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?
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 that it’s magic.
But if you actually show it to them in person, it don’t think it would 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.
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.
Well yeah, if you explain magic it stops being magic, that’s how magic is.
Yes, it’s fundamentally something supernatural that can’t be explained. That’s what I’ve been saying in my first comment. So what are we arguing about?
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?
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 that it’s magic.
But if you actually show it to them in person, it don’t think it would 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.
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.
Yes, it’s fundamentally something supernatural that can’t be explained. That’s what I’ve been saying in my first comment. So what are we arguing about?