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Post by Inugami on Feb 27, 2009 17:19:45 GMT
Magic is a symbolic lexicon and accompanying grammar system utilized by an entity by procedural means to interface with and command a closed-source engine that generates or manipulates the environment in which said entity exists. If said engine is self-aware, the interface is prayer, and the body of knowledge is religion, which is a subset of the category of magical frameworks. Alternatively, the body of knowledge is "relationship." Prayer remains the interface, but it is not about offering the Source anything for something in return. Afterall, if the Source is closed and self-contained, then all of the environment is subject to the Source. Offering anything of environment (such as livestock or wealth) is offering what the Source already owns. So, the Source instead responds to the requests of those whom live in closer relationships with the Source. One who prays from within a relationship will ask for what the Source is happy to give and entrust to the asker. In this sense, prayer is not entering a contract with a cosmic merchant, but tagging on Dad's pant leg and asking for a piggyback ride. Asking for a puppy of course does not result in a puppy until the Source is confident the requester is ready for such a result. It is far more likely to result in various trials and challenges. Why would a request for something desired result in trials? To prepare one for receiving the puppy. The Source wants to give it, so it will help the asker reach the point that the Source will give it. Thus, another twist on "Be Careful What You Wish For." Sometimes you get it and you didn't want it after all. Other times, you have to fight for it, so you should be prepared to fight.
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Post by djublonskopf on Feb 27, 2009 17:50:46 GMT
Warrl and Imaginaryfriend, you both make good points. I hadn't considered the "rare" magic aspect. It makes sense though . . . a universe where every data point makes this nice neat line except for that one magical thing that ruins it all . . . and scientists wonder at it, puzzle over it, get frustrated and bury it outside, and all agree to never speak of it again. Ha! And you're right, Imaginaryfriend, that conservation of mass is held to, but not necessarily conservation of energy. Imagine this scenario . . . . . . Anja is sitting some distance above a flywheel, holding the blinker stone "B". B Anja ----
v v | v \ | / \ | / v------o------v / | \ / | \ v | v v Now Anja drops the blinker stone: Anja ----
v v | v \ | / B \ | / v------o------v / | \ / | \ v | v v The blinker stone catches on the flywheel and starts it spinning: Anja ----
v v | v \ | / \ | / v------o------v / | \ B / | \ v | v v Anja *blinks* it back into her hand: B Anja ----
v v | v \ | / \ | / v------o------v / | \ * / | \ v | v v The flywheel's still going to be spinning, just because of its own rotational inertia . . . but now she can let go of the blinker stone again and get the flywheel spinning even faster. And faster. And faster. And faster. Because she's not doing the work of lifting the blinker stone back up (which is usually the case, and why this can't be used for free energy in OUR universe), she's getting free energy out of the system. The Court could gain infinite "real" energy from etheric technology, if this is really how it works . . ..
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Post by warrl on Feb 27, 2009 23:40:30 GMT
Warrl and Imaginaryfriend, you both make good points. I hadn't considered the "rare" magic aspect. It makes sense though . . . a universe where every data point makes this nice neat line except for that one magical thing that ruins it all . . . and scientists wonder at it, puzzle over it, get frustrated and bury it outside, and all agree to never speak of it again. Dang I wish I had thought to describe it that way! That's EXACTLY what I was trying to say! (And it fits the way Anja described the Court's reaction to her computer, among other things.)
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Feb 28, 2009 1:34:33 GMT
The flywheel's still going to be spinning, just because of its own rotational inertia . . . but now she can let go of the blinker stone again and get the flywheel spinning even faster. And faster. And faster. And faster. Because she's not doing the work of lifting the blinker stone back up (which is usually the case, and why this can't be used for free energy in OUR universe), she's getting free energy out of the system. The Court could gain infinite "real" energy from etheric technology, if this is really how it works . . .. Mass/energy conservation is a pretty durable theory. I can uphold it here in the GC universe by describing the blinker stone's power as an energy gain from increased efficiency. Here we see that all humans radiate those energy waves but for those who can't use blinker stones they're wasted, presumably dissipated into the macro environment with no noticeable effect. Think about a internal-combustion car engine. Running normally it produces a lot of waste heat and exhaust, and during breaking there's additional heat and material loss from the break pads. Magnets recharge the battery from the motion of the engine as it runs. The radiator dissipates the engine's waste heat harmlessly. We can recapture some of the force of the exhaust with a turbine or or in better cars by harnessing breaking energy that would otherwise go to the break pads but it's not free. We can also run a coffee-pot from the cigarette lighter but the energy isn't free either, it's being drawn from a larger system in a way that we don't notice the cost. That small amount of energy from such a large and wasteful system goes unnoticed. Increase the drain and you'll be able to see the effect. In some older cars you'll see a noticeable power loss on hills when you have the A/C cranked up. In a lot of fantasy systems people throw around a lot of magic with no noticeable costs, but in the better ones there's always some effect somewhere down the road. In Terry Brooks' books large uses of magic tends to sicken the land around it, for example. So, in your example, I speculate that Anja would get tired after retrieving the blinker stone a number of times. She also can't think or do anything but concentrate while retrieving the blinker stone which is an opportunity cost. Not to nitpick your example, but even if the surface of the flywheel catches the blinker stone perfectly (no matter how fast its rotating it never deflects it in a way that it loses energy) and is mag-lev and in vacuum to lose no energy to friction (poor Anja) the mechanical energy that could be harvested for other uses from the flywheel would top out pretty quickly as it can never rotate faster than the blinker stone hits on the portion of the wheel it falls on. If you propose a gigantic wheel with the blinker stone hitting the very edge to try to overcome these problems, then you face the initial inertia. The blinker stone cannot hit hard enough the first time to start the wheel spinning.
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ceallaso
New Member
Starkle, starkle little twink... Now it's time that you guys SINK!!
Posts: 29
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Post by ceallaso on Feb 28, 2009 4:27:29 GMT
In a lot of fantasy systems people throw around a lot of magic with no noticeable costs, but in the better ones there's always some effect somewhere down the road. In Terry Brook's books large uses of magic tends to sicken the land around it, for example. I've always felt this way about the whole thing. It became a problem for me in my project when the idea of magic came up (since, of course, I am a huge fantasy fan), and I've put a lot of thought into it. In the end, I decided that "magic" for this world is the end result of the people's natural ability to tap into a "source," which is essentially pure energy. Their mind converts the energy into whatever is needed (exactly how is different from person to person, dependent upon their beliefs) and it is released. The leftover energy then dissipates and is reabsorbed by the world, to be used over again. At the same time, the "place" where this magical energy comes from is self-producing, but at a slow rate. Going further, the amount of magic regenerated at a time moves in cycles, similar to the waxing and waning of the moon. So at some times there will be a lot of magic, and at others there will be almost none. One of the big themes that comes up is the danger inherent in improper or overuse of magic, and how these dangers affect people and the world around them. In a particular case, a certain group learns to directly harness the "pure" energy, which is highly unstable and mostly unpredictable. The weapons made using this method are highly effective, sure, but that's like saying a nuke is highly effective; you can kill a lot of people, but in the end you'll be hurting everyone, including yourself.
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Post by warrl on Feb 28, 2009 8:43:59 GMT
It became a problem for me in my project when the idea of magic came up (since, of course, I am a huge fantasy fan), and I've put a lot of thought into it. In the end, I decided that "magic" for this world is the end result of the people's natural ability to tap into a "source," which is essentially pure energy. Their mind converts the energy into whatever is needed (exactly how is different from person to person, dependent upon their beliefs) and it is released. The leftover energy then dissipates and is reabsorbed by the world, to be used over again. At the same time, the "place" where this magical energy comes from is self-producing, but at a slow rate. Going further, the amount of magic regenerated at a time moves in cycles, similar to the waxing and waning of the moon. So at some times there will be a lot of magic, and at others there will be almost none. You might enjoy a couple of Larry Niven books, "The Magic Goes Away" and "The Magic May Return". They are somewhat along these lines.
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Post by spritznar on Feb 28, 2009 9:39:10 GMT
so this is sort of tangential to the topic, but as i was looking at this thread i couldn't escape an inevitable thought - which may appear simple at face value, but languange is such a complex organism that i felt it worth pondering.
define science
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Feb 28, 2009 13:52:34 GMT
That's much easier than defining magic. Wiki has a pretty good write-up on science though I did notice that if you skip sections and don't read the whole article you can come away with a bit of a slanted view, as is sometimes the case with Wiki. I'd summarize it like this: Science is a collective effort to gather and advance a reliable body of (human) knowledge. I think the most important thing for this discussion is that science is not antithetical to magic. There's a lot of works out there that paint this as the necessary case, but I think this resulted from a cultural schism between dogmatic religion(s) and secular materialism that's been fought over the last few centuries. On the other hand, science can be viewed as incompatible with the ethereal tenet. While a duality between these two concepts is a main theme in GC there have been examples that demonstrate beings do not have to adhere strictly to one ideology or other, such as Reynard picking locks and the Donlans casting spells.
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Post by warrl on Feb 28, 2009 17:59:03 GMT
so this is sort of tangential to the topic, but as i was looking at this thread i couldn't escape an inevitable thought - which may appear simple at face value, but languange is such a complex organism that i felt it worth pondering. define science Science is well-defined. It's an answer to the fundamental question of epistemology: how do you know something? In science, a theory - to be taken seriously - must have several attributes: 1) It must explain all previously known and relevant data. (This is why the scientists would form a tacit agreeement to bury blinkerstones and never talk about them again.) 2) It must have testable predictive value. There must be some way in which it leads to forecasts of data not known, that differ from the forecasts made by the "conventional wisdom", and it must be possible to actually test some of those forecasts. 3) Its tests must be repeatable. The test can be done by different people, selected at random from those competent to do it, and get the same result - unless the definition of the test includes a way of measuring people to see which ones can do it. (In backward-looking sciences - paleontology for example - this gets defined somewhat differently.) The scientists of the Court would probably love to find a way *that does not involve the use of blinkerstones or etheric technology* to determine who can use blinkerstones. Even if the test is not practical because it's so vastly much easier to just have people TRY using a blinkerstone. But right now they have no idea, so anything involving blinkerstones is not repeatable by this standard. When they can accurately say "Mr. Donlan can't use a blinkerstone because he doesn't have X as measured by this test" then it's a big step closer to being repeatable, even if they are still scratching their heads over why X matters.
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Post by fatexx544 on Mar 1, 2009 3:32:34 GMT
I will go ahead and post my view of magic, which stems directly from the computer related term:
Magic is an unknown process that works.
I computer world the phrases "magic" and "dark magic" refer to programs that *work*, even though it appears that they shouldn't, or to computer programs that don't even though it appears that they should. Not used as much anymore because most computer programs do exactly what they are supposed to (the ultimate goal of a computer), but there are still many cases when this applies.
For example, I once wrote a script that used two programs. Program 1 read a file and gave it to Program 2, which modified it and saved the result. Every so often Program 2 returned a completely blank file, for no reason I could (or can) figure out. That is magic (or unmagic, because it doesn't work).
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Mar 5, 2009 6:34:46 GMT
That reminds me of a case I read about back in the early days of computing, when dumb terminals still roamed the earth. There was a bank branch office that backed up its transaction records to some remote server a number of times per day over dialup. After a while they upgraded to a better and more secure server at a different phone number.
After the change-over was successful the old number was eventually reassigned. Some poor housewife got it and was harassed many times per day by mysterious phone calls. Eventually it was traced back to the bank branch computer which was discovered to have always dialed the old number for its server before the new one. Supposedly they found and deleted a hidden reference (security safeguard?) to the old number and tore the programs apart looking for more. They spent months looking but they never found any. The bank branch computer unfailingly dialed the woman's phone number before making its regularly-scheduled contact with the server, no matter what. No matter what they tried it never stopped. The woman sued the bank and collected damages for harassment because of the ceaseless phone calls, and eventually got a new phone number (this was back in the days when this sort of thing wasn't easy).
Maybe it was all the result of another hidden security feature of that old machine that they couldn't find, maybe not. Whichever it was, remembering got me thinking about how well the concept of magic has kept up with technology changes over time. In fact magic has always been right there with humanity through the ages, so I wondered if maybe the reason magic is hard to define is because the two are tied together somehow.
What exactly human means is also very difficult to define. Maybe we can avoid getting bogged down in it, and also skirt defining magic as being socially-defined or relative, by including "human" in our definition. How about we drop "secret" from the definition I've been working and replacing it with something like, "beyond abstract reasoning, introspection, or human problem solving?"
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ding
Full Member
Posts: 129
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Post by ding on Mar 11, 2009 23:36:30 GMT
Prayer remains the interface, but it is not about offering the Source anything for something in return. Afterall, if the Source is closed and self-contained, then all of the environment is subject to the Source. Offering anything of environment (such as livestock or wealth) is offering what the Source already owns. Nice work, there. I'd suspect the methods for successfully ingratiating oneself with an omnipotent, all-knowing, self-aware engine would depend on its unique disposition. A Deuteronomic self-aware engine would micro-manage entities, monitoring their compliance with tolerances that, when broken in the smallest degree, incur wrath for not only for the offending entity, but its class as well. Kind of like iPhone OS. And others just don't pick up the phone: <?php class PiousJew { function Job($tribulation){ if($tribulation == 0) { offerSacrifice('YHWH'); $response = apache_getenv("VOX_DEI"); echo "God:" . $response;
}elseif ($tribulation == 1){ suffer(); offerSacrifice('YHWH'); $response = apache_getenv("VOX_DEI"); echo "God:" . $response;
}
} }
$tribulation = 1; Job($tribulation);
?>
God: NULL
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chris
New Member
it's a metaphor
Posts: 23
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Post by chris on Mar 11, 2009 23:52:54 GMT
a trading card game where you role play as a wizard and do battle with other players in duels
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Mar 12, 2009 11:05:33 GMT
a trading card game where you role play as a wizard and do battle with other players in duels You're thinking of Magic: The Gathering (of as much money as possible).
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