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#121 |
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#122 |
Graduate Poster
Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 1,403
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These analogies are quite a stretch and I really worry about people who see them.
This is a tiny group of people living on an island that is part of India. The analogy that is obvious is to a religious cult - of roughly equivalent numbers - that isolates itself within a country. One could also think of a tiny, remote village where the locals are hostile to strangers. Most people live in nations that consist of millions of strangers. There will be countless groups (like eq cults or isolated, rural communities) that belong to the same nation. But most people live in cities and will have a much more complicated social life. Also: By all appearances, this guy wanted to leave again. I am not aware that tourists (or even foreign missionaries) are an issue anywhere in the west. If you think that a tiny group of people killing outsiders compares to a nation you have issues. |
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#123 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: the wet side of the mountains
Posts: 3,010
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Maybe it would help if you think of them as immune-compromised. Because that's really the case.
We teem with bacteria and viruses all the time, but we don't get ill from them because we have built-up immunities. They don't. They're like AIDS patients or transplant patients who can die of infections from common bacteria that live all around us. They have immunities to anything that's endemic to the island, of course, but extended lack of contact means that doesn't include most illnesses that plague us, or even the ones we've vanquished. They could be killed by the common cold. |
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#124 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 21,708
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The relevant government (India's) has apparently decided to respect the islander's wish to be left alone. The wisdom of this decision might be discussed, but that is how it stands. So this fellow decided to ignore it and come there to preach his own religion to them.
Now, I don't think anybody deserves to be killed, but I can't pity him (I can pity the people who loved him, but that is another story). His decision to go and foist his personal religion on them was arrogant and stupid. Hans |
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#125 |
Agave Wine Connoisseur
Join Date: Jul 2002
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#126 |
Skepticifimisticalationist
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Gulf Coast
Posts: 22,801
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There's a lot of irrelevant information there re: that guy's interactions with other Andaman tribes that the Sentinelese could never have known about; but besides that I find there's a glaring hole in his logic.
He begins with the premise that the Sentinelese were likely made hostile because of this single visit in the 1880's. He then proceeds to point out that the very next visit by outsiders, 80 years later, was the only nominally "peaceful" contact with the Sentinelese - in which strangers' landing was tolerated non-violently for at least a few minutes before the islanders began making it clear with increasing aggression that it was time for the visitors to leave. And of course he acknowledges that every contact after that point has been deadly violent. If it was the 19th-century incident, or stories passed down about it, that made the Sentinelese so aggressive, then why was their next contact with visitors 80 years later non-aggressive? Why did they only become exclusively, violently inhospitable after that visit? It makes more logical sense that something happened during the 1960's visit to provoke them, not the 1880's visit. Although as I've pointed out earlier, I think contextual clues like their isolate language and disconnection with other Andaman tribes suggest it's likely they have been violently inhospitable for a much much longer period of history and these visits did not have any appreciable effect on that. |
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"¿WHAT KIND OF BIRD? ¿A PARANORMAL BIRD?" --- Carlos S., 2002 |
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#127 |
Show me the monkey!
Join Date: Jul 2005
Posts: 21,436
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I'm not disagreeing with you but want to clarify.
An endemic pathogen or disease would be one found only at North Sentinel Island and nowhere else on earth. If such a thing exists then they ought to have some immunity to it but maybe not and it depends on various factors. But putting that aside, we would expect immunities to diseases which are not endemic and are instead regional or even worldwide. A quick example would be ocean shellfish and the pathogens that they carry. Those same pathogens would be at their island, all of the Andamans and Nicobar, the entire Indian Ocean and even worldwide. Over the past few days I have read that they have no fire and also that they may have no fire. It might be an unanswered question - I don't know. If true, then they are especially unique among uncontacted tribes. Nothing that they eat could be cooked and therefore could not be sterilized by fire. |
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#128 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Apr 2015
Location: Moomin Valley
Posts: 14,885
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Are we sure they are savages? Sounds quite sophisticated, having 'sex on the beach'. And here was me thinking that was a Finsbury Square fad.
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#129 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Aug 2001
Posts: 19,236
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Doesn't anyone consider that they could be carriers of a disease that they alone are immune to? Wouldn't it be ironic if some visitor to the island (that returns) became Patient Zero for a pandemic that wipes out the rest of the world?
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#130 |
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#131 |
Show me the monkey!
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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#132 |
Show me the monkey!
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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#133 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 41,844
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It would be ironic, but it's also extremely unlikely. Both their population and the population of any native animals that might serve as incubators is so low compared to the world as a whole that it's extremely unlikely that a civilization-ending disease would pop up there instead of somewhere else.
It is quite possible, however, that you would get very sick drinking local water that they can drink safely. |
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#134 |
Scholar
Join Date: Jan 2015
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#135 |
Show me the monkey!
Join Date: Jul 2005
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The animal species there are likely to be about the same as other nearby islands. There is the possibility that they have none of or few of the introduced species that are so common to inhabited islands. To my knowledge, no modern biodiversity survey has ever been done.
We probably can't talk about population numbers for animals. A particular species might be super rare or super abundant as compared to the nearby Andaman Islands. There still could be some truly endemic terrestrial species. It's fascinating to me and I want to see a biodiversity survey for the land fauna but I don't want a scientific expedition. So I don't get my wish. |
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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#136 |
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It makes no difference whatever whether they laugh at us or revile us, whether they represent us as clowns or criminals; the main thing is that they mention us, that they concern themselves with us again and again. -Hitler |
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#137 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 41,844
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Sure, we don't know what species are living there, but that's beside the point. Regardless of which species are there, there simply cannot be a lot of any species (meaning the number of actual animals, not the number of species) simply on account of the small area. Not a lot of animals means not a lot of breading ground among potential hosts for crossover diseases.
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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#138 |
Agave Wine Connoisseur
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Just past ' Resume Speed ' .
Posts: 15,313
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Stealth?
To avoid their radar? |
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" The main problem I have with the idea of heaven, is the thought of spending eternity with most of the people who claim to be going there. " |
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#139 |
Show me the monkey!
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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#140 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 41,844
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1) Crabs are not good candidates for crossover diseases.
2) You're actually making my point: high densities of small animals happen all over the world. Now matter how dense the animal population is on this island, it's still going to be a vanishingly small fraction of the globe.
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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#141 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Dec 2006
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"I don't think I'm getting the most out of my computer. I turn it on... and use it as a light." - Harry Hill |
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#142 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 41,844
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To avoid being seen. Or heard.
Note: I'm not actually suggesting we should do this. But it might be possible some day. |
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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#143 |
Show me the monkey!
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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#144 |
Show me the monkey!
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Rats or mice may have been introduced as well as domestic pigs and other such animals. The region already has a native wild pig.
Bats can be a disease trouble. I remember reading about bats and Ebola virus in a small area of Africa even though bats are nearly everywhere on earth. Bats around the Guam-Saipan islands have a disease which wrecks your brain before you die. But again bats are everywhere. I doubt that there are such diseases at Sentinel but still a stage has been set whereby it is possible that those people have an immunity to something bad that nobody else does. |
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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#145 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2003
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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#146 |
Show me the monkey!
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot. |
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#147 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Jul 2013
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Yes bats carry a lot of viruses (but the there are a lot of bats), rabies, nipah, ebola. Rodents are also a trouble, hanta, plague, again just because there a lot of them so they carry a lot of viruses.
They are probably exposed to mosquito carried infections. There is a minimum population size to maintain most infections, so it is likely their population is too small to maintain infections like measles or mumps. Herpes viruses and viruses with vertical (mother to baby) transmission and prolonged carriage could occur. |
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#148 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Jun 2003
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"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose -- that it may violate property instead of protecting it -- then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious." - Bastiat, The Law |
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#149 |
Master Poster
Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 2,989
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I think we can rule out dangerous diseases carried by any kind of flying animals. North Sentinel Island is only about 20 miles west of the rest of the Andamans. Storms, migration patterns, and regular airborne travel would have brought over pretty much any deadly bat, avian, or flying insect based disease to the rest of the Andamans or vice versa.
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#150 |
Penultimate Amazing
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 15,683
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Does India have any rules about child welfare or education? If so,is this tribe violating it?
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#151 |
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#152 |
Penultimate Amazing
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#153 |
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#154 |
Penultimate Amazing
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#155 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Detroit
Posts: 5,352
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About their language: The linguists cited by Wiki think it's probably in the same family as the Ongan languages. Sounds plausible.
As for the Sentinelese: The Indian govt. faces a dilemma. They'd like to persuade these savages to quit murdering people, and maybe even send their kids to school, so that someday the tribe can adopt a few wholesome practices, e.g., reading and vaccinations. But to do that, the Indians must avoid the very real likelihood of infecting people for whom they have responsibility with fatal diseases. India has other problems, bigger ones, I submit. Maintaining a low-cost wildlife refuge for a small subset of the Andamanese is probably the best policy. |
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Fill the seats of justice with good men; not so absolute in goodness as to forget what human frailty is. -- Thomas Jefferson What region of the earth is not filled with our calamities? -- Virgil |
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#156 |
Philosopher
Join Date: Aug 2007
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There is no secret ingredient - Kung Fu Panda |
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#157 |
Skepticifimisticalationist
Join Date: Jun 2002
Location: Gulf Coast
Posts: 22,801
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Not really necessary; the fact that the Indian government itself ceased all attempts at contact and set up the exclusionary zone around the island in the 90's which has endured to the present day indicates the legal government considers the exclusionary policy to overrule all other typical government functions and interests. That makes it legally sound as a simple practical matter of fact until the day somebody challenges it via whatever means laws are legally challenged in India.
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#158 |
Lackey
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#159 |
Penultimate Amazing
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#160 |
Lackey
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