Science as ¨magic¨.

[Celtic_Minstrel]

They contradict only in certain circumstances, yes, but that's exactly why they're incompatible. The standard model works on a small scale, while general relativity works when you have large masses, but in a black hole you have both, and trying to use them together creates a paradox.

That said, there certainly are theories of quantum gravity. They haven't yet reached the level of support that the standard model or general relativity have, though; furthermore, there are several of them, and we don't yet know which (if any) of them is most correct.

String theory isn't pseudoscience, by the way. It's a reasonable mathematical model of quantum gravity, but it does a poor job of predicting things because it has too many (or too complex?) parameters, so with the right parameters it could predict nearly anything. There are other models of quantum gravity (I can think of twistor theory off the top of my head, I'm sure there's a couple more), which as far as I know aren't much better.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Celtic_Minstrel:
Re myths:
I've spent several years studying them in and outside of university, if you wanted me to write a 'proper' definition of a myth it would take several pages and <urinate> off many Wesnoth forum members. The definition you gave is intersting and you might find it in an short dictionary entry, but it is often that people like to bring culture into their definitions of what a myth is.

As for scientific method:
I must be careful here. If I thought you had said that scientic method works great, it's only people who have <effluent waste> for brains, I'd be all over you asking about who the scientific method was created to help understand how the universe works? computers? God(/s)? Extra-terrestirals? I'd be shouting at you that a system designed by humans for humans to use which is 'perfect' except for human error is a load of <horned animal manure> and the like. I'd probably get into trouble for this.
You have not said this as far as I understand your post and therefore I will not violently attack what you have to say. So instead of my (potentially ad hominem) psychotic rant, I'll suggest only the following: 1) the scientific method can not be 'self-correcting' since it has no agency. It is used by people and must be corrected by people. If the people are stupid they make mistakes. 2) Yes, there can be bad uses of the information/perspectives we gain by applying the scientific method and good ones.

What I was getting at was that I think this definition of "magic" as a negative entity is by it's very nature flawed. If you take "magic" as "using science without understanding it" then well your whole thing about science being considered "magic" at some point is actually quite boring

Is that how you'd define magic, or do you have other suggestions?

I'm also not following what you said about my "catagories".

[johndh]

A myth, at its most basic level, is a story that may or may not be true, that attempts to give meaning or explanation of a phenomenon, typically based on what makes intuitive sense rather than an empirical understanding of the world. This is similar to the relationship between magic and technology in the real world. Magic is an attempt to influence the world based on what makes intuitive sense (burn incense to appease the sky spirits) as opposed to what makes empirical sense based on science. If you want to talk about a fictional version of magic that actually works, as shown in fantasy, and that works according to predictable rules and structure (if x, then y), then any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science. It's just science based on forces that don't exist in the real world, but in fantasy they're just another natural force like gravity, and can be studied as such.

[Celtic_Minstrel]

1) the scientific method can not be 'self-correcting' since it has no agency. It is used by people and must be corrected by people. If the people are stupid they make mistakes. 2) Yes, there can be bad uses of the information/perspectives we gain by applying the scientific method and good ones.

But the principles of the scientific method imply that, assuming it continues to be applied, correction will occur. Faked results will not be reproducible and will be discredited. Inaccurate theories will not line up with experimental results and will be revised. In theory, if you continue to apply it for an infinite amount of time, I would expect you to come up with a "one true theory of everything", though once you get there, regression is still possible by introducing mistakes. Of course, in reality, the scientific method is not applied perfectly. (Whether getting a "one true theory" is possible without infinite time, I'm not sure, but I'd like to think it is. That said, I doubt we could ever prove that a given theory is the "one true theory", so maybe it doesn't matter. At the moment it seems like we're pretty close, though we're not really getting any closer, and the appearance of being close to a "one true theory" might be just an illusion anyway.)

As an aside, I'm not sure why you think it's impossible for humans to design a system which is theoretically perfect — perfection is usually simpler, so I'd expect it to be easier than designing a system that has to account for flaws. It wouldn't be perfect in practice, of course, being based on the false assumption that its users are also perfect, but it could still be a pretty good system (though there's no guarantee that it will be).

What I was getting at was that I think this definition of "magic" as a negative entity is by it's very nature flawed. If you take "magic" as "using science without understanding it" then well your whole thing about science being considered "magic" at some point is actually quite boring

Personally, I prefer to define it as a "supernatural" force that doesn't conform to what we know as the laws of physics. Perhaps it has an element of randomness/chaos to it, more so than quantum mechanics (as an extreme example: suppose that 1% of the time, when you cast a fireball spell, the target is instead turned into a small animal). Or perhaps it follows its own rules that are as rigid as the laws of physics.

I'm also not following what you said about my "catagories".

This bit:

I maintain that people try to understand thigns mostly becasue they want to use/control them and that there are things we can understand and we can use [= +understand+control], things which we can understand [...] but can not use or control [= +understand-control] and those we can use or control without understanding them in the slightest [= -understand+control] [...] then there are things we can neither understand nor hope to use or control [= -understand-control].

Emphasis is mine, some bits are [...] elided, stuff in [] is edited in by me. The - means "minus" in these categories, rather than being a hyphen.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Aah, thanks for the clarification.
I suggested that many/most humans want to understand things in order to control them and not for the sake of simply understanding them. This is not always the case as those dealing with threads such as the chromosomal makeup of Orcs on this very forum will attest.
What I was getting at there was not so much why we want to understand things, I'd put that down to human nature, but whether we can understand everything or not. I read of something related to the Tree of Life which was called something like the Ein Sof Aur(?) and basically dealt with the Judeo-Christian God's creation of the universe, it came across as something like the point at which human understanding fails. I don't think you need to subscribe to those particular beliefs in order to apreciated this principle - it diametrically opposes what philosophers call the 'priciple of sufficient reason', which states that given 'enough monkeys and enough typewriters' we can undestand everything. I maintain that there is at least the possiblity that there are some things we simply can't undersand, this may, but does not neccesarrily have to influene our ability to control them.

A myth, at its most basic level, is a story that may or may not be true, that attempts to give meaning or explanation of a phenomenon, typically based on what makes intuitive sense rather than an empirical understanding of the world. This is similar to the relationship between magic and technology in the real world. Magic is an attempt to influence the world based on what makes intuitive sense (burn incense to appease the sky spirits) as opposed to what makes empirical sense based on science. If you want to talk about a fictional version of magic that actually works, as shown in fantasy, and that works according to predictable rules and structure (if x, then y), then any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science. It's just science based on forces that don't exist in the real world, but in fantasy they're just another natural force like gravity, and can be studied as such.

Again, the 'trying to give meaning' is only one aspect of what a myth is, but who's counting?
I found what you said a slightly more juicy alternative to what I hoped the mistrel was not saying, thinking of it as sort of like hacking the source code of the universe?

Celtic_Minstrel's idea of magic entailing the use of some wild or ungovernable principle/element is very itnersting to me. I'm not sure we could ever understand the entierety of 'the way the universe works' - of course if I were to say that we can't, I'd have to say that there was a 'way the universe works' and that I understood it sufficiently to say that it couldn't be understood, which would be contradicting myself horribly. I'm inclined to tie C_M's suggestion to my idea of using forces which we can (somehow) control but can not hope to properly understand, even though I rather like johndh's suggestion of 'taking short-cuts' (as I read what he wrote) with the functioning of the universe. I don't really see any reason we couldn't combine the two: in order to 'take the short-cut' you must bring a little chaos into the order which would be 'the way the universe works' - sounds dangerous! If that is the case then, no, I wouldn't think that such magic could ever come to be viewed as science since it would entail the use something whcih by its very nature could not be understood rationally and could undermine the validity of science by disrupting the 'fabric of the universe'. Maybe this is why they burned witches?

[johndh]

Again, the 'trying to give meaning' is only one aspect of what a myth is, but who's counting?
I found what you said a slightly more juicy alternative to what I hoped the mistrel was not saying, thinking of it as sort of like hacking the source code of the universe?

Not really hacking exactly, just figuring out the rules and how to use them. Science figures out what the rules of the universe are (e.g. force = mass * acceleration), and then technology comes up with interesting ways to use those rules. Magic just introduces a new set of rules. When science figured out relativity, technology used it to make satellites stay in sync. If we figured out that burning the fat of a female goat during the full moon resulted in an average of 10% increase in crop yields the following harvest, we could experiment and see what happens when we change some of the variables. What if it's a male goat, or a female sheep? Does the amount of fat make a difference? Does it matter how hot the fire is? What if you do it during a different phase of the moon? What if there's too much cloud cover to see the moon? We would optimize it and see if there was a way to increase the 10%. By the same token, if prayer (probably the most common form of magic in the modern world) could cure cancer, it would be a reliable part of every physician's training and we could measure its success compared to other forms of treatment.

Celtic_Minstrel's idea of magic entailing the use of some wild or ungovernable principle/element is very itnersting to me. I'm not sure we could ever understand the entierety of 'the way the universe works' - of course if I were to say that we can't, I'd have to say that there was a 'way the universe works' and that I understood it sufficiently to say that it couldn't be understood, which would be contradicting myself horribly. I'm inclined to tie C_M's suggestion to my idea of using forces which we can (somehow) control but can not hope to properly understand, even though I rather like johndh's suggestion of 'taking short-cuts' (as I read what he wrote) with the functioning of the universe. I don't really see any reason we couldn't combine the two: in order to 'take the short-cut' you must bring a little chaos into the order which would be 'the way the universe works' - sounds dangerous! If that is the case then, no, I wouldn't think that such magic could ever come to be viewed as science since it would entail the use something whcih by its very nature could not be understood rationally and could undermine the validity of science by disrupting the 'fabric of the universe'.

I don't believe in true randomness or chaos. I know there are some quantum physicists who would disagree with me, but I don't buy it. We call things random when we can't predict them, but we get better at predicting things all the time. A roulette wheel seems random at first, but if you can precisely control the amount of force being put on it, the coefficient of friction, the air resistance, etc., you can get the same result every time. I'm somewhat confident that, given enough time and advancement, all of this quantum randomness nonsense will be discredited. Even things like human behavior can be studied and (to some degree) predicted. Our knowledge hasn't advanced enough to where we can precisely predict exactly what a person will do in a particular situation, but I'm confident that enough study in neuroscience would get us there eventually, and in the mean time we can manipulate populations and get some vague probabilities of what a person is likely to do.

When our future generations understand every neuron, synapse, and chemical and electrical stimulus in a person's brain, they'll be able to figure out how to manipulate them. They could clone a brain, put it in a jar, feed it stimuli, and predict the reaction. There is already precedent for this in the form of remote control animals (stimulus A produces behavior B). Marketers and social scientists understand this pretty well -- they know that a certain presentation or phrasing will persuade more people than another and they use this to create more effective messages. Even if magic were to come from spirits or godlike entities, it could still be studied and used in technological manner. It's just like studying human or animal behavior, except without physical access to the brain. What phrasing is more likely to get a desired outcome from your prayers? Does it affect the outcome if you open with an exaltation ("dear heavenly father" vs. "hey, god")? Are there certain times that are better for prayer? If you pray more often, do the desired outcomes increase (bonus for faithfulness), decrease (penalty for being needy), or stay the same? Does the very act of studying it make the god less likely to answer your prayers?

Maybe this is why they burned witches?

They still do.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Heh-heh, you don't have to believe in true randomness or chaos for what I'm saying to work.
Imagnie that there was another universe, another dimension if you like... the 'physics model used to generate that universe' (I'm not talking about Physics, the study and saying 'the way things every time work' is a little clumsy) is fundimentally different from our own. Imagine somehow we could contact that unverse... 'use it' in the sense of somehow causing it to influence events in our own universe. If the 'physics model' was different, we could not use our science to make any sort of observation. We would have to 1) go there and 2) develop a new science which would explain/approximate the 'physics model' of that universe. We may not be able to do this. Firstly, we might not be able to exist in the same state 'over there' as we do here, perhaps solid matter would be impossible or chemistry would work differently, perhaps there wouldnt' be any of the elements which make up our universe or perhaps it would just be impossible to think in the way we do here.
It needn't be true chaos, just something completely outside our frame of reference which we could not equate to anything familiar, even by crude approximation.
I think it might be possible, eventually, to predict and control the effects of 'the great unknown' on our universe, but it would be closer, I think to superstition than science.

I know they burn withces only too well thank you (I won't go into details) .

[johndh]

As long as there is an observable effect that can be produced in our universe, we can study it. We might have to learn an entirely new set of rules (2+2=orange) which would make it difficult, but given enough time and enough tests, a pattern would emerge and we'd start to sort it out. The ancients didn't really have a frame of reference for the movement of the stars and planets, but we eventually learned some rules of gravity and now we can make predictions with them.

[Celtic_Minstrel]

Heh-heh, you don't have to believe in true randomness or chaos for what I'm saying to work.
Imagnie that there was another universe, another dimension if you like... the 'physics model used to generate that universe' (I'm not talking about Physics, the study and saying 'the way things every time work' is a little clumsy) is fundimentally different from our own. Imagine somehow we could contact that unverse... 'use it' in the sense of somehow causing it to influence events in our own universe.

That's actually kinda the premise of The Gods Themselves. (That's a novel by Isaac Asimov.) Of course, that book makes no mention of magic, though. It's intended to be science fiction.

[Midnight_Carnival]

As long as there is an observable effect that can be produced in our universe, we can study it. We might have to learn an entirely new set of rules (2+2=orange) which would make it difficult, but given enough time and enough tests, a pattern would emerge and we'd start to sort it out. The ancients didn't really have a frame of reference for the movement of the stars and planets, but we eventually learned some rules of gravity and now we can make predictions with them.

Actually, the ancient Sumerians started keeping astrological reccords of the positions of the stars, these were continued by the ancient Babalonians through to the Assyrian and Neo-Babalonian empires - although many reject all astrolgoy, especailly the slightly different flavor of ancient near eastern astrology, it so happens that the continious observations over a period of roughly 3000 years led to 'readings' more accurate than those our scientific insturments can give us today and predictions of where such and such a 'planet' will be in our time are reputed to be almost entierly accurate

I'm sorry, I feel that you might be one of those "monkeys and typewriter" people, who believes that there is nothing in the universe (or any universe which effects ours) we can not understand given the right equipment, enough data and proper procedure, etc... I don't know if that is true or not, but until we do understand everything we can not know that we can, and so I tend to assume that we can not until proven othewise.

C_M, you should be a theology student, I'm sure the rather one-sided views and arguments of theology professors would, be greatly refreshed by your intersting insights.
For myself I liked a story called The Machine that Won the War - but I can't remember if it was by Asimov or Clarke.
The ancients did not distinguish between 'sceince', 'magic' and 'medicine' and Greek Idealist philosophers said that they'd love to discredit magic, becasue it made no sense, but due to the overwhelming empirical evidence they had no choice but to accept it.

[johndh]

I was trying to think of this example when this thread first started, but I couldn't find the relevant excerpt until recently.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/r ... k_of_Rhada

They just know that the ancients pressed certain buttons and said certain things to make the ship fly, so now they repeat the same rituals and get (mostly) the same results with no idea how it works. Then again, how much do most of us really know about the machines we use every day?

[Midnight_Carnival]

nope, haven't a clue!
I think little daemons carry the letters from the keyboard through the wire onto the screen, then a large toad-like beast who's back is 85% brain memorises the message and sings it too high for humans to hear, but the air spirits sing the song to angels who telepathincally tell other toad-beasts in computers around the world what rubbish I'm typing "... and that's how I met your mother."

[Naron]

Speaking about "magic", would an entity with an IQ of 80000 be a "god"? Just a curiosity.

[iceiceice]

I think they would be a "god" at multiple choice tests

[Dugi]

I think that even defining what is IQ 80000 might be a huge problem. Many IQ test expect the user to have some basic knowledge and it can happen to everyone to miss a part of the things most people know, so somebody with insanely high IQ would not score perfectly in all IQ tests. Other (IMO better) IQ tests are based on recognising patterns, but somebody with such huge IQ would most likely find possible patterns for every 'wrong option' (like for example here).

Huge IQ is useful pretty much everywhere, allows you to solve complex problems easily and understand many complicated things, but it does not make you a superior being. Stephen Hawking's IQ is thought to be 160. There were people with IQs above 200 and neither of them is as known for being a genius as Hawking or Einstein (Einstein's IQ is not thought to have been above 200 neither). I scored over 140 in an IQ test and that's not far under 160 considering that it can go over 200, yet I am definitely far bellow being comparable to any of these guys. Still, 80000 is far above all humans' IQs.

Still IQ itself is not a perfect way to determine the person't mental abilities. Some people can multiply or power large numbers in a fraction of a second, but their IQ is not large. Autistic people can achieve some amazing feats, but they are not superior. Some people can memorise large amounts of information just by reading it or even looking at it written, but their IQ is not huge. It also appears that there are more classes of IQ, each for a separate kind of problems. Even people with huge IQ are led by human motives, although most of them have jobs where they can make use of their intelligence, but there were cases of geniuses who had absolutely simple manual jobs (I heard of a digger/mathematics docent and a shepherd/physics PhD). There was even a genius inventor and psychopathic serial killer in one person, he was a successful and well situated inventor who sometimes went to murder people for petty reasons (he did it in quite an elaborate way, but a sane person would understand that the petty gain tops the great risk, that eventually got him a lifetime sentence). Fabregas, the famous football player, is known to be a genius, he is a master of tactics and creative play but it does not make allow him to achieve amazing visible feats other top player are known for. Most scientists aren't geniuses, they are intelligent enough to understand what they are dealing with deeply enough and then they do experiments (most science is about assembling information anyway).

If somebody's IQ was 80000, he would still have to learn things (you can't build mathematical theories from scratch), maybe he would process and understand it incredibly good and remember it far faster, but still would have to learn it. He would understand relationships better and faster, but lack of information would not make him capable of knowing and predicting everything. He would not have faster reactions. On the other hand, I'd expect him to make some breakthoughs in science, especially in stuff that requires heavy thinking, like quantum physics, computer security, understanding how the brain works et cetera. He might advance the technical progress of mankind in some direction, but not everywhere.