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Comment by precisioncoder | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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