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What if we're the North Sentinel Island ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island ) of the unive

What if we're the North Sentinel Island ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island ) of the universe? The universe is a really really big place and there are probably plenty of habitable planets, especially with terraforming. We're probably just a little remote violent oddity. The most interesting thing about the earth is probably our DNA. They can get that easily without destroying us.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
North Senetinel Island is a anachronism. Much more likely to happen is Hispaniola. From De Casas: Destruction of the Indies The Spaniards first assaulted the innocent Sheep, so qualified by the Almighty, as is premention'd, like most cruel Tygers, Wolves and Lions hunger-starv'd, studying nothing, for the space of Forty Years, after their first landing, but the Massacre of these Wretches, whom they have so inhumanely and barbarously butcher'd and harass'd with several kinds of Torments, never before known, or heard (of which you shall have some account in the following Discourse) that of Three Millions of Persons, which lived in Hispaniola itself, there is at present but the inconsiderable remnant of scarce Three Hundred. Nay the Isle of Cuba, which extends as far, as Valledolid in Spain is distant from Rome, lies now uncultivated, like a Desert, and intomb'd in its own Ruins. You may also find the Isles of St. John, and Jamaica, both large and fruitful places, unpeopled and desolate. The Lucayan Islands on the North Side, adjacent to Hispaniola and Cuba, which are Sixty in number, or thereabout, together with with those, vulgarly known by the name of the Gigantic Isles, and others, the most infertile whereof, exceeds the Royal Garden of Sevil in fruitfulness, a most Healthful and pleasant Climat, is now laid waste and uninhabited; and whereas, when the Spaniards first arriv'd here, about Five Hundred Thousand Men dwelt in it, they are now cut off, some by slaughter, and others ravished away by Force and Violence, to work in the Mines of Hispanioloa, which was destitute of Native Inhabitants Whenever "explorers" from distant parts have "discovered" new areas, throughout history the indigenous peoples get badly screwed over. See the history of post-Columbus native Americans. Look at India and China to see what even very advanced civilizations with large populations still get screwed by the invaders.
- rgbrenner 9y ago
  A large portion of that population loss in the Americas was due to diseases brought from Europe. But those diseases went through evolution in an environment that's similar to America -- it had the same atmosphere, similar soil, plant life, etc. Even the hosts were similar. But an alien virus would have none of those things. Chances are it would find earth inhospitable and be completely unable to survive much less spread. It would be truly remarkable if an alien virus found earth/humans compatible.
  - wyager 9y ago
    > A large portion of that population loss in the Americas was due to diseases brought from Europe. The vast majority was caused by an ill-timed native viral hemorrhagic fever, not European diseases.
    - jacobolus 9y ago
      There were several waves of smallpox, influenza, measles, mumps, typhus, cholera, bubonic plague, tuberculosis, yellow fever, whooping cough, etc., which ran rampant through the Americas, often simultaneously ripping through the same communities. I don’t know what native virus you are referring to (citation?), but it is estimated that in many parts of the Americas population collapsed by about 90% in the course of a century or two (sometimes faster), and the scholarly consensus is that this was largely due to Eurasian diseases to which people had no immunity. The societal collapse brought on by disease also led to internecine war, helping depopulation along. And obviously the numerous instances of genocidal slaughter by Europeans and forced migration later contributed to the final native depopulation of many areas.
  - anoonmoose 9y ago
    Or, a virus finds our environment just barely hospitable enough and adapts like all life does, multiplying like rabbits in Australia.
  - bdamm 9y ago
    Or, we find out that DNA has a common base among the galaxy thanks to panspermia, and that the equation for life is somewhat common, and those galactic viruses work just fine among the flora or fauna of Earth.
DanielBMarkham 9y ago
Violent? Don't be so earth-centric. The universe has been around for billions of years. Humans are a flash in the pan. We're gnats. Pond scum. Fungus. We're no more interesting than your average gas cloud. We're like tree bark. I really love a good sci-fi movie about aliens, but the vast majority of them have humans and earth as being something special. To me that looks preposterously unlikely.
- bhaak 9y ago
  But we are sentient life. This alone makes us special and interesting as it's likely a club only very few beings join.
  - DanielBMarkham 9y ago
    Think so? My guess is that we are only sentient in our minds. Compared to a species still around that reached our level a billion years ago, I don't think we would even register as conscious. It's all speculative, of course, but I tend to think we vastly overestimate how special, unique, important, intelligent, and so forth we actually are. The numbers just don't look like they support it.
    - bhaak 9y ago
      We consider life inherently interesting. An ant is objectively an inferior lifeform compared to us. Smaller, weaker, less intelligent. But there are still human beings that dedicate their life to study them. And we find unique and interesting features in them. I don't think this would be different if a more developed life form would study. Supposing, that this life form still has some curiosity left. But if they lived so long that everything is boring to them, it's not our fault that they wouldn't find us interesting. :-)
      - boomlinde 9y ago
        Inferiority is an inherently subjective notion. That it is inferior to be smaller, weaker and less intelligent reflects your values, not some sort of universal score sheet.
Houshalter 9y ago
Do you know that the Sentinel Islanders aren't as crazy as they seem? The vast majority of hunter-gatherer societies are quickly wiped out when agricultural ones show up. This isn't even something that only happened in the distant past. Even today, in Brazil, farmers massacre natives for their land. Why do we need so much land? Don't we have enough? But our numbers have grown exponentially. And even though we don't need that much land at the moment, there's still some small positive economic value to more land. And so the natives lose. A similar thing applies to civilizations. The universe only seems big until you factor in exponential growth. Even if humanity could travel a fraction of the speed of light. Give us a few hundred thousand years, and we would settle and overpopulate every planet in this galaxy. And be on our way to the next one. There are other reasons aliens would want to stop us. If they value human life at all, they might have completely alien moral systems and want to impose them on us. Human society is pretty awful with lots of suffering. No moral aliens would leave us alone to our own devices. But do we really want to get stuck being ruled over by them forever with no autonomy? If they don't value human life, we are really screwed. In the future we could expand and advance and become a threat to them. It costs them nothing to exterminate us and prevents any future conflicts or costs we might cause them. So why not?
- flashman 9y ago
  Humans would do all of those things. Maybe aliens would, too, because they respond to the same incentives and threats, but perhaps a prerequisite for cosmic fecundity is a more mature outlook. I mean, a human could spend their entire life locating and exterminating ant colonies, and ants would fear that about us if they could conceive it, but we generally have better things to do with our time. (Of course if we're in the way...)
- narrator 9y ago
  If ETs are able to travel around the Galaxy at faster than light speed that means that they have have the ability to harness absolutely enormous amounts of energy. Probably each Extra Terrestrial ship has multiple Tsar bombs worth of energy at their disposal. Their society must have developed some sort of maturity to make war and violence obsolete, much like World War has become less prevalent with the advent of the atomic age or they would have annihilated themselves early on.
indubitable 9y ago
There is 0 reason to believe that evolution is in any way whatsoever unique to Earth based species. And if it's not then it's an extremely safe assumption that every other species that's developed, or will develop, is going to have a similar background. Things that overcome and eat other things stay alive to reproduce and propagate. Those that can't, cease to exist. This very fundamental aspect of nature implies that there will always exist some selection bias towards aggressive predatory behavior among the most successful products of evolution. It's interesting to consider that the 'morality' of herbivore vs carnivore is an entirely human conception. Go back far enough and humans and grass share a common ancestor. We just evolved in different directions. In any case the development of higher intelligence enables us to overcome and suppress or evolutionary instincts. But I imagine these instincts will always be a part of us. I see no reasonable way a highly advanced species could have ever evolved without them. And while the media and other players sensationalize violence, the reality is we live in what is likely the single most peaceful era of civilization - ever. Try to imagine that in WW2 around 70 million people died from a world population of 2.3 billion. That's more than 3% of the entire world's population killed. Scaled up to present day population that would be more than 231,000,000 killed. Since we suck at understanding such huge numbers. Let's convert that in 9/11s. That would be more than 77,000 9/11 scale events. In other words imagine we had a 9/11 scale event every single day for 211 years. That's how many people died in WW2. Today we in the developed western world freak out about 60 people dying, and a single 9/11 is a world shaking event. And go back to things like the Mongol invasions - they were on the order of 300% more deadly the world's population than WW2 was. One can only imagine the actions within prehistory among isolated populations. Perspective.
- Razengan 9y ago
  > Things that overcome and eat other things stay alive to reproduce and propagate. It is our assumption that all "life" has to "eat" and "reproduce." Life could get energy from stars or other ambient sources. Life could be an entire "species" consisting of just a single individual. Life could be an species whose members are spontaneously "born" or "created" at a single source, without requiring any action from each other. Life could come in the form of a ..thing.. that converts other unrelated living creatures to become a part of it. Say, something like a virus, that imparts intelligence and a common goal to any organism it "infects."

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago

North Senetinel Island is a anachronism. Much more likely to happen is Hispaniola. From De Casas: Destruction of the Indies The Spaniards first assaulted the innocent Sheep, so qualified by the Almighty, as is premention'd, like most cruel Tygers, Wolves and Lions hunger-starv'd, studying nothing, for the space of Forty Years, after their first landing, but the Massacre of these Wretches, whom they have so inhumanely and barbarously butcher'd and harass'd with several kinds of Torments, never before known, or heard (of which you shall have some account in the following Discourse) that of Three Millions of Persons, which lived in Hispaniola itself, there is at present but the inconsiderable remnant of scarce Three Hundred. Nay the Isle of Cuba, which extends as far, as Valledolid in Spain is distant from Rome, lies now uncultivated, like a Desert, and intomb'd in its own Ruins. You may also find the Isles of St. John, and Jamaica, both large and fruitful places, unpeopled and desolate. The Lucayan Islands on the North Side, adjacent to Hispaniola and Cuba, which are Sixty in number, or thereabout, together with with those, vulgarly known by the name of the Gigantic Isles, and others, the most infertile whereof, exceeds the Royal Garden of Sevil in fruitfulness, a most Healthful and pleasant Climat, is now laid waste and uninhabited; and whereas, when the Spaniards first arriv'd here, about Five Hundred Thousand Men dwelt in it, they are now cut off, some by slaughter, and others ravished away by Force and Violence, to work in the Mines of Hispanioloa, which was destitute of Native Inhabitants Whenever "explorers" from distant parts have "discovered" new areas, throughout history the indigenous peoples get badly screwed over. See the history of post-Columbus native Americans. Look at India and China to see what even very advanced civilizations with large populations still get screwed by the invaders.

rgbrenner 9y ago
A large portion of that population loss in the Americas was due to diseases brought from Europe. But those diseases went through evolution in an environment that's similar to America -- it had the same atmosphere, similar soil, plant life, etc. Even the hosts were similar. But an alien virus would have none of those things. Chances are it would find earth inhospitable and be completely unable to survive much less spread. It would be truly remarkable if an alien virus found earth/humans compatible.
- wyager 9y ago
  > A large portion of that population loss in the Americas was due to diseases brought from Europe. The vast majority was caused by an ill-timed native viral hemorrhagic fever, not European diseases.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    There were several waves of smallpox, influenza, measles, mumps, typhus, cholera, bubonic plague, tuberculosis, yellow fever, whooping cough, etc., which ran rampant through the Americas, often simultaneously ripping through the same communities. I don’t know what native virus you are referring to (citation?), but it is estimated that in many parts of the Americas population collapsed by about 90% in the course of a century or two (sometimes faster), and the scholarly consensus is that this was largely due to Eurasian diseases to which people had no immunity. The societal collapse brought on by disease also led to internecine war, helping depopulation along. And obviously the numerous instances of genocidal slaughter by Europeans and forced migration later contributed to the final native depopulation of many areas.
- anoonmoose 9y ago
  Or, a virus finds our environment just barely hospitable enough and adapts like all life does, multiplying like rabbits in Australia.
- bdamm 9y ago
  Or, we find out that DNA has a common base among the galaxy thanks to panspermia, and that the equation for life is somewhat common, and those galactic viruses work just fine among the flora or fauna of Earth.

DanielBMarkham 9y ago

Violent? Don't be so earth-centric. The universe has been around for billions of years. Humans are a flash in the pan. We're gnats. Pond scum. Fungus. We're no more interesting than your average gas cloud. We're like tree bark. I really love a good sci-fi movie about aliens, but the vast majority of them have humans and earth as being something special. To me that looks preposterously unlikely.

bhaak 9y ago
But we are sentient life. This alone makes us special and interesting as it's likely a club only very few beings join.
- DanielBMarkham 9y ago
  Think so? My guess is that we are only sentient in our minds. Compared to a species still around that reached our level a billion years ago, I don't think we would even register as conscious. It's all speculative, of course, but I tend to think we vastly overestimate how special, unique, important, intelligent, and so forth we actually are. The numbers just don't look like they support it.
  - bhaak 9y ago
    We consider life inherently interesting. An ant is objectively an inferior lifeform compared to us. Smaller, weaker, less intelligent. But there are still human beings that dedicate their life to study them. And we find unique and interesting features in them. I don't think this would be different if a more developed life form would study. Supposing, that this life form still has some curiosity left. But if they lived so long that everything is boring to them, it's not our fault that they wouldn't find us interesting. :-)
    - boomlinde 9y ago
      Inferiority is an inherently subjective notion. That it is inferior to be smaller, weaker and less intelligent reflects your values, not some sort of universal score sheet.

Houshalter 9y ago

Do you know that the Sentinel Islanders aren't as crazy as they seem? The vast majority of hunter-gatherer societies are quickly wiped out when agricultural ones show up. This isn't even something that only happened in the distant past. Even today, in Brazil, farmers massacre natives for their land. Why do we need so much land? Don't we have enough? But our numbers have grown exponentially. And even though we don't need that much land at the moment, there's still some small positive economic value to more land. And so the natives lose. A similar thing applies to civilizations. The universe only seems big until you factor in exponential growth. Even if humanity could travel a fraction of the speed of light. Give us a few hundred thousand years, and we would settle and overpopulate every planet in this galaxy. And be on our way to the next one. There are other reasons aliens would want to stop us. If they value human life at all, they might have completely alien moral systems and want to impose them on us. Human society is pretty awful with lots of suffering. No moral aliens would leave us alone to our own devices. But do we really want to get stuck being ruled over by them forever with no autonomy? If they don't value human life, we are really screwed. In the future we could expand and advance and become a threat to them. It costs them nothing to exterminate us and prevents any future conflicts or costs we might cause them. So why not?

flashman 9y ago
Humans would do all of those things. Maybe aliens would, too, because they respond to the same incentives and threats, but perhaps a prerequisite for cosmic fecundity is a more mature outlook. I mean, a human could spend their entire life locating and exterminating ant colonies, and ants would fear that about us if they could conceive it, but we generally have better things to do with our time. (Of course if we're in the way...)
narrator 9y ago
If ETs are able to travel around the Galaxy at faster than light speed that means that they have have the ability to harness absolutely enormous amounts of energy. Probably each Extra Terrestrial ship has multiple Tsar bombs worth of energy at their disposal. Their society must have developed some sort of maturity to make war and violence obsolete, much like World War has become less prevalent with the advent of the atomic age or they would have annihilated themselves early on.

indubitable 9y ago

There is 0 reason to believe that evolution is in any way whatsoever unique to Earth based species. And if it's not then it's an extremely safe assumption that every other species that's developed, or will develop, is going to have a similar background. Things that overcome and eat other things stay alive to reproduce and propagate. Those that can't, cease to exist. This very fundamental aspect of nature implies that there will always exist some selection bias towards aggressive predatory behavior among the most successful products of evolution. It's interesting to consider that the 'morality' of herbivore vs carnivore is an entirely human conception. Go back far enough and humans and grass share a common ancestor. We just evolved in different directions. In any case the development of higher intelligence enables us to overcome and suppress or evolutionary instincts. But I imagine these instincts will always be a part of us. I see no reasonable way a highly advanced species could have ever evolved without them. And while the media and other players sensationalize violence, the reality is we live in what is likely the single most peaceful era of civilization - ever. Try to imagine that in WW2 around 70 million people died from a world population of 2.3 billion. That's more than 3% of the entire world's population killed. Scaled up to present day population that would be more than 231,000,000 killed. Since we suck at understanding such huge numbers. Let's convert that in 9/11s. That would be more than 77,000 9/11 scale events. In other words imagine we had a 9/11 scale event every single day for 211 years. That's how many people died in WW2. Today we in the developed western world freak out about 60 people dying, and a single 9/11 is a world shaking event. And go back to things like the Mongol invasions - they were on the order of 300% more deadly the world's population than WW2 was. One can only imagine the actions within prehistory among isolated populations. Perspective.

Razengan 9y ago
> Things that overcome and eat other things stay alive to reproduce and propagate. It is our assumption that all "life" has to "eat" and "reproduce." Life could get energy from stars or other ambient sources. Life could be an entire "species" consisting of just a single individual. Life could be an species whose members are spontaneously "born" or "created" at a single source, without requiring any action from each other. Life could come in the form of a ..thing.. that converts other unrelated living creatures to become a part of it. Say, something like a virus, that imparts intelligence and a common goal to any organism it "infects."