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I readily acknowledge we may agree more than it first appears given the particular emphasis we each chose. But I do think there is substantive disagreement here

I readily acknowledge we may agree more than it first appears given the particular emphasis we each chose. But I do think there is substantive disagreement here within the realm of non-violent (and, dare I say it: civilized) ways to approach the matter. The very idea of having a way that "we" deal with "uncontacted tribes" is collectivist on both ends. Individuals should do whatever they want without violating anyone's rights. Your way of phrasing the situation has systematic collectivist bias that implies things like withholding access to some individuals in their tribe if a tribal leader doesn't want us. And it implies central planning/organization (what "we" do). When you don't let any individual who wants to interact with them, without violating their rights, do as he pleases, then you are restricting access. When you divide the world into different countries, tribes, etc, and restrict the free flow of people, information, trade, etc, worldwide across all borders, then you are restricting access. When you draw a sharp distinction between aliens and human, that is species prejudice. Making a big deal out of what collective group people are from is the real nationalism, xenophobia, racism, or whatever. I see all people as individual people and that's it.

raganwald 16y ago
I suspect we still agree on the principles. The only thing I am advocating is thinking things through. For example, it is very difficult to interact with them without violating their right to life because it is easy to infect them with a disease. What do we do? Nothing, and let people figure it out for themselves? Put up signs? Or restrict the area to anthropologists who have training in the matter? I don't personally know what to do about that. I said I'd like to treat them as I'd like to be treated. Personally, I'm glad I have access to the Internet.
- xenophanes 16y ago
  Fair enough.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  ...it is very difficult to interact with them without violating their right to life because it is easy to infect them with a disease. What do we do? Ship in a bunch of doctors, and introduce them to disease under medically controlled circumstances. We can't isolate them forever to avoid an epidemic, but we can try to mitigate the impact when it occurs.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    To those downmodding, do you have a better solution? Should we simply wait for accidental contact (most likely with no doctors present) to wipe out everyone?
mrleinad 16y ago
Yes. And not every kind of discrimination or restriction is wrong. We must not contact them, unless they want to contact us. We cannot be certain of the impact of our presence to their minds. Just as we can't be certain (no, we can't) of the impact of an alien presence in our planet.
- uxp 16y ago
  It makes you wonder what they were thinking when they saw the plane flying around over their heads. In almost every shot of the tribe, they were all standing and staring. I doubt it is the first time they have seen some sort of modern technology, but it certainly isn't common. Modern man is taking away their land to oil drilling and logging. Personally, I think we should treat it as tribal leaders once did. We are the enemy. If we want to preserve them, then we should not study them as subjects either. That is their land, their home. Let them be.
  - robryan 16y ago
    It sounds like they would have seen planes many times as this guy has been following them for 20 years. It would be interesting how they perceive the planes, they may see them as some kind of god watching over them.
    - simcop2387 16y ago
      Hard to say since it's unlikely to be the same plane, they might think it's either multiple beings. I'd suspect more that they think it's a giant bird than a god though.
    - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
      >they may see them as some kind of god watching over them Or they may see them as a manufactured tool for flying
- Groxx 16y ago
  >We must not contact them, unless they want to contact us. And how do we tell? They can't know about us unless they... know about us (contamination: our existence, and any visual differences). They can't contact us unless they know where we are (contamination: we're watching them, and they see us doing so). Then they can't express desires until we understand each other (contamination: language and ideas). At that point, you've already significantly altered their culture, at least for the individual(s) you directly dealt with, and any they told. If we "must not contact them", then we must not contact any, because every person is part of a group, and arguably is a group of one, so you've already contaminated a person, a group, a sub-culture, a unique society that will never be the same again. We either force contact, or we deny them the knowledge of our existence. There is no middle-ground, because any step away from zero contact is contact. Inaction is just delay of choice; what happens if they literally walk in a straight line until they hit a city? We are forcing contact by our mere existence, we could pick up the city and move to avoid contaminating them against their choice, since if they didn't know about us they couldn't have chosen to contact us.
Helianthus16 16y ago
Ignoring collectivist thinking is a fault when people do in fact act in groups. It is even more so a fault when referring to the violation of rights, when rights only exist as a collectivist decision. If you were about to meet this tribe, there is nothing you can do about the fact that you are a member of a Western culture meeting a member of a tribal culture, and your different groups--national, cultural, philosophical (in the sense of your strict individualism)--are interacting in important ways. Denying the problem by pretending there are no groups does not make it go away.
waterhouse 16y ago
Observing this discussion, it occurs to me (not for the first time) that it would be nice if people discussing the topic took each other's words literally, didn't take them to mean anything beyond the literal meaning. xenophanes says "Our way of life is better" and argues for "giv[ing] them access to technology and to our way of life" and against "[p]reserving their backwards culture", "actions that maintain them in that lifestyle", and "[t]rying to minimize contact". Then raganwald appears to hear "It's justified to force them to follow our way of life" appended to xenophanes's post and proceeds to argue against this (mentioning two historical examples); it takes another post by xenophanes to explain that he neither said nor meant that. Elsewhere, d3x says "You are basically saying that your beliefs and way of life are so superior and better than theirs that you must convert them", and the italicized part is, again, not part of what xenophanes said. xenophanes replies saying "I did not advocate forced conversion", plus a bit of ranting about a "left wing way of thinking" which probably led to enough downvotes to keep it at 2 and provoked a 10-point reply devoted solely to the "left wing" comment and a 9-point reply devoted half to it and half to the original topic. Also, DanielBMarkham jumps in with a reply to d3x, making basically the same points as xenophanes--saying "If they are happy with a life expectancy of 30, [etc....], if they want that life, let them have it", arguing to "show and tell them what they are missing and let them decide", arguing against "inaction" and "let[ting] people suffer when we can help them stop [i]f they so desire". And d3x replies arguing against "[the idea that] their lives are so bad" (which does address what he said), "feel[ing] ... that I have the right to be condescending when discussing their way of life-" (which at least addresses his comment, though I think it's unfair) "-and I have the obligation to convert them to my way of thinking" (which is not what he said). d3x also draws a comparison between DanielBMarkham's arguments and historical arguments to justify slavery, a reductio ad absurdum that might conceivably be aimed at Markham's actual arguments, but that I imagine was aimed at an argument d3x read into Markham's comment. This entire tree of discussion is full of this sort of putting-words-in-your-mouth. Even xenophanes's reply to raganwald's original comment may be guilty of this--raganwald originally argued against "massacring technologically inferior peoples" and "keep[ing] them alive but destroy[ing] their culture and identity while mouthing platitudes about how we were helping them", which does not say anything about the deliberate "preserving their backwards culture" or "[t]rying to minimize contact" that xenophanes proceeds to argue against. xenophanes doesn't directly say something to indicate that this is intended as a rebuttal to raganwald's comment, and it was his first post in this thread (I think), so maybe he was just making a general statement of his position (which I personally would upvote)... but I could also interpret it as yet another misguided rebuttal to things someone didn't say and didn't mean. So, guys, please become more autistic and interpret things literally; it would cut out the need for a lot of the anger and "No that isn't what I said" noise in this thread. I'm joking about the autism, but seriously, there are 277 comments on this story and I think reading-and-replying-to-things-that-weren't-written is the reason for most of them.

raganwald 16y ago

I suspect we still agree on the principles. The only thing I am advocating is thinking things through. For example, it is very difficult to interact with them without violating their right to life because it is easy to infect them with a disease. What do we do? Nothing, and let people figure it out for themselves? Put up signs? Or restrict the area to anthropologists who have training in the matter? I don't personally know what to do about that. I said I'd like to treat them as I'd like to be treated. Personally, I'm glad I have access to the Internet.

xenophanes 16y ago
Fair enough.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
...it is very difficult to interact with them without violating their right to life because it is easy to infect them with a disease. What do we do? Ship in a bunch of doctors, and introduce them to disease under medically controlled circumstances. We can't isolate them forever to avoid an epidemic, but we can try to mitigate the impact when it occurs.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  To those downmodding, do you have a better solution? Should we simply wait for accidental contact (most likely with no doctors present) to wipe out everyone?

mrleinad 16y ago

Yes. And not every kind of discrimination or restriction is wrong. We must not contact them, unless they want to contact us. We cannot be certain of the impact of our presence to their minds. Just as we can't be certain (no, we can't) of the impact of an alien presence in our planet.

uxp 16y ago
It makes you wonder what they were thinking when they saw the plane flying around over their heads. In almost every shot of the tribe, they were all standing and staring. I doubt it is the first time they have seen some sort of modern technology, but it certainly isn't common. Modern man is taking away their land to oil drilling and logging. Personally, I think we should treat it as tribal leaders once did. We are the enemy. If we want to preserve them, then we should not study them as subjects either. That is their land, their home. Let them be.
- robryan 16y ago
  It sounds like they would have seen planes many times as this guy has been following them for 20 years. It would be interesting how they perceive the planes, they may see them as some kind of god watching over them.
  - simcop2387 16y ago
    Hard to say since it's unlikely to be the same plane, they might think it's either multiple beings. I'd suspect more that they think it's a giant bird than a god though.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    >they may see them as some kind of god watching over them Or they may see them as a manufactured tool for flying
Groxx 16y ago
>We must not contact them, unless they want to contact us. And how do we tell? They can't know about us unless they... know about us (contamination: our existence, and any visual differences). They can't contact us unless they know where we are (contamination: we're watching them, and they see us doing so). Then they can't express desires until we understand each other (contamination: language and ideas). At that point, you've already significantly altered their culture, at least for the individual(s) you directly dealt with, and any they told. If we "must not contact them", then we must not contact any, because every person is part of a group, and arguably is a group of one, so you've already contaminated a person, a group, a sub-culture, a unique society that will never be the same again. We either force contact, or we deny them the knowledge of our existence. There is no middle-ground, because any step away from zero contact is contact. Inaction is just delay of choice; what happens if they literally walk in a straight line until they hit a city? We are forcing contact by our mere existence, we could pick up the city and move to avoid contaminating them against their choice, since if they didn't know about us they couldn't have chosen to contact us.

Helianthus16 16y ago

Ignoring collectivist thinking is a fault when people do in fact act in groups. It is even more so a fault when referring to the violation of rights, when rights only exist as a collectivist decision. If you were about to meet this tribe, there is nothing you can do about the fact that you are a member of a Western culture meeting a member of a tribal culture, and your different groups--national, cultural, philosophical (in the sense of your strict individualism)--are interacting in important ways. Denying the problem by pretending there are no groups does not make it go away.

waterhouse 16y ago

Observing this discussion, it occurs to me (not for the first time) that it would be nice if people discussing the topic took each other's words literally, didn't take them to mean anything beyond the literal meaning. xenophanes says "Our way of life is better" and argues for "giv[ing] them access to technology and to our way of life" and against "[p]reserving their backwards culture", "actions that maintain them in that lifestyle", and "[t]rying to minimize contact". Then raganwald appears to hear "It's justified to force them to follow our way of life" appended to xenophanes's post and proceeds to argue against this (mentioning two historical examples); it takes another post by xenophanes to explain that he neither said nor meant that. Elsewhere, d3x says "You are basically saying that your beliefs and way of life are so superior and better than theirs that you must convert them", and the italicized part is, again, not part of what xenophanes said. xenophanes replies saying "I did not advocate forced conversion", plus a bit of ranting about a "left wing way of thinking" which probably led to enough downvotes to keep it at 2 and provoked a 10-point reply devoted solely to the "left wing" comment and a 9-point reply devoted half to it and half to the original topic. Also, DanielBMarkham jumps in with a reply to d3x, making basically the same points as xenophanes--saying "If they are happy with a life expectancy of 30, [etc....], if they want that life, let them have it", arguing to "show and tell them what they are missing and let them decide", arguing against "inaction" and "let[ting] people suffer when we can help them stop [i]f they so desire". And d3x replies arguing against "[the idea that] their lives are so bad" (which does address what he said), "feel[ing] ... that I have the right to be condescending when discussing their way of life-" (which at least addresses his comment, though I think it's unfair) "-and I have the obligation to convert them to my way of thinking" (which is not what he said). d3x also draws a comparison between DanielBMarkham's arguments and historical arguments to justify slavery, a reductio ad absurdum that might conceivably be aimed at Markham's actual arguments, but that I imagine was aimed at an argument d3x read into Markham's comment. This entire tree of discussion is full of this sort of putting-words-in-your-mouth. Even xenophanes's reply to raganwald's original comment may be guilty of this--raganwald originally argued against "massacring technologically inferior peoples" and "keep[ing] them alive but destroy[ing] their culture and identity while mouthing platitudes about how we were helping them", which does not say anything about the deliberate "preserving their backwards culture" or "[t]rying to minimize contact" that xenophanes proceeds to argue against. xenophanes doesn't directly say something to indicate that this is intended as a rebuttal to raganwald's comment, and it was his first post in this thread (I think), so maybe he was just making a general statement of his position (which I personally would upvote)... but I could also interpret it as yet another misguided rebuttal to things someone didn't say and didn't mean. So, guys, please become more autistic and interpret things literally; it would cut out the need for a lot of the anger and "No that isn't what I said" noise in this thread. I'm joking about the autism, but seriously, there are 277 comments on this story and I think reading-and-replying-to-things-that-weren't-written is the reason for most of them.