  Current research indicates that (sub)surface ocean worlds essentially devoid
of subaerial landmasses (e.g., continents) are common in the Milky Way, and
that these worlds could host habitable conditions, thence raising the
possibility that life and technological intelligence (TI) may arise in such
aquatic settings. It is known, however, that TI on Earth (i.e., humans) arose
on land. Motivated by these considerations, we present a Bayesian framework to
assess the prospects for the emergence of TIs in land- and ocean-based habitats
(LBHs and OBHs). If all factors are equally conducive for TIs to arise in LBHs
and OBHs, we demonstrate that the evolution of TIs in LBHs (which includes
humans) might have very low odds of roughly $1$-in-$10^3$ to $1$-in-$10^4$,
thus outwardly contradicting the Copernican Principle. Hence, we elucidate
three avenues whereby the Copernican Principle can be preserved: (i) the
emergence rate of TIs is much lower in OBHs, (ii) the habitability interval for
TIs is much shorter in OBHs, and (iii) only a small fraction of worlds with
OBHs comprise appropriate conditions for effectuating TIs. We also briefly
discuss methods for empirically falsifying our predictions, and comment on the
feasibility of supporting TIs in aerial environments.

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics;Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics