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Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

uncontactedtribes.org

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Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#91

Post by lwhi »

d3x wrote: post #80
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. What is so bad is you making the decision for them -- one way or the other. It's that kind of pompous paternalistic attitude that caused all kinds of pain and misery. If they are happy with a life expectancy of 30, of having mothers die in childbirth commonly…

Your reply is so laced with hypocrisy its disgusting. How do you know their lives are so bad? From what the video showed they seem to be doing just fine. I would rather be A West coast armchair philosopher than an elitest who feels he is so superior to other people that I have the right to be condescending when discussing their way of life and I have the obligation to convert them to my way of thinking. FYI: one of t…

This is the post I'd give a 100 upvotes to.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#93

Post by DanielBMarkham »

raganwald wrote: post #73
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. What is so bad is you making the decision for them -- one way or the other. It's that kind of pompous paternalistic attitude that caused all kinds of pain and misery. If they are happy with a life expectancy of 30, of having mothers die in childbirth commonly…

Treat people as you would like to be treated if you were them. I wish I had 100 upmods to give. This is exactly what I was saying elsewhere, we should think about how we would want to be treated. Would we want medicine and education offered to us? Would we want the option for some of our elders to live out the rest of their lives in a traditional manner? Would we want bulldozers knocking down our trees? Would we want…

I don't know the answer either, but I sure as hell know it's not my decision to make for somebody else.

Your point about possible alien intelligences is an excellent one. How would we want to be treated if the shoe were on the other foot? I don't know my answer -- I suspect I would be all for change even if it were uncomfortable. But I absolutely know that I would be the one to make my personal decision about the matter. That's not for others to decide for me.

We have a word for a situation where beings are allowed to live in fake isolation, while we secretly observe them and feel great about ourselves for letting them live as close to their natural state as we can allow. It's called a "zoo"

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#94

Post by raganwald »

xenophanes wrote: post #27
raganwald wrote: post #9

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…

I never actually said we shouldn't contact them or offer assistance. Before I go to the gym, I'll argue what I think is with your point.

For those who think they should be left in isolation, why is it bad to contact them and expose them to our civilization, but good to invent new things and businesses and cultural systems in our civilization?

For example, entrepreneurs invented television and birth control. These inventions changed everything for us and our culture. How is it ok for someone to invent television but not ok for us to contact an isolated tribe and show them what the rest of the world is doing?

How is it ok for someone to invent a way for hetero women to make more choices about their bodies and their sexuality, but not ok for us to offer them medicine so that they can make more choices about their bodies?

We hackers espouse a philosophy of creating change. How is it ok to create change for our culture but not ok to create change for theirs?

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#96

Post by narrator »

I am really getting a kick out of the ironic juxtaposition of the most technologically primitive segment of the world population getting space up here at the top of Hacker News. After all, the Hacker News audience represents arguably the most technologically sophisticated segment of the world population.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#97

Post by uvdiv »

mwhite wrote: post #74
xenophanes wrote: post #27

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…

Define "better". Primitive people's lives are short, yes. But that they are uncomfortable and brutish is at best an uninformed value judgment that supports the narrative of civilization. By any good measure of happiness, they are probably happier than us. Most of them would die from diseases of civilization in the event of contact, anyway, so I don't really see how western medicine potentially extending their lives a…

>Primitive people's lives are short, yes. But that they are uncomfortable and brutish is at best an uninformed value judgment that supports the narrative of civilization.

Then let them make their own value judgement. Offer them 80-year life expectancies and the extravagant luxury of modern life; let them make their own choices. Xenophanes isn't the one arguing for forced isolation -- for keeping the truth of the world secret from them.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#98

Post by gokhan »

xenophanes wrote: post #27
raganwald wrote: post #9

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…

Check the FAQ first:

http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/articles/3109-questions-and...

But could this be because they don’t see the benefits of ‘our’ way of life? If they knew, might they want to join us?

They won’t get the chance. In reality, the future offered by the settler society is to ‘join’ at the lowest possible level – often as beggars and prostitutes. History proves that tribal peoples end up in a far worse state after contact, often dead.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#99

Post by seanos »

raganwald wrote: post #94
xenophanes wrote: post #27

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 never actually said we shouldn't contact them or offer assistance. Before I go to the gym, I'll argue what I think is with your point. For those who think they should be left in isolation, why is it bad to contact them and expose them to our civilization, but good to invent new things and businesses and cultural systems in our civilization? For example, entrepreneurs invented television and birth control. These inv…

I think it's because when we invent television we don't lose anything. Once we show these people the modern world, there is no going back. It makes it a difficult moral dilema.

Re: Aerial footage of uncontacted Amazon tribe

#100

Post by raganwald »

rubashov wrote: post #90
raganwald wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IIRC, the Spaniards stopped the Aztecs with smallpox and the measles.

http://www.thenagain.info/WebChron/Americas/Cortes.CP.html

But let's not quibble a minor point like that. The question I raised was simply how our perspective today differs from their perspective back in colonial times, with an eye to considering the possibility that we are fallible and that what we sincerely believe is in someone else's best interests may not be in their best interests.

I'm not saying we can't or shouldn't contact or help them, I'm saying we should be careful, because it may be that what we think is good for them today turns out to be bad for them. That doesn't mean we shouldn't act, but isn't it worth thinking carefully before making choices?

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