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The Forbidden Island

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Re: The Forbidden Island

#261

Post by andrewcooke »

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.

what makes you think they would be rich enough for any of those? as other posts point out - they aren't going to be automatically promoted to middle class americans in the burbs.

Re: The Forbidden Island

#262

Post by thret »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #252
ctdonath wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not jumping off a cliff. They've been doing fine (insofar as they're surviving with a small population) for some 60 thousand years. First contact alone will probably kill them with diseases (a well-documented phenomenon). More akin to a guy standing on a ledge of a cliff, albeit precarious but doing fine; if you try to help him, he'll probably fall and die fast. He knows this, and he's telling you to stay the…

It's not about their interests. It's about our interests of preserving that ancient culture for our research purposes.

I was going to say the same thing. Their scientific value as a primitive society preserved against all odds is something we will never see again. To destroy it on a whim would be akin to killing the last dodo for food.

Some type of hidden observation as in the movie Insurrection might be worthwhile though? Someone should ask the NSA, are they really comfortable with these people NOT being monitored constantly? They could be a terrorist threat?

Re: The Forbidden Island

#263

Post by onebaddude »

3327 wrote: post #205
rytis wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they survived 65'000 years just fine, but now suddenly we need to "help" them? I don' think they need our medicine, housing or plumbing.

65k years and counting, lets see if our "modern" and "advanced" civilization makes it that far. Mark the start to where ever you feel like doesn't matter. Imperial or Feudal Europe, Rome? Bronze Age? Who knows and doesn't matter, moves the result by give/take 3000 years - less than 5%.

>65k years and counting, lets see if our "modern" and "advanced" civilization makes it that far.

Uh, we have.

You're assuming that they've lived for 65,000 years with no social or cultural or technological upheaval within their own little sub-civilization. While at that same time drawing arbitrary end-points in ours.

At this point, they're only surviving because of the benign interests of outsiders. Do you really think they could survive a hypothetical contest of "what society can survive the longest?". If our culture hadn't evolved to accept and respect indigenous people like this, or if there was any economic value on that island, they'd be dead or subjugated by now. So how can you claim that they've figured out better civilization survival instincts than the rest of the world?

Re: The Forbidden Island

#264

Post by true_religion »

LukeShu wrote: post #249
s_q_b wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take a job in a factory churning out iPhones in China over dying a slow and painful death from gangrene that started as an ingrown toenail. People in the first world romanticize ancient ways of life, but the reality is that life without basic technology is nasty, brutish, and short. Another blind spot is that there are degrees of bad. Living in a village in northern Afghanistan is better in a lot of ways than liv…

> They do it because it's better than their previous existence. Something to consider is that if some members of a society choose the new existence (provided by the new outsiders), then it can undermine the rest of the society.

I don't think its really fair to deny people a chance at a better life as they see it, simply because it'll negatively impact the original community they came from.

Re: The Forbidden Island

#265

Post by true_religion »

userulluipeste wrote: post #82
homeomorphic wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know… suppose some highly advanced aliens with for the most part benign intent found us. Would you really like them to "stay the fuck away"? I, for one, would love for our technology to leapfrog ahead centuries, even though it would completely change our culture. The disease part can be handled today. We could go visit them in hazmat suits. And I know I'm being really generous when I'm comparing the modern wo…

The (Star Trek's) Prime Directive is not something worthwhile to be considered here? The representatives of these people (the ones with bows and other kind of weapons that dare to face the outsiders) are stating clearly their policy. Maybe it is us that must get over our desires to intrude supposedly on someone else's benefit.

Representatives notwithstanding, I think ever member of the community has a right to make their own informed choice.

I never liked the prime directive in any case. Culture is not a tangible thing to be 'lost' nor something that need be preserved at the cost of the health and comfort of human beings.

Re: The Forbidden Island

#266

Post by true_religion »

thret wrote: post #262
dennisgorelik wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about their interests. It's about our interests of preserving that ancient culture for our research purposes.

I was going to say the same thing. Their scientific value as a primitive society preserved against all odds is something we will never see again. To destroy it on a whim would be akin to killing the last dodo for food. Some type of hidden observation as in the movie Insurrection might be worthwhile though? Someone should ask the NSA, are they really comfortable with these people NOT being monitored constantly? They c…

Having the scientific value of their society trump the need of their people to have better health and livelihood seems a bit utilitarian to me.

Re: The Forbidden Island

#267

Post by true_religion »

dirktheman wrote: post #119
Anderkent wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone was raising their children in a similar quality of life in a western society, they would have their children taken away by social security. Do you disagree?

No, I don't. But these people don't live in a western society. They don't share our cultural beliefs of what is good or civilized. They live by a whole different set of rules and conventions. We can't just go there, impose our vastly superior beliefs upon them with the argument that it's for their best because WE believe that. Have you ever travelled to another continent? If you're American or from Western Europe, tr…

I don't really understand this argument. Other cultures have survived contact with technologically superior civilizations. Examples are listed in your own post: Africa, Japan, etc.

People can negotiate how much an outside culture influences them. Even in cases where campaigns are made to stamp out culture (e.g. W. Africa, wherein anyone in schooling was given Western names and forbidden to speak their native language in school), the old mores still prevail if people where were willing to fight for it.

And how can you measure that the parts of the culture that are lost, are more important than the practical benefit of say.... modern medicine dropping the early childhood mortality rate by 90%?

Re: The Forbidden Island

#268

Post by onebaddude »

geuis wrote: post #45

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…

>destroying their history

Can you explain how this specific 65,000 years of history, in the context of a history that may go on for millions of years in the future for these people, is any more important than any other, and vital to protect?

Maybe a million years from now their ancestors will look back to the time they "joined the real world" as the biggest, most important positive development in their history. Kind of like how the spread of language, the alphabet and math worked for us.

There seem to be two types of people in this world: those who romanticize about the past and think that everything was better in simpler times, and those that think that things are just getting better as we go. I'm of the latter.

Do you ever wish you were still a hunter gatherer? I don't, nor do I know anyone who does. Why is that?

Re: The Forbidden Island

#269

Post by foobarbazqux »

icelancer wrote: post #258
foobarbazqux wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you have to do is issue a decree that encourages people to upvote civility and downvote incivility, as opposed to the current standard which says upvote agreement and downvote disagreement. People upvoted this guy because they agreed with his fundamental points despite the baiting, and in turn he received positive feedback. I think maybe you underestimate the effect karma has on posting behavior; it's not just ab…

>All you have to do is issue a decree that encourages people to upvote civility and downvote incivility, as opposed to the current standard which says upvote agreement and downvote disagreement. This doesn't matter. Doesn't work on reddit, doesn't work on StackOverflow, and won't work anywhere else.

I'd be interested in reading more about that if you have a link. Reddit says to "moderate based on quality, not opinion" whereas PG said explicitly to do the opposite. (I can't remember how to find the link atm, but it was a comment in some thread on HN that I've seen people refer to.)

http://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette

I also found this discussion, which says that in practice there will always be a middle ground between moderating based on quality and moderating based on opinion:

http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1g14yo/is_th...

because our ego bias is to moderate based on opinion. However that's why a guideline to moderate based on quality pulls things towards the middle.

Re: The Forbidden Island

#270

Post by gambler »

homeomorphic wrote: post #71
geuis wrote: post #45

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…

I don't know… suppose some highly advanced aliens with for the most part benign intent found us. Would you really like them to "stay the fuck away"? I, for one, would love for our technology to leapfrog ahead centuries, even though it would completely change our culture. The disease part can be handled today. We could go visit them in hazmat suits. And I know I'm being really generous when I'm comparing the modern wo…

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

Assimilating a culture is an irreversible action. Once it's assimilated, there is no going back. Once we assimilate everyone on the planet, there will be no enclaves. Nothing to learn or wonder about. Is it not scary? To be a complete monoculture?

If everyone on Earth could join advanced aliens any time, could Earth be considered an independent society?

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