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Man of the Hole

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Re: Man of the Hole

#81

Post by luckylion »

lazide wrote: post #78
luckylion wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the space age scenario, that means they get exposure to some space age stuff. But they don't, unless they actually get exposed to it. "They've heard a machine and it was loud and terrible and knocked over a tree" doesn't mean they're making an informed decision, because e.g. they don't know surgery or antibiotics. > They were just working to keep others from going in and screwing with him. And that's fine, but h…

Why is this distinction important to you exactly? By the criteria you seem to be using, I’m not sure it’s possible for anyone to ever make an informed consent about 99% of anything, since practically speaking there are near infinite possible options available for almost every action, almost all of them impractical or pointless to even discuss, and most of them more damaging than they are worth to even bring up. For e…

It's important because people started talking about choice. What they mean, I assume, is "let them live in peace", which I fully agree with. But this whole "no, they've chosen that lifestyle" is dumb. It implies that they know the alternatives and somehow arrived at that lifestyle as the one they preferred. That's nonsense on e.g. the North Sentinalese islanders. I dislike changing the meaning of words because it sounds nice, it ruins communication.

> For example, it doesn’t seem like a reasonable requirement that someone spends a bunch of time doing cocaine so they understand it, in order to not want to do cocaine.

And I would mostly agree with that, if it weren't for the fact that you can read about drugs and their effect and learn something about it. It's limited, and you should be very aware of the fact that you have a very limited understanding of the alternatives, but it's not comparable to "I don't know that cocaine exists, therefore I have chosen not to consume it". That's just ignorance, not choice.

Re: Man of the Hole

#82

Post by lazide »

luckylion wrote: post #81
lazide wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this distinction important to you exactly? By the criteria you seem to be using, I’m not sure it’s possible for anyone to ever make an informed consent about 99% of anything, since practically speaking there are near infinite possible options available for almost every action, almost all of them impractical or pointless to even discuss, and most of them more damaging than they are worth to even bring up. For e…

It's important because people started talking about choice . What they mean, I assume, is "let them live in peace", which I fully agree with. But this whole "no, they've chosen that lifestyle" is dumb. It implies that they know the alternatives and somehow arrived at that lifestyle as the one they preferred. That's nonsense on e.g. the North Sentinalese islanders. I dislike changing the meaning of words because it so…

Ignorance is a choice, when it requires action (or intentional inaction) to maintain it. I’m not sure why you seem to think it isn’t.

In the cocaine example, If I stay away from reading about recreational drugs, and don’t put anything that I don’t know what’s in it in my body, why should I ever have to know or care about cocaine at all? Is that not a choice with the same effect, but also without all the work and risk involved in doing all that research and potentially trying something that is more dangerous to me than would be obvious?

Forcing someone to know something is removing their ability to make those choices.

Having Agency/Self Determination means being able to make that choice, even when others don’t agree with it, or it causes potential problems for someone. That is the cost (and privilege) of ownership.

In a society, we infringe that for members of our society when the society overall thinks it justifies the costs. Vaccinations for kids before they go to school, to stop large scale outbreaks and death for instance. Or mandatory public education.

But that is for folks raised in and part of the overall fabric already, and impossibly intertwined with it.

Doing that for someone outside of it makes no sense.

For one (less extreme) example, The Amish (if they’re devout) aren’t being deprived because they aren’t being forced to learn how to program in C or whatever. They’re making choices to intentionally not go there, for their own reasons. They are free to change that if they want.

If you want to argue that their kids or whatever don’t get to choose, that’s all kids everywhere.

Unless they are offending us in some serious way that we can’t stand by and ignore, we’ve generally all agreed to let everyone live and let live, since otherwise it produces worse abuse and deprives them of their right to live the way they want.

But if you want to say that it’s societies obligation to ‘fix that’, you’re treading a very dark and dangerous path.

The same path that resulted in the ‘aboriginal schools’ in Australia, Canada, etc. and the reservations, missions, forced conversions etc. in the US and their massive and terrible abuses.

Re: Man of the Hole

#83

Post by andrewflnr »

scotty79 wrote: post #51
andrewflnr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The liberty is in not being forcibly relocated. Try to focus. Note how far the question has already drifted from human zoos, to just whether it's good to contact people or not. This is not an accident. It's because the human zoo comparison was never defensible; it was trivial to force you to move the goalposts.

So if you put cages over the animals in the jungle that's not a zoo because they never got relocated?

Ha, fair point, sort of. Dropping a cage on someone in situ is a very specific form of liberty denial that doesn't really have a name because no one does it.

Re: Man of the Hole

#84

Post by sangnoir »

cantrevealname wrote: post #59

I wonder how the government officials were able to track him for decades? The Man of the Hole moved at least 50 times during that period in an area of 31 square miles (8,000 ha), which is one-third bigger than the land area of Manhattan. We see news reports about searching for lost hikers or campers, who want to be found, involving dozens of officials, volunteers, and dogs scouring the wilderness for days or weeks wi…

> I wonder how the government officials were able to track him for decades?

I can think of 2 major differences between locating him vs hikers:

1. Less time pressure as the government could wait weeks/months between locating him. Finding him once in a 3 month window is a success, finding hikers after 3 months would likely be for the purposes of recovering remains.

2. Hikers usually don't construct multiple semi-permanent structures that can be identified from the air (holes, animal traps, shelter)

Re: Man of the Hole

#85

Post by luckylion »

lazide wrote: post #82
luckylion wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important because people started talking about choice . What they mean, I assume, is "let them live in peace", which I fully agree with. But this whole "no, they've chosen that lifestyle" is dumb. It implies that they know the alternatives and somehow arrived at that lifestyle as the one they preferred. That's nonsense on e.g. the North Sentinalese islanders. I dislike changing the meaning of words because it so…

Ignorance is a choice, when it requires action (or intentional inaction) to maintain it. I’m not sure why you seem to think it isn’t. In the cocaine example, If I stay away from reading about recreational drugs, and don’t put anything that I don’t know what’s in it in my body, why should I ever have to know or care about cocaine at all? Is that not a choice with the same effect, but also without all the work and risk…

Not knowing about other options is neither a choice nor does it enable you to choose: if you don't have options, you cannot choose. If you don't know about options you theoretically would have, you don't have them and you cannot make a choice, because a choice requires more than one possible outcome.

If you don't share that understanding, we don't have enough common ground to communicate.

Re: Man of the Hole

#86

Post by scotty79 »

lazide wrote: post #77
scotty79 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody. I'm just trying to understand what makes a zoo, a zoo. My intuition is more about not forcibly relocating but putting boundaries so that movement is restricted and safe observations can be performed for prolonged time.

Why is that important to you?

I just like to know what words mean.

Re: Man of the Hole

#87

Post by lazide »

luckylion wrote: post #85
lazide wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorance is a choice, when it requires action (or intentional inaction) to maintain it. I’m not sure why you seem to think it isn’t. In the cocaine example, If I stay away from reading about recreational drugs, and don’t put anything that I don’t know what’s in it in my body, why should I ever have to know or care about cocaine at all? Is that not a choice with the same effect, but also without all the work and risk…

Not knowing about other options is neither a choice nor does it enable you to choose: if you don't have options, you cannot choose. If you don't know about options you theoretically would have, you don't have them and you cannot make a choice, because a choice requires more than one possible outcome. If you don't share that understanding, we don't have enough common ground to communicate.

If that is what you got from what I wrote, I have no words.

Cheers!

Re: Man of the Hole

#88

Post by tomblebomble »

cantrevealname wrote: post #59

I wonder how the government officials were able to track him for decades? The Man of the Hole moved at least 50 times during that period in an area of 31 square miles (8,000 ha), which is one-third bigger than the land area of Manhattan. We see news reports about searching for lost hikers or campers, who want to be found, involving dozens of officials, volunteers, and dogs scouring the wilderness for days or weeks wi…

He probably lit fires often. From the air, the smoke from a fire (even with a fairly large area of forest to search) likely wouldn't be too hard to make out.

Re: Man of the Hole

#89

Post by hackerlight »

friend_and_foe wrote: post #41
rajeshp1986 wrote: post #38

Breaks my hear to see the indigenous tribes and cultures dying. We will regret Deforestation & forced-modernization of these forest based tribes. In Africa & India, some of the evangelical proselytizing has destroyed very old knowledge of the land. There was one tribe in Andaman & Nicobar island which had some indigenous knowledge about weather patterns, storms and earthquakes. It was found that the members of the tr…

As much as it makes me sad to hear about it too, I think it's wishful thinking to say we will regret it. The entire history of civilization is the history of genocide and forced assimilation. Civilization is basically an ever expanding cultural grey goo meat grinder. The Romans did it to Europe and central Asia, the first caliphate did it to (ultimately) all of Arabia, the various east Asian civilizations did it to n…

It's also our history on a species level. Neanderthals and Denisovans didn't disappear on their own. They were devoured by us.

  "Nobody really regrets any of it"
And a lot of people get defensive when you talk about it. They feel like you're attacking their identity. Some outright celebrate it.
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