The Forbidden Island

Let’s suppose our earth is visited by aliens. Giant extraterrestial spaceships appear. They make contact, abduct a couple of humans, some of which return with strange diseases. Oh yeah, and heaps of iPads as gifts. The people that make it back speak of a strange society, where everybody is essentially a mindless part of a big mainframe, not unlike the Borg in Star Trek.

One day, the aliens make contact. We try to fend them off, but our weapons don’t seem to harm them. They explain that their intentions are good, and that by assimilating mankind, we no longer have to deal with hunger, poverty, crime, fear or even death.

You like?

Absurd, right? Yet this is probably not far from how the Sentinelese see us. They have heard from diseases they cannot fight from other tribes, they have witnessed the abductions. Why should things be different all of the sudden?

My point is: we have to stop seeing our culture or civilization as superior. In the alien analogy, becoming a Borg-like drone is probably far better in the eyes of the aliens. Why would these ‘savage’ humans would want to deal with the perils of life? Why can’t they see that we’re just here to help them?

Their culture, their world view is so far apart from ours. Do we really think that, when we show them a modern hospital, they’ll think it’s a good idea? Do we really believe that these people would somehow benefit from things like cell phones, cars, education, healthcare? Besides, we can’t show them just the good stuff. We can’t NOT show them pollution, taxes, budget crises, alcoholism, child pornography or facebook.

I’m sure the ones that genuinly want to help these people have good intentions. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. No matter how good our intentions are, making contact is not in the best interest of these people. They don’t need our view of what is civilized, and they don’t need our vices and virtues. And they make it pretty clear, too.

Leave them alone.

> I guess all I'm saying is that not establishing contact is also a choice that we're making on their behalf.

It's also a choice that they are making for themselves. It may or may not be a fully informed choice, but they are making their opinions pretty clear. They certainly aren't coming across as a group of people looking desperately to some outside group to save them from anything.

Answer 1: Yes, stay the fuck away. If Race XYZ has ability to monitor us without us knowing, thus not interfering with us, sure go ahead. Its not like there's much we could to stop them. But the moment they make their existence known, we're fucked.

At that moment, we aren't the world-conquering successful species we love and proclaim to be. We're the little tribe living on the little island that's quietly being protected by the corrupt government of a minor power in the universal state of nations and empires that we just are now learning about. There's a lot of euphemisms in my last few sentences. Figure them out.

Leave these people alone.

This is kind of in response to your second point. Think about the scale of what we're talking about. We have a massively global, interconnected society of both economy and knowledge comprising billions of people. Even the poorest person in the most desolate parts of the world can, with some inconvenience, get on to the Internet. The people on this island, 400-1000 souls that they be, don't even have the understanding of modern society that the poorest person in the modern world has. Where do you start with that?

So suppose your friendly aliens show up and say "Hi!". What then? We're the people that struggle to maintain ONE space station. We have no extra-terrestrial colonies or establishments. Aliens decide to claim Mars? What are we going to do? The Moon? Its theirs. Pretty much anything outside of our little island Earth is open for claim, and not by us necessarily. The fucked up part is that if you traveled tens or hundreds of light years to get here, Earth itself is probably not the main goal. Its just the natural resources of the system. And what happens in a few hundred years when we decide to get off our asses and go into space? Nothing's left, because fucking Zork claimed it all.

So when you think about all of this together, what options do you present to these people even if they were interested? Medicine, food? Sure. Maybe we can get them vaccinated before the common cold or bird flu wipes them out. Education? Here's some books representing external human history from the perspective of the people supplying the money. Oh, check out our religion too! By the way, did you know that your island is one of several others claimed by India? Its a big island (not really) with over 1 billion people. Too many to count? Don't worry, once your 100 kids have moved to Bangalore to become tech support reps and within 20 years your entire culture has died they'll be able to explain.

I know this is a bit rambly, but hopefully you can see where I'm going. There is no benefit to the people in question to be contacted by us. It only changes and hurts them.

> If an asteroid hits the Earth, who do you think will be best equipped to survive?

Them, obviously. You and I would die a painful death in a few days without sanitation, proper housing and supermarkets. They on the other hand, are perfectly used to manage with extremely scarce resources.