Comments on: Old Man’s War: Decent, but not revolutionary http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/05/24/old-mans-war-review/ Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:39:44 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: “The Ghost Brigades” shows clear signs of Scalzi’s improvement as an author | Cyde Weys Musings http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/05/24/old-mans-war-review/comment-page-1/#comment-29651 “The Ghost Brigades” shows clear signs of Scalzi’s improvement as an author | Cyde Weys Musings Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:19:01 +0000 http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/?p=785#comment-29651 [...] recently read Old Man’s War, it’s not surprising that I’ve just finished reading its sequel The Ghost Brigades. I [...] [...] recently read Old Man’s War, it’s not surprising that I’ve just finished reading its sequel The Ghost Brigades. I [...]

]]> By: William http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/05/24/old-mans-war-review/comment-page-1/#comment-27631 William Sun, 25 May 2008 07:51:48 +0000 http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/?p=785#comment-27631 He's got a novel that's up on his site for free that I rather liked. "Agent to the Stars" or something to that effect. You might want to give that a read if you haven't yet. He’s got a novel that’s up on his site for free that I rather liked. “Agent to the Stars” or something to that effect. You might want to give that a read if you haven’t yet.

]]> By: Cyde Weys http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/2008/05/24/old-mans-war-review/comment-page-1/#comment-27616 Cyde Weys Sun, 25 May 2008 02:26:44 +0000 http://www.cydeweys.com/blog/?p=785#comment-27616 Oh, and I didn't even mention the part where John Perry and crew attack a world of one-inch-tall intelligent bipedal aliens. They essentially go Godzilla on the place, finding the most effective tactic against the aliens (because their guns are overkill) to be stepping on them. I wish I was making that up. But apparently the battles are "more even" in space, because really small spaceships on a scale of one-inch-tall beings are hard to hit. This go along with my critique in the last section, because there are pretty established limits on intelligence with brain size. Simply put, bigger is better. You can't have human-level intelligence in a being the size of a bug; you would have bug-level intelligence. Just like how the weight of an animal scales with the cube of its size but the carrying capacity of its legs only scales with the square of its size, thus establishing an effective maximum size for terrestrial animals (and meaning ants can get away with incredibly spindly legs but humans need good-sized legs), potential brain volume also scales with the cube of size. You can only fit so many neurons into such a small package (and there are very real chemical, biological, and physiological limits on how small and how effective each individual neuron can be). Long story short, any intelligent species that manage to construct spaceships won't be much smaller than us. There's no reason they couldn't be much larger, of course — there's no fundamental reason dinosaurs couldn't have evolved large brains — but they won't be much smaller. About the only scenario I can come up with for having small intelligent beings is if they had a hivemind, kind of like how the manowar jellyfish is made up from lots of individual creatures. Individual beings would be ~1 inch tall and about as smart as a bug, but when a large number of them assembled and networked, they could display a human-level intelligence. So these beings would be intelligent on an aggregate, but not an individual, level. Heck, that would make a good science fiction story (and I do recall reading something like this, but I cannot remember which novel). Oh, and I didn’t even mention the part where John Perry and crew attack a world of one-inch-tall intelligent bipedal aliens. They essentially go Godzilla on the place, finding the most effective tactic against the aliens (because their guns are overkill) to be stepping on them. I wish I was making that up. But apparently the battles are “more even” in space, because really small spaceships on a scale of one-inch-tall beings are hard to hit.

This go along with my critique in the last section, because there are pretty established limits on intelligence with brain size. Simply put, bigger is better. You can’t have human-level intelligence in a being the size of a bug; you would have bug-level intelligence. Just like how the weight of an animal scales with the cube of its size but the carrying capacity of its legs only scales with the square of its size, thus establishing an effective maximum size for terrestrial animals (and meaning ants can get away with incredibly spindly legs but humans need good-sized legs), potential brain volume also scales with the cube of size. You can only fit so many neurons into such a small package (and there are very real chemical, biological, and physiological limits on how small and how effective each individual neuron can be).

Long story short, any intelligent species that manage to construct spaceships won’t be much smaller than us. There’s no reason they couldn’t be much larger, of course — there’s no fundamental reason dinosaurs couldn’t have evolved large brains — but they won’t be much smaller.

About the only scenario I can come up with for having small intelligent beings is if they had a hivemind, kind of like how the manowar jellyfish is made up from lots of individual creatures. Individual beings would be ~1 inch tall and about as smart as a bug, but when a large number of them assembled and networked, they could display a human-level intelligence. So these beings would be intelligent on an aggregate, but not an individual, level. Heck, that would make a good science fiction story (and I do recall reading something like this, but I cannot remember which novel).

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