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Comment by farlington | Hacker News Reader

from their faq (http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/articles/3109-questions-and...):

"uncontacted tribes will have seen aeroplanes on numerous occasions. The idea that this damages their self-image and/or spiritual beliefs belongs in the realm of fiction, and is based on the false supposition that their cultures are fragile. Experience shows that such peoples are in fact robust and well able to adapt to outside goods – most have been doing so for a very long time. Tribal peoples are not destroyed when they get or see things from outside, but by violence and disease as their lands are invaded."

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I have to call BS on this.

It may not "hurt" them, but it does influence/effect them. It has to. Going way back to my anthro classes, all primitive cultures crafted religious beliefs as survival mechanisms, to pass down stories and things that would benefit future generations etc etc. It was also a way to explain what they couldn't explain but still experienced (weather, natural disasters...) and this would fall into that category.

What the FAQ did was use inflammatory language (damage, fragile) rather than talk about how this might shape and craft their thoughts and beliefs. If we haven't contacted them, we simply cannot know if IT DID impact them.

You're being nitpicky. The point is that they won't form a religion around it and it won't have any major "The Gods Must Be Crazy"-style impact on their culture. Yes, it will have some effect, and so will a butterfly flapping its wings in China.

I did not mean to suggest that they would deviate significantly from the norm of any other group of people presented with unexplainable phenomena throughout the remainder of human history. Given the variance in how smoothly minor points of difference in mythology have gone down in the rest of history, it was not intended to indicate any additional fragility over baseline humanity.

Suggesting that it damages anything is a significant value judgment. To suggest that notable, repeated, unexplained phenomena would have no impact at all whatsoever is sufficiently at odds with the entirety of human history, culture, and the general body of human mythology, that I'd like to see a stronger citation than the paragraph on their website if you find one.

>Experience shows that such peoples are in fact robust and well able to adapt to outside goods

Yes, fairly often by either adding it to their mythology or creating a cargo cult: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

Whether either of those count as "damage" is academic; it's change. Either we inflict more change or we try to prevent all change.

That's a false dichotomy.

"do or do not" is a false dichotomy? Any contact causes change, so the only way to prevent forcing change is to prevent all contact.

Or they could go, "Oh, wasn't that weird!" and then forget about it.

Sure, just like I'm sure you'd forget seeing a literal flying saucer, glowy lights and everything. Just like all the alien-visitation advocates forget it, and don't try to tell others.

First, you're making the assumption people have actually seen such things, rather than making up stories to draw attention to themselves.

Second, a helicopter high in the sky in broad daylight would be far less freaky.

Third, it's not inevitable that just anyone goes and form entire religions and mythological worlds based on seeing something fly by in the sky. You're average person just simply isn't that creative.

1) you're making the assumption that people haven't.

2) a noisy, black, flying thing that's bigger than any bird won't draw attention, clearly. Why would it be less freaky?

3) totally agree. But your average person does tell other people. Do you think Spielberg made Close Encounters because he was visited by aliens? Or a significant number of the many many many other alien books / movies?

1) you're making the assumption one should accept something as true without the slightest shred of evidence beyond someone claiming it to be true. Well, I'm the King of Atlantis. Now the onus is on you to prove me wrong!

2) nobody said it wouldn't draw attention. Watch the video. It did. But where's the evidence that having seen something freaky has now just irreparably altered their way of life?

3) Not sure where you're going with that. People tell stories, some of those stories have budgets, but...how has that changed our way of life? If (if!) these people go on to tell their children about the Big Noisy Freaky Thing In The Sky for generations to come...so what? Does this in any way prevent them from living the lives they have always lived? Does the fact that they've seen such a thing now mean that we have to invade their culture and "civilize" them, because otherwise...well, otherwise what? At most, they've got a new god to add to their stories. If that.

It's a false dichotomy to say that if they've seen airplanes in the sky, we might as well airdrop xboxes. I may be misreading you.

That's probably it. I dislike approaches that generate mythos rather than knowledge, but you really can't claim that such a thing is or is not damage. It is change, and you have to either seek to maintain what things are now (enforced isolation) or you must cause change, especially if you seek to communicate with them at any time in any way.

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