On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: > > Suppose that centuries from now we are capable of traveling to inhabited > planets in other star systems. We come across a planet populated by > humanoids who are roughly in the middle ages. They are terribly afraid of > us and regard us as the demons of some ancient prophecy of their religion. > Do we see them as part of our tribe, take over the planet and impose our > values and technology for the greater good?
Something like that sounds a lot more moral to me than treating them condescendingly as zoo animals. And I'll tell you one thing we DON'T do, we don't let ignoramuses interfere with our discovery of how the universe works. > > Or do we try to remain benevolently distant until they are ready? Should we remain distant and respect the culture of crappy inner city schools or try to improve them? Should we treat the pupils of those schools as sentient beings as intelligent as ourselves or should we treat them as endangered whooping cranes ? > > > This is not so different from the situation native Hawaiians found > themselves in when the Europeans arrived. What the native Hawaiians found themselves in when the Europeans arrived is irrelevant because all the Hawaiians and all the Europeans involved in that encounter have been dead for centuries. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
