This article is funny, but I like to nitpick.
So I will.
That planet is what, twice the radius of earth? At that radius and assuming the average density of earth for the larger planet, gravity would logically be close to twice earth normal assuming the earth-normal density of 5.5 g/cc.
Twice normal gravity would be a bit difficult to deal with, but doable.
Water has a lot lower density than most of our planet, so if the larger planet had a lot more water to lower the average density to 4 g/cc gravity would be about 1.44 times earth normal. This would be a lot easier to handle.
Also, a planet with no tectonic activity would not be long-term habitable most likely. It’d be essentially dead. Subduction/obduction, orogeny (and the related iron cycle) and other geological processes bring a huge amount of minerals and other nutrients to the surface that are required for continued vital biospheres. (The piece later says there are volcanic peaks which probably can’t happen on a rocky planet without tectonic activity outside of meteor strikes or similar.)
Anyway, there’s more but that’s all I feel like nitpicking for now.
So I take it there’s a goldilocks zone for gravity, too?
I’m not a geophysicist or a planetary scientist so take anything I say with a huge grain of salt, but a planet needs to be beyond a certain size to hold an atmosphere of anything most-likely useful to life.
Earth doesn’t have enough gravity to hold helium and hydrogen long-term, but nitrogen and oxygen are heavy enough to stick around. Good news for us. You probably already know all that, though.
A planet much smaller than earth would lose those over a few dozen million years.
However — and here’s what I think you were getting at — beyond about 2g, a planet would start retaining helium and hydrogen and this is probably (though who really knows) incompatible with life.
So yeah, the Goldilocks gravity would for life as we know it would be about 0.8g to 2g.
Life, however, as we don’t know it might be possible on a warm gas giant. But that’s really far out of the realm of what anyone really has any knowledge about, though fun to consider.