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RowanE comments on Open thread, 16-22 June 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think you've misinterpreted the choice Emile is describing. The choice isn't between being colonized or not, the choice is what to do while you haven't been colonized but there's an empire nearby who might (and let's face it probably will) decide to colonize you soon. His "first path" would be something like Meiji Japan, as others have discussed in this thread.
(Agreed).
More broadly, my point is that treating culture as a Sacred Value That Must Not Be Compromised risks leading to suboptimal decisions, and that in a lot of cases, compromising culture is pretty okay (especially if you can reinvent it). Unlike being outgunned and outnumbered and sitting on a ressource everybody wants, how one thinks about culture is something the hypothetical Chieftain can control.