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I hope someone has selected a control group to see how the internet and especially social media changes people My favorite example is how when missionaries con

I hope someone has selected a control group to see how the internet and especially social media changes people My favorite example is how when missionaries contacted the Pirahã people, there was a missionary who was a language expert to learn their language quickly to do Bible teachings. He postulated their language didn't have recursion, which caused quite a bit of debate with Noam Chomsky and others. My take away from learning about this is that the Pirahã people didn't have a notion of past and future ("It's always been this way") and how they were totally transformed for the worse, in my opinion, by watching and seemingly becoming addicted to watching television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_people https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Pirah%C3%A3 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Pirah%C3%A3

estaseuropano 5y ago
If you haven't read it, "don't sleep, there are snakes" is a wonderful read, half travel report, half grammar tutorial. Everett was even converted by them: after learning language basics he tried to tell them bible stories, but they just asked whether he knew Jesus, and when he said No they asked whether he knew anyone that knew him, which he also denied. At that point they did not have any more interest in the stories. So they do have terms for the past, but they simply don't consider any 'far' past. Wiki summary on this: > As far as the Pirahã have related to researchers, their culture is concerned solely with matters that fall within direct personal experience, and thus there is no history beyond living memory.
- mwattsun 5y ago
  Awesome! Thanks, I'll look for it. I forgot that delicious detail that he's the one that lost his religion, which destroyed his marriage of 35 years over religion. Score one for the uncontacted tribes of the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Everet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Everet Someone earlier asked why people make comments on Hacker News with no expectation of getting a response (far down in a thread for example.) This is why. Edit: Since my religious sensibility is getting downvoted I might as well throw in this Eskimo: 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?' Priest: 'No, not if you did not know.' Eskimo: 'Then why did you tell me?' Annie Dillard
throwaway2331 5y ago
> their culture is concerned solely with matters that fall within direct personal experience, and thus there is no history beyond living memory. > one of the strongest Pirahã values is no coercion; you simply don't tell other people what to do. > There appears to be no social hierarchy; the Pirahã have no formal leaders. Their social system is similar to that of many other hunter-gatherer bands in the world, although rare in the Amazon because of a history of horticulture before Western contact > They take naps of 15 minutes to, at the most, two hours throughout the day and night, and rarely sleep through the night. > The concept of drawing is alien to them and when asked to draw a person, animal, tree, or river, the result is simple lines.[7] However, on seeing a novelty such as an airplane, a child may make a model of it, which may be soon discarded. > According to Everett, the Pirahã have no concept of a supreme spirit or god,[9] and they lost interest in Jesus when they discovered that Everett had never seen him. They require evidence based on personal experience for every claim made.[ > Everett states that it has no relative clauses or grammatical recursion. Everett points out that there is recursion of ideas: that in a story, there may be subordinate ideas inside other ideas. > Pirahã has one of the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possesses such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations." > Daniel L. Everett, on the other hand, argues that the Pirahã are cognitively capable of counting; they simply choose not to do so. > The language may have no unique words for colors, contradicting Berlin and Kay's hypothesis on the universality of color-naming. There are no unanalyzable root words for color; the recorded color words are all compounds like mii sai[6] or bii sai, "blood-like," indicating that colors in the language are adjectival comparisons that are not consistently applied. And then finally: > Adoption of western culture > A 2012 documentary called The Grammar of Happiness which aired on the Smithsonian Channel, reported that a school had been opened for the Pirahã community where they learn Portuguese and mathematics. According to FUNAI the school is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education of Brazil.[10] In addition to a formal school being introduced to the culture, the documentary also reported that the Brazilian government installed a modern medical clinic, electricity and television in the remote area. Truly, the West subsumes all cultures it comes into contact with. There is no hope in trying to progress further, because it's like grinding two mis-matched gears together, to generate torque: all you're doing is forcing things that are not meant to be. What a depressing article.

estaseuropano 5y ago

If you haven't read it, "don't sleep, there are snakes" is a wonderful read, half travel report, half grammar tutorial. Everett was even converted by them: after learning language basics he tried to tell them bible stories, but they just asked whether he knew Jesus, and when he said No they asked whether he knew anyone that knew him, which he also denied. At that point they did not have any more interest in the stories. So they do have terms for the past, but they simply don't consider any 'far' past. Wiki summary on this: > As far as the Pirahã have related to researchers, their culture is concerned solely with matters that fall within direct personal experience, and thus there is no history beyond living memory.

mwattsun 5y ago
Awesome! Thanks, I'll look for it. I forgot that delicious detail that he's the one that lost his religion, which destroyed his marriage of 35 years over religion. Score one for the uncontacted tribes of the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Everet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Everet Someone earlier asked why people make comments on Hacker News with no expectation of getting a response (far down in a thread for example.) This is why. Edit: Since my religious sensibility is getting downvoted I might as well throw in this Eskimo: 'If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?' Priest: 'No, not if you did not know.' Eskimo: 'Then why did you tell me?' Annie Dillard

throwaway2331 5y ago

> their culture is concerned solely with matters that fall within direct personal experience, and thus there is no history beyond living memory. > one of the strongest Pirahã values is no coercion; you simply don't tell other people what to do. > There appears to be no social hierarchy; the Pirahã have no formal leaders. Their social system is similar to that of many other hunter-gatherer bands in the world, although rare in the Amazon because of a history of horticulture before Western contact > They take naps of 15 minutes to, at the most, two hours throughout the day and night, and rarely sleep through the night. > The concept of drawing is alien to them and when asked to draw a person, animal, tree, or river, the result is simple lines.[7] However, on seeing a novelty such as an airplane, a child may make a model of it, which may be soon discarded. > According to Everett, the Pirahã have no concept of a supreme spirit or god,[9] and they lost interest in Jesus when they discovered that Everett had never seen him. They require evidence based on personal experience for every claim made.[ > Everett states that it has no relative clauses or grammatical recursion. Everett points out that there is recursion of ideas: that in a story, there may be subordinate ideas inside other ideas. > Pirahã has one of the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possesses such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations." > Daniel L. Everett, on the other hand, argues that the Pirahã are cognitively capable of counting; they simply choose not to do so. > The language may have no unique words for colors, contradicting Berlin and Kay's hypothesis on the universality of color-naming. There are no unanalyzable root words for color; the recorded color words are all compounds like mii sai[6] or bii sai, "blood-like," indicating that colors in the language are adjectival comparisons that are not consistently applied. And then finally: > Adoption of western culture > A 2012 documentary called The Grammar of Happiness which aired on the Smithsonian Channel, reported that a school had been opened for the Pirahã community where they learn Portuguese and mathematics. According to FUNAI the school is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education of Brazil.[10] In addition to a formal school being introduced to the culture, the documentary also reported that the Brazilian government installed a modern medical clinic, electricity and television in the remote area. Truly, the West subsumes all cultures it comes into contact with. There is no hope in trying to progress further, because it's like grinding two mis-matched gears together, to generate torque: all you're doing is forcing things that are not meant to be. What a depressing article.