
Speaker 1: plus the transfer of of those neural signals from from

926
00:52:23,800 --> 00:52:28,879
Speaker 1: touch from pain uh four different uh accent pathways. When

927
00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: you say stub your toe, uh, it takes time for

928
00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:34,399
Speaker 1: that for that signal to reach the brain. Now, it's

929
00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:37,160
Speaker 1: a very small amount of time. Um, and it varies

930
00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:40,240
Speaker 1: depending on the type of sense data. But but there

931
00:52:40,239 --> 00:52:45,560
Speaker 1: there is a delay. And in the evolutionary scheme of things, Um,

932
00:52:45,600 --> 00:52:47,680
Speaker 1: you know, the body is going to again, it's gonna

933
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 1: be lazy, it's gonna go with the path of least resistance.

934
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:53,799
Speaker 1: So it's easier just to to cut down that that

935
00:52:53,880 --> 00:52:55,920
Speaker 1: delay time as much as possible. Yeah. I think he

936
00:52:55,960 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 1: makes that point pretty convincingly. The the other thing he says,

937
00:52:59,160 --> 00:53:01,759
Speaker 1: I think this is into thing too. Despite the fact

938
00:53:01,760 --> 00:53:04,799
Speaker 1: that he's very pro head, he characterizes the number of

939
00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:07,839
Speaker 1: limbs we have is pretty much happenstance of evolution, Like

940
00:53:07,880 --> 00:53:10,800
Speaker 1: that's just a fluke. We have four limbs because we

941
00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:14,239
Speaker 1: evolved from four lobed fish, but we could have had

942
00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:18,239
Speaker 1: any other number of limbs. Though somehow, I don't know,

943
00:53:18,320 --> 00:53:22,239
Speaker 1: four limbs seems economically primed to me, Like if you

944
00:53:22,239 --> 00:53:25,600
Speaker 1: have an animal with less than four limbs. It seems

945
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:28,640
Speaker 1: like you couldn't evolve an intelligent animal with two limbs,

946
00:53:28,640 --> 00:53:33,440
Speaker 1: because they wouldn't have tool manipulating uh you know, like

947
00:53:33,680 --> 00:53:37,799
Speaker 1: grabby grabby things whatever those be. Well, it instantly makes

948
00:53:37,840 --> 00:53:41,040
Speaker 1: me think though about giraffes and elephants, um, because of

949
00:53:41,040 --> 00:53:45,960
Speaker 1: course the elephant has a highly tactile trunk, uh, and

950
00:53:46,000 --> 00:53:50,160
Speaker 1: then the giraffe has a pretense prehensile a tongue. So

951
00:53:50,200 --> 00:53:53,960
Speaker 1: I could I could imagine alien species who say, I

952
00:53:54,080 --> 00:53:55,960
Speaker 1: only have two legs and they walk on them, but

953
00:53:55,960 --> 00:53:58,719
Speaker 1: then when it comes to using their computers or what

954
00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:00,880
Speaker 1: have you, they rely on their trunk, they rely on

955
00:54:00,960 --> 00:54:04,640
Speaker 1: their their their draft like tongue. In fact, in one

956
00:54:04,640 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 1: of the culture books in Banks has an elephant type

957
00:54:07,680 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 1: creature that has two trunks I remember correctly, and those

958
00:54:11,120 --> 00:54:17,600
Speaker 1: are its primary manipulation uh limbs. Man. That's fascinating. Yeah,

959
00:54:17,640 --> 00:54:20,839
Speaker 1: it just highlights actually how poor our imagination is, because

960
00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:24,200
Speaker 1: I was thinking, yeah, yeah, you need hands, but you

961
00:54:24,200 --> 00:54:25,759
Speaker 1: could I don't know, you could have a tail, and

962
00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:27,640
Speaker 1: then you could have a tail that over time grew

963
00:54:27,680 --> 00:54:30,319
Speaker 1: a fork in it and it had prehensile forks, and

964
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:32,840
Speaker 1: then you could basically have tentacles on land. Let's not

965
00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:35,400
Speaker 1: count out ear lobes. You know, we take them for granted,

966
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:37,880
Speaker 1: But there could be a species out there on a

967
00:54:38,239 --> 00:54:41,480
Speaker 1: artist in alien world and those are its primary you know,

968
00:54:41,560 --> 00:54:45,279
Speaker 1: tactile instruments. I have a question, do you think it's

969
00:54:45,360 --> 00:54:50,960
Speaker 1: really all that advantageous to have like four arms? Like,

970
00:54:51,000 --> 00:54:54,719
Speaker 1: would would Goro have a real advantage as an organism

971
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:58,919
Speaker 1: outside of the sacred rights of Mortal Kombat? Yeah? Why

972
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 1: would Goro? What? What was he? A showcan? Is that

973
00:55:02,200 --> 00:55:05,080
Speaker 1: his species? I don't recall? Um? Yeah, why why is

974
00:55:05,120 --> 00:55:11,239
Speaker 1: this model evolved? Um? Well mhmm, yeah, he certainly has

975
00:55:11,239 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 1: an advantage against humanoids, and maybe he had if I

976
00:55:15,160 --> 00:55:18,120
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, his his species sort of ancestral

977
00:55:18,239 --> 00:55:21,160
Speaker 1: enemy is essentially a centaur right of a big Oh

978
00:55:21,239 --> 00:55:23,879
Speaker 1: is that right? Yeah? The one in the third Mortal

979
00:55:23,960 --> 00:55:27,880
Speaker 1: Kombat film Motaro. Okay, so if they're fighting there was

980
00:55:27,920 --> 00:55:31,520
Speaker 1: a third film? No, no, well, Motaro might be in

981
00:55:31,520 --> 00:55:33,719
Speaker 1: the films too, But in the third game of Taro's

982
00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:37,040
Speaker 1: like a coo role of being like the sub boss.

983
00:55:37,520 --> 00:55:39,479
Speaker 1: So I was about to leave work and go watch

984
00:55:39,520 --> 00:55:42,000
Speaker 1: the third Mortal Kombat film. I think he shows up

985
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:44,160
Speaker 1: in it, you would probably not be surprised. But so

986
00:55:44,280 --> 00:55:46,600
Speaker 1: maybe there is an evolutionary advantage to having a second

987
00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:52,560
Speaker 1: pair of arms if you're having to grapple with uh. Yeah,

988
00:55:52,600 --> 00:55:58,120
Speaker 1: another species that has six limbs, six limb creatures, maybe

989
00:55:58,200 --> 00:56:03,600
Speaker 1: that's ultimately the model of life uh on the go homeworld.

990
00:56:03,840 --> 00:56:05,920
Speaker 1: You know, I have to come down with one sad

991
00:56:06,080 --> 00:56:09,480
Speaker 1: prediction of my own, which is that if we encounter

992
00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:13,600
Speaker 1: alien species, I don't think they will biologically emit rays.

993
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:17,759
Speaker 1: This is a thing that's often imagined, right, I can

994
00:56:17,800 --> 00:56:20,719
Speaker 1: see them having laser guns, but I don't think from

995
00:56:20,760 --> 00:56:23,840
Speaker 1: their bodies they will emit rays. It just seems like

996
00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:28,480
Speaker 1: the energy requirements are implausible. Yeah, that's probably a safe bet.

997
00:56:28,480 --> 00:56:31,080
Speaker 1: You're probably not going to be vaporized by their their

998
00:56:31,120 --> 00:56:35,200
Speaker 1: heat vision, right, you see them, So Kryptonians are out.

999
00:56:35,600 --> 00:56:38,439
Speaker 1: And plus if a creature has like a natural heat

1000
00:56:38,560 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 1: vision ability, again, they why are they Why are they

1001
00:56:42,640 --> 00:56:45,480
Speaker 1: developing the kind of advanced intellect that would enable them

1002
00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:49,680
Speaker 1: to travel. They're just setting there blasting whatever they want

1003
00:56:49,680 --> 00:56:53,360
Speaker 1: to eat, and if anything messes with they blast the predators.

1004
00:56:53,360 --> 00:56:57,479
Speaker 1: So no problem and no reason to venture out into

1005
00:56:57,480 --> 00:57:01,400
Speaker 1: the void. Well, I always enjoy talking about aliens, but

1006
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:05,960
Speaker 1: this has been particularly fun. Robert, Yeah, yeah, I mean it's, uh,

1007
00:57:06,040 --> 00:57:08,759
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that, like, oftentimes I find

1008
00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:11,000
Speaker 1: myself just sort of thinking at night, and I tend

1009
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:13,880
Speaker 1: to more and more and more pessimistic about the idea

1010
00:57:13,920 --> 00:57:17,919
Speaker 1: of intelligent life in a sci fi sense existing out there.

1011
00:57:18,120 --> 00:57:21,400
Speaker 1: But I'll often think, well, there's probably somewhere, just so

1012
00:57:21,480 --> 00:57:25,600
Speaker 1: far away, there's an ocean that I can scarcely imagine,

1013
00:57:25,640 --> 00:57:28,040
Speaker 1: and there's some sort of like slug like creature just

1014
00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:34,000
Speaker 1: doing it's very basic thing, and it's it's incapable of

1015
00:57:34,040 --> 00:57:37,880
Speaker 1: knowing me, incapable of imagining me. But it's out there somewhere. Well,

1016
00:57:37,960 --> 00:57:40,480
Speaker 1: not to open a whole other can of sandworms, but

1017
00:57:40,680 --> 00:57:44,160
Speaker 1: there are I mean, their their whole environments we haven't

1018
00:57:44,160 --> 00:57:46,800
Speaker 1: even really discussed in this. I mean we're talking about

1019
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:50,720
Speaker 1: sort of like surface dwelling creatures that might be in

1020
00:57:50,760 --> 00:57:53,560
Speaker 1: the water, or they might be walking around on some

1021
00:57:53,640 --> 00:57:56,600
Speaker 1: kind of hard, rocky surface of a planet. There's also

1022
00:57:56,640 --> 00:57:59,280
Speaker 1: the idea that's pretty common is that well, what if

1023
00:57:59,360 --> 00:58:02,760
Speaker 1: gas planet it could be inhabited but basically floating or

1024
00:58:02,880 --> 00:58:06,960
Speaker 1: flying aerostatic types of creatures that that move up and

1025
00:58:07,000 --> 00:58:10,200
Speaker 1: down in the thick, dense, fluid like atmosphere of gas

1026
00:58:10,200 --> 00:58:14,480
Speaker 1: and a gas planet. Essentially Jovian jellyfish. Yeah. I can

1027
00:58:14,520 --> 00:58:17,240
Speaker 1: see something like that too, though with those I also

1028
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:20,480
Speaker 1: don't know, if you know, would technology evolve, would would

1029
00:58:20,520 --> 00:58:23,640
Speaker 1: something like that create tools if they don't have hard,

1030
00:58:23,800 --> 00:58:27,480
Speaker 1: rocky materials to make tools out of. Yeah, what would

1031
00:58:27,520 --> 00:58:30,400
Speaker 1: their technology consists of? Perhaps it would be entirely organic

1032
00:58:30,600 --> 00:58:33,600
Speaker 1: or yeah. It just it just blows the mind to

1033
00:58:33,600 --> 00:58:34,920
Speaker 1: try and think about it. But that's why we keep

1034
00:58:34,960 --> 00:58:38,240
Speaker 1: coming back around to it. One. We we keep envisioning

1035
00:58:38,240 --> 00:58:41,760
Speaker 1: all these different fantastic aliens. You know, essentially giant and

1036
00:58:41,800 --> 00:58:44,520
Speaker 1: small aliens are not any different than the giants and

1037
00:58:44,600 --> 00:58:48,680
Speaker 1: dwarves that inhabit our mythologies and folklores. But as we

1038
00:58:48,720 --> 00:58:50,520
Speaker 1: look into the future with them, we take we take

1039
00:58:50,560 --> 00:58:54,000
Speaker 1: more and more of our scientific quandaries and apply them

1040
00:58:54,040 --> 00:59:00,000
Speaker 1: to the creation. Yeah, all right, So there you have it. UH,

1041
00:59:00,200 --> 00:59:05,960
Speaker 1: Space Faring Bears considerations UH on the size of aliens

1042
00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:09,760
Speaker 1: and the populations of of aliens elsewhere in the universe.

1043
00:59:09,960 --> 00:59:13,760
Speaker 1: As always, if you want more information on this episode,

1044
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:17,320
Speaker 1: if you want more episodes, if you want blog post videos,

1045
00:59:17,560 --> 00:59:20,080
Speaker 1: links out to our social media account such as Facebook, Twitter,

1046
00:59:20,080 --> 00:59:22,280
Speaker 1: and Tumbler. Head out over to stuff to Blow your

1047
00:59:22,280 --> 00:59:24,880
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's the mothership and that's where you

1048
00:59:24,880 --> 00:59:26,480
Speaker 1: will find all of it. In the Landing Patriot. This

1049
00:59:26,520 --> 00:59:28,640
Speaker 1: episode will include some links out to the materials we

1050
00:59:28,680 --> 00:59:31,920
Speaker 1: discussed here, and if you've ever been abducted by an alien,

1051
00:59:32,080 --> 00:59:34,919
Speaker 1: seen an alien, or just have any relevant thoughts about

1052
00:59:35,000 --> 00:59:37,560
Speaker 1: what aliens might look like, how big their bodies are,

1053
00:59:37,720 --> 00:59:40,520
Speaker 1: what their brains are like, you can email us at

1054
00:59:40,600 --> 00:59:42,920
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com and

1055
00:59:43,440 --> 00:59:49,520
Speaker 1: tell us all of your crazy fantasies. For more on

1056
00:59:49,600 --> 00:59:52,080
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff

1057
00:59:52,080 --> 00:59:58,720
Speaker 1: works dot com