Ah. The book I was complaining about yesterday is called "Mainspring" by author Jay Lake - don't read it, it's bad

@dot_Sp0T noted.

Good morning. How's everyone doing?

@NexTerren doing fine, happy Republic Day!

@DaaaahWhoosh Wait, that's a real thing?

it is in India

@DaaaahWhoosh Does this mean you're in India, or you think I'm in India?

@NexTerren it means I like celebrating other people's holidays

@DaaaahWhoosh I like celebrating other people's birthdays. In fact, 364 other people's birthdays.

today does seem like a good day for birthday cake

See? I knew you were a smart man.

oh no. I just researched how to buy a birthday cake. I can get one for like 10$.

D:

A good one though? This is important.

well, the only way to find out is to buy it

but what if it is?

what path have you started me on?

The path I started you on was making 364 new friends.

but I'm too efficient for that, you should know this

why have friends when you can have infinite birthday cake?

or, well, not infinite, but I can probably afford 2 per day if I stop eating anything else

they might be the little ones, but it says they feed up to eight people

"Up to" always makes me suspicious.

"This apartment can house up to 58 people! Come enjoy the 80 sq ft!"

8 People, or one person with the appetite of 8

yeah, I figure I can eat at least as much as two people when they say such things

sometimes as much as four

like, one box of hamburger helper. I could eat the whole thing myself, no way that's feeding an entire American family

0_0

@DaaaahWhoosh I once ate a box of hamburger helper complete with 1lb of ground beef. I have not done so again.

Morning

@James it's not something I would recommend, but it is something I consider every time I make it

there's a certain tipping point between "there's enough left for leftovers" and "I might as well eat the rest"

Yeah that happens

My cousin owns a restaurant, its a diner breakfasty place. They make a seriously killer breakfast burrito that is smothered in cheese and pork chili verde. I ususally get about halfway through and say... yeah I should stop, Ill save the rest for later

Inevitably I look down a few minutes later and wonder where the rest of it went.

"chest" ?

cheese?

@JourneymanGeek Huh what? What are you talking about whistles

;p

@DaaaahWhoosh Its worth considering though, most of the authority I use is moral

I rarely, if ever actually go past "Hey, knock that off"

and the fact you didn't notice is by design ;p

@JourneymanGeek so I guess you don't want me to salute you whenever you enter the room?

Man...you bastards made me want cake...

@James I just wanted to celebrate Republic Day

Yeah...but...cake

I am quite literally salivating

oh no, me too

stop reminding me about it

I just had a grapefruit. I'm good

@DaaaahWhoosh naw

I have two boxes of oranges

Caaaaaake

@AndyD273 not really true

I honestly don't feel tempted by cake

sour grape cake?

Don't get me wrong, I am addicted to sugar, and if there was a cake down in the lunchroom it might be different, but imaginary cake does nothing for me

@AndyD273 yeah, I may be spared by the fact I'd have to order it a day or two in advance

if there was a fast-food cake restaurant, I might not survive

But cake also isn't on the top of my favorite desert list either

lol

We're having pizza soon

I'm trying to convince my mom to let me try something odd

sour tender mangos as a topping

oh no, now I want pizza and cake!

I'm having chicken tetrazzini for lunch

@JourneymanGeek That sounds... Interesting. I have no frame of reference for that

Somebody asked me if a question was in scope (which arguably covers the same... area as the linked questions), and I found myself unsure. My instinct was to find similar questions, but I know that--logically--"it was done elsewhere so it must be in scope" isn't actually a defense.

@NexTerren Likewise "this has never come up before" isn't an opposition either.

I think scale is important

asking about one guy is dangerous, asking about an army is better

My opinion: when in doubt, assume it's in scope. If someone is willing to take their time to answer, what business is that of yours?

@AndyD273 Well it's my own question that I'm concerned about if it's in scope, so I'm trying to be cautious to avoid bias. It has two VTC and a comment asking if it's really world building. Naturally one's instinct is to defend one's own question but... I am biased.

@NexTerren I think I was the second VTC.. but it was in the queue, and I'm trying to cure my self-doubt

@DaaaahWhoosh It's actually not about one guy, I just wanted to simplify it. It's technically two governmental groups (sort of) going at one another but trying to describe the dynamic is a bit challenging. I was trying to basically come up with a pre-established plan that the organization could implement to try to leave nothing to chance as much as possible.

I put in the false details because real details would have made it longer, or have required a lot of follow up.

And this isn't in defense of my question; it's explanation of it. It might still be worth VTCing...

yeah, unfortunately phrasing is key for most borderline questions

And to be clear, I'm not upset at you or any other VTCer, but if it's a bad question for the site I'd just delete it instead of letting it sit there.

You got answers, so it's not unanswerable. The answers are highly voted, so they are quality...

@AndyD273 The two linked questions aren't mine, actually!

There are rules, but there is a grey area, and so in those cases let the users decide

Eh, my sentiment stands.

@AndyD273 They're questions that were received by the community in the same spirit of mine; what's the best S&T course of action given large resources.

Fair enough.

So Andy says that the question looks good, DW has concerns about the scale. Hmmm.

(If I understood correctly)

so, the real question is how to fend off an attack by dozens of soldiers in a modern setting

I guess it should be on-topic

it just doesn't feel right

I'm mostly saying that while a specific user might think that a question is unanswerable (bad), that doesn't mean that there isn't an answer that someone with more knowledge than me would have

The actual question is "What plan would an organization establish in advance" to absolutely stop the threat of an abnormally trained and well funded group.

But I wrote it in that format to try to provide needed context to limit comments asking for more info.

@DaaaahWhoosh Any advice on how to rewrite it or adjust it?

@NexTerren eh, dunno, maybe a TLDR to refocus

@NexTerren Preemptive strike. Remove the threat before they can move against you.

They have the capability to attack me, and the motive to attack me, so I must assume that eventually they will attack me, and so I will attack them first, removing the threat.

And turning to literature typically such situations they pick storytelling over efficiency; a plan that makes for a better story than absolute certainty (or as close as one can get) to victory.

It's basically the dark forest scenario

I was trying to formulate that plan for the world, but...

@AndyD273 ?

I'll probably mess this up, but here goes: So a bunch of hunters are out in the dark forest, all armed. They know some of the other hunters are hostile, and they know that some of the hunters might be friendly, but there is no way to know for sure. So as they stalk through the forest and they spot another hunter they have to chose.

Do I assume they are friendly and greet them, opening myself up for attack? Do I assume they are hostile and take them out? Do I just sit here quietly, knowing that if I can see them, they could probably see me, and take the decision out of my hand?

@AndyD273 can you follow them until they find someone else?

Maybe, but then you take the risk of the person they find being you

And in Nex case, you can be pretty sure they are hostile, so at that point you take them out before they can take you out, whatever that means

It's the basic concept behind a story I just finished. I don't know if I agreed with all of the authors points, and there were a couple parts where certain characters acted in a very silly manner, but still...

@AndyD273 It depends on their aggression policy. "Not Blue, Shoot it" or "Not Red, Don't Shoot".

I've been trying to come up with a way to make a video game where you don't immediately shoot enemies, but also don't shoot friendlies too much

haven't come up with one yet. It seems like the usual response is "if it moves, shoot it. If friendly fire is on, be prepared to apologize afterwards"

but some of my favorite memories from Halo were when I drove to the enemy's base and picked one of them up, then we drove around together

@DaaaahWhoosh Some kind of a competitive/cooperative, where you have to compete, but you also can't win on your own without help from the other side

It would be tricky to get the balance right, but not impossible

yeah, looking at games like DayZ it seems like players are much more likely to kill each other than risk cooperating

In the story the second part of the theory was that it might be possible for a strong civilization to reach out toward a weak civilization to try to forge friendship, but even that wasn't safe because of technological explosions. Humans have been on the planet a long time, but we essentially went from the bow being the height of technology to driving robots on mars in 300 years. Give or take

You might decide to cooperate with me because I am stronger and have a gun and pants, but if you get your own gun then do you need me anymore.

@AndyD273 oh yeah, that reminds me of the soon-to-be backstory of my sci-fi galaxy

humans get all-but-destroyed so they become dependent on aliens, but then the aliens don't realize once the humans become more powerful than them

I haven't gotten to the third book, but the second book kind of ends with a stalemate/tentative peace treaty based on MAD. "We could destroy your world, but if we do earth will probably be destroyed too. So we won't pull the trigger so long as it looks like you aren't going to try to kill us..."

I wonder if there's a spectrum of MAD-capable technology

like, is there a point at which a weapon becomes scary enough that just having them on both sides makes wars stop?

Nukes come pretty close

yeah, I wonder, if they never got any bigger, would they actually work?

I wonder if that's answerable...

If both sides had a bomb that would turn the earth into loose gravel, so long as you have some basic safeguards to keep the insane away from the triggers...

This will kill me, but it'll kill you too

no, but I'm saying, say nukes never got bigger than Fat Man. Would they actually still work as a nuclear deterrent? Or, how many would you need?

Because, say you could shoot a single bullet and hit anywhere in the world. That's not going to stop people invading your country. So there's a point where you'd stare down a nuclear arsenal and say "meh, worth it"

Ah, yeah, they have to be pretty big/numerous to be considered MAD. You could get something like that on a small scale. Mexican standoff with live grenades.

Hello; I can't see my last message so assuming much has happened: What's the gist?

@dot_Sp0T YO

so, then. Say an alien got rid of all nukes in the middle of the Cold War. It would probably lead to a lot of people getting killed

@DaaaahWhoosh Maybe... But if both sides lost them at the same time with no warning, they might still not attack because conventional warfare is still pretty expensive, and if neither side is expecting it then they wouldn't be ready to put boots on the ground.

hmm, yeah I guess so

but then there's still the time where they're rebuilding their nuclear arsenal, where neither side is strong enough to mutually assure destruction

like a Mexican standoff where everyone drops their guns

@AndyD273 I like your solution to the hacker's arrow

@NexTerren Thanks. :) It's kind of a silly scenario, especially when it would be much easier to get/trick someone into plugging a USB Rubber Ducky into the machine, but that's not what the question wanted

huh, that anti-magic question isn't closed yet

I though it was just me that wasn't able to make sense of that...

It has 8 answers, so someone must be able to make sense out of it

honestly, the top answer is even more confusing than the question

I get it. Basically a world where our physics don't apply, and instead it works the way the ancients used to think the world worked. In a world like that, how would you make an area where magic couldn't work. It's not to different from "how would I make an antigravity field"

The top answer seems to be trying to talk about the thing called the void

@AndyD273 if it was just gravity, then yes. But it's "all magic"

or, that's how I read it

Physics is magic doesn't make sense. By definition...

@DaaaahWhoosh If you had the science to make an antigravity field, then you could probably mess up other physical laws too. And this is easier because it's all just magic

@AndyD273 right, but in that case there's still no good answer

it's just "do magic"

That's usually the final answer to any magic question

in a comment I mentioned you can make things that nullify sound or radio waves or light, but I'm not going to try to give an exhaustive list of things that prevent other things from doing what they would do naturally

Oh, so you want to use magic to open a jar of pickles? Ok, do magic.

yeah, so I'm going to pretend you agree with me that the question should be closed

@DaaaahWhoosh But depending on how magic works (if the OP has even thought it through that much) you could nullify magic that way. Find out the field that makes it, and invert it and feed it back in an area

One of the problems that I have with it is that he hasn't actually explained the magic system

@Mithrandir24601 exactly

That's way easier than nullifying gravity

Probably

So far as we know

and they haven't explained which magics they want to nullify

@DaaaahWhoosh Also true

@Mithrandir24601 Yeah, that's why I didn't answer personally. Not because I think it needs to be closed, because I don't care about that, and at least 8 people thought it was good enough to take time to answer so what business is it of mine, but I don't have enough information to come up with an answer I want to take the time to type out.

I mean, if physics is magic (which doesn't make sense), and you want to nullify magic, then you want to nullify physics, which gives... Nothing-ness

k, but what if normal physics applies, but there is another layer on top of it, like overriding a function, that makes things behave differently. So when this MagicAPI layer is dispelled in an area it just becomes normal physics. So some guy hates the chaos caused by magic, and so decides that he wants to remove it completely, and move to a world of scientific principles.

> Any sufficiently advanced society will mistakenly believe all magic to be unknown technology. - Dean Koontz The Taking

That was a weird book...

@AndyD273 But then physics isn't magic

Are you familiar with Ars Magica?

Nope

@Mithrandir24601 The way I read it, it doesn't matter. It operates under a "different physics" which behaves like classical magic.

Ars Magica is a game about magicians who understand and manipulate classical physics.

So... Either people don't understand physics and call it magic, or everything is magic and there's no such thing as physics?

I've found the Wiki for Ars Magica, so I'll have a read

Personally, I prefer magic-as-patronage.

I like Steven Erikson's confusing magic system. It seems to obey Sanderson's first law, despite being nearly all-powerful. So far at least. Maybe it's just because I like Malazan so much

And there's Lord of Light where technology has become completely indistinguishable from magic, even for most of those who use and maintain it.

@Mithrandir24601 Or it's both. There are physics as we know them, but they can be overridden by higher powers when they are bored or whatever

@AndyD273 So... Magic is supernatural. Isn't that the point? :P

I'm working on a game set in classical Egypt/Nubia/Minoa/Babylon, and I'm trying to use their worldviews.

Magic isn't supernatural for them.

@BESW R'hllor is a very good example

When the sun rises and sets because somebody's literally dragging it through the sky, eclipses are a dragon trying to eat that guy, and winter is caused by a mother is sad about her daughter being gone, the world isn't divided into "natural" and "supernatural."

[rummages for notes]

So, that's a case of they believe that physics is magic

No, it's a case of having a totally different epistemology.

(as opposed to physics actually being magic)

Right. Magic is supernatural, but that doesn't mean that the natural can't be underneath it somehwere

The concept of physics and magic is... a very confusing one for them.

Sure, there are natural principles they understand. But there's no delineation between a natural principle, a god's influence, a curse, whatever. It's all just how the world works.

You could just as easily say that the supernatural is natural, than that physics is magic. It's an equally meaningless distinction.

Farmers use charms and prayers alongside fertiliser and crop rotation, and make no distinction between them.

Well... Physics is the 'law' of the universe and exists independent of any beliefs. Magic is anything that can't be explained by physics.... What we believe to be magic is anything that can't be explained by what we know of as physics

That's a modern concept.

This thread is relephant, though even here she's talking about the last several hundred years:

Sometimes I feel like what we know about the laws of physics amounts to the introduction page in a graduate level law textbook.

So... they understand the world to be magic, or part physics and part magic?

Daryn Lehoux's 2008 paper "Tropes, Facts, and Empiricism" offers some insight into how this kind of thing works, as a mental construct.

@AndyD273 I often feel that what we know about physics amounts to the title page of a children's novel

@Mithrandir24601 It's like you have the underlying law, unless it is superceded by other laws. Like physics says no cookies for breakfast, unless magic is out there before she wakes up and says it's ok.

So... Physics is a thing, but magic is either something different on top of physics, or another 'layer' of physics?

@Mithrandir24601 I think we're on the same page

Something like that. That's how I'm reading it anyway

Right... But we're back to the original problem: If magic is different, then it's not physics. If it's another layer, then magic is only a subset of physics and not physics itself...

Or an alternative to physics

Like dad isn't a subset to mom, that's why dad can say "sure, but only one cookie" while mom would definitely say 0 cookies

(I only let them have a cookie for breakfast once, and they ate their other food first)

And still not physics, which is one of the problems I'm having with the question - I now get (I think) how you view the question, but the title still consists of the phrase "a setting where physics is magic", which is just confusing

So kind of like 2 halves making a whole?

I get that. The question itself describes it as "different physics", which is where I'm getting the alternative part. Gravity says "fall down and break your leg", but magic says "eh, just ignore that whole falling thing, it's not important." If I don't have a way to call on magic, I'll have to get a cast

I think I sort of-almost get what's going on. Thanks

@BESW care to elaborate on what magic-as-patronage is?

also, do you use 'irrelephant' humorously, or not know you're spelling it wrong, or am I spelling it wrong?

"Irrelephant" is a personal joke I inflict on the world.

@DaaaahWhoosh With magic-as-patronage, a person can use magic through their direct, personal relationship with a god, spirit, or other personified power.

ah, so like an artist

They usually call on or invoke the power when they use magic, and they have to maintain the relationship through upholding vows, behaving in certain ways, etc.

(and by 'like an artist' I meant the classical idea of invoking the Muses when creating art, though I guess patronage is also a relevant idea related to artists)

Somewhat, yes.

something I was taught in relation to the New Testament was that people didn't used to believe in getting ideas on their own. They figured the gods were giving those ideas to them

(or I guess some people may still believe that some places)

That's a concept in some cultures, yes, and there's a once-popular-now-debunked psychological theory that early humanity interpreted its own thoughts as external voices.

(Westworld invokes that theory.)

huh, interesting. And yeah, I guess that makes sense

But it's difficult to know, historically, just how much of that sort of thing actually happened. We can only infer from context clues.

well, I think to a certain extent such beliefs still exist

The "muse" is from one culture that did talk about the idea explicitly.

something I like about, say, Tolkien, is the idea presented in Leaf by Niggle

that the things we create already exist somewhere, we're just trying to reproduce them

That sounds like a variation on Plato's theory of forms.

I think it probably comes up a lot

There's a similar philosophical debate in, of all places, the Myst franchise.

@DaaaahWhoosh I'm trying to remember where I heard the idea of memes sleeting through the universe, and every once in a while they'll hit a persons brain and become something that needs to be shared.

@BESW I loved those Myst books

@AndyD273 I'm fond of the notion that whenever we have an idea we can't remember, it got loose and floats around until someone else runs into it--and that's where epiphanies come from.

@BESW That's a pretty good one too

There's several serious proposals that some ideas and creative acts are necessary results of the sociohistorical context, and must be expressed. This is used in equal part to explain breakthroughs made simultaneously but independently across the globe, and to say that an individual's accomplishments are actually not their own because if they hadn't done the thing, the pressures at bear would have caused someone else to do a functionally identical thing.

@BESW but just because two people have the same idea doesn't mean neither of them owns that idea

ideas are infinite, you can duplicate them with enough effort

wait... am I arguing against myself...

okay, never mind, no one owns ideas

ideas are verbs, not nouns

when you explain something to someone, you're not giving them a mountain, you're helping them climb it

okay, sorry, sometimes this chat is my rubber duck

ooh! intellectual manifest destiny!

we are pioneers, expanding to a new world of knowledge!

and we think we own that knowledge, that it belongs to us, but that's not true! It belongs to everyone, it should be free!

nitwit

blubber

oddment

tweak

goose

flummoxed

@DaaaahWhoosh Sorry - I just couldn't resist :P

@Mithrandir24601 eh, I was waiting for a combo breaker

anyway, I think my paradigm shifted. I'm gonna go buy some birthday cake.

(It's a quote from one of the Harry Potter books - I don't remember which one)

It took you all that time to actually go and buy cake? :o