[eej71]

I am clearly in the minority in these parts.

I find it intellectually alarming (but not surprising) that someone would say something like "[the north sentinelese tribe] are doing the rest of us a favor by preserving a way of life we may need again someday".

"way of life" is doing a lot of obscuring here.

It took centuries of hard work to leave that behind.

[busterarm]

It's insurance. The same way you don't want to go too far with germline editing. There are genetic variations that you might need to save your species some day. The cost of that is people suffer.

We may need a close connection to that way of life again and not have to relearn it from scratch.

This strikes me more as one of those things that is shocking to hear but not incorrect. People get more upset that someone said it without actually having a counterargument.

He's not saying that we _should_ live that way but that we might need to.

[eej71]

I understand the value of things like a seed bank.

But in no way is "their knowledge" (which I think is an overly generous use of that term) - acting in the role of a knowledge seed bank.

[busterarm]

I think you're underestimating how much we simply don't know about how to live that primitively. Maybe you could do it in small groups of people. Maybe up to a dozen. Most experiments at this fail hilariously early by the way.

Can you do it and sustain hundreds of people? I doubt it. At least they're here to be potentially observed. You don't have to _totally_ wing it. People living like that through history had bigger day to day survival concerns than documenting the finer details of sustaining their continued existence to us.

The last closest analog we have to them would be the Hadza people and they've had agriculture since 500 CE...

[amanaplanacanal]

It has been said that hunter gatherers spend a lot less time working and a lot more time just hanging out and socializing than agriculturalists. It would be nice if we could use all of our modern technology to get back to that kind of work/life balance.

Not to mention all the time they spent in nature which is impossible now.

[amanaplanacanal]

Huh. I never thought so many people would be against work/life balance and spending time in nature