Sentinelese tribe: Rare footage captures one of world's last uncontacted indigenous people

[luctor-et-emergo]

I guess this is one island you don't want to get stranded on with some kind of broken boat. "A look, there's an uninhabited island we can stay until we get saved."

 

[Suzanimal]

So you advocate invading their island and setting them straight as to how to behave?

Considering it's one little island with 50-500 people living on it, it's not really a top priority...

...I'm mostly using them as an example to make a larger point.

But, yea, in principle I'd be for finding out what's going on there, and then intervening depending on what's found.

Do they have a murder rate 10x the average in India?

Do they eat people?

Do they sacrifice children to the coconut Gods, as fishy wondered?

Completely agree, we know essentially nothing about them.

I never actually endorsed invading their island.

All through this thread I've been speaking in hypotheticals.

You'd have to intervene to find out what's going on there.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

You'd have to intervene to find out what's going on there.

I bet you could drop cameras with some kind of antenna to find out. I wouldn't call it intervening, but it's certainly interfering.

 

[merkelstan]

This brings up another interesting issue often discussed and debated among libertarians.

Would you violate the NAP in order to achieve some desriable or laudable objective?

If you are freezing to death in the woods, would you break into someone else's cabin for shelter? (I would.)

Would you break into a closed pharmacy late at night in order to get a life-saving drug for your child who is in urgent need? (I would.)

Would you trespass in order to prevent a murder? (I might.)

Given the punishment the Sentinelese apply to trespassers in their jurisdiction, that is certainly a disincentive to would-be intervenors ...

Would you also pay reparations later?

 

[r3volution 3.0]

You'd have to intervene to find out what's going on there.

Not necessarily, you might be able to take photos from a distance.

But even if you did have to land (i.e. presumably, on someone else's property, without their permission), so be it.

That's a pretty small price to pay.

Think about search warrants (real ones, not secret FISA court *wink*wink* warrants).

That's a small aggression necessary to prevent larger ones.

 

[William Tell]

Therefore, if we see that people on Sentinel Island are in trouble (e.g. are being killed and eaten), it's okay to intervene to help?

You see one of them about to be eaten, sure. Try to leave me out of "we" though until you have a real world case where you ask for my personal help. because I'm not endorsing intervention as a matter of policy. I am in theory in favor of any human in danger of receiving help, but as a matter of policy I am a non interventionist politically for reasons I already laid out.

I'm not talking about US foreign policy, Will.

Have you ever seen me once endorse any of our government's interventions? No, you haven't.

Granted. But you are making similar greater good arguments to the ones we are used to hearing.

I'm making a broader, ethical point.

If you want to claim that no intervention could actually reduce aggression, in practice, that's fine.

...I disagree, but that's another matter.

All I'm saying now is that, in principle, IF an intervention would reduce aggression, it would be justified.

My argument has not been that the theory of intervention is immoral. I will even concede that individual good things can happen despite the overall horrible effects of intervention. For example, if an American soldier stops a Taliban guy from raping a woman that is a good thing. But it does not mean that it makes up for all the other lives that have been destroyed by our presence there.

And take the case of these Sentinelese, lets say their leaders are doing really really bad things and you intervene for the children. The sad fact is the children would probably die from the diseases you bring. I firmly believe intervention is bad policy, if there is ever an exception to that rule I'd like to see it after the fact. But I'm not going to endorse something that I think odds are is going to make things worse.

 

[Suzanimal]

I bet you could drop cameras with some kind of antenna to find out. I wouldn't call it intervening, but it's certainly interfering.

Someone sent in drones and they were shot down - same thing would happen if someone sent drones flying over my house.

Not necessarily, you might be able to take photos from a distance.

But even if you did have to land (i.e. presumably, on someone else's property, without their permission), so be it.

That's a pretty small price to pay.

Think about search warrants (real ones, not secret FISA court *wink*wink* warrants).

That's a small aggression necessary to prevent larger ones.

But you have no reason to assume there is a larger aggression happening.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

My argument has not been that the theory of intervention is immoral.

Then we're in agreement on the theory of it.

As for practice...

I firmly believe intervention is bad policy, if there is ever an exception to that rule I'd like to see it after the fact.

Intervention is the reason we're having a civilized conversation on RPF rather than chasing each other about with pointy sticks.

The emergence of the state is the supreme example of intervention.

One group conquers its neighbors, putting an end to their endemic petty warfare, and making peace.

The peacemaking process accelerated as states consolidated their power: stamping out feuding and so forth (i.e. more intervention).

 

[r3volution 3.0]

But you have no reason to assume there is a larger aggression happening.

See the charts I posted. There's good reason to think that people at that level of development are experiencing extreme levels of violence.

That's enough to warrant a peek, I'd say.

 

[Suzanimal]

See the charts I posted. There's good reason to think that people at that level of development are experiencing extreme levels of violence.

That's enough to warrant a peek, I'd say.

LOL, no it's not. I'd say a fisherman seeing babies on spikes on the beach would be actual evidence but no such thing has been seen.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

LOL, no it's not. I'd say a fisherman seeing babies on spikes on the beach would be actual evidence but no such thing has been seen.

Well, I guess we have different standards of evidence re search warrants (waiting till you see babies on pikes is a rather high standard!).

But anyway, I don't really care about the Sentinelese, they're just my guinea pig for thought experiments.

 

[Occam's Banana]

Would you also pay reparations later?

Yes. And if I did not, I could justifiably be forced to do so. See post #110.

 

[Suzanimal]

Well, I guess we have different standards of evidence re search warrants (waiting till you see babies on pikes is a rather high standard!).

But anyway, I don't really care about the Sentinelese, they're just my guinea pig for thought experiments.

I get that but I'm still trying to wrap my head around how a chart is evidence of anyone committing a crime.

Here's a chart. Is that enough evidence to go searching people's homes?

 

[r3volution 3.0]

Here's a chart. Is that enough evidence to go searching people's homes?

Since that shows absolute numbers, not rates, it's not comparable to what I posted. It doesn't say much of anything about the tendencies of those groups. And if you did work out the rates (compare those figures to population), you'd find none of those groups are anywhere near as violent as the average, known hunter-gatherer society.

P.S. Apart from all that, the Sentinelese are known to have murdered two people, aren't they?

That's sufficient to justify a landing right there, to find the culprits.

 

[Occam's Banana]

Would you violate the NAP in order to achieve some desriable or laudable objective?

I say it's justifiable to aggress in order to prevent a greater aggression.

...and I'll bet that everyone here agrees, whether they know it or not.

Yes. That's just the sort of thing I was getting at when I asked later in the same post, "Would you trespass in order to prevent a murder?" (I parenthetically indicated that I might.)

The concept of aggression itself has fuzzy edges, and what constitutes "greater" or "lesser" aggression is even more problematic. Many non-hypothetical, real-world answers to such problems will certainly have to appeal to those "supplemental" considerations I mentioned in my footnote to post #101.

Consider the judicial system (either the real one or whichever one you envision in your ideal society, state or stateless). It is impossible to determine guilt with absolute certainty. In any real judicial system, innocent people will from time to time be found guilty and wrongfully punished (i.e. aggressed against). The only possible solution to this problem is to not have a judicial system at all, not punish anyone for any crime. But we all (I hope) recognize that such a cure would be far worse than the disease; the end result being much more aggression overall.

The same utilitarian logic can be applied to other situations.

Speaking of other situations, what of the following?

Recall the "cabin in the woods" scenario I mentioned in post #104:

If you are freezing to death in the woods, would you break into someone else's cabin for shelter?

In World A, you commit the aggression of trespass by breaking into the cabin. In World B, you do not.

World A and World B are otherwise identical. Thus, "more aggression overall" exists in World A than in World B.

By the utilitarian "mimimization of aggression" standard you have cited above and elsewhere, should you not prefer World A (where you die) over World B (where you do not)?

If it is jusfied to prefer World B, then ipso facto there are cases in which minimizing aggression is not to be preferred.

 

[phill4paul]

Their behavior doesn't influence those in my neighborhood. They don't affect my bag out team. They don't affect the individuals and their actions with me in the county I live in. They don't affect the individuals and their actions with me in the state I live in. They don't affect the individuals and their actions regarding me in the country I live in. They don't affect the individuals and their actions regarding me in on the continent I live on.
Pretty sure they are so far down the list that I don't give a fuck what they do to each other.
That's my NAP.

 

[Origanalist]

Has anyone mentioned a thousand points of light yet?

 

[Suzanimal]

Since that shows absolute numbers, not rates, it's not comparable to what I posted. It doesn't say much of anything about the tendencies of those groups. And if you did work out the rates (compare those figures to population), you'd find none of those groups are anywhere near as violent as the average, known hunter-gatherer society.

P.S. Apart from all that, the Sentinelese are known to have murdered two people, aren't they?

That's sufficient to justify a landing right there, to find the culprits.

I don't feel like looking up a better chart but I still wouldn't feel good about messing with these people based on a chart.

As far as the murders go, there's a little more to the story. Apparently, these folks had reason to believe the fishermen could be hostile.

The two men killed, Sunder Raj, 48, and Pandit Tiwari, 52, were fishing illegally for mud crabs off North Sentinel Island, a speck of land in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands archipelago.

During the night their anchor, a rock tied to a rope, failed to hold their open-topped boat against the currents and they drifted towards the island.
"As day broke, fellow fishermen say they tried to shout at the men and warn them they were in danger," said Samir Acharya, the head of the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology, an environmental organisation.

"However they did not respond - they were probably drunk - and the boat drifted into the shallows where they were attacked and killed."

After the fishermen's families raised the alarm, the Indian coastguard tried to recover the bodies using a helicopter but was met by the customary hail of arrows.

Photographs shot from the helicopter show the near-naked tribesmen rushing to fire. But the downdraught from its rotors exposed the two fisherman buried in shallow graves and not roasted and eaten, as local rumour suggested.

...

Attempts to recover the bodies of the two men have been suspended, although the Andaman Islands police chief, Dharmendra Kumar, said an operation might be mounted later.

"Right now, there will be casualties on both sides," he said from Port Blair. "The tribesmen are out in large numbers. We shall let things cool down and once these tribals move to the island's other end we will sneak in and bring back the bodies."

Environmental groups urged the authorities to leave the bodies and respect the three-mile exclusion zone thrown around the island.

In the 1980s and early 1990s many Sentinelese were killed in skirmishes with armed salvage operators who visited the island after a shipwreck. Since then the tribesmen have remained virtually undisturbed.

...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...kills-fishermen-who-strayed-on-to-island.html


And there this...

A Human Zoo on the World's Most Dangerous Island? The Shocking Future of North Sentinel

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimdob...king-future-of-north-sentinel/2/#78693b47643d

 

[Suzanimal]

And another point to make...

The global organisation, which works to protect tribal people’s lives, claims it is vital that the islanders’ wish to remain uncontacted is respected, otherwise they could be wiped out by diseases to which they have no immunity.

Knowing you could import diseases that could kill them off completely, is it still in their best interest to find out if anyone is being agressed? What's the greater aggression?

 

[phill4paul]

Let's see. Hunter-gatherers are more violent? Than what? A hunting-gathering society, by Nature, is a rather small grouping of individuals when compared to agricultural societies that built up large states. Yes. States. Hunter-gatherers are for the most part nomadic. They must go to where the hunting and gathering is most abundant. The agrarian societies just staked out a territory. They flourished. They expanded. They did this with multitudes and their killing was a whole bit larger. And larger. And larger.
Hunter-gatherers are no more violent that any other groupings of individuals that band for survival. Some more violent. Some less so. And in scale, much smaller, much less violence than any state that grew up around agrarian culture and "civilization."