11:38 AM
> But Paradoxis also knows magic: It seems that sentient beings can influence their surroundings by a strange force. Some people are quite adept at it while others struggle with it. Its influences are innumerable and well-observed and documented: Molecules change their form, their temperature, their consistency. People can move and levitate objects, start fires, cool things down, speed up or slow down processes. What is interesting is that people doing magic need to "synchronize" their attempted magic with the environment, the time and location, with themselves and observers. They get in a …
That's one of the most common ways to make magic intractable to science, by making the sample space so large and never repeats, thus forbid the assignment of probabilities, the only rule we can say is that "everytime it is done, some new thing happens"
> Magic could function in a similar way. Science can look at the effects of magic and describe how a sorcerer draws energy through the earth, but knowing how all of these things occur does not give one mastery over magic, any more than knowing the science of sound makes someone a maestro on the tuba. Magic can be described with science, but ultimately the practice of magic is learnt through decades of hard work and perseverance in shaping the mind and body of the magician to perform it.
This is another way to evade science by making the craft itself so individualistic that no prescribed procedure can be handled out to reproduce a given effect exactly
7
What if the universe always works your way... But only for you?
People tend to assume that rules define how everything works.
That is to say:
(Rules/Reality) -> defines -> (Magic/Emotions)
For example, because of the exact position of every atom inside my head, their energy, and the set of ru...
(We will expand on this later when we present the proposed hierarchy of true magic)
> Which gets to yet another possibility, again going back to religions, that science is again studying effects where as magic could be effecting primary causes. In which case it wouldn't be that science couldn't study magic, it would just not be in a position to do so currently.
> One very fundamental assumption in scientific inquiry is this: the rules stay consistent. This is what allows us to make testable predictions and hence run experiments to determine how well our theories match 'reality'. Without this ongoing consistency, the scientific method cannot function.
The key to distinguishing magic from science, then, is to make the rules variable. In fact, if you describe magic as the action of pure, unfettered intention, the ability to make choices outside the framework of determined rules, then magic is literally the ability to either bend or break the rules.
> In a sense, the science that defines our predictable world is the very mindset that limits our access to magic. The art of magic and the challenge of the magician, then, is to harness will and bend the rules within this framework of reality, without getting swept away by the raw power and losing all trace of human identity in the process. This is the balance of the mage, whose grasp on reality is always tenuous at best, for when the world bends to your will, you run the risk of getting twisted up in it.
> Science can still classify phenomena and experiment upon magic, but can't reproduce it. For instance, there's no reason science wouldn't try to figure out how a massive, wingless dragon can fly. But eventually, they're only going to be able to record observations. Science would have no way of explaining the hows and the whys, and wouldn't be able to develop applications for their knowledge.
> Approach 2: Magic is completely individualized. One's personality and experiences determine one's magical abilities, but in a deep, complex way that isn't based on any observable patterns in brain chemistry. Even though a particular individual's magic may be analyzable, if that person's self-image changes in some drastic way, their powers may change accordingly.
(spoiler alert) That's the route walked by The House with a Clock in its Walls
> Option B: To steal a page from the SCP Foundation wiki, magic is un-studyable for memetic reasons. Any observation you make of how magic functions, you'll forget. Any notes you write down, you won't be able to read. Any footage you take, you won't understand- or you'll forgot what you saw as soon as you look away. The only aspect of magic that scientists are able to remember and retain is this memetic principle- the world can remember that it's impossible to study magic, but it forgets anything deeper.
Now that's an interesting one: Unable to form records of it
Put is simply, the scientific method works because:
In research design, especially in psychology, social sciences, life sciences, and physics, operationalization is a process of defining the measurement of a phenomenon that is not directly measurable, though its existence is indicated by other phenomena. Operationalization is thus the process of defining a fuzzy concept so as to make it clearly distinguishable, measurable, and understandable in terms of empirical observations. In a wider sense, it refers to the process of specifying the extension of a concept—describing what is and is not an instance of that concept. For example, in medicine, the...
And if you want really really really really really pure magic:
> Abandon the soundness principle of phenomenon in reality
> Make it unable to be analysed under an operational way (e.g. cannot probe it from the outside)
Abstract magic, the most minimal and the purest of all the true magic, is one that breaks every single thing we knew about science, logic and structural thinking in general
But because of that, its rules are unpredictable and thus unusable
What does it mean for a real phenomenon to be logically non true, I have no idea
It is the same as asking what does it meant for an existence that is nonexistent
Set in distant future human and machine coexist amicably with each other, only a few men and women are able to apply magic in real world.
How magic works
The world is rich in philosopher's stone instead of fossil fuel, a tiny gram of this substance is sufficient to warp the fabric of reality a...
In my opinion, magic can lead to its very own kind of technology, possibly very similar to ours.
If it is a kind of magic where you use one energy source to trigger one other event (like in The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss), then it actually is very similar to electricity and you can...
The Factory Floor
