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The Forbidden Island

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Re: The Forbidden Island

#41

Post by ars »

kaybe wrote: post #36
derleth wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But... the choice is theirs, not yours or mine. How much do they really know, though? Do they know that some of their diseases could be cured, for example?

But then, some of the plants in the jungle seem to be amazing. I read some books about expeditions to find them for western medicine. One talked about a black paste you put on a tooth and it will simply fall out, no pain and no problem. A plant that makes women infertile for 7 years (they give it to their teenagers, apparently). Also, great plants against many sorts of other problems like abscesses. Sadly, the result…

None of those plants sound real. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Re: The Forbidden Island

#42

Post by toyg »

finnw wrote: post #28
dirktheman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would freak them out. A metal bird, making strange humming noise, hovering over their heads... A couple of years ago I was driving on the I-95 from Las Vegas to Tonopah. Out of nowhere, a predator drone came up and flew next to our car for a good couple of hundred yards. A strange and somewhat frightening experience, even for someone who knows what drones are. Besides, the thick jungle canopy wouldn't allo…

Why would it freak them out any more than the helicopters which they have seen before?

Seen before and taken shots at before. They'd likely do the same to any metallic bird.

Re: The Forbidden Island

#43

Post by dirktheman »

derleth wrote: post #29
6ren wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The archaeological record shows that tooth decay increased dramatically with agriculture, and prior to that, was much less frequent than today. It's one step forward, two steps back - at least, for dentistry. Many of our dramatically beneficial advances - such as covered sewage and vitamin-supplemented bread - solve problems that did not exist for less densely populated hunter-gatherers. The big problem for them was…

OK, nobody disputes that they have better teeth than my circa 1800 ancestors did, but I very likely have better teeth than they do now, so who really wins here? > The big problem for them was carrying capacity, meaning you had to migrate, fight the tribe next door... or practice infanticide. Overcoming these is the true achievement of our age. This is a point I wish I had made.

I get your point, and I think we can all agree that our standards of living are WAY better than theirs, but by OUR standards. Yes, our life expectancy is better, we have better teeth, we are healthier, we get to use all the shiny stuff that comes with our civilization. But those are our standards, not theirs. So there's no 'winner' here.

Look at native Americans. They were also 'savages', and we didn't do very well imposing our superior western civilization upon them. That kind of thinking is old-fashioned and harmful. We can't just assume that our culture, civilization is somehow 'better'. Of course, I wouldn't like living the way they do, but given the ferocity of their defense against others, this goes the same for them.

Re: The Forbidden Island

#44

Post by nitrogen »

unimpressive wrote: post #6
joering2 wrote: post #5

as one of the comments from the article points out to google map: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=North+Sentinel+Island&ll=11.5... looking at this island (looks huge!), am I the only one who feel so sick and tired of what the US government does to its people and our land, that I want to fill up my jetski and just head that way? Only if the tank was large enough... Edit: zoom out on the island.. and think about this: s…

>Edit: zoom out on the island.. and think about this: somewhere under the green down there there are living people like me and you that do not know what internet is... or cell phones.. or ipads.. cable TV... anything.. Or books, for that matter. Such things probably aren't as important if everybody you will ever have the chance to meet in your life numbers 400 people.

Isn't it just as unethical to withhold modern learning from these tribes as it would be to infect them with our modern diseases?

Re: The Forbidden Island

#45

Post by geuis »

I'm pretty late to leaving a comment, so it won't get a lot of exposure.

Let's just leave these people the fuck alone.

What threat are they under? Curious assholes like us. There are probably less than 1000 people on that island, all descended from people tens of thousands of years ago. There are more people than that that visit an Apple store on a Tuesday before 2pm.

Leave them alone.

We don't need to assuage our 10 second collective attention span by ruining their lives, destroying their history, and effectively ending a lineage thousands of years old.

These people probably have their own ideas about the weird shit washing up on their beaches and the crazy stuff in the sky that drops outsiders and food from time to time. Leave them to it. It doesn't matter what they think, no matter how curious you think you are.

Leave them alone.

For the physics-minded, think of them as a sample of humanity in Schrödinger's box. It's not a cat, but people. Except in this experiment, any direct observation will absolutely kill the people. Any exposure to disease, customs, or technology without their explicit choice will kill them. Maybe they don't physically die, but their lineage will end.

Re: The Forbidden Island

#47

Post by ekianjo »

rndmize wrote: post #31
derleth wrote: post #18

Just think: A life without the damage wrought by modern antibiotics, dentistry, surgery, and preventative medicine! Where if you get sick with something that a week's worth of pills would clear right up, you're gonna die in pain! Paradise! Yep, nothing quite like the Noble Savage, who has the dignity to die of something you've only heard about in old novels.

As compared to the Civilized Man, who has only solidly developed all the things you describe in the last couple hundred years and took thousands of years of war, famine, plague, slavery, and endless grinding inequality (still haven't quite fixed that one it seems) to get where we are now? Nothing quite like the modern man, where some tiny percentage of the world enjoys all its fruits and a few billion others try to l…

> a few billion others try to live on subsistence farming

There has never been as few famines as in today's world. I'm not sure what you are referring to. And expect for a few countries, life expectancy around the world as well as life standards are increasing progressively. As posted several times on HN, the future is about abundance, not poverty. Even people in Africa nowadays have mobile phones everywhere. Take your blinkers off.

Re: The Forbidden Island

#48

Post by eshvk »

hingisundhorsa wrote: post #25
dirktheman wrote: post #9

Fascinating story, as well as the wikipedia article about uncontacted peoples. I really appreciate the Indian government for the exclusion zone, as contact with the rest of the world will probably wipe them away. From a anthropological standpoint, this is a nice paradox. I'm sure anthropologists would LOVE to study an uncontacted tribe. Particularly this tribe, as they appear to be of African descent yet are living i…

How long do we think this Indian protection of this island will last? The current Indian government, who Indian colleagues tell me is led by a mafia related Italian family, is one of the most corrupt in the world. It is only a matter of time before whichever intelligent anthropologist in the bureaucracy/judicary is currently protecting them falls by the wayside.

I am curious. What is the purpose of your comment?

> How long do we think this Indian protection of this island will last? Is this a rhetorical question? A call to arms so that someone "more responsible" takes over the island and helps protect the "noble savage"? Or did you want an actual response?

> mafia related Italian family

Did you mean the Italian mafia? Because the only references to such a thing that I can find are from what look like conspiracy stories.

Alternatively, was the fact they were "Italian" supposed to count against them?

Re: The Forbidden Island

#49

Post by ekianjo »

tnjm wrote: post #20
derleth wrote: post #18

Just think: A life without the damage wrought by modern antibiotics, dentistry, surgery, and preventative medicine! Where if you get sick with something that a week's worth of pills would clear right up, you're gonna die in pain! Paradise! Yep, nothing quite like the Noble Savage, who has the dignity to die of something you've only heard about in old novels.

But... the choice is theirs, not yours or mine. It's clear they know the outside world exists. They have chosen not to engage. (To put it mildly.) As an aside, there are more than 100 'uncontacted' tribes in the world. All of them know of the outside world; all have chosen -- for now -- not to interact directly with mainstream society.

I'm not sure you have much choice when you are born in such a society. You are probably very much expected/forced to stay and be useful to your tribe. Freedom is very relative...

Re: The Forbidden Island

#50

Post by ekianjo »

dirktheman wrote: post #15
terhechte wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always fly drones around. Edit: Non-Lethal, Non-Army drones. Just flying cameras to see what's happening there, or how they're living. Even better, really small cameras that look a bit like slow-moving birds.

I think it would freak them out. A metal bird, making strange humming noise, hovering over their heads... A couple of years ago I was driving on the I-95 from Las Vegas to Tonopah. Out of nowhere, a predator drone came up and flew next to our car for a good couple of hundred yards. A strange and somewhat frightening experience, even for someone who knows what drones are. Besides, the thick jungle canopy wouldn't allo…

> A metal bird, making strange humming noise, hovering over their heads...

Because a huge tanker stuck in the water would not freak them out, maybe? It's way more impressive than a small drone flying around, for people who don't even have boats.

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