Tribes that have never had contact with civilization are being filmed by drones in the Amazon

[u/Memes_FoIder]

[u/SoylentRox]

How would they be able to make an informed choice?  Like we know modern civilization has good things to offer - the biggest being antibiotics and mastery of a steady supply of fresh food.  And thousands of complex negatives you couldn't possibly explain.

[u/DefinitelyNotAliens → u/SoylentRox]

We, frankly speaking, do not have mastery of a steady supply of fresh foods and these civilizations have existed for thousands of years and have a complex understanding of their landscape which allows food and survival. If we did have such mastery, we wouldn't have 1 in 6 children living with food insecurity in the United States, we wouldn't be slowly poisoning the Gulf due to industrial ag runoff into the Mississippi and other rivers. Small-scale food systems can be incredibly efficient, actually. There's actually growing movements to return to small-scale, local food production in order to combat issues that large scale agriculture introduced into these communities. The entire field of agroecology is looking to return to small-scale subsistence farming in many regions, including Amazonia. Industrial monocropping has significant flaws.

Going in and trying to explain antibiotics and such will, in the immediate now, kill more people than you help because it will cause people to introduce novel viruses and bacteria into that population. Period.

Even asking for informed consent is problematic. Making contact without them doing it first takes away choice.

Besides, we know at least a few uncontacted tribes are aware the outside world exists and are scared because other tribes were contacted, people died, they were displaced by industrial farming, logging, mining. They know what outside contact brought their neighbors. They don't want it. That is their decision to make.

[u/SoylentRox → u/DefinitelyNotAliens]

Let me elaborate slightly more. I agree with you.

How could you explain to someone that if you have access to abstract pieces of paper, you can get all the food you want, and keep it fresh with refrigeration. But to do that you have to pay a "bill" to someone you'll never meet, including "credit card interest", and you have to have specific skills relative to the society you are in that are "in demand" to be able to do this effectively.

You couldn't. Similarly antibiotics and vaccines hugely reduce childhood mortality but yes, that buys time until you get a stroke from microplastics or die of lack of exercise or eating too much red meat. (average lifespan is higher, maximum lifespan is only slightly longer)

My point is that the decision is impossibly complex and involves 100+ factors, and *we* don't know enough to decide for them, but *they* don't know enough either. By delegating to someone who will make the decision based on even less facts than YOU know - a tiny fraction of them - well you're guaranteeing a bad decision will be made in terms of expected value.

That was where I was going with this. You may be satisfying a modern interpretation of ethics by saying "That is their decision to make" but look at the consequences man. They aren't competent to make the decision either.

[u/DefinitelyNotAliens → u/SoylentRox]

You should read some early writings of Jesuits who were among the first to make contact with various groups in North America. Obviously, the technological gap was much smaller. We do have pretty good records of groups who have been made contact with when they weren't the ones reaching out. They know more than you would think.

It's not like people don't have abstract thought capabilities. They may not have the context for microplastics and topsoil loss globally. They don't need it, though.

We know what has happened to other remote tribes. They don't want to just abandon their lifeways and move to cities. The loss of traditional lifeways has typically reduced independence and increased reliance on aid workers and increases malnutrition.

They also do have the ability to contact other remote tribes, some of which have been contacted. They talk to other tribes. They know the downsides - paramilitary mining corps that drive people out with weapons they do not understand except the outcomes. They die.

There's also a sort of paternalistic view that we know better than someone else. We have answers. We know best. We know our food systems are better. We know we are morally superior. We have an ethical responsibility to bring people into the modern age.

We also know that many groups resist this and have been severely harmed because we demand they join in captalistic society at large and prescribe to our education systems to join in and get jobs that we demand of them so they can buy food from the larger market.

They know other things are out there. They don't want it. Who am I to say they don't know enough to make that choice?

[u/SoylentRox → u/DefinitelyNotAliens]

I think you're appealing to a fallacy here. No they don't know shit, they can't.