this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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The universe didn't force you not to believe in magic. You could have spent your whole life believing magnets are magical stones, that the electromagnetic force is magical energy, and that computer engineers are wizards who conjure spirits from magic. And you could have been 100% factually and scientifically correct.

But you chose to believe that magic is by definition not real, because you didn't want to live in a world of whimsy and wonder. You defined magic as supernatural, in opposition to the natural world. While every scientist knows that nature is just a word for everything that exists. You chose to define magic in a way that it wouldn't exist, denying it through tautology and not through science.

Why did you choose that?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I did not define the word magic. Society did that. My choice is to communicate effectively, which means largely respecting the established consensus on which words mean what. If you'd rather render yourself ineffectual by using your own personal alternate definitions for established words, that is your choice, but it's not a choice that aligns with my or most other people's priorities.

Besides, "magic" only has whimsy associated with it because we restrict it to fake things. If we'd been calling electricity "magic" all along, "magic" would be mundane and you'd be over here complaining that we don't use a more whimsical term like "etherics" or "thaumaturgy" or "electricity."

As for wonder... what the flippity floppity fuck are you even talking about? The scientific world is full of wonder. Wonder is what drives science in the first place, and it has nothing at all to do with terminology. If you look up at the night sky and are too distracted by vocabulary to feel wonder at the pretty lights shining across unfathomable temporal and spatial distances, well, that seems more like a deficiency in you than any sort of flaw in which arbitrary sounds and squiggles we've picked out to describe things with.