# Why would people want magic to exist? If it did it would turn the world into a nightmare.



## P.K.Acredon (May 4, 2021)

This is just a fun hypothetical scenario. If magic was real, (power that just happens without any explanation) it would instantly corrupt people. Worlds like harry potters' wizarding world would be a nightmare because all of the students and teachers would be warping everything they could to their own liking without any laws. And just like many other superheroes stories have shown, having superheroes with powers would be a corrupt society full of individuals who don't see people as actual people. 
I'm usually very pessimistic about magic. I know lots of stories that show the wonders of magic and who awesome it is. But lots of stories I've been writing about always paint magic as something horrible that easily corrupts people. I'm just saying. What do you think? Why would you want magic considering how corruptable it is?


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## Wayne Mack (May 5, 2021)

Brandon Sanderson is an advocate for defining a rule set for magic systems and many other writers' tales do provide some limit on magic use, often a physical toll on the magic user or having it be unconnected pieces that have to be learned one by one. 

The same can be said of other genres. Science is constrained, even if only because the equipment is failure prone. Super heroes have some weakness to be exploited.


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## CupofJoe (May 5, 2021)

If magic instantly popped in to existence with no warning, then you may well be right.  It could be like any disruptive arrival, fatal for the existing normal.
But if it was a process of evolution, then society would have adapted to deal with this. Maybe not perfectly. There would be taboos, religious edicts, moral guidance, even civil laws to limit the unfetter use of magic. And if the magic was truly chaotic in nature [and not inherently evil], then for each person seeking to run amok they would be people wanting the status quo.
Today, in the real world, people can wield incredible power on others. Personally or at a distance, but there is usually some curb on these action  whether is personal morality, public revulsion, or criminal sanction.


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## AnyaKimlin (May 5, 2021)

Magic does exist - it's just science we don't understand yet.

I have an autoimmune condition which comes with the tag idiopathic which means the medical profession don't have a clue why I have it. Every morning I take magic pills that keep me alive but we only sort of know why they work.


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## G.T. (May 5, 2021)

If magic appeared, depending on the rules, there'd most likely be a magical arms race.

Like Dr Manhattan in Watchmen or the use of Dust in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, the superpowered and the magic itself would end up being used by one side against another.


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## Vladd67 (May 5, 2021)

AnyaKimlin said:


> Magic does exist - it's just science we don't understand yet.


As in Babylon 5's Technomages.


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## .matthew. (May 5, 2021)

I doubt it would make the world any worse, people willing to do nasty things already exist. If anything, a force multiplier like magic could work in favour of good people, making them able to defend themselves from oppression.

I will add though that I've never been fond of the whole 'absolute power corrupts absolutely' thing. It seems like a poor justification for people behaving badly... "It wasn't really my fault, I was corrupted by the power."

The fact is that powerful positions _attract _corruptable people. Nobody is given power, they take it, usually through underhanded or at the very least manipulative tactics. Good people rarely gain authority, and when they do, they tend not to last long.


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## alexvss (May 5, 2021)

I must disagree. I think the world would indeed get worse. If we suddenly had superhero-like magic, some people would use it to become supervillains. They would fight and, well, would destroy whole cities while doing it. Also, the superheroes would suck too. Just read/watch *Watchmen* or *The Boys* or *Invincible*. The whole concept of superheroes is a dumb idea.

That put, I'd say that this is not about people "wanting" magic to exist, like you said in the title, but it's about things that exist in the worlds we create, no matter if its inhabitants want them or not. Like youtuber shadiversity often talks about, if magical things existed, the society would change accordingly. For instance, cities would have ballistas to fight dragons; charms to uncover skinwalkers; silver to fight werewolves. 

I say this because I often read stories in which only the protagonist knows about the magic, and everybody else is ignorant to it. As Brandon Sanderson says, it's better to deeply explore one kind of magic than write a lot of shallow, bland magic systems in just one story.


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## luriantimetraveler (May 5, 2021)

*The Power by Naomi Alderman* is a great exploration of this question!


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## .matthew. (May 5, 2021)

alexvss said:


> I must disagree. I think the world would indeed get worse. If we suddenly had superhero-like magic, some people would use it to become supervillains. They would fight and, well, would destroy whole cities while doing it. Also, the superheroes would suck too. Just read/watch *Watchmen* or *The Boys* or *Invincible*. The whole concept of superheroes is a dumb idea.


I'm surprised you didn't mention Sanderson's Reckoners series, where the superpowers _literally _corrupt people.

But no, unless you subscribe to that notion, there would be far more good people with magic than bad, and far more indifferent people who just want to live their lives in peace than both. This would have a balancing effect in itself.

You also need to consider the motives behind people's actions. In comic books, most bad guys are either criminally insane or out for world domination or some other silly reason. There aren't enough insane people in the world to make up a destructive percentage unless the magic you're talking about could literally wipe out a city in a single blow. Most magic systems (this didn't seem to be about superhero powers like invincibility etc) are fairly small scale, with mages being able to do very little destructively that a person with a machine gun or explosives couldn't achieve.

Most of the 'bad' people who had magic would also be far more likely to use it to gain wealth and power, and there are far easier and safer ways of doing that than going all evil wizard. Think about it...

Portals and teleportation - you could have a freight empire or sell your services to the military.
Ice powers - you could cut server costs down by billions a year and make a profit from that.
Fire - they could maybe put out fires or be a mercenary for a government.
Water - definitely putting out fires although this isn't a rich making one. Maybe some sort of water dancing act  (edit: help with underwater construction or deep-sea research, or again military stuff).
General Harry Potter Magic - sell flying cars! or potions for hair growth, de-ageing, immortality, luck, regrowing bones, magical prosthetics, etc.
Weather - deliver rain to drought areas... for a price.
Earth - work in the mining industry doing the job of a hundred men and 100 million pound machines... or building stuff out of rock.
Mind - well okay, that one would get you straight up murdered if it was known about, nobody wants their secrets out... but you could use it smartly to win at cards or something.
Healing - you'd be the richest person on the planet! Even if there were lots of you, you'd still be rich as hell.
That was mostly off the top of my head but there would be countless other opportunities for constructive use of magic and while you might get one or two crazies with cause, there should be enough sane people to keep the peace, much like how we maintain civilisation.


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## BAYLOR (May 5, 2021)

I would love to live in world where magic was real.


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## alexvss (May 6, 2021)

.matthew. said:


> I'm surprised you didn't mention Sanderson's Reckoners series, where the superpowers _literally _corrupt people.


It's because I simply never heard about this series   



.matthew. said:


> But no, unless you subscribe to that notion, there would be far more good people with magic than bad, and far more indifferent people who just want to live their lives in peace than both. This would have a balancing effect in itself.


Indeed, there would be more good people (or maybe we just like to think this way). But I disagree with the notion of the "balancing effect". The bad guys, even when a minority, would wreck havoc while fighting the good guys, and the normal people who just want to live their lives would be in the middle of all that and, well, wouldn't be able to just "live their lives". Note that I'm talking about superhero scale power here.

Now, if the magic was in a smaller scale, it would be like I said before: society would change accordingly. Just like you said in the second half of your post too. The problem is that some authors don't realize that when they build their fictional worlds. 

PS: delivering rain to drought areas is a terrible, terrible idea.  Watch *Weathering with You* or read the Alabasta arc in *One Piece*.


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## .matthew. (May 6, 2021)

alexvss said:


> It's because I simply never heard about this series


You should check it out, it's actually pretty fun.



alexvss said:


> The bad guys, even when a minority, would wreck havoc while fighting the good guys, and the normal people who just want to live their lives would be in the middle of all that and, well, wouldn't be able to just "live their lives". Note that I'm talking about superhero scale power here.


But what motive would they have for that? In comics and fiction, supervillains are written because the heroes need crazy to fight against. The heroes also fight a lot of battles completely alone because they're the heroes of their own stories. Imagine if the Justice League or the Avengers rocked up together to deal with each individual threat... those fights would last about 5 seconds 

Now, of course, there would be extremists of some form or another, and maybe if they obtained powers they would use them as you say, but there would be great efforts made to combat them before reaching that point, much like current anti-terror operations don't wait for someone to rock up with a bomb before tackling them. So unless we're talking literal invincibility plus destructive abilities plus some way of reaching the target without being stopped, I can't see them achieving much. 

Add to that, in comics the 'good guys' regularly do idealistic (next story) stuff to deal with the bad guys, like the prisons that they *always *escape from. In the real world, solutions would be more permanent - I don't see governments not just executing superpowered criminals on the spot or encasing the invincible in a thousand tons of concrete


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## P.K.Acredon (May 6, 2021)

AnyaKimlin said:


> Magic does exist - it's just science we don't understand yet.


I will never believe that. Ignorance is not magic. Just because a famous guy said that, doesn't mean everyone should agree with it. But I'm not saying nobody should agree with it. To each his own. Heck, I'm not even saying it not interesting. I just get this vibe that people only say that phrase because it's popular and its said without ever thinking about it past that common phrase. 

Personally, I believe Magic is a very internal process. It doesn't exist outside of the imagination but imagination is what gives it its power. Yeah, I don't know how a phone works, but that is just ignorance that I can overcome. Not magic. But if I would imagine all the different impossible ways that the phone works, it would be sources made from my own head. Sources that I made up. Not knowing why a phone works isn't magic. But making up different sources about why the phone works(which if using imagination, are only impossible sources) is magic to me personally.

This is why I think it would be very dangerous for magic to exist. Imagination can get very demented at times. And having a bunch of people using their imagination in the material world warping things to their own liking and becoming so self-absorbed with their power that requires no logic would be chaos. 
Magic belongs in the internal parts of the mind.


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## paranoid marvin (May 6, 2021)

In Harry Potter's world there is strict governance for the use of magic, which is why places like Hogwarts exist to teach people not only how, but also when to use magic. For those who mis-use it there is the Ministry of Magic or ultimately the Dementors and Azkaban. Judging by the books, it doesn't seem to take too much mis-use of magic to end up there.

I suppose in any magical world there would be those who would use their gift for evil , and those who would use it for good. Equally there would be suitable methods of prevention for crime in a magical world as there are in a non-magical one. Tbh though I wouldn't relish the thought of living in the Marvel universe, where one super-villain was capable of laying waste to a city.


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## AnyaKimlin (May 9, 2021)

P.K.Acredon said:


> > I will never believe that. Ignorance is not magic. Just because a famous guy said that, doesn't mean everyone should agree with it. But I'm not saying nobody should agree with it. To each his own. Heck, I'm not even saying it not interesting. I just get this vibe that people only say that phrase because it's popular and its said without ever thinking about it past that common phrase.


I wasn't aware Arthur C Clarke had said it until you sent me looking for his quote. I do agree with him though.  When things go wrong in our lives we have bad luck and misfortune.  When things go right it is miraculous and fortuitous.

I've had fibromyalgia for 20 years and less common autoimmune condition called CIU.  The I in CIU stands for idiopathic which is medical speak for we don't have a bloody clue why this is happening but unlike with fibromyalgia we can't say it's all in the head because we can see it.

The fibromyalgia cannot be seen and it's so random, it wasn't that long ago I'd have been accused of having a wandering womb for unnatural behaviour (within Arthur C Clarke's lifetime) or could have charged a witch with putting a spell on me or my illness be blamed on my loose morals and karma.  Medical advice around the condition is to offer medication that they have no clue why it might work, graded exercise which is harmful etc When my fibromyalgia started to get better my doctor said I had been "lucky".  Well no I had just taken copious notes and worked out what worked for me.  It was a tad more scientific than luck.  Had I been religious, I bet people would be calling it a miracle.  If I had been religious some people may even say I was ill so long because I lacked faith.

My CIU can be treated to a point but beyond calling it idiopathic, and having a basic idea they need to keep my histamine levels down,  again  the doctors understanding of it isn't much beyond a pox on you.  I know that meditation works if a person is going into anaphylaxis - not because of any "magic" but because histamine levels rising also raises hormones like cortisol causing panic and stress, bringing them down can make the difference between an airway closing completely or not.  However, even in 2021 someone who is using their rosary or saying prayers to similar effect may call it a "miracle".

Miracles, karma, luck and magic still happen in this world but they're words we use even in 2021 for things that happen that we don't understand why.


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## Astro Pen (May 9, 2021)

This is the fundamental difference between sci-fi and fantasy.
One has to think extremely hard and logically about solving problems encountered.
The other just invents a bit of magic, no deep thought needed.

This, unfortunately,  leads to a dichotomy in our children, half of whom consider economic reality and half of whom think money grows on trees.

Signed:
_Bank of Astro Mum and Dad_


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## psikeyhackr (May 9, 2021)

P.K.Acredon said:


> Yeah, I don't know how a phone works, but that is just ignorance that I can overcome. Not magic. But if I would imagine all the different impossible ways that the phone works, it would be sources made from my own head. Sources that I made up. Not knowing why a phone works isn't magic.


Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Smartphones are one reason the world is going to hell.


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## Astro Pen (May 9, 2021)

Closest I have seen to magic is water dowsing.  I did a course with a girlfriend many years back. I was a total skeptic.
However as soon as I went out with those rods. wow!  They just had a will of their own, crossing and opening. They felt magnetic but obviously weren't.  I did a load of dowsing after that, from underground streams to drain mapping.  Only worked with moving water though, and map dowsing with a pendulum did nothing which was disappointing.


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## Wayne Mack (May 10, 2021)

I understand the attraction of a mechanism to reduce manual labor, which is essentially what magic is. I would put magic in the same category as science, largely amoral. It is really up to those who use it to use it for good or ill.


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## P.K.Acredon (May 10, 2021)

psikeyhackr said:


> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
> 
> Smartphones are one reason the world is going to hell.


Did you even read what I said?


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## P.K.Acredon (May 10, 2021)

AnyaKimlin said:


> Miracles, karma, luck and magic still happen in this world but they're words we use even in 2021 for things that happen that we don't understand why.


This is precisely why I don't believe in the phrase: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." everyone seems to treat everything as nothing more than a label. "This is just that but with a different aspect." "These things happened so they are this or they are that"
Let me ask you something: how does the label of something change its behavior? If I were to say: "Freedom is just a happier version of chaos." how does that change these concepts' nature? Chaos is destructive and confusing. It has no laws. Freedom is choosing whatever path you like. How do I know this? Because their natures are different based on their actions. Despite whatever philosophical argument anyone has about chaos being the same as freedom, it doesn't change the fact that these concepts have different actions. Chaos causes destruction because of its lack of laws. You can imagine a building being burned by anarchists. Freedom is choosing whatever path you desire. You can imagine someone going through a white door rather than a black door.
As I said, ignorance is not magic. Because the outcome of ignorance gives you confusion and frustration and a desire to gain knowledge. Ignorance is part of a process of understanding that everyone goes through. It's a sign that your mind is not as developed and the only thing to do is to develop with knowledge. I doubt every fantasy writer wrote magic as a cheap mechanism that was solely used because they didn't understand how scientific mechanisms work. The best fantasy stories are extremely symbolic and have layers upon layers of meanings that represent what the fantasy writer is trying to say or show that readers can dive in and study. Being a literary art with places, characters, and conflicts with hidden meanings is a big difference of nature compared to: "We don't know what these powers are, so they're magic." kind of nature.
Let's say there is a seed that can grow into a tree and a fantasy book. That fantasy book isn't going to plant the seed. It has a bunch of words that tell a story about things that don't exist and will never exist. What's going to plant the seed is someone who knows how soil works and how water works. Including their observation on a process that is a scientific law about how a certain aspect of the universe works. That law being, if you plant a tree seed, it's going to turn into a tree. Does that mean the fantasy book is worthless? Not at all. Because what if the person planting that seed was inspired to do that based on what they read in that fantasy book. The meanings and characters of that fantasy book could have made the person use their imagination in their head. Seeing the story internally, feeling the emotions that the author tried to convey, and being inspired by it.

You see what I mean? I don't believe science and magic are the same because science's behavior is an external process of observation on the structure of the world. While magic behavior is more of an internal imagination that lets us explore ourselves and be inspired by our creativity. Keyword: ------>Different behaviors.<------- You can label lots of things whatever you want, that's not going to change its nature. Saying: "Clouds are just lakes in the sky" isn't going to change the fact that clouds behave like clouds. And a cloud's behavior is different from a lake's.

That's why I don't believe that phrase. Because whatever label we make doesn't give something its nature. Its actions do. And its actions are far beyond what label we personally think it is.

I'm not trying to say: "I know what science and magic are and everyone who says they're the same is wrong and stupid!" I'm just saying there is a different aspect that we usually fail to see because we usually are too used to what's popular.
There are still many different things to wonder about the nature of science and magic other than magic is just science we don't know about. Just saying.


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## Wayne Mack (May 11, 2021)

I propose that a general differentiation between science and magic is that both involve manipulation of physical elements and for either, the governing rules may or may not be known, but use of science is available to all while use of magic is restricted to a subset of people. A teleporter is science and available to all while teleportation is magic and is only usable by a select few.


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## KGeo777 (May 11, 2021)

CAST A DEADLY SPELL--everyone used magic except the private eye HP Lovecraft.
He had car trouble--gremlins were in it.
Literally.


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## G.T. (May 11, 2021)

P.K.Acredon said:


> This is precisely why I don't believe in the phrase: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."



I think you focus too much on the generality of that phrase rather than its specificity. It could be true that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," without taking anything away from either science or magic. It would depend on the observer.

Clarke is saying the observer would not be able to tell the difference, the observer isn't necessarily everyone. It is the person who is sufficiently distant from the technology that they might believe it to be magic. He isn't pointing his finger at you or me but some observer who might believe that.

It is not saying that all magic is unknown technology. All it is saying, is that if the science is advanced enough, it might appear to be magic because of a lack of understanding. That doesn't make magic less than it might be and it doesn't make science less than it might be. It is simply a way that science might be interpreted.

Imagine tomorrow aliens arrive on earth, they have no spaceships, they just pop into being at the UN (or wherever). They talk their gibberish alien languages but we hear our own language in our heads. Do you think anyone on earth will assume they are magical? Only the foolish.

Because of science, we are more likely to assume some unknown science is at play than to assume it is magic. That is because we are in an age of science and have access to it in our daily lives and can imagine strange and obscure future uses of that science. We are not the observer that Clarke imagines with his phrase.

To get back on topic to your original post, and given what I've said above, I think if magic did suddenly appear in the world, no one would believe it was magic, they would assume it was some unknown science.

So I guess in this day and age, "Any form of magic is indistinguishable from a sufficiently advanced technology."


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## Teresa Edgerton (May 11, 2021)

For thousands of years people did believe that magic existed, and that they could work it, in small or in large ways. In some parts of the world it was accepted.  In Europe, of course there were types of magic that the Church and the government would try to suppress and that people would fear to practice openly or at all, but just about everyone was making use of various folk magics, using them without much thought, because that was part of the rhythm of their lives.  Subjectively, they lived in a world full of wonders, of supernatural forces, but it was not a comic book super-hero world that they imagined they lived in. That could only be conceived much later by people who knew next to nothing at all about magic.

And the vast majority of these people_ throughout the entire world_ using their magics large and small did not indulge in power trips or become flamboyant villains or act violent or dangerous.  Mostly they were concerned with things like assuring a good harvest, keeping their stock healthy, healing their sick, warding against bad luck, etc.  Yes, there was a few who tried to use magic for malicious purposes because that is the kind of individuals they were; if they hadn't believed that magic was available to them, they'd have found other means to express their malice.    People did terrible things to each other back then; people do plenty of bad things to each other now.

So, no, I don't think that a world filled with magic would be any more—nor any less—of a nightmare than the kind of world we live in now.


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## psikeyhackr (May 11, 2021)

P.K.Acredon said:


> Did you even read what I said?


Yeah!

I went to college for Electrical Engineering.
I was a Customer Engineer for IBM.
I built my first computer in 1978.
I don't have a problem with regarding the smartphone I am texting on right now as magic.

It has exceeded my expectations of 30 years ago.

Now we have planned obsolescence in smartphones like in automobiles 30 years ago.


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## AnyaKimlin (May 12, 2021)

P.K.Acredon said:


> T
> 
> I'm not trying to say: "I know what science and magic are and everyone who says they're the same is wrong and stupid!" I'm just saying there is a different aspect that we usually fail to see because we usually are too used to what's popular.
> There are still many different things to wonder about the nature of science and magic other than magic is just science we don't know about. Just saying.



Kind of making the point that magic is simply uninformed mob mentality.

Or have some of those of us with STEM qualifications considered Arthur C Clarke's view and simply come to the same conclusions?  As I said I wasn't aware it was a particularly popular opinion.  It was doing a study on the Wizard of Gordonstoun in the 90s that formed my view.

He was hit by the pitchfork mob for the flashes and bangs or "witchcraft" coming from his home.

He was probably an early example of experimenting with electricity (late 1600s).

In Salem they hung witches but about 280 years later we discovered the ergot theory.

Magic is merely a matter of perception. I am absolutely sure that in the world I created for my books that in that world their science would one day explain how the magic works - they just don't fully understand it yet.  Really good fantasy stories have a magic system that has a consistency and possible scientific explanation for the magic.  In our world it wouldn't come to pass or make sense but it does in the world you have written.

When magic in our world receives a rational explanation it becomes less widely called magic but some people do think of it as such.  I mean how many are incredulous that in a world were people are isolating, opening windows, using masks and washing their hands - that colds and flu aren't as virulent.  It doesn't matter that Grandmother born in 1907 and left school at fourteen had enough scientific knowledge to explain why because that's how they combatted most of the plagues in hers and her mother's lifetime.

I have a mechanics qualification or two but when I go to the races it's the magic that gets me, pulls me in and transfixes me.  I don't even need to go, watching a TV show with a £4 million supercar can be mesmerising.  I understand how they are built and the work that goes into them but it requires a different knowledge to understand their magic.


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## Montero (May 12, 2021)

@AnyaKimlin 
Gosh yes you are right. The magic of things that transcends their mechanics - as it happens I've just been re-reading Pratchett's Raising Steam and he is commenting both on the magic of stream trains and re-visiting his idea that if enough people believe in something then it takes on its own reality - from the locomotive Iron Girder to Annoya the goddess of things stuck in drawers.
I had to read a poem at school that was an artistic person expressing their opinion that if you understood how a rainbow was formed then it lost its magic. Already a scientist by that point I strongly disagreed as I thought that understanding how was a bonus and its own form of magic.

Also regarding grandmothers' approach to infectious illnesses. Mine used to talk about how she was sent to a fever hospital for scarlet fever. (Her younger brother and sister who were babies at the time of the epidemic died of it.) I've also read nursing autobiographies from the time before antibiotics and the barrier technique they learned for nursing highly contagious diseases - to avoid catching the disease themselves or passing it on to other patients.


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## W Collier (May 14, 2021)

Seems like this thread has branched into a couple of threads.

*Definitions of Magic*:  Aren't debates over definition a bit pointless?  If we stipulate that the definition of magic is any technology or science which most people can't understand or reproduce, then that word "magic" is useful for conversations about that.  If we stipulate that the definition of magic is manipulations of the universe which defy the laws of the universe, or at least defy those laws which are demonstrated scientifically to exist, then that just gives us a different word "magic" for a different conversation.  Both conversations are valuable, and both styles produce interesting, thought-provoking fiction and discussion, so neither definition is better than or preferable to the other; they're just different words.  Different concepts, maybe related but significantly distinct from one another.  If a word is a symbol for a concept, then we're using the same symbol to represent vaguely-related but separate conversations.  Maybe it's like "love."  They say the Ancient Greeks had a bunch of different words for "love," and we've lost that nuance, but maybe we haven't.  Maybe people just get a little lazy about using precise labels for what they mean.  Or, maybe, in this case, precise labels don't exist yet in English, and we need to invent words or codified label phrases (or borrow a few loan words from Ancient Greek or Chinese or Sumerian) to identify what we're actually talking about.

*The actual effect of magic, and superpowers, in the world*:  There's a couple of nice sub-threads in this one going on...
*Power corrupts*:  I see two sides of this debate in the thread above, and I think both have merit.  (First, a definition: "power" here we seem to be using to mean "the ability to impose one's will on other people, regardless of their will, such that they must obey or suffer.")  Side A says that power corrupts.  If you give any human being power, no matter how moral he was, he will become less moral and more abusive.  Side B says that the primary corrupting influence of power is that it attracts immoral, abusive people who are prone to use power corruptly.  The latter is definitely true and self-evident throughout history.  The former I think rests on a grain of truth:  It's not that power corrupts, but that no man is perfect.  All human beings are corrupt, and therefore not capable of wielding power over other human beings justly.  Any person who holds power will sooner or later impose his inner evils on the people around him, and if he does that without consequence, he will keep doing, and will escalate, because a human being is not strong enough to regulate himself.  The two Sides above both seem to imply the same conclusion, though: the only person whom you should ever promote to a seat of power is a person who has the expressed and demonstrated agenda of reducing the power of that seat or elevating the power of all other seats to match it.  Only people who don't believe in kingship should be made king, and then only long enough to destroy kingship.​​*Exclusivity*:  A founding premise of almost all fantasy fiction about magic (or superheroes) is that of exclusivity.  Only a small, select few are gifted with these gifts.  But while that always seems to be a part of magic/super fiction, there's nothing about magic/super concepts that necessitates it.  It's like... just because every beef you've ever eaten was seasoned with thyme doesn't mean that thyme is a part of beef.  The exclusivity part comes from the human nature of the writers, not from any fundamental component or necessity of magic theory.  Reality is very different.  In reality, traits are either heritable or learned.  The two work differently, but in one respect they are the same: if a trait is beneficial to the individual, then it will spread, and the more beneficial it is, the more powerful it is, the faster it will spread.  Whether magical/super capability was genetic or something a person can learn, in the real world it would spread like wildfire.  Within a couple of generations, it would express in the normal (bell-curve) distribution across the whole however-many-billion of us, and it would be just like physical strength, intelligence, or technology.  At that point when it had mostly taken over, the shape of civilization might be radically different, but human nature would still be the same, so the overall prevalence of evil and good would be the same.  During the transition, the great evil would clash with the great good, and people would be forced to choose sides and do battle.  There would be a lot of violence.  Once the bell curve was reestablished, though, you'd have what you always have:  1% good, 1% evil, 98% of the population just following whichever side is most willing to do violence (usually the evil), most of the world would live under oppression as they do today, not happy but satisfied, convinced that any greater freedom would be scarier than the "normal" evils their governments impose on them or their neighbors each day, and that would last until the next upheaval.​​But in any case, the idea that magic/super powers would appear in and remain, for any length of time, the exclusive domain of a select few is probably more unrealistic than the notion of magic/super powers itself.  That's a pure writer's conceit, a convention which defies everything we know about how the world works.​​*We/They/People*:  The other thing that a debate like this sees a lot of us the use of collective words.  One says, "_People_ would abuse their powers," because "_we_ humans aren't capable of wielding power justly."  That might be true, in some sense, but no one ever defines "people" and "we" precisely enough to get to any meaningful sense.  All these words really serve to do is distance the whole thing from "I".  A much more interesting question to me than "what would the world be like" is "What would you be like?"  If superpowers or magic appeared in the world, there's just as much likelihood that it would be you stuck with them as anybody else.  How you would feel as a normie caught in the crossfire between two supers is an easy question, ripe for cheap cynicism.  Anybody can write something cynical.  All you have to do is blame everything but the protagonist for the problems and never solve any of them.  That's how you get "The Boys."

I ask you, what would you do?  If you were in that first generation, when superpowers were still rare, would you be corrupted by your power?  The evil supers would immediately bring violence to the world, an ultimatum that all the rest obey or die.  Would you have the courage to fight them?  Would you have the courage to kill them?  Could you do that without becoming them?  Are you different from them, and if so, how?


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## tinkerdan (May 14, 2021)

There's a book that says something like.
Do not suffer a witch.
It goes on to suggest burning them.
Witches delve in magic of a sort.

Who is to say we don't have magic?
There could be a regulatory committee whose job it is to regulate magic people because; well, for a long time we've been advertising that we're killing these people.

What's interesting is I've read a few science fiction novels recently where Scientist are put to death because science and technology always lead to an imbalance of power and then war and suffering.

I think that this would not be an issue unless everyone had ready unlimited access to all magic. Even then it might lead to a natural deterrent to keep everyone in check.

I think if one person had great power and was inclined to enslave everyone that they would quickly discover that they would have to do something drastic like flood the whole earth to kill everyone; because the rest of normal humanity would not let them rest or let their guard down. 

Unless their power made them omnipotent and omniscient they would not likely live long after advertising their threat capability.


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## paranoid marvin (May 15, 2021)

It does really depend on what we class as magic. A person would gather herbs and plants to make a potion to cure ailments. They may or may not have said an incantation whilst making it that they believed would help. The person receiving it recovers; perhaps it was the potion itself, or perhaps it was a placebo effect, and because they believed the magical potion would cure them they got better. This is magic; no scientific basis to base it on, just a believe in arcane powers.

Even in the Harry Potter movies, magic is more of a skill than it is a mysterious force. It is something that is taught and which is learnt, just the same as learning mathematics or geography. In such a world were it is mundane and part of everyday life, it loses much of what we term as magical.

I think what makes magic 'magic' is when it is only gifted to a few and it cannot be logically explained.


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## psikeyhackr (May 16, 2021)

Admittedly something indistinguishable from magic is not magic but so many technologies have become so complex that multiple areas of ignorance are inescapable. I have yet to encounter what seems to be a good explanation of quantum computing. I haven't decided whether it is BS or magic. 

Daemon & Freedom by Daniel Suarez express this very well.


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## Lostinspace (May 18, 2021)

Graydon Saunders produced a universe where magic does exist and it does produce a nightmare, generally by making familar things deadly. For at least a hundred thousand years, sorcerers have been creating weapons to fight other sorcerers. Thus "weeds" are designed to drift in as seeds and kill people by a variety of means. I really like how swans have been altered as described in "Safely You Deliver" :

They’re larger now, and what were feathers are not precisely illusion, the follicles make stable structures out of some sort of force. Anything material, up to at least catapult shot, I don’t know if anyone’s tried modern artillery, bounces off. Very brave people have broken big axes on swan necks, just before being brave didn’t keep them alive.


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## P.K.Acredon (Jul 19, 2021)

AnyaKimlin said:


> Kind of making the point that magic is simply uninformed mob mentality.


If that were true then I wouldn't have said the value of a fantasy novel. But speaking of pitchfork mobs, how many religious mobs operating under pure irrationality attacked people using science because they were brainwashed into believing in some magical Deity's.



AnyaKimlin said:


> Magic is merely a matter of perception. I am absolutely sure that in the world I created for my books that in that world their science would one day explain how the magic works - they just don't fully understand it yet.  Really good fantasy stories have a magic system that has a consistency and possible scientific explanation for the magic.  In our world it wouldn't come to pass or make sense but it does in the world you have written.
> 
> When magic in our world receives a rational explanation it becomes less widely called magic but some people do think of it as such.  I mean how many are incredulous that in a world were people are isolating, opening windows, using masks and washing their hands - that colds and flu aren't as virulent.  It doesn't matter that Grandmother born in 1907 and left school at fourteen had enough scientific knowledge to explain why because that's how they combatted most of the plagues in hers and her mother's lifetime.


I have never heard anyone use magic in those terms. You speak of magic as if it is some basic commodity of feeling or ignorance. Why not just call it happiness? Or skill? Do you say to everyone around, "Its magic that pulls me in to things that I want." Do you ever think that maybe people will think you're unusual?
I'm not saying its bad what you're doing. Have whatever perceptive you want. But how bout I share my perspective?
I studied some psychology and things that you're describing like luck, joy, or feelings of miracles are emotions. And based on most psychology research, emotions or all those abstract feelings you call magic are more connected to the unconscious part of you're brain. Unlike your conscious part of your brain which study's and analyzes structures both physical or mental, The unconscious part of your brain just feels. It reacts without you even being aware that its reacting. Heck, that's why they called it the unconsciousness. If people were to have magical powers that don't need any scientific activation, like say a light switch for a channeling an electric current in a lightbulb, and could just be activated on pure emotions. Well, having power that you're not even aware of is bound for disaster. If someone got irrationality angry because a car broke down, the car wouldn't turn on. But If someone got irrationality angry with this magical power, they could destroy a neighborhood in seconds.
But maybe I didn't really get your point because you said something like:


AnyaKimlin said:


> I don't even need to go, watching a TV show with a £4 million supercar can be mesmerising.  I understand how they are built and the work that goes into them but it requires a different knowledge to understand their magic.


What are you talking about? Go where? You know how supercars are built but then it requires different knowledge to understand their skills? That doesn't make sense. Maybe you could help understand your point so I can maybe agree with you more.


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## AnyaKimlin (Jul 21, 2021)

P.K.Acredon said:


> What are you talking about? Go where? You know how supercars are built but then it requires different knowledge to understand their skills? That doesn't make sense. Maybe you could help understand your point so I can maybe agree with you more.



I don't need to go and see one in person to feel the power and the magic of a supercar.  Although in person they are incredible.

Just watching a video of an fighter jet taking off is powerful.  Watching it happen never gets old (it's a sight I have seen many times over the years).

I have a pretty good understanding of how both work, why they work and with the car how to fix them when they go wrong. (I actually know more people aircraft mechanics than I do car mechanics)

However, no matter how much I understand mechanics and engineering watching them work is magic.  It's a moment that takes us out of this world.

Heck just that moment when the small car engine I have spent hours on starts up is incredible. Why didn't it happen the previous times? Sometimes I know and sometimes it's a secret the universe has kept to itself.  There's always that moment when you know it should work but whether or not it does is in the lap of the gods.

There was a famous helicopter crash which was caused by a manual that specified a bolt get fixed in the wrong way.  The magic isn't in the one that crashed, it's in the ones that took off many times over the years and didn't.

Similar things happened with Concorde and the Nimrod.  They'd had decades of "magic" preventing them crashing before one did.


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## Fiberglass Cyborg (Aug 3, 2021)

Charles Stross' "Laundry Files" has an interesting take on this. Magic (well, applied computational demology) is hard to do well. There are relatively few practitioners, and most of them are kept under control by press-ganging them into government agencies. It is possible for programmers and mathematicians to do dangerous magic by accident. Preventing this, or clearing the wreckage from it, is one major responsibility of those agencies. So far, so stable.

However, a complex slow-motion apocalypse is under way. As part of this, it will become much easier for ordinary people to spontaneously work magic without elaborate calculations or any understanding of safety. And the agencies are utterly terrified, both of the likely magical atrocities and of the wave of deaths caused by careless contact with extradimensional demons.


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## Guttersnipe (Aug 5, 2021)

If it were only white/light magic, it wouldn't be as problematic.


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