this post was submitted on 31 May 2024

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-18

It's a choice (lemmy.ca)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

91 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why are people hating on this? OP is right! Non of you have any idea what gravity is, besides being some attractive force that starts existing with mass. How? Why? Wtf even is it? NON OF YA KNOW! How is that different from a wizard utilizing limited knowledge of "magic" to create a fire ball spell? All the wizard knows is that some words and imagining some flow inside the body mixed with a bit of contraction produces sparks out of the finger tips. How? Why? Wtf even is it? The wizard sure as hell can't tell! But can utilize this knowledge to predict processes and make new things! Just like a scientist! Scientists are just a lot more advanced since they view stuff like peer review as a necessity.

This goes hand it hand with the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.", read some old legends and be absolutely bored by what they considered magic.

In conclusion scientists are wizards. To a certain extend engineers too, since they practice said "magic". I mean many iconic wizards in stories didn't invent the spells and rituals they use.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Actually, in Dungeons and Dragons wizards understand magic very well. It takes years of academic study in order to cast a single cantrip. Magic is governed by the Weave, a sort of field that extends across the multiverse and carries arcane energies of life, necrosis, law, order, good, and evil. For a wizard, spellcasting is based on intelligence. Book smarts and deep understanding.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Hmm, makes sense. It pretty much takes years of studying to make your own fully independent 3d renderer, or at least one efficient enough to still get good frames once you add mesh textures and shading. It sounds like a similar workflow.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Didn't cross my mind that there are settings that explain EVERYTHING. D&D qualifies as less "magical" than real life! xD

Honestly it brings me great joy thinking of me and my programmer buddies as little mages, and wizards respectively. Creating my own world inside my lighting infused rune stone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I mean. I'm sure those wizards up in the tower are asking. "ok, but WHY does this field cross over planes when others don't. Why does it carry energy? Why am I able to access this energy the way that I am?" And in the process of answering those questions they discover new ones they never even knew to ask.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

By definition, it is merely manipulating reality through supernatural forces. If magic was real, we would still call it magic. We just would not say "magic isn't real." Because remember: At some point in time, people believed magic was real.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No, that's nonsense. Supernatural means not real. The natural world is a scientific term for all that exists, and supernatural means nonexistent. If fire breathing dragons were natural, they wouldn't be supernatural, would they, you silly? You'd still be denying the existence of magic.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Supernatural just means beyond science or understanding.

Magic could exist and people could still not understand why. Just like many concepts and natural forces in the real world, such as consciousness that we don't understand at all, and yet we still understand it is real.

So much your thoughts here depend on definitions of words that you might want to crack open a dictionary and actually see what the definition of them is.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago

Nothing is beyond science.

[–] [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.

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