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Our life expectancy and education is literally thousands of years ahead of anything they have. You can argue about violence, capitalism and religion, and I'd agree, but parts of our culture are better then theirs in easily measurable ways.



education: it depends on the subject- many of the people under discussion are probably expert trackers/hunters and have a more intimate knowledge of their surroundings than even our modern biologists. Most of civilization's education is not very useful in this context.

I doubt there is a single part of our culture that is "better in an easily measurable way". This includes life expectancy, which of course cannot be "literally thousands of years ahead".


How is life expectancy not easy to measure? (Unless you mean without disturbing them)


Why should we assume 'life expectancy' is an absolute measure of progress. One could equally argue that what one does over the course of a lifetime is more important than how long it lasts. Many people in our social systems spend the best part of 15 years in school, then 40 years working 40 hours a week, and may spend their final years riddled with diseases; depression and mental illness are on the rise; obesity, diabetes, back problems, etc., are increasingly common even in the young.

It was only relatively recently that the overall health of a person living in an agricultural society came to be comparable with the health inferred from ancient hunter gatherer skeletons.

There is no way to objectively 'measure' whether their lives or ours are better spent or more enjoyable.


life expectancy in civilization is easy enough to measure.

However, by definition it is very difficult to measure life expectancy of isolated people. First you must contact them- which starts to change them. Second, you must determine their age, which is a difficult task.

The real problem is that using life expectancy by itself is misleading- it mostly represents access to emergency medicine and antibiotics, and the harshness of the environment. We can keep people alive in the USA for a very long time, but that doesn't mean they are healthy.


What does it matter if some parts of our culture are better in "easily measurable ways?" If one is making the case whether or not these people should be exposed to the Western world, one must keep in mind the net utility that would be added to their lives. It could very well be negative. At that point, higher life expectancy and education would be irrelevant.




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