Aye, but letting them know there is a choice would corrupt them; it’s a Schrödinger’s Cat kind of situation.
Geographical question: From the Sentinelese’s island, are they able to see other islands with the naked eye or might they think there is no way they could physically leave for a new world?
Corrupt them how? Again, they are not children or innocents. They’re human beings who are capable of rational decision-making. Let’s say that there’s a Japanese soldier from WW2 chilling in the Philippines. We don’t not tell him the war is over in order not to ‘corrupt’ his existence. He has a right to know the truth of the world. If we were to discover some people living in a holler somewhere that still thought we were in the antebellum era, we wouldn’t say, “Keep your slaves and cholera, gents. We wouldn’t want to corrupt you.” We’d tell them the war’s over and we have trains, planes and automobiles. The Sentinalese are not animals, they’re people. People who deserve to know the truth about the world.
…I’m not denying them jack-shit and neither is anyone else. If they want to learn “fundamental information about the nature of the world and their place in it” then there is nothing stopping them from asking us.
I think you mean a Schrödinger’s Catch-22.
They don’t know what to ask nor that we are people who would answer. It’s like never telling your kid about sex, how it works or how to do it safely and then say if they wanted to know, then they would ask you. Obviously, you are not absolved of responsibility.
I think we should air-drop some provisions - pots and pans, plastic containers, firestarters, canned foods. You could work out the population with heat signature cameras and then provide enough of the items to mitigate against it causing in-fighting or appropriation.
…what do you mean “they don’t know what to ask?” How do you know this?
We aren’t talking about kids. You aren’t their parents.
No one here gets to decide. They do, because they’re human beings with free will and human rights.
[post=21341648]We can’t tell them about modernity without being obnoxious. We can’t talk to them.[/post]
You may think they’d be happier with modern medicine and internet access, just as I think all women would be happier if they slept with me. (I’m really good.) Unfortunately, Taylor Swift returned my last 6 fifteen-page letters unopened and stamped “REFUSED,” and then she sent me a restraining order, kind of like the Sentinelese have done to the outside world. She made her choice without examining all the information, just like the Sentinelese. I tried my best, and so have we all. 
I think there are some conditions under which I would favor intervening. What those would be is a hard question. But I’m comfortable saying that “they killed some trespassers” is not a reason to intervene.
They know that they are not alone, and that there are strangers who want to come into (invade?) their home.
A hundred years ago, they had contact with British sailors, and over the past decades they have had several contacts with anthropologists and sailors. They see modern ships passing by frequently. They have a sunken ship which they have explored and looted, so they have seen metal and other wondrous things which they cannot understand, but which they have held in their hands and know that if they wanted more , they can get it from the strangers.
So they know that there a new world out there, and that it is accessible.
Exactly chappachula. Anthropologists have reached out to them repeatedly and been told to buzz off using the universal language of bows and arrows. Periodically, the odd fisherman or odder missionary happens by and similar messages are relayed.
I happen to think that the Sentinelese have the right idea. But whatever its wisdom, they’ve made their views pretty clear. They are aware that the outside world has vastly superior technology. They want no part of it.
Eyes open, hands off. That’s the proper framework.
My work with google maps suggests that they are slightly less than 29km or 18 miles from the nearest island, Tarmugli. Using the topographical map helpfully provided by HurricaneDitka and a calculator on the web, a Sentinelese should be able to see 35 kilometers out from their island’s highest vantage point of 98 meters. On a clear day, it’s hard to see much beyond 20km, according to How Stuff Works. But this website provides greater detail: Here in San Diego, we rarely can see San Clemente Island, about 125 km offshore. The top of the island should just be visible above our horizon with normal refraction, but it’s concealed by “airlight” during the day. Even in the clear air of a “Santa Ana,” which causes looming and raises more of the island above the apparent horizon, it’s often hard to make out.
But just after sunset, the island is often visible, if you know where to look. The air between you and the island is only dimly illuminated after sunset, but the sky behind the island — i.e., the air beyond the horizon that is still in direct sunlight — is still fairly bright. Then the silhouette of the island is striking, even if it had been invisible a few minutes before sunset. …
What’s the record for visibility without help from the silhouetting effect? I think that might belong to the report of the expedition led by Korzenewsky (1923), who reported seeing snow-capped peaks of a mountain range 750 km away. Conditions were perfect: the lower atmosphere was in shadow at sunset; the peaks were quite high… I suspect the islanders are aware of other islands nearby.
They aren’t choosing between working at Wendy’s and scraping by on Sentinel Island. Door number 2 is becoming a citizen of the great state of India: given their skills maybe they could join the Musahar community or another Dalit caste.
Given those choices I’ll take hunting and gathering, thanks.
How do you know that? They have no clue about what they don’t know.
This goes to the first point. Without a foundation to make an informed decision, then those choices are removed from the individual (and usually left in the hands of others who usually choose what is in their own best interest). Unfortunately, some people have to be forced to learn. Which is why every child should have to attend a secular public school to receive enough of an education to at least have a chance of thinking and deciding for themselves.
So what are you proposing? Send the Sentinelese kids off to a boarding school on the mainland to learn about the modern global culture/world? Then you destroy their culture, because during that time they won’t be learning how to be a hunter-gatherer on North Sentinel island. Or don’t you think that learning to make a living off hunting wild game with a bow and arrow, learning to make bows, arrows, and spears, learning to make other tools with wood and stone, learning which plants on the island are edible or not, and which can be used as medicine, would also take time and effort for a person to acquire that knowledge?
Or, I suppose we could do what missionaries used to do - barge in, construct buildings, and again, have the kids in school 6 or 8 or whatever hours a day… during which time they still aren’t learning and practicing the skills to pull a living from the island around them. After which they’ll be dependent on government handouts. Hmm… how well has that turned out other places?
Sure, the alternative is to leave them in the stone age, largely ignorant of the outside world, without modern medicine or technology. Which has some downside.
Maybe there isn’t a completely satisfactory answer.
Also, in case anyone is wondering why more Sentinelese do not take off for graduate studies at IIT, recall that there is no such thing as money on the island.
I certainly do think it would take time to learn those skills. And if you want to be hunger-gatherer, then you’d need to learn them. I also think that learning how the 100’s of other cultures that did similar things would be of enormous benefit as well. For example, they might sacrifice their young at the dark of the moon, when another culture, would do it during the full moon. More light to see by. Less chance of accidentally cutting yourself in the process. See how much more effective they could be?
Seriously, I’m a great fan of Star Trek except for the stupid prime directive. The stone age had it’s day. One of the reasons people end up suffering or cause suffering is that they cling to their old ideas and cultures and don’t adapt to the changing world. Education helps them adapt.
The best thing might just be more of the current system: Observe them, and airdrop food and metal tools and whatnot every now and then.
You are clearly unfamiliar with the history of colonization. And anyone who has ever sat in a classroom should already know you can’t “force” someone to learn. As much as I support the sentiment of educating everyone, there is no moral way to implement such a practice.
You are describing a colonial-era practice by which many thousands of children were essentially kidnapped from their families, often by use of violence, and literally forced into school in places like North America, South America, and Australia. I’ll bet you’d be a friend of Richard Henry Pratt, whose personal mottor who declared his intent to “Kill the Indian and save the man." He ran a boarding school for Indians, ostensibly with the goal of teaching them the benefits of civilization.
Does it not occur to you that these people might want to be left alone precisely because they are aware of their own history? You can see an example of this in the Amazon. The white colonizers used violence to exterminate or enslave natives to work on rubber plantations. The tribal people fled deeper into the Amazon and avoided contact with whites because they feared what would happen to them. Now we are starting to see some people emerge from the jungle only because they are now several generations removed from their ancestors who cautioned them to avoid the white man.
So what is it that you propose? The only way I can imagine “forcing” the children of Sentinel Island to be educated is to send in the Marines. Are you literally suggesting we use violence to drag these children to the mainland for education? Because that’s the only way it will happen. And if this is what you propose, what then? Are we supposed to do the same in the Amazon? Fly helicopters over the rain forest looking for native children who need to be educated by force? What about Papua New Guinea? Or Afghanistan? I’m sure they’d appreciate it.*
*Not really.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The idea is equity of opportunities. Children should not be denied opportunities because of extenuating circumstances. Sentinelese children through no fault of their own are being denied opportunities simply because of their race. They will never be able to see the Pyramids or work for an NGO. They will never be able to be a doctor or a lawyer. They will likely never be literate or able to marry outside of their own grouping. They are being denied opportunities just because of who they are. It’s a fundamental human rights violation.