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One one hand:

Most of the Australian aborigine people had walked out of the desert by the 1960's, but in 1984 a family of 9 that had lived in the desert, finally also walked out to reunite with their relatives [1]. The relatives had already lived ca. 20 years in an Australian village nearby.

When they finally saw the comfortable lifestyle their relatives had enjoyed already for 20 years, they were quite angry [2] that they had been left living in the desert, and not contacted earlier:

"They told us there was plenty of food and water came out of pipes," Yardi said.

"The older ones were angry that their long-lost relatives – who they had not seen for nearly 20 years – had left them out in the desert eating lizards while they lived in what they saw as the lap of luxury,"

"I like this life," Yardi said. "I much prefer it to the old ways."

Warlinipirri said: "I wouldn't go back."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pintupi_Nine

[2] http://www.heraldsun.com.au/archive/news/lost-tribe-happy-in...

On the other hand:

The Sentinelese people (of the article) are not the only indigenous people around there, they are just on the most distant island.

On nearby larger islands there live e.g. the Jarawa [1] and Onge [2] people and some others [3].

The Jawara inhabit jungle areas of a larger island, that has also for already very long time been settled by Indian farmers. The Jarawa used to stay in the jungle, and there were occasional violent encounter and conflicts. But in 1997 the Jarawa started to make peaceful visits to nearby villages, wanting food and gifts.

The farmers see the Jarawa as a nuisance. They don't want to escalate violence, but they also don't want the Jarawa to learn that they could walk in people's homes and steal whatever they want.

Apparently [4,5] the Jarawa and Onge languages are not very well studied, either.

So, whatever anthropological, cultural and humanitarian interest anyone might have toward the un-contacted people on the North Sentinel island, they could first direct their interest and charity toward these other nearby tribes who have already had some contact with civilization for last decades or centuries, but are apparently not faring very well at the moment.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarawa_people_%28Andaman_Island...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onge_people

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andaman_Islands#Indigenous_Anda...

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarawa_language_%28Andaman_Isla...

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onge_language

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.

The representatives of these people are hardly in a situation where they can make an informed decision. Even if they were, they have no right of condemning their children to such life.

We are getting into politics here. We all have representatives and policy makers that are deciding all the time for us and we also have to support the consequences of their decisions, no mater how informed they were.

That doesn't really matter. If a girl refuses to go out with you, she might not be in a position where she can make an informed decision. And she is possibly depriving her future children of a magnificent father, condemning them to life without you. But you should still respect her "NO".

On a more serious note, given some historic evidence how our contact with other tribes ended (pick any tribe, anytime, anywhere) I am both surprised and happy that they exist. I hope they stay the same for as long as possible and may we never learn anything about them.

But if a man is jumping of a cliff because he thinks he can fly, you should not respect his 'NO' when trying to catch him.

Your serious argument is one of the little valid points raised so far. And I agree, we might not be in a position to help them now. But the statements that even if we could bring them to our society in a humane manner we still shouldn't, because they're clearly fine as they are... That just disgusts me.

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 he11 away.

That said, I am sympathetic with your basic view. Les Stroud's Beyond Survival was fascinating, but the recurring theme of "and this ancient people is about to die out or lose their culture" struck me as "well, if doing stupid things[1] isn't survivable then maybe those ways should change, and the consequences of sticking to them are natural." The Sentinese however seem to be holding it together pretty well; not advancing, but living on what is otherwise a stereotypical tropical paradise island (food growing on trees, good climate, water), methinks they've achieved some form of comfortable equilibrium and are doing pretty well (I'm sure some here on HN are thinking "I'd like to join them").

Someone mentioned above "your 100 kids will leave the island, move to India, and become call center employees". That vs. where & how they're living now, I'm not so sure "bring[ing] them to our society in a humane manner" really is. Someday it will happen, someday modern life will crash into their ancient and stable culture, someday they will have to deal with new diseases and cell phones and high-speed transport, and "someday" probably isn't very long from now.

"But the kids need to do X and Y and Z!" my wife declares. "They're content and playing nicely with their toys and crayons," I'll reply. "Let them enjoy it a little longer."

[1] - the clincher was a tribe that fishes by dangling bare hooks in the ocean for hours while sitting on poles. I'm amazed that culture lasted so long. Yeah, they need some help.

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?

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.

Would they be better off with a desk job in some western city? That's likely out of grasp, as they would have no competitive skills compared to westerners that have trained for our economy for their whole lives. They would likely be wards of the state in a strange land, and so would their children.

Or, you know, they could live a life that makes them happy.

What about their grandchildren? They could get a good education, integrate into modern society and have the opportunity to live a way happier life than if they had stayed in the island.

> If a girl refuses to go out with you

I think you're unnecessarily conflating this with another topic entirely.

I think he made the point quite well. "No" means "no", and they're saying "no" pretty emphatically and consistently - and no amount of "but I'll make your life so much better" trumps that.

The adults are saying "no", the children just have to go along with that choice that was made for them. This is arguably a form of coercion because the children are being denied the opportunity to a better life.

That isn't the point, he specifically likened the situation to asking out a girl; and "no means no" is an emotionally charged idiom, for that matter.

So "you should still respect her \"NO\"" - How is this relevant? He doesn't expand on why you should do this, so we can't link that logic to the situation and and, all we have is "You'd accept 'no' if you asked someone out, so you should also do so here", with no further reasoning on how the two are similar.

Won't anyone think of the children?

/s

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, try going to Japan. Or somewhere in Africa, off the beaten path. You're likely to experience a culture shock, right? You can do two things. You can think 'I can't believe these fucktards, why the hell would they want to live like this, now where's the nearest Motel 6' or you can accept the fact that their culture is just different. I'm not speaking in terms of better or worse, just different.

They don't need our help and they don't want our help. We have showed time after time that 'helping savages' does not work. Native Americans? Unless you think the inabriated guy with the poncho selling roadside flatbread is actually happier than his ancestors, it's hard to argue we did a good job helping them. Numerous tribes in South America now have to deal with alcoholism, crime, murder. The ones that don't are just smart enough to evade us.

Ask yourself this: should we contact these people if we were certain that our contacting them would lead to their loss of culture, and most likely would wipe them away? Do you think that, despite ALL the times where we screwed up entire tribes, this time it will be different? Why is it our responsibility anyway to 'help' them, even against their will?

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%?

For one, we don't know enough about their quality of life to say anything about it. I would assume they have a better quality of life than the majority of the planet, in particular it is likely to be better than the majority of urban dwellers and subsistence farmers in the 3rd world.

If you wanted to give them the quality of life enjoyed in the nicer parts of the US or Europe you would have to provide all those amenities for them, and it is in any case unlikely that they would appreciate them the same way that you do.

The only likely benefit that "we" could provide would be medical care for infections or easily treated disorders. That would have to be balanced with the high likelihood that contacting and attempting to integrate them would actually kill most of them. Anything else is a egocentric view of what is good for mankind.

"I would assume they have a better quality of life than the majority of the planet"

I'd agree with you that they probably have a more enjoyable day to day experience, however I also would bet that they have an infant mortality rate that is astronomical even by 3rd world standards. And that they have an average life expectancy which isn't hard to beat in the 3rd world. I'm not saying that these 2 things justify us forcing contact with them, just that it is hard for someone to justify that lower infant mortality and higher life expectancy are always positive things for our species to strive for. Its not just an issue of culture.

The United States is 35th in infant mortality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mor...) - and the US is 33rd in life expectancy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expec...). You just said you didn't know their two statistics in those categories, but a hunch may be enough to go in and shake things up for them.

Of course, many other countries cook the infant mortality books be not reporting premature babies that die shortly after birth or are "hopeless" because they don't have the medical tech that the US does. Consequently, that skews US life expectancy down.

All I'm saying is that the US isn't all sunshine and daisies. There are a TON of poor areas (rural and urban alike) where it's just not safe to live, kids don't get enough mental and physical nourishment, and there's a good chance you'll die before high school. That sucks. And that's a problem that should be fixed. As a US citizen, I care infinitely more about fixing these problems before trying to contact and civilize the inhabitants of some remote island.

As bad as the US is in those statistics, you'd expect this island to be 5 - 20 times worse looking at the range of third world countries on the list.

A lot of the infant mortality in the 3rd world is due to infectious disease or conditions like diarrhea. These are diseases common in crowded unsanitary places accompanied by poor nutrition.

It would be mistaken, therefore, to assume that the same conditions would prevail in isolated places like North Sentinel Island, where the people are apparently well nourished. So the infant mortality rate there may be above the best found elsewhere, but it is probably lower than many other places.

for all we know, they view infant mortality as a perfectly acceptable form of birth control. this would be an example of culture shock.

Excellent point.

Is ~400 people a large enough population to support most diseases, or is it possible that they essentially (infectious) disease free by virtue of their tiny population?

I'm also curious what the genetics of a 400-person island look like. I always assumed that the minimum viable population was larger than that -- somewhere in the thousands -- but if the population estimate is correct, and has been for tens of thousands of years, then that's pretty concrete evidence that it's no more than 400.

A small isolated population like that will be free of most infectious diseases. The number of Sentinelese isn't known, but may be as low as 100, since the Sentinelese, Great Andamanese, and Onge,(i.e. those on the island in question as well as the neighboring islands) have "a combined population of 400–500 individuals." [2].

Several studies, two on the genetics of the Andamanese [1,2] and the other on their linguistics [3] suggest that they have been isolated for 50-70,000 yr. The genetics studies also showed a very low population diversity, so in common parlance they are "inbred". Oddly enough, if they have been isolated for long enough, they will therefore be free of most genetic diseases, since the rare ones will be manifested early on in their isolation due to inbreeding, and then selected against. Genetic conditions that don't affect reproductive fitness could be common, though. Genetic isolation can also result in increased susceptibility to pathogens later introduced from outside said population.

[1]Kashyap, V. K., et al. "Molecular relatedness of the aboriginal groups of Andaman and Nicobar Islands with similar ethnic populations." International Journal of Human Genetics 3 (2003): 5-11.

[2] Thangaraj, Kumarasamy, et al. "Genetic affinities of the Andaman Islanders, a vanishing human population." Current Biology 13.2 (2003): 86-93.

[3]Abbi, Anvita. "Is Great Andamanese genealogically and typologically distinct from Onge and Jarawa?." Language Sciences 31.6 (2009): 791-812.

For those interested, the article below is a study on what happened to the inhabitants of the nearby island Little Andaman after it was settled by mainlanders. Infant mortality rose (to 40%), malnutrition and disease increased, and life expectancy, even excluding infant mortality, was approx 35 yr.

http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/...

Because of the conditions, or because of how far removed their lifestyle is from western societal norms?

What if the tribe decided our children were being severely mistreated with glowing distraction screens, processed corn sugar, helicopter parenting, etc.? Surely you'd let them take our kids away.

Informed decisions are inside our rational [and egocentric] limitations, so in this case not take those decisions very seriously.

"Even if they were, they have no right of condemning their children to such life"

So who does? You? Western society? Don't you find that thinking a bit arrogant?

> Star Trek's

We could send William Shatner to fool around with their women...

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.

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

Point taken. For now all we have are members of their community that made contact with external world and expressed an isolationist stance. Of course we may not like it and consider that (regardless whether they want or not) they should be exposed again and again until we'll finally get out of them the buyer's "yes". I also guess that only then we'll call their decision "right" and "informed". If we may somehow disable our influence as actors in their decision then yes, I agree with you that individuals that desire the freedom of making informed choice should have it. For those who chose (having peaceful reasons) to willingly get in contact with external world, there should be left a door somewhere in their reach.

"Culture is not a tangible thing to be 'lost' nor something that need be preserved"

Here I doubt that you got in contact with enough cultures to make for yourself an informed opinion.

Considering they have no marketable skills or education, how could their situation get any better? There are tons of poor people in the world who die from easily preventable diseases that you could help instead if that's your true motivation.

They are a self-sufficient people that don't seem to be screwing up the world nearly as much as we are... why would we even assume we're superior? Maybe we're just jealous?

Exactly!!!! They are superior in that they are sustainable, and it's so horrible that people want to convert them into us. Let's build them a Walmart while we're at it.

Personally I like refrigeration, modern medicine, transportation, and high technology. Maybe those aren't your thing, but I know if I was born into a society like that, I would spend my life trying to see what was beyond the water.

Or die. Because, you know, a lot of them die.

We all die.

I am pretty sure parent wanted to point out that we live much longer.

Life's good when you're at the top of the totem poll.

However, if the greener grass turns out to be a Mumbai slum or an e-waste site in China, or one of many other terrible but more realistic fates, maybe you'd pass on that opportunity... because, you know, a lot of people die there too.

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 living in Darfur, which is better than Somalia. Honestly, people didn't choose to live in cities and work long hours in factories because we tricked them. They do it because it's better than their previous existence.

> 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.

Regarding the aliens... how do we know they aren't already doing exactly that to us? "Leave them alone"?

Also, with advanced technology comes advanced ways of self destruction. Maybe we don't poses the cultural requirements for being accepted in that club?

I would argue the same for the Sentinese (there are good historical examples for this[1]). Maybe if we give them weapons, they will kill themselves, or end up in constant warring state or something else.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Tahiti

Answer 1: Yes, stay the fuck away. If Race XYZ has ability to monitor us without us knowing, thus not interfering with us, sure go ahead. Its not like there's much we could to stop them. But the moment they make their existence known, we're fucked.

At that moment, we aren't the world-conquering successful species we love and proclaim to be. We're the little tribe living on the little island that's quietly being protected by the corrupt government of a minor power in the universal state of nations and empires that we just are now learning about. There's a lot of euphemisms in my last few sentences. Figure them out.

Leave these people alone.

This is kind of in response to your second point. Think about the scale of what we're talking about. We have a massively global, interconnected society of both economy and knowledge comprising billions of people. Even the poorest person in the most desolate parts of the world can, with some inconvenience, get on to the Internet. The people on this island, 400-1000 souls that they be, don't even have the understanding of modern society that the poorest person in the modern world has. Where do you start with that?

So suppose your friendly aliens show up and say "Hi!". What then? We're the people that struggle to maintain ONE space station. We have no extra-terrestrial colonies or establishments. Aliens decide to claim Mars? What are we going to do? The Moon? Its theirs. Pretty much anything outside of our little island Earth is open for claim, and not by us necessarily. The fucked up part is that if you traveled tens or hundreds of light years to get here, Earth itself is probably not the main goal. Its just the natural resources of the system. And what happens in a few hundred years when we decide to get off our asses and go into space? Nothing's left, because fucking Zork claimed it all.

So when you think about all of this together, what options do you present to these people even if they were interested? Medicine, food? Sure. Maybe we can get them vaccinated before the common cold or bird flu wipes them out. Education? Here's some books representing external human history from the perspective of the people supplying the money. Oh, check out our religion too! By the way, did you know that your island is one of several others claimed by India? Its a big island (not really) with over 1 billion people. Too many to count? Don't worry, once your 100 kids have moved to Bangalore to become tech support reps and within 20 years your entire culture has died they'll be able to explain.

I know this is a bit rambly, but hopefully you can see where I'm going. There is no benefit to the people in question to be contacted by us. It only changes and hurts them.

Modern medicine, physics, modern housing, sanitation, plumbing, etc, etc. They have a massive amount to gain. You can romanticize their situation, or we can decide to leave them there for other reasons but claiming they have nothing to gain is just plain wrong.

I claim that they have plenty to lose. There are people in our society without access to modern medicine, no concept of physics, no chance of what you consider to be modern housing, terrible sanitation, no plumbing, etc, etc.

You can romanticize how much better their situation will be all you want, but there's plenty of evidence it won't be.

I read an article years ago on feral surfers who were basically turning indigenous peoples into diseased addicts, sex workers, and slaves. Not because they intended to, but it just happened to be convenient. I'll try and dig it up.

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?

Almost no society needs any of that for the continued survival of the society. Modern hunter and gatherer tribes have been "fine" by this measure with murder rates as high as 50%, but that is a pretty ridiculous standard.

Fascinating, but why is it our business?

By that measure, should western governments be liberating various cultures who don't live in a manner consistent with western ideals?

In practice, this seems to be a large part of what Western governments do. There's nothing the West loves to do so much as meddling in other people's affairs and bringing the blessings of democracy to people that never wanted it.

Ehm, Isn't their violent reaction a clear representation of their choice?

Individuals might want to get out and wonder as you say, but some makes a choice for them - their leaders. For one reason or another good or bad.

Just like people make choices for you and you have bare minimum say. They way your government, state government, mayor they all make choices that impact your life one way or another, some highly, some to a low degree.

>I guess all I'm saying is that not establishing contact is also a choice that we're making on their behalf. Is deciding that they can't parttake in modern society any more OK than deciding they must? Can we not contact them in a way where they get to choose?

so NO!

one thing about the western world, and America especially: we have no cultural memory of what it feels like to have another culture impose their value system upon you.

it's therefore easy to see other cultural views as falling into these categories: odd/silly, needlessly restrictive (possibly also immoral), or downright immoral [1].

that's a mental trap, though, much like believing yourself to live at the center of the universe.

once you remove the "superior culture" argument, it becomes quite hard to formulating a reason to touch this island.

for instance: we have medicine! but we only value it because we fear death, etc.

[1] examples come to mind: some cultures believe using birth control is like murder (silly). some cultures believe a woman should not exposition her shoulders in public (no rights). some cultures believe infanticide is acceptable, others find it natural for men to have romantic relationships with boys (immoral). these are all examples from a western perspective, of course.

>for instance: we have medicine! but we only value it because we fear death, etc.

I could understand that argument when considering prolonging of life when you're already really old and pretty much falling apart, but for completely preventable deaths?

I remember reading somewhere that a cult of death is considered a pretty universal value.

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

It's also a choice that they are making for themselves. It may or may not be a fully informed choice, but they are making their opinions pretty clear. They certainly aren't coming across as a group of people looking desperately to some outside group to save them from anything.

Considering the state of our affairs, I think we are doing them best by not interfering in their way of life.

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?

That they violently defend themselves is of course a highly complicating factor.

I feel that this is a choice of theirs that should be respected rather than considered as an inconvenient obstacle. True, it's an ignorant choice, but nothing is preventing them taking a more curious stance.