Comment on Magic is real, we just know how it works and call it technology
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 4 days agoShow a sentinelese person a smartphone, they’re gonna say it’s magic.
Comment on Magic is real, we just know how it works and call it technology
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 4 days agoShow a sentinelese person a smartphone, they’re gonna say it’s magic.
remon@ani.social 4 days ago
I wouldn’t count on it.
Most people don’t understand how most technologies work, but they still don’t call it magic. We know that someone understands how it works, because they build it. I’m pretty sure the Sentinelese are capable of understanding that concept as well.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I dunno about that. The sentinelese don’t even have a written language or engage in agriculture, if you show them a glassy black rectangle covered in strange glyphs, that squawks and speaks without a mouth, and glows like a fire while remaining cold to the touch, how can they assume it’s anything but an enchanted object? I can’t imagine they have the slightest clue of the simplest procedures for constructing something like that, they don’t know what a diode or a battery is or how doping works. They don’t even understand electricity.
You can also look at the cargo cults of Melanesia. They saw WW2 operations in the area and interpreted them as rituals to summon goods (cargo) from their deities. How does a member of a non-industrial society interpret an airdrop if they have little to no concept of airplanes, parachutes, or even advanced metallurgy?
remon@ani.social 4 days ago
Sure, if you just toss a phone on the island and let them try to figure it out with no context, some might reach the conclusion.
But if you actually show it to them, like in person, it wouldn’t be hard to convince them it’s man made. They are familiar with tools and making stuff and the fact that there are other people that have stuff they don’t have.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Well yeah, if you explain magic it stops being magic, that’s how magic is. If you explained the magic of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings using advanced quantum physics or something you’d turn it into an explainable, mundane world, like what we have done with the real world. But the magic remains under different terms.