[2261] There ain't no such thing as magic

[arf]

Gamma's heard this one before.

Edit: anyone care to comment on the double negative?

[imaginaryfriend]

Feb 3, 2020 8:02:37 GMT arf said:

anyone care to comment on the double negative?

Only that I've heard various formulations of "there's no such thing as magic" before also, often in fictional works where the characters were discussing magic and how it works, sometimes as the first thing a noob needs to understand before learning magic. I've heard it irl regarding stage magic and the art of the temple, as well.

[madjack]

It's probably just Zimmy's terrible/typical speech I reckon.

Edit: Also, the 'world being affected by things you can/can't see' bit is reminding me of the strings around Smitty's hands...

[seraphiixiao]

I'm actually curious to know what else Zimmy thinks! Annie is a smart girl, perhaps hearing Zimmy's side of things will give her a new perspective.

[jda]

Well, well, well, seems like Eggs was busy circa 1687...

[Zox Tomana]

I'll comment on the double negative: it's obviously an affirmation of Zimmy's belief that there is no such thing as magic, and that the world does follow rules, explainable or otherwise.

Double negatives are perfectly valid constructions in English as a means of emphasis ON the negative rather than a negation of the same negative (and are used for both purposes), and anyone who goes about saying otherwise is (at best) merely ignorant of the history of the usage of the English language, or (at worst) willfully in denial of such. They go back to Chaucer and are even recorded as being part of English usage by those 18th century prescriptivists who've poisoned English learning with proscriptions against ending sentences with prepositions and split infinitives, although in their record of usage they also recommend against double negatives. They've certainly fallen out of favor and tend to be used in subsets of English (e.g. US Southern, AAVE, and apparently various UK regional subsets), but once you start criticizing regionalisms as being "wrong" you quickly run into problems of why you're favoring the English of one area over another, much less favoring the English of one class or race over another.

[arf]

Well, I asked...

I rather like the expression being exchanged between Annie in panel 2.

[Deleted]

At first glance, Zimmy's argument seems to be on its head; mathematics is neither intuitive nor immanent. If she's not making the exact same point as Kat way back in the workshop ("magic is just what science hasn't explained yet"), then Zimmy seems to be reaching for the classic argument of German irrationalists: that what Annie considers "magic" is the result, governed by the same natural laws, of leaving things deliberately obscure to reason and perception.

I don't see why "magic" cannot mean that, though.

A month ago, I was talking with a friend about whether the concept of "magic" is ill-defined in Gunnerkrigg (specifically, the Ether); at the time, I argued against this, believing that there were ample hints to the workings of the Ether -- I still do; but looking at this dialogue, Zimmy's revelation isn't "working" for me because I've never been shown Annie's own attempts to define "magic" prior to this. I understand that this lack of contemplation is perhaps a prerequisite to working "magic", as Zimmy seems to be hinting on this page. I'd still find "Ether is materialized self-denial of reason" a disappointing premise because, in the end, illusionists aren't impressive because they make you permanently believe that the surface of their tricks is real, but because they make you realize that what you're perceiving cannot be the whole of it: and that their craft is the opposite of leaving themselves in the dark, open to chance and "nature". Even to call it "magic" is a trick.

I don't think it's right to consider Newton a materialist, but I'll ascribe that claim to Zimmy, not the author.

[basser]

Wasn't super expecting flashbacks to my physics degree here but still delighted to see Zimmy faithfully reproducing the standard "theorists vs experimentalists" lecture.

Actually almost word for word what Prof Garcia told us at the beginning of senior particle physics, with the same formula example and everything, which is mildly spooky.

Zimmy's point will presumably be that while the math has its predictive uses it's ultimately just a model devised to permit constructive collaboration and that experimental results which fail to align to mathematically-derived expectation must never be discounted for that reason alone. Because it's our pesky, messy "results" that force the theorists to keep their models in line with reality, and if we'd just let them run amok they'd still be trying to apply perfect circles to planetary motion.

Also of perhaps interesting note here is that the gravity equation pictured says nothing whatsoever about why gravity is or where it came from, it just describes the pattern gravity happens to follow. That big fat G in front is an arbitrary constant slapped in there to make numbers come out right, the two m's are the masses of the objects in question, and the r^2 is down there at the bottom cause we dunno that's just how it do.

Funnily enough several other phenomena also turn out to follow the gravity equation (electric field, radiation, etc) but the r on the bottom (distance) usually changes power for no obvious reason. Theorists freak out about this, experimentalists shrug and memorize which power goes with which phenomenon.

Basically the big secret is that physics doesn't know why anything does the way it do, we just try to put bright fancy hats on reality so's we can all talk about it easier.

[flowsthead]

I would say there are two possible definitions of magic that I am familiar with.

1) To do something that is physically not possible in the real world.

2) To create something from nothing.

Under the first definition, all the Gunnerkrigg Court stuff would absolutely be magic. Under the second, it wouldn't. Anything "magical" done in the comic is done by using the Ether as a source of energy, and it is possible to imagine a universe that has another energy source that can be used to do things that seem like magic.

I guess the question would depend on what the characters of Gunnerkrigg define magic as, since so far this seems like just a game of semantics.

[arf]

I suppose Zimmy is only repeating Coyote's assertion that he doesn't exist.

Alita [catching her first sight of the floating city]: Wow, what's *that*!?
Ido: That is Zalem.
Alita: What holds it up? Magic?
Ido [laughing]: No! Engineering.*

*I am aware of what that engineering might be, but not the specifics for a structure that size, so it might as well be anti-gravity.

[arf]

Feb 3, 2020 9:15:59 GMT basser said:

Also of perhaps interesting note here is that the gravity equation pictured says nothing whatsoever about why gravity is or where it came from, it just describes the pattern gravity happens to follow. That big fat G in front is an arbitrary constant slapped in there to make numbers come out right, the two m's are the masses of the objects in question, and the r^2 is down there at the bottom cause we dunno that's just how it do.

Funnily enough several other phenomena also turn out to follow the gravity equation (electric field, radiation, etc) but the r on the bottom (distance) usually changes power for no obvious reason. Theorists freak out about this, experimentalists shrug and memorize which power goes with which phenomenon.

Basically the big secret is that physics doesn't know why anything does the way it do, we just try to put bright fancy hats on reality so's we can all talk about it easier.

The inverse square law is evidence that the influence of a force is related to spatial geometry (specifically area)

The real mind blower is the infinite potential energy that an inverse square rule implies as you get very close to the centre point (de sauce of de force ;-). Some very fancy mathematical tricks have to be employed to handle those infinities and get some meaningful answers.

Doesn't help that physical space becomes anything but Euclidean at very small scales. Coyote could be a 'Boltzmann Brain'

Still, the best trick is when experimentalists chuck in a Rigg factor to make formulas fit the observations, and then theoreticians describe the causes of that Rigg factor, which then get verified by experiment.

I feel they've still got a ways to go with dark matter, though.

[wies]

This was hard to understand for me. What I am getting from Zimmy so far, is that there are actual rules and explanations for how Ether stuff works, instead of the Etherical Tenet (Stuff just works, okay?). Which could explain why there is surprisingly so much bureaucracy in the Ether. But they will probably be rules we will have a hard time to understand them, because they are not rational. Reminds me of Anthony's fury when Surma died and desparate attempt to at last use the Ether to see Surma again.

The thing I find most intriguing are the second and third panel. Zimmy places a lot on the distinction between things visible and invisible - it returns again in the last panel and likely will be explored further in the next page - but she clarifies that you don't need eyes per se to see. So I wonder what 'seeing' then means to her. Is it akin to conceptualization? Things you are able to comprehend in your mind? I am not sure yet. But I feel this is an important part of what she is saying here.

And most suprising: characters are actually following up things they said!

[migrantworker]

Feb 3, 2020 9:18:47 GMT flowsthead said:

I would say there are two possible definitions of magic that I am familiar with.

1) To do something that is physically not possible in the real world.

2) To create something from nothing.

Under the first definition, all the Gunnerkrigg Court stuff would absolutely be magic. Under the second, it wouldn't. Anything "magical" done in the comic is done by using the Ether as a source of energy, and it is possible to imagine a universe that has another energy source that can be used to do things that seem like magic.

I guess the question would depend on what the characters of Gunnerkrigg define magic as, since so far this seems like just a game of semantics.

There is another definition which I personally favor:

"Magic is an art/practice of causing changes in consciousness in accordance with will."

Magic fitting this definition is actually very common in our world, and almost universally accepted as proven to work - but disguised under a variety of different names. Think ads: designed not to make you go and buy stuff, but to make you want to go and buy stuff. The 'make you want to go' part describes your consciousness being changed to match the wishes of the seller, i.e. magic.

Zimmyingham would kind of match this definition as well, and this comment of hers (last panel) could be read as confirmation if you look at it in juuust the right way. But funnily enough, pretty much all other uses of magic in the comic affect matter directly, and therefore are not in fact magic according to this definition. Could it be science then?

Well, I suppose it could. I mean, ether has been used as a concept in real world science in the past: it used to be 'something that allows light to pass through empty space'. It was obvious that this something exists, because without it we would not see anything in the sky: not the distant stars, not even the Sun or the Moon, nothing at all. But then we discovered the true nature of this something (an electromagnetic field), and this understanding allowed us to develop technologies that make use of the ether - and because electromagnetic field very much does meet the definition of 'something which allows light to pass through empty space', then it is ether whether we happen to call it this way or not. The Court may follow the same line of thinking with regards to Gunnerverse's ether, and etheric beings may already have control of it in the same way that a firefly can produce light without understanding all this electro-watchacallit business (see for example panel 5 here).

[todd]

The discussion reminded me of a scene in a children's fantasy I was writing some years ago (I laid it aside because I couldn't find a publisher for it, and have turned to other projects at present) where one of the characters says she's never liked the word "magic" because it means too many things - everything from stage tricks to "strange abilities in fairy-tales" - and is thus too vague for her tastes.

[csj]

Brummies ain't never got no problems with using none of them double negatives

[pyradonis]

So...This whole argument makes no sense without a proper definition of what magic is supposed to be.

Feb 3, 2020 9:15:59 GMT basser said:

Wasn't super expecting flashbacks to my physics degree here but still delighted to see Zimmy faithfully reproducing the standard "theorists vs experimentalists" lecture.

Actually almost word for word what Prof Garcia told us at the beginning of senior particle physics, with the same formula example and everything, which is mildly spooky. 

Have you ever seen Tom and Prof. Garcia in the same room? Or Newton and one of them? No? Yeah, think about that...

[ctso74]

Feb 3, 2020 9:11:30 GMT @korba said:

I don't think it's right to consider Newton a materialist, but I'll ascribe that claim to Zimmy, not the author.

With his period of alchemical drinking of mercury and lead, Newton was certainly open to experimentation outside of convention. Coincidentally, I believe they even found Antimony in his remains. On the other hand, there may be another "timeline" Annie assassinating scientists, leaving traces of Antimony as her calling card. Clever girl...

Feb 3, 2020 10:23:52 GMT arf said:

I feel they've still got a ways to go with dark matter, though.

I've always preferred the term "dark gravity"(not that anyone cares). We can literally see the effects of gravity, but can't see any mass that's creating it. Saying it comes from "matter" is debatable to me. It probably does, but until someone can find it, we should admit the "dark" refers more to our current knowledge, rather than a still undiscovered particle/mass/other dimension.

[basser]

Feb 3, 2020 14:53:53 GMT ctso74 said:

Saying it comes from "matter" is debatable to me. It probably does, but until someone can find it, we should admit the "dark" refers more to our current knowledge, rather than a still undiscovered particle/mass/other dimension.

That is what the dark term refers to LAUGHING ON LINE, nobody claims to know what it actually is. Not a lot of point just calling it "random gravity what with no clear cause" on account of that's exactly what it is already and we'd all be out of jobs if we quit looking for the causes of stuff like unexpected gravity.

[shaihulud]

Feb 3, 2020 14:53:53 GMT ctso74 said:

Feb 3, 2020 9:11:30 GMT @korba said:

I don't think it's right to consider Newton a materialist, but I'll ascribe that claim to Zimmy, not the author.

With his period of alchemical drinking of mercury and lead, Newton was certainly open to experimentation outside of convention. Coincidentally, I believe they even found Antimony in his remains. On the other hand, there may be another "timeline" Annie assassinating scientists, leaving traces of Antimony as her calling card. Clever girl... 

Antimony was considered an important part of renaissance alchemy, which Newton practiced. He was actually pretty obsessed with the stuff.

webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/reference/chemProd.do

www.levity.com/alchemy/markh_1.html

[fia]

Feb 3, 2020 9:15:59 GMT basser said:

Wasn't super expecting flashbacks to my physics degree here but still delighted to see Zimmy faithfully reproducing the standard "theorists vs experimentalists" lecture.

Actually almost word for word what Prof Garcia told us at the beginning of senior particle physics, with the same formula example and everything, which is mildly spooky.

Zimmy's point will presumably be that while the math has its predictive uses it's ultimately just a model devised to permit constructive collaboration and that experimental results which fail to align to mathematically-derived expectation must never be discounted for that reason alone. Because it's our pesky, messy "results" that force the theorists to keep their models in line with reality, and if we'd just let them run amok they'd still be trying to apply perfect circles to planetary motion.

Also of perhaps interesting note here is that the gravity equation pictured says nothing whatsoever about why gravity is or where it came from, it just describes the pattern gravity happens to follow. That big fat G in front is an arbitrary constant slapped in there to make numbers come out right, the two m's are the masses of the objects in question, and the r^2 is down there at the bottom cause we dunno that's just how it do.

Funnily enough several other phenomena also turn out to follow the gravity equation (electric field, radiation, etc) but the r on the bottom (distance) usually changes power for no obvious reason. Theorists freak out about this, experimentalists shrug and memorize which power goes with which phenomenon.

Basically the big secret is that physics doesn't know why anything does the way it do, we just try to put bright fancy hats on reality so's we can all talk about it easier.

As a philosopher, I want to send you a big loving heart cookie, because sometimes we get talked down to by famous physicists as if we're full of shit......... but I think you just gave a really good argument why doing philosophy is the best we have to show why doing things the physics way mostly makes sense but is still something we have to keep working on in order to get a full explanation with justification in the right place(s).

[arf]

Thinking about Zimmy's assertion that Kat* and the Court only believe what they 'see' (understand), spend their time trying to convert what they can't see into something they can (formulae), and ignore whatever they can't do that to.
That's not how scientific method operates. It admits to when something isn't understood. More importantly, it admits to when existing theories are proven wrong.

* Why doesn't Zimmy know Kat's name? Ah! She is a bit freaked out by mechangel Kat.

[mturtle7]

I checked the site today hoping for some really off-beat fresh new perspectives from Zimmy, and I WAS NOT DISAPPOINTED. Man. It clearly makes so much sense to her, but it's just so completely different from how normal people think about "magic vs. science" that it becomes just really, really difficult to wrap my head around.

For those scientists and philosophers among us, I might suggest you think of Zimmy's conception of "stuff you can see" as something along the lines of "stuff you can empirically verify". As in, an apple falls on some guy's head, and that's something he can verify, since he can see it, hear it, feel it, etc. But what made the apple fall on his head? Nobody was carrying it, or throwing it - he simply has no way of gathering information about that invisible force. Or does he? Turns out, he does! He can just go to the library and check out a book all about Newtonian physics, which will give him lots of clearly visible info about it which was gathered & logically deduced on the basis of empirical evidence. How nice for him. But let's say, instead of an apple falling on his head, some guy suffers a series of improbable tragedies: his wife dies in a car crash, his friend dies in a house fire, and he loses his job due to layovers - all on the same day. Now, if he were a truly, purely, scientific guy, he would be forced to admit that it was "just random chance" that made all this happen. There is no empirical evidence for a singular structure which governs the exact pattern of tragedies that happened to him, so science tells him none whatsoever exist. However, if he believed in magic...

[okay, so Zimmy hasn't actually finished her explanation yet, but this is my speculation about how she might think of it] if he believed in magic, he might believe there is a singular force that caused all this suffering. Even if absolutely nobody in the past, present, or future could empirically verify anything about this force, he knows for sure that it must exist in this world, and furthermore, he can produce all sorts of information about it. Oh, he can tell you all about the gods, or demons, or witches, or whatever he thinks it is that has it out for him. It's actually kind of eerily similar to Coyote's Great Secret - note how both Zimmy and Coyote place a lot of importance on what people can "see", in a metaphysical sense. And both of them, I think, have a lot of scorn for what people think of as "magic". To Zimmy, this guy who thinks he understands the "maaaaaagical" force that made him suffer that day is full of c**p. Stuff just happens, and maybe, just maybe, there is a singular force behind it; that still doesn't give you the right to call it "magic" as if you're suddenly an expert on its particular way of existing. Whatever it is, it's obviously not showing itself to you or giving any details about it, so maybe just give it some space and hope it doesn't try to f**k with you again.

[fia]

Feb 3, 2020 10:55:12 GMT wies said:

This was hard to understand for me. What I am getting from Zimmy so far, is that there are actual rules and explanations for how Ether stuff works, instead of the Etherical Tenet (Stuff just works, okay?). Which could explain why there is surprisingly so much bureaucracy in the Ether. But they will probably be rules we will have a hard time to understand them, because they are not rational. Reminds me of Anthony's fury when Surma died and desparate attempt to at last use the Ether to see Surma again.

The thing I find most intriguing are the second and third panel. Zimmy places a lot on the distinction between things visible and invisible - it returns again in the last panel and likely will be explored further in the next page - but she clarifies that you don't need eyes per se to see. So I wonder what 'seeing' then means to her. Is it akin to conceptualization? Things you are able to comprehend in your mind? I am not sure yet. But I feel this is an important part of what she is saying here.

And most suprising: characters are actually following up things they said!

I don't know that you need rules in order for there to be explanations. Perhaps that's one mistake Zimmy is ascribing to the empiricists like Newton. On the other hand Antimony's mistake is broader than this, in thinking that just because you can't observe it, it means you can't explain it. As another Gunner mentioned above, mathematics doesn't need to be observed, exactly, to be true or to be useful in explanation. Those are all rule-based forms of a rationalist explanation, though.

There are still open possibilities for what Zimmy might mean. Perhaps she knows they cannot instrumentally 'observe' some of the things she herself can perceive or know (since she seems to experience things others do not); or perhaps she thinks that there is no inherent order in the universe, that perhaps it is chaos or randomness all the way down and observability or unexplainability are neither quite right. That is, you could have causality without having comprehensible probabilities or causalities.

It might be a straight up methodological criticism though. "Posit only that which you can observe or confirm by observation," she is correct to say, as again another Gunner mentioned above re: experimentalists, is not going to get you very far when you're trying to come up with the theory of the world, particularly when you don't have a sense yet of what you can't see. You'll end up being kind of dumb half of the time.

[fia]

Feb 3, 2020 21:18:43 GMT arf said:

Thinking about Zimmy's assertion that Kat* and the Court only believe what they 'see' (understand), spend their time trying to convert what they can't see into something they can (formulae), and ignore whatever they can't do that to.
That's not how scientific method operates. It admits to when something isn't understand. More importantly, it admits to when existing theories are proven wrong.

* Why doesn't Zimmy know Kat's name? Ah! She is a bit freaked out by mechangel Kat.

In Tom's quite blunt visual depiction of it, though, Kat's perspective seems a bit reductive. She herself says, "man why don't I ever get to see the cool stuff".

On the other hand, it's possible Annie is possibly over-exaggerating reality. It may be in a way affected not directly by how she sees Kat, but perhaps how others (like the robots) see Kat, and that may be etherically influencing her perception due to her etheric sensitivity (which Paz also has a bit of it seems), the way that the collective social consciousness or ideology might be thought to impact individuals, even if they didn't come up with it themselves.


Theory: maybe Zimmy knows that all this psychological stuff is a force in the universe, but it can't be 'directly observed', because it is the act of observation itself that distorts? Maybe that's one of the things that make humans see in 'stale symbols', i.e., language that they need to develop in common for communication purposes, but which might pre-prepare them for certain kinds of observations?
Wouldn't surprise me as a viewpoint of a comic that wants to investigate perspectival disagreement.
I admit, though, it's less world-changing than it sounds, if it is true.

[pyradonis]

Feb 3, 2020 21:18:43 GMT arf said:

* Why doesn't Zimmy know Kat's name? Ah! She is a bit freaked out by mechangel Kat.

What makes you think Zimmy does not know Kat's name?

[Deleted]

She knows Kat's surname at least (somewhere in Dobranoc, Gamma, "it was decent of Donlan to bring over this stuff [...]").

[madjack]

First we find Kat.

[arf]

Feb 3, 2020 23:27:14 GMT pyradonis said:

Feb 3, 2020 21:18:43 GMT arf said:

* Why doesn't Zimmy know Kat's name? Ah! She is a bit freaked out by mechangel Kat.

What makes you think Zimmy does not know Kat's name?

She simply seems reluctant to use it, opting for 'your friend' instead. (She may be referring to someone else, but I'm not sure who. Jack?)

[saardvark]

Feb 3, 2020 22:52:08 GMT fia said:

Theory: maybe Zimmy knows that all this psychological stuff is a force in the universe, but it can't be 'directly observed', because it is the act of observation itself that distorts?

That starts to sound like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which arises from the fact that on the quantum level, observing something cant help but change it.  To see something, you have to bounce something (photon of light, or an electron, or some such) off of it, and then detect what you've bounced, but this process also imparts energy to the observed, changing it.  Certain "measurable quantities" are paired, such that you cant precisely know both at the same time.  By pinpointing precisely where something is, you necessarily lose information on how fast it is going, for example.  Physics can get very philosophical at the quantum level.....