It depends upon how you define catastrophe. If it’s simply disease elimination, then we can require anthropologists to stay in quarantine for a certain amount of time before attempting contact and to remain quarantined for the duration of any time spent with them. We have quite a bit of experience dealing with people with compromised immune systems and I’m not an immunologist, but I don’t see how that is an insurmountable obstacle.
I’m not sure we’ve ever invented an effective memetic quarantine…
Sorry, but no. First we have a high likelihood of genocide. Let’s pretend that can be handled.
At that point we need a strategy that provides a high likelihood of net gain for the North Sentinelese. Except given our track record we better set the bar higher. We’d want a high likelihood of substantial net gain for them. Because the current strategy is Eyes On, Hands Off. That’s the baseline we need to improve upon. Potential airdrops during natural disasters are baked into the status quo.
I maintain that such a plan is more than expensive, it involves unprecedented behaviors. It would involve hard science, red teaming/blue teaming, what Charlie Munger calls a checklist procedure, skeptical oversight, and disinterested oversight on top of that. To put it bluntly, while I can imagine such a strategy, Western human culture is insufficiently advanced to carry it out. Ditto for Eastern, Northern and Southern.
Any human society that is sufficiently advanced to carry out such a strategy would be sufficiently advanced to focus their attention towards lower hanging fruit.
That’s a pretty bold statement. Yes, you could end up impoverished, or you could end up with your great-great-great-great granddaughter being one of the most powerful politicians in the most powerful country in the world. There are plenty of people descended from hunter-gatherers only a few generations ago that have done very well for themselves and are living happy, successful lives in the modern world. Perhaps Jane wants to take that gamble.
It also bears repeating that this is a nice sentiment, but largely removed from the confines of this discussion. We’re not talking about what should be done with refugees or the homeless or anything else. We’re talking about the Sentinelese. If I say, “We should stop tear-gassing people on the border.” The response “People in Syria are suffering worse” is not a particularly good counter-argument. It does not justify tear-gassing asylum seekers, it merely deflects criticism from the policy without addressing the policy. Simply saying, “There are people we treat worse than we treat the Sentinelese” does not justify our treatment of the Sentinelese nor somehow resolve the debate in your favor.
In my understanding, immunologists are recommending that the possibility of spreading disease to the Sentinelese is best avoided by preventing contact with the Sentinelese. Quarantining scientists prior to contact wouldn’t eliminate the spread of all those pathogens that are sitting benignly inside the scientists’ bodies, just waiting for a target with an unfamiliar immune system to jump into.
I’m a Christian, and even I find that very presumptuous on your part.
As my daddy used to say, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”
I’m going to disagree with you because you’re being paternalistic. It’s just a ‘White Messiah’ argument. You are the one that is deciding what is ‘net gain’ and you are the one that is unilaterally deciding what is ‘best’ for them. You’re coming at it from a position that what you value as ‘best’ is an objective truth and disallowing them the autonomy to decide what they see as ‘best.’ Maybe they all really agree that their culture sucks and it’s time to put it to sleep and are simply waiting for the right opportunity. Maybe they all are just really bored with fishing and killing small game and would love the opportunity to beg on the streets of a city. I tend to doubt it and I would likely try to talk them out of such a thing, but it’s not my place to make that decision for them.
As an example, I would think being homeless in Hawaii is not a particularly good existence. Chris Pratt apparently enjoyed it. That’s his decision to make. If somehow I was able to not tell him about Hawaii and instead make it seem like his only option was a good trade school because I thought that would lead to his best life outcome, I would be denying him his right to self-determination. Maybe my deception would have led to him being a perfectly respectable HVAC repairman and that would be great and maybe his decision to be homeless would have led to him dying in a gutter at 40, but that would be HIS decision, not mine or a bunch of academics from a different place deciding on what he should or should not do.
So are you, when you argue that leaving the Sentinelese alone is depriving them of their rights that they ought to be able to exercise. They have clearly indicated, repeatedly, that what they want is to be left alone.
I think that goes without saying. The best way to avoid a car accident is to never leave your house, but that doesn’t mean you become a hermit. There is a certain amount of acceptable risk with all decisions. We know that the diseases that were responsible for most of the deaths of other Adoman islanders were measles, syphillis and smallpox. Smallpox is not much of a worry and I think that it’s reasonable to assume we can prevent the spread of syphillis as well. Measles is really the only one that is a reasonable worry and I think that it’s not unreasonable that with precautions, it too could be prevented. Now I recognize that there may be an ‘unknown’ disease that they have a particular susceptibility to, but we also know that those three diseases tend to be the big killers in most contact situations, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that the chance of another ‘unknown’ is relatively small.
Oh please. If this were true, then what would be the point of philosophy? Of course philosophical truths can be evaluated, even if sometimes only subjectively.
Actually, יְהוֹשֻׁעַ would be the more accurate name. Was that supposed to be some kind of “gotcha” statement? I can’t use the English translation of his name with latin characters?
Though I don’t think this thread is the appropriate place to go into it in depth; the life, death, and resurrection of Christ are historical events that can be corroborated.
That’s part of what makes the Catholic faith beautiful and even unique. It is truly “Catholic” in the sense that its truths transcend human culture and even human individuality.
I am arguing as I have above that such a decision is not informed and thus not truly a free decision. I am not arguing that we should drag them to Indore and make them live there for a year, but I am saying that they need to at least have enough knowledge about the outside world as to make a reasonable decision about whether or not to live there or what things about it they would like to bring to them. Forbidding them that knowledge is forbidding them that choice.
That’s a lot of conjecture and my statement wasn’t bold. It’s based directly upon the experience of the descendants of relatively friendly tribes from within 100 miles of the Sentinelese. They were wiped out. Some exist as beggars. Remember, this is India.
We’re discussing resource allocation, so it’s very apropos. You are proposing a very expensive developmental program directed at a small number of people. Or, if you want to do it on the cheap, you are proposing genocide.
Nonsense. All you have is speculation. I can point to their extensive communication with visitors: they want them to buzz off. I can also opine that, judging from the evidence, they have the right idea.
If any native is stupid enough to wade out to a visiting anthropologist’s boat and climb in, hey I won’t stop them.
It would be informative to know the current thoughts of the official contact team (Tribal Welfare officials, medical officials, Anthropological Survey et al.) on this matter, and how they have changed over the past couple of decades in response to newer research, various incidents, and parallel developments such as with the “Jarawa problem”.
I object to the idea that India is somehow a more flawed place incapable of integrating tribes people into society. I recognize their poor track record, but that is not indicative of a 21st century attempt to do so. The Jarawas have not been the victims of genocide and their greatest threat is tourists (which I freely admit is a real and true problem which certainly needs addressed, but I’m not convinced it’s unsolvable.) Some of them have chosen to leave the bush and others have not. They are moving at their own pace towards ‘modernization’ and may choose to reject it completely or not as they wish.
We’re discussing resource allocation? When did that happen? We’re discussing ‘interventioin with the Sentinelese under any circumstances.’ We can shift this to a resource allocation discussion, but I doubt that any of us actually know India’s budgets for such things, nor where the theoretical resources for such a venture would go in the event that it was not carried out.
Actually, you are. You’re advocating for not contacting them at all, which by its nature prohibits them from wading out to an anthropologist’s boat. I’m in favor of sending the anthropologist and giving them that opportunity to wade out there. You seem to be saying that such an opportunity should be denied based on your opinion of what is or isn’t good for them.
Jesus fucking Christ.
We’re not “denying” them the opportunity. We don’t shoot at them if they try to leave the island. All the Indian government does is restrict visits by outsiders to the island.
As has been said over and over and over and over again, the islanders are not isolated or uncontacted. They’ve been contacted hundreds of times. But over time they’ve learned that outsiders bring trouble. So they threaten outsiders, and if they don’t leave, they shoot them.
If I barge into your home, and you ask me to leave, and I refuse, you can use force to get me to leave. In modern America the normal way to use force is to call the cops, and the cops will take you away. But in this case there are no cops. So they use force to make the invaders leave. What’s immoral about that?
The contention that we’re acting paternalistically in refusing to use force to satisfy ourselves that the islanders are making an informed choice is fucking ridiculous. You can’t imagine that maybe your neighbor is having some trouble, and barge into their house at gunpoint because you imagined that maybe they don’t have the information needed for a self-actualized life. Most people in the world don’t live self-actualized lives. If you’re so concerned about people not living self-actualized lives, maybe start with helping the ones who don’t violently refuse to listen to you? And once you’ve dealt with the first billion or so people who don’t violently resist your efforts to help, then start worrying about the moral imperative to use violence to force the ones who don’t want to listen.
The likelihood though of course is that you and your kind will get your way eventually, and the Sentinelese will be forcefully integrated into modern society, and the very likely result of that is extinction for them. But that’s a win for you, because then you won’t be worried that they’re living unexamined lives. Your conscience will be clear once they’re all dead, I guess.
But what if we could eliminate the dangers of contact? Sure, if we could eliminate all the bad things that might result from our decisions, then those decisions would be fine. If we could eliminate all the bad parts of murdering your neighbors and eating their livers and wearing their skin as a mask, then it would be perfectly fine to murder then and wear their skin. And so?
The fact is, which if you gave it five minutes of thought, we’re not going to eliminate the negative side effects of forcing the Sentinelese into boarding schools at gunpoint, any more than we can eliminate the negative side effects of cannibalizing your neighbors and using their body parts as trophies. So what are talking about again?
You win. Obviously what I am talking about is rounding them up and moving them to boarding schools. When I say, “I think that they deserve to know about the outside world.” What I’m really saying is that we should land a marine corps division and not stop shooting until we use their faces as masks. You have summed up the gist of my argument admirably.
Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what I’m proposing at all. I’m proposing that its more along the lines of the Jarawas. They were hostile and antagonistic until one day a young man broke his leg and decided that he didn’t want to die in the forest. He came out of the forest and was admitted to a hospital, had his leg fixed and went back to the Jarawa and said, “holy crap, they’ve got some awesome stuff.” The Jarawa stopped killing people and decided to explore other societies. Yes, it has not been perfect. There is certainly some exploitation and there have been disease issues, largely from measles, but there have also been Jarawas that have enrolled in local schools. Quite a few of them do hang out on the roads begging, but quite a few of them stay in the woods and never bother with outsiders. It is not a perfect situation and ‘safari tourism’ is a real problem, but they arguably have more freedom now than they did before. There were no marine divisions that marched in, nor were there forced education camps, nor has there been mass genocide. There are certainly not ideal situations there, but neither is it a mass pit of misery. Jarawan people are not noticeably less happy now than they were before.
What’s the line between “making sure you’re making an informed decision” and “convincing you to change your mind”?
I’m not convinced that there’s an established metric here for determining such a difference, and so any attempt to promote the option of a different lifestyle over the objections of the one being targeted must be considered at least in part selfish on the part of the cajoler.
Dead is dead. No one came back after being buried three days, any more than Mary got pregnant without intercourse. There is not one crumb of hard proof of any of your myths.
As just one example… Pope Paul V telling Galileo to abandon heliocentrism because it was heresy, put on trial by Pope Urban VII, convicted, subjected to house arrest, then Pope John Paul II in 1992 said whoopsie! The allegedly infallible popes and church got it wrong, Galileo was right, the Earth DOES go around the sun!
You forget the bit I added about leavening from the Middle East of Roman times.
So do I. That’s why I’m not a Christian. If the man named “Jesus” son of Joseph ever existed he didn’t resurrect after his death and his mother wasn’t a virgin.
Then there’s that nonsense about claiming to be a monotheistic religion while worshiping a trinity…
That’s not even getting into the seriously creepy thing about eating the flesh and blood of your god. WTF? I mean, if you’d just keep to it a symbolic representation that would be one thing, but claiming the bread and wine actually become flesh and blood and you eat and drink it? It’s, at best, symbolic cannibalism. If you actually believe in transubstantiation, it is literal cannibalism. What the frack?
From the outside Catholicism is really, really weird and at times horrifying. And that’s without getting into the history of the crusades, inquisitions, and colonizing.
What’s arrogant is that you steadfastly maintain something blatantly and obviously untrue is a fact and seek to try to brainwash everyone else into doing the same.
They have made a decision. They’ve decided they don’t want outsiders on their island. Why can’t we respect THAT decision?