Timeline for Would relatively primitive people really confuse technology with magic?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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| Jul 25, 2018 at 9:12 | comment | added | Falco | Other examples include: Hitting the side of a machine that doesn't work in the hope this will somehow "magically" fix the problem. Or "rebooting probably helps" or opening the hood of your car, staring at it, touching everything once and hoping this somehow fixed the issue. Or blowing on your dice for good luck before rolling them. Or always turning the key two times to lock the door (is two times really safer than once? But just do it) - all this without actually believing in real magic. | |
| Jul 25, 2018 at 9:05 | comment | added | Falco | Even with the Cargo Cult it is hard to differentiate between "People thinking it is actual real magic" and "People know they don't understand it, but hope it works anyhow". I think we have a lot of rituals in our days resembling a cargo cult: For example rubbing the coin on the wall if the vending machine rejects it - many people do it, because they have seen someone else do it - scientific tests show it has absolutely no effect, no one really knows how it is supposed to work, but no one believes it is "magic" | |
| Jun 6, 2018 at 12:41 | history | edited | Separatrix | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 31, 2015 at 5:07 | comment | added | zxq9 | Hrm... thinking about my last comment... I think magical thinking occurs when one believes their model to be right instead of an approximation, and begins inventing an extended, formal system around it to account for behaviors the original model could not accommodate. | |
| Dec 31, 2015 at 5:06 | comment | added | zxq9 | @O.R.Mapper Indeed. This is why we invoke the bogeyman and whatnot to explain to our kids why they shouldn't do certain things when they are too young to understand the relevant explanation. That these ideas imprint and linger too long is a weird side-effect, but its not hard to see this process in action in our own minds. Our view of the world is based on building increasingly accurate models atop previous, less accurate ones. We even teach computers this way "the man in the computer does blah" -> "we send commands to the machine" -> "register X is an output signal to Y" -> etc. | |
| Dec 30, 2015 at 10:21 | comment | added | Rayjax | About "Big Loud Machines" - we can also note that when the first guns (arquebuses) were used in the battlefield, they did more damage by the fear they inspired because of the noise and smoke, than the effective bullets reaching the enemies. The same thing happened with the first native americans fighting against the conquistadores | |
| Dec 30, 2015 at 10:07 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | @Lostinfrance: Most "everyday-superstition" (XYZ means bad luck kind of rules) is extremely systematic, and possibly even originated from observations. It probably very much is a seemingly "confirmed hypothesis", merely flawed due to completely inadequate sampling. | |
| S Dec 29, 2015 at 22:18 | history | suggested | Darcinon | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 29, 2015 at 21:56 | review | Suggested edits | |||
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| Dec 29, 2015 at 10:25 | comment | added | TheSexyMenhir | @Lostinfrance That applies to most magic/gods. One has to remember that magic is an attempt at understanding, or controlling the world arround us. | |
| Dec 29, 2015 at 9:48 | comment | added | Lostinfrance | The cargo cults ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult ) are probably the most well documented example of people thinking technology is magic, but even there it is interesting how systematic the methods used by the islanders to draw the cargo to themselves were, e.g. control towers. You could call it scientific thinking based on a wrong hypothesis. | |
| Dec 29, 2015 at 8:02 | history | answered | TheSexyMenhir | CC BY-SA 3.0 |