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Re:The Forbidden Island by geuis on Friday July 19, 2013 @07:41AM (#6069478)
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.

Re:The Forbidden Island by precisioncoder on Friday July 19, 2013 @09:38AM (#6070022)
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.
Re:The Forbidden Island by rapind on Friday July 19, 2013 @10:25AM (#6070334)
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.

Re:The Forbidden Island by rytis on Friday July 19, 2013 @01:42PM (#6071675)
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.

Re:The Forbidden Island by OvidNaso on Friday July 19, 2013 @02:36PM (#6072007)
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.
Re:The Forbidden Island by 3327 on Friday July 19, 2013 @02:30PM (#6071962)
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%.
Re:The Forbidden Island by onebaddude on Saturday July 20, 2013 @08:54AM (#6075063)
>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?

Re:The Forbidden Island by Spooky23 on Saturday July 20, 2013 @12:12AM (#6074314)
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?

Re:The Forbidden Island by jacoblyles on Saturday July 20, 2013 @03:21AM (#6074561)
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.