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Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

uncontactedtribes.org

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Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#81
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - it's a shocking point of view. I'm choosing to read it as parody. EDIT: Does the downvote mean it's not parody? EDIT,EDIT: So maybe the OP was being sincere - in which case I'm v depressed.

You're mistaken. I did not post a parody. I'm serious. That you have a hard time believing that people who disagree with you (like myself) even exist should perhaps be a wake up call to open your mind.

It's just that many (feared and hated) leaders from history took a similar view.

I'm surprised so many people on HN share it.

(Did I dodge the Godwin's law bullet...?)

--

Seriously though, this is exactly the point of view that was used by all colonial movements. It's antiquated, unjust and it's also completely xenophobic. I'm genuinely shocked.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#82
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should give them access to technology and to our way of life. Our way of life is better. Preserving their backwards culture so they can continue lives of misery and suffering is just as disgusting as the Prime Directive. Help is exactly what I would want from advanced alien visitors. I don't want them to respect my culture just because it is mine; I want something better for myself, not cultural relativism. There…

I really hope you are kidding. If not this is so typical of the american way of thinking. Yes, we are so superior lets convert them all to our [insert culture, religion etc...]. What is so bad about leaving them alone? I would bet they are much happer than the majority of the FB and Twitter obsessed narcissist that I run into every day. While we are at it lets make sure they all become good christians too because any…

I am not kidding.

You are posting a very typical left wing way of thinking where you have a hard time believing people can both exist and fundamentally disagree with you. You hope they don't really mean it, or at least they are Christians so you have something unintellectual to blame (I am not).

You are advocating some kind of "tolerance" of primitive cultures (consisting largely of non-intervention which is rather different than tolerance) but you have have no tolerance of opposing viewpoints within your own culture.

I did not advocate forced conversion. That you refuse to differentiate between access to better ideas and depriving them of their rights is a straw man.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#83
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting - can you link to any sources?

"The photographer that took the picture, José Carlos, has admitted that the tribe has, in fact, been known about since 1910. He created the hoax "in order to call attention to the dangers the logging industry may have on the group." http://www.geekologie.com/2008/06/fake_uncontacted_amazon_tr...

A set of photographs of the tribe were indeed published by msnbc.com and others in May 2008. However, the images above - which were made available to the media for the first time yesterday - are not the same photographs. A Survival International spokesperson has just confirmed to me that the images were taken in June 2010. For the sake of clarity and accuracy, I have therefore updated the title of this post to say Newly-released photos rather than New photos. The controversy over the 2008 pictures was sparked by an article in The Observer headlined Secret of the "lost" tribe that wasn't. Later in 2008, Stephen Pritchard, that newspaper's readers' editor, wrote a follow-up piece in which he said the original article had misrepresented the situation.

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/01/5965571-newl...

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#84
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should give them access to technology and to our way of life. Our way of life is better. Preserving their backwards culture so they can continue lives of misery and suffering is just as disgusting as the Prime Directive. Help is exactly what I would want from advanced alien visitors. I don't want them to respect my culture just because it is mine; I want something better for myself, not cultural relativism. There…

I really hope you are kidding. If not this is so typical of the american way of thinking. Yes, we are so superior lets convert them all to our [insert culture, religion etc...]. What is so bad about leaving them alone? I would bet they are much happer than the majority of the FB and Twitter obsessed narcissist that I run into every day. While we are at it lets make sure they all become good christians too because any…

>BTW: you to know that Western medicine is not the only medicine in the world.

There is only one class of medicine in the world, and is scientific. Your attempt to frame science-based medicine as a racial or cultural property ("Western") lies at the root of your reasoning fallacies: you reinterpret comparison between industrialized and tribal humans as cultural/racial, regardless of whether race or culture has anything to do with it. The superiority of empirical medicine is not cultural hegemony. The life-saving knowledge of microbe theory and hygiene is not a religious belief that be can relativized with shamanist "healing."

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#85

You know that Golden Rule?" Not the one that VCs quote, but the one that goes "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you?" We should think about that when we choose how to deal with uncontacted tribes. It may be that one day another intelligence will need to decide how to deal with us, and on that day I hope we can say, "Yes, we used to have a habit of massacring technologically inferior peoples we encounte…

We should give them access to technology and to our way of life. Our way of life is better. Preserving their backwards culture so they can continue lives of misery and suffering is just as disgusting as the Prime Directive. Help is exactly what I would want from advanced alien visitors. I don't want them to respect my culture just because it is mine; I want something better for myself, not cultural relativism. There…

[deleted]

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#86

You know that Golden Rule?" Not the one that VCs quote, but the one that goes "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you?" We should think about that when we choose how to deal with uncontacted tribes. It may be that one day another intelligence will need to decide how to deal with us, and on that day I hope we can say, "Yes, we used to have a habit of massacring technologically inferior peoples we encounte…

We should give them access to technology and to our way of life. Our way of life is better. Preserving their backwards culture so they can continue lives of misery and suffering is just as disgusting as the Prime Directive. Help is exactly what I would want from advanced alien visitors. I don't want them to respect my culture just because it is mine; I want something better for myself, not cultural relativism. There…

>Preserving their backwards culture so they can continue lives of misery and suffering is just as disgusting as the Prime Directive.

The point is that they are not suffering.

Modern anthropology and the best science actually indicates that tribal hunter-gatherers experience higher levels of happiness and satisfaction than your typical citizen of an agricultural society.

Tribal hunter-gatherers have healthier diets, live longer without outside interference, have more social harmony, deeper longer lasting social bonds, etc. All the ingredients for deep, lasting, and fulfilling happiness.

They are living precisely how humans evolved to live. From the perspective of "suffering" agriculture is actually a step backwards. Nonetheless agricultural societies dominate because agricultural societies have higher populations, stronger diseases (natural disease warfare) and better military technology.

It is natural that agriculture dominates and pushes out the tribal lifestyle. However on the basis of suffering/misery it is actually the agriculturalists who are worse off.

A great book that details this phenomenon was recently released for the public called Sex At Dawn.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#88
post #10

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/01/5965571-newl... This has better photos. According to NBC report in 2008, an agency has been aware of the tribe and have been tracking (and not contacting) them since 1910.

The child in the first picture has very big and modern looking blade on his hand and a metallic pot is on the ground as pointed out by Keyframe in an another comment. Far from uncontacted.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#89
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mistaken. I did not post a parody. I'm serious. That you have a hard time believing that people who disagree with you (like myself) even exist should perhaps be a wake up call to open your mind.

It's just that many (feared and hated) leaders from history took a similar view. I'm surprised so many people on HN share it. (Did I dodge the Godwin's law bullet...?) -- Seriously though, this is exactly the point of view that was used by all colonial movements. It's antiquated, unjust and it's also completely xenophobic. I'm genuinely shocked.

Respectable people like Jacob Bronowski, David Deutsch, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- not to mention easily over 100 million Americans -- believe this kind of thing. Don't be so shocked by a mainstream point of view.

It is not xenophobic to be pro-civilization, to think that allowing people the option to join civilization is good for them, or to wish aliens would come along and share advanced knowledge with us (thus radically transforming our world).

Change is not bad or scary on principle. Change is a necessary aspect of improvement. Improvement exists. I'm not going to force my idea of improvement on anyone, but I damn well am going to offer it to them and give them the choice.

Maybe you are ignorant of how some Western organizations strive to keep uncivilized people backwards against those people's will by putting up barriers between them and integration with the modern world. They treat them a little like a zoo. That's disgusting.

(You might have dodged Godwin's law if you hadn't included the parenthetical about it... :)

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should give them access to technology and to our way of life. Our way of life is better. Preserving their backwards culture so they can continue lives of misery and suffering is just as disgusting as the Prime Directive. Help is exactly what I would want from advanced alien visitors. I don't want them to respect my culture just because it is mine; I want something better for myself, not cultural relativism. There…

How does your perspective differ from the perspective of the missionaries who attempted to bring "salvation" to indigenous peoples around the world? How does your perspective differ from the perspectives that led to the imposition of the Residential Schools? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Canadian_Indi... Also, nothing I wrote says anything about providing them with access , it says something about de…

What about the missionaries who stopped indigenous peoples' crazy blood soaked ways and widespread human sacrifice rituals? The Aztecs in particular were quite psycho.

With the daily stories of decapitated bodies and mass slayings in connection with the drug cartels in Mexico, sometimes a wonder about the cultural link back to the Aztec ways.

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