I read an intersting article at NPR here.

This should prove very interesting. It may mean that we humans are more special than ever!

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"If I had simply asked what the people wanted, they would have said faster horses."
Henry Ford

Very, very unlikely.

Notice it says "rare", not "special."

The other really big thing is that Kepler is looking for planets like Earth in size and distance from its sun.

BUT ...


Right now we know very little about what life is. We only have one sample and even there we have no clear dividing line between what is living and what is not. We have no idea of what other life forms might be possible or what environmental conditions might be required.

In addition, for most of the Earth's history, conditions would not have made humans likely, perhaps not even possible.

You can hold out hope if you want that Kepler doesn't spew out a ton of "earth-like planets" if you so want, but it would still not support humans being anything special or of any greater value than anything else.

If you want to equate rare with being special, then it is obvious that Cheetahs and Rhinos and Pandas and Iberian Lynx and Père David’s deer and the Tasmanian devil and and a bunch other critters are far more special than humans.

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How pierceful grows the hazy yon! How myrtle petaled thou! For spring hath sprung the cyclotron - How high browse thou, brown cow? -- Churchy LaFemme, 1950

How "rare" would Earth-like planets have to be to make you feel "special"? What if there was only one other counter-Earth? What if counter-Eve didn't eat the counter-apple and all the counter-Earthlings still had their free pass to heaven?

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What we really need to do is fix the public.
-- Jon

Phat would more than likely be counter-happy that they got the special counter-treatment

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Love your enemies.

How special does a child in a large family feel compared to an only child or a child in a small family>?

Why must men move a mountains worth of dirt and rock in order to find one ounce of gold? Gold is rare. Gold is special. We make it special by placing value on it. Platinum is rare and special. A pearl in the middle of a field is a pearl of great price.

So why are humans special?
While Pandas, Iberian Lynx,Davids deer and Tasmanian devils all share rare and marvelous traits, none of them can build telescopes that study the stars, spacecraft to explore the galaxies, nor computers to crunch data and numbers.

Humans are special because we crowned ourselves special. Humans are special because we can do so many things that other animals cannot do. IF humans were told (by other humans, of course) that they were not unique or special, how do you think such a perspective would help us in any way?

While a little humility is in order, I believe that we need to tell ourselves that we are special and that we have a grand purpose and destiny in this universe. People who feel ordinary tend to act ordinary.

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"If I had simply asked what the people wanted, they would have said faster horses."
Henry Ford

I have three brothers and forty-nine first cousins. I can't tell you what it's like to feel 'special' but I can tell you how it feels to be a part of something bigger than yourself. In a sense, everybody's accomplishments are your own. That's why it's more satisfying (if not 'special') to understand that the apes and the clams are our brothers. That's (one reason) why we look for other life in the universe - because we feel better if it isn't just us.


Exactly. The 'value' is artificial.


Exactly. The 'specialness' is artificial.


Then why do we put so much effort into trying to fly like a bird, submerge like a whale, hear like a bat?


How does facing reality help us in any way?

We could be arrogantly 'special' and claim that we don't have anything to learn from the birds or the whales or the bats (or the aliens). Where would that get us? We'd all be creationists, shivering in a cave, sneering at ungodly things like fire.


That's what all the megalomaniacs say. Only they think they're more 'special' than the Nobel Prize winners and the humanitatians too. They tend to kill the less-special to fulfill their 'destiny'.


So, tell us all about your extraordinary accomplishments, Mr. Special.

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What we really need to do is fix the public.
-- Jon

With good parents, every child in that family will feel special.


If you want to base that on rarity, then humans are merely commonplace.


Yes, we appointed ourselves as "special". But that's hardly an objective criterion.


Unfortunately, many of the things we do are quite destructive.


Many people would not take that seriously.


And apparently that "grand purpose and destiny" is to destroy our own environment.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Note that the value of gold or platinum and particularly a pearl is almost totally artificial.

This is important to understand.

Gold and platinum do have some intrinsic worth as raw materials in a modern society, but that is also as artificial as the rarity or beauty value.

In addition, if we are to be honest, we need to factor in the negative value we created when mining the gold or platinum.



You are moving the goal posts yet again.

Traits and abilities are irrelevant in this topic. You based the discussion on rarity. If you wish to use rarity as the measurement criteria then Cheetahs and Rhinos and Pandas and Iberian Lynx and Père David’s deer and the Tasmanian devil and and a bunch other critters are far more special than humans.

You need to look at what you do in these discussions because there is a pattern that is constant.

Look at the OP.

You base your whole argument on rarity as well as jumping from what the article actually said (that earth like planets and therefore earth like life might be rare) to humans being special. The two things simply do not appear to be supportable.

When the flaw in your reasoning is pointed out you move the goalposts. In this case you first switched to traits instead of rarity and then ...





Yes, we crowned ourselves special. It is false and artificial just like the value of gold.

You remember reading "The Man who would be King"? Do you remember how it ends?

Understanding that we are NOT special can help in many ways. It will let us understand both the accomplishments of those other creatures and hopefully give them a higher value when we look at the true cost of stuff like gold.



Humility has nothing to do with it. No one says we should be humble. But how do you think the North American Indians felt about Manifest Destiny, or the South American Indians about Spain's Destiny or the Indians felt about the Destiny of the British Empire?

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How pierceful grows the hazy yon! How myrtle petaled thou! For spring hath sprung the cyclotron - How high browse thou, brown cow? -- Churchy LaFemme, 1950

Are we (humans) special?

WOW - that's a hard one.
Our observations (to date) says that we ARE the only self-aware/intelligent/sapient beings in the universe.

However, we only have one data point - Hard to make a judgment!
( look up Anthropic Principle )
Although I can argue all night long on if we are the only sentient being on OUR planet.

Once we find more than ONE planet capable of sustaining life, then determine if life exists or not, will we have another data point.

I honestly feel that if humans had not become the dominant species on this planet something else would have ( elephants, dolphins, velociraptors, etc. ).
Therefore I do not think we are REALLY special.... only time will tell.



On another note ( OFF the record ):

The recently mentioned space mission has already detected FAR MORE planet-type stellar crossings than ever expected.
It has also discovered a lot of binary star systems that were previously unknown in Cygnus.

Stu