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SFGirl
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Magic in the "Real World"
How do you think it would affect our "real world" if suddenly some people had magical abilities?
I'm thinking about this question for my 2006 NaNo and I'm interested in what anyone else thinks about it.
Sherry
---
Reading: Scardown by Elizabeth Bear
Writing: The Seventh Crow
Editing: One's Aspect to The Sun
Drawing: Gargoyle
Listening: Decoder Ring Theatre (www.decoderringtheater.com)
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10/23/2006, 9:04 pm
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thepinksuicidallemming
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
I think people would be scared of the magic users and want to "cure" them, probably seeing them as unclean (think XMen).
I'll continue to answer with a whole bunch of questions:
What sort of people are getting these powers? Are these middle-aged people, who have already built up their own values-system? If so how would they use it to further their cause?
What about religious beliefs? Would the magic-users start 'converting' people to their value system?
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Sentio aliquos togatos contra me conspirare.
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10/23/2006, 11:58 pm
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Firlefanz
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
I believe some would be scared, others would be excited or even envious. Some might start a new religion, or whatever. It would certainly influence society.
Pink's X-Men example is probably pretty valid - after all, it covers a similar scenario.
Hmmm. Interesting.
--- - Firlefanz
Reading: "The Golem's Eye" by J. Stroud
Writing: Rewrite of the Unicorn Girl YA novel
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10/24/2006, 6:31 am
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SFGirl
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
The way I'm envisioning it, it's the result of an external stimulus that affects Earth and everyone on it for a brief time initially. The effects are lasting, however. At the time, many people develop minor abilities, but a few are more powerful. It cuts across race, age, and geographical lines. It later shows up in people born after the initial event. It's a change in the human race, not just one generation. So yes, maybe X-Men-ish, but more prevalent in the wider population in minor powers and abilities. I think this would make the "acceptance" level different from an X-Men scenario. Also everyone will know what the cause is.
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Writing: The Seventh Crow
Editing: One's Aspect to The Sun
Drawing: Gargoyle
Listening: Decoder Ring Theatre (www.decoderringtheater.com)
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10/24/2006, 10:49 am
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Jondra
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
Facinating idea. Have you read Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Series? There is magic in the real world but only a few people know about it. I like your idea. I'd read it.
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10/26/2006, 3:54 am
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Phaetova
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
I still remember a day when my youngest son (not yet the moody teenager he is now) asked me if there could possibly be real magic in the world. He had gotten seriously into sword and sorcery (and never did leave) and I think he wanted to be a wizard. I told him that I wasn't sure but it seemed likely that the magic in our world was in the form of scientific discovery.
I really hated saying that. 
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10/27/2006, 5:33 pm
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QS2
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
I have my doubts if non scientific magic would have been any easier to learn though. Some how or the other you have to keep a handle on what you are doing afterall. 
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10/29/2006, 2:01 am
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BardNoir
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
In all honesty, it comes down to what you simply believe or have faith in.
Personally, I love seeing that science starts to uncover truths about the Natural World that validate what Sages and Healers have known for thousands of years.
Did you know they’ve just discovered that Vitamin K spikes 300% on the third day of a male newborns life outside of the womb? This is a phenomenon does NOT take place in females and science can’t explain why. Vitamin K is a blood clotting agent and that’s as far as they get. It just so happens that over 2,000 years ago a Jewish Rabi only performed a circumcision when the male child was 3 exactly days old.
The Chinese have believed, for the last 6,000 years that there is an energy field on Earth that can affect the body and just now science has realized that certain cellular structures in your body will actually line up to point South regardless of you physical orientation.
They’ve even done studies to prove that cancer can be cured by a placebo… so clearly it doesn’t matter where you put you faith, so long as you have it in the first place.
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10/29/2006, 4:00 am
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Blitzen
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
I already believe magic exists, but that's just me.
I think people wouldn't believe magic existed. If someone suddenly started using magic, people wouldn't go wow, its magic, they'd say whoa, what a cool trick - I wonder where he hid the pulley?
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11/2/2006, 9:06 pm
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Michael58
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
quote:
Blitzen wrote:
If someone suddenly started using magic, people wouldn't go wow, its magic, they'd say whoa, what a cool trick - I wonder where he hid the pulley?
Haha! You're probably right ...
I believe in magic too. Science still doesn't explain everything; and what it does explain still sounds very much like a magical system to me. What's the real difference between magic and science? With science, we're pretty much documenting the rules of how the magic works as we understand it, then teaching the basics of it to everyone (instead of keeping all of it secret).
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9/30/2007, 4:50 am
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Reythia
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
quote:
Michael58 wrote:
I believe in magic too. Science still doesn't explain everything; and what it does explain still sounds very much like a magical system to me. What's the real difference between magic and science? With science, we're pretty much documenting the rules of how the magic works as we understand it, then teaching the basics of it to everyone (instead of keeping all of it secret).
Science is a way of documenting how our world works, such that we can make predictions about what will happen tomorrow. Science doesn't "make" things happen -- for example, having written down Newton's theory of gravitation doesn't MAKE the apple fall from the tree to the earth. Instead, it just states that every OTHER apple that has fallen has gone down (rather than up), so we should expect the next apple to do the same. Mathematics is used to quantify more exactly how fast, how far, and how likely that apple is to fall, but again, it doesn't MAKE the apple do anything.
Magic (as it is customarily defined) is different. Magic makes things happen. Magic would point at that tree and say, "Apple! Fall!" In that sense, magic is more comparable with technology (ie: an apple picker) than science.
For the record, while I enjoy reading (and writing) about magic, I see it as implausible in our real world. Things that LOOK magical usually turn out to simply be something that we only saw part of, or something we don't understand well enough yet.
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10/2/2007, 4:52 pm
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QS2
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
Sensing other peoples emotions is a part of the brains neuron mirror cells.
The long healing I have no explanation of, but oftently in these cases they showed it to be related to the power of suggestion. Or other things like that. People have a bad habit to also correlate anything that seems to succeed as, 'it works!' even if actually didn't. This is a quite long lasting problem in science as well.
Other then that, science is when you make magic not magic, right?
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10/2/2007, 8:09 pm
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Firlefanz
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
quote:
QS2 wrote:
Other then that, science is when you make magic not magic, right?
Yep! 
Well, with the emotions - that was very strange. I'm doing a class with "family constellations". In this case, the teacher presented us with a very reduced situation: a person, a problem, and a goal. We didn't get names (of course not, that's protection of privacy), details or anything else.
I ended up "representing" the person. We tried to find a way so that the person could reach the goal without the problem remaining a problem.
After some back and forth movements (we were working in a room using our positions and checking what we felt at every spot), the teacher asked "the problem" who she felt like. She looked surprised and said: "the father".
I then faced "the problem" aka "my father" and looked her straight in the eye - and felt profound sadness. It was so strong that I cried, I couldn't help myself. Soon afterwards, we found a solution, the details of which don't matter.
Then our teacher revealed that indeed the person I had represented at that moment had had a huge problem with their father and had indeed cried when put into the same position.
How the heck could that happen? I have a good relationship with my father, even though it's a little distant. There is no need for any sadness where I'm concerned. So, those were not my emotions, but the person feeling them was neither present nor aware of this happening.
So far, there are no good explanations for this, I find. And thus, such experiences are rather ... strange.
--- - Firlefanz
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10/2/2007, 8:22 pm
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QS2
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
If I had to guess, then one you started internalizing the person you were representing as yourself and that your mirror neurons got confused. They usually serve to allow you to be able to discern what comes from you or what you imagine another's problem might be. (Wether you know that person has problems or not won't stop you from imagining things
I'm unsure you actually knew the situation, if you didn't, then maybe by chance you made a correct guess, based on perhaps that cases that are brought up usually aren't totally innocent in the first place. Otherwise you might well have had some knowledge to build it up on already as well.
I can imagine it is a bit disconcerting though when you start feeling things you don't usually feel in such ways)
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10/2/2007, 8:47 pm
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Reythia
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
quote:
QS2 wrote:
People have a bad habit to also correlate anything that seems to succeed as, 'it works!' even if actually didn't. This is a quite long lasting problem in science as well.
This is the main reason I'm skeptical about "magical" occurances in real life. Often things happen that seem "miraculous", but which are really just fortuitous random events, uncaused by any of our direct actions.
Let's use Firle's example of healing a friend or relative over long distance. Now, I don't know what Firle did or experienced, so I'm going to make up a purely hypothetical example (but one similar to other stories I've heard in the past). Here goes:
Let's say someone you know is hurt or ill, but you're too far away to do anything except talk to them on the phone, maybe. Certainly you're too far away to do anything direct. So you pray for them, or wish hard, or send them optimistic messages over the phone, or whatever. Maybe you even focus all your thoughts on the idea of healing your friend. Then -- miraculously! -- your friend gets better.
Did you just do magic? Well, I can't PROVE that you didn't. But if you want to convince me, then you'll need to do more work. After all, something that happens once could just be a coincidence.
Now, here's where a lot of people make a mistake. For their scientific proof, they start making a journal listing each time they successfully healed someone by prayer or conscious thought. After several years, they may have documented tens or even hundreds of cases, which they then cite as hard evidence.
The flaw in this plan is that usually these people don't list the opposite hypothesis: that they are having no effect on the patient, who is getting better by himself. To test this, the potential mind-healer would have to list ALL the people he tried to heal and then tally up how many did get better (success!) and how many didn't (failure!). Everytime I've seen this sort of test done, the results are notably less impressive than when you just state how many times you've been right.
This isn't to say that praying for or thinking of someone might not help them. Just that you'll need repeated evidence to convince me it wasn't just a fluke or a property of statistics.
Also, I don't have the article on me, but just last week there was something published about a scientific test on how well acupunture truly works for people in pain. The researchers showed that acupuncture DID work better than western medicine. BUT they also showed that "placebo acupuncture" -- where the needles are put in the wrong areas and not rotated -- worked almost as well as real acupuncture!! Which raised the question: is it the acupuncture that's helping these people, or their belief that acupuncture is working that's helping them?
So similarly, I can accept the idea that talking to someone who is sick or hurt and encouraging them could certainly help their healing, even over long distance. But I see that as persuasion, not magic.
--- -- YAR! |
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10/2/2007, 9:09 pm
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QS2
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
So to get back to topic, how would magic effect things in the real world. Where by we take magic as known in fantasy.
I guess it could have big effects then, something that sometimes is brought up in such cases in stories is psyonics and even in relatively mild versions the writers can easily show how it could change quite a lot. Still, to have an educated guess, I guess you would really need to know what exactly has been added magically seen.
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10/2/2007, 11:05 pm
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Michael58
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
quote:
Reythia wrote:
Science is a way of documenting how our world works, such that we can make predictions about what will happen tomorrow. Science doesn't "make" things happen -- for example, having written down Newton's theory of gravitation doesn't MAKE the apple fall from the tree to the earth. Instead, it just states that every OTHER apple that has fallen has gone down (rather than up), so we should expect the next apple to do the same. Mathematics is used to quantify more exactly how fast, how far, and how likely that apple is to fall, but again, it doesn't MAKE the apple do anything.
Magic (as it is customarily defined) is different. Magic makes things happen. Magic would point at that tree and say, "Apple! Fall!" In that sense, magic is more comparable with technology (ie: an apple picker) than science.
For the record, while I enjoy reading (and writing) about magic, I see it as implausible in our real world. Things that LOOK magical usually turn out to simply be something that we only saw part of, or something we don't understand well enough yet.
Yes, in that sense I'd say that magic is more like technology. Still, as I perceive it, even with magic you must know the principle of something; you must know how it works. Once you know it, then you can make something happen, such as sending signals through wires or air, making a gun go off, etc.
I suppose I'm not going by the traditional definition of magic, however. (Sigh).
Of course people would be afraid if they saw magic at work. It's human nature. And it probably wouldn't matter if the "magic" were used to help people. Historically, it was always those most beneficial to community that were persecuted as witches.
It would be nice if we've grown beyond that kind of reaction...
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10/2/2007, 11:27 pm
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David Meadows
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
quote:
Reythia wrote:
The flaw in this plan is that usually these people don't list the opposite hypothesis: that they are having no effect on the patient, who is getting better by himself. To test this, the potential mind-healer would have to list ALL the people he tried to heal and then tally up how many did get better (success!) and how many didn't (failure!).
It's worse than that... you also have to keep a journal of all the people you DIDN'T try to heal and see how many of those did and didn't get better!
---
"By tragic historical coincidence a period of abysmal under-educating in literacy has coincided with this unexpected explosion of global self publishing."
-- Lynne Truss
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10/3/2007, 7:55 am
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David Meadows
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
My general rule is that if it breaks the Laws of Thermodynamics, it's magic.
In a "real" world, there are certain things that must be true: conservation of energy, laws of elctromagnetism, speed of light as an absolute limit, etc.
As soon as you create a fireball out of nothing, you're doing magic. You can dress it up with rules and laws and pretend it's therefore "a different kind of science", but it isn't compatible with our science. It isn't "science we haven't discovered yet", it's science that can not co-exist with real science. Break the First Law of Thermodynamics and you're no longer writing about our universe. You're writing about a fantasy universe.
This is a non-negotiable point of view 
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-- Lynne Truss
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10/3/2007, 8:43 am
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Blitzen
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
Reythia, so far you've not offered proof that magic doesn't work, either. Science only measures, right, but it could be measuring magic.
David, you'd need a list of all the other people who may or may not have tried to heal people you either tried or didn't try to heal, and what the results were, and this is all going to get very silly in a moment.
A thing to remember - science tells us that every time the apple fell from the tree, it went down. From this we say it MIGHT go down, but we can't be sure until it happens. There's not much doubt, but there is some.
Anyway, magic exists. I don't have to explain this (but I will).
Magic is... the ability to alter things by the power of your mind (essentially).
So when the doctor gives you a placebo, and you get better, you are altering things by the power of your mind, right?
Curses, cures, all kinds of spells work this way. There is a wiccan spell for getting employment. I've seen it cast on someone, and the effect was remarkable. They instantly became more confidant, and they soon got a job. It doesn't matter if this was IN their head, or some cosmic power from without, they still got more confident.
Magic exists.
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10/3/2007, 4:03 pm
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David Meadows
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
quote:
Blitzen wrote:
There is a wiccan spell for getting employment. I've seen it cast on someone, and the effect was remarkable. They instantly became more confidant, and they soon got a job. It doesn't matter if this was IN their head, or some cosmic power from without, they still got more confident.
Magic exists.
I think you've only shown that psychology exists. Unless you want to claim that all psychological influence is "magic", it does matter whether it's all in their heads or not.
That's not saying the wiccan charm is a bad or useless thing. If it had the desired effect through the power of psychology, that's a great result. But it's not a magical result.
Cast the spell on people without telling them you've done it and see if they get more confident.
Cast a made-up nonsense spell on people and tell them it's the proper spell, and see if they get more confident.
Ideally, the people "administering" the spell won't know if they're administering the real one or the fake one either (a double-blind test; this is to minimise the chance of them consciously or unconsciously influencing the outcome).
Track all these groups of people (those who really got the spell, those who didn't but thought they did, and those that did but thought they didn't), making sure that the groups are large enough to produce a result that isn't masked by statistical variation. And if the spell really works, the proof of magic will be pretty hard to dispute.
Strange that this has never been done...
---
"By tragic historical coincidence a period of abysmal under-educating in literacy has coincided with this unexpected explosion of global self publishing."
-- Lynne Truss
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10/3/2007, 4:22 pm
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Reythia
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
quote:
Blitzen wrote:
Reythia, so far you've not offered proof that magic doesn't work, either. Science only measures, right, but it could be measuring magic.
A thing to remember - science tells us that every time the apple fell from the tree, it went down. From this we say it MIGHT go down, but we can't be sure until it happens. There's not much doubt, but there is some.
Science, ideally, does more than measure: it PREDICTS. Now, mind you, scientists do not always predict correctly, but those places where they don't are almost always the result of either a bad understanding of science or else an inadequate collection of facts. If you ask me, "An apple is disconnected from the tree. What will happen?" then I'm going to say, "It's going to fall and hit the ground." If, underneath that apple, there's a gigantic fan set up, which blows the apple upwards instead of down, then I've predicted incorrectly. But it wasn't "bad" science, and the apple going up instead of down wasn't magic. It was just a matter of me not knowing all the relevant facts.
That's a trivial example, of course, but real science works similarly. Before someone (Kepler) could hypothesize that the planets revolved around the sun in ellipses, someone else (Brahe) had to take very precise measurements. And later, before the planets revolving in ellipses could become a full scientific theroy, someone (Newton) had to explain a reason (gravity) that made them do so. And then, to prove that he was right, others (inc Cavendish and Galileo) had to demonstrate that the explanation could predict future events (like eclipses of the Galilean satellites).
So there are four parts to science: the observations, the theory, the explanation, and the prediction. If any one of the first three is wrong or incomplete, the fouth (prediction) fails. That doesn't mean it failed because of "magic". Most likely, it failed because of a mistake or oversight on the part of the scientists. Once that mistake is found, progress can be made and future predictions should be better.
Blitzen, you're right: science doesn't prove that magic doesn't exist. But the scientific mindset reminds you that just because you don't understand something, that doesn't mean it has no rational explanation. Science says to you, "Sure, that MIGHT be true, but check out all the other possibilities instead." It insists that things must be repeatable, above everything else.
Also, I've heard of things like the guy regaining his confidence based on a spell, etc. I don't doubt it. But I question whether the spell actually did anything or whether the mere suggestion of the spell accomplished the deed. I've avoided deep discussions of such things because my knowledge of biochemistry ends with first-semester college classes, so I don't know the details. But I have read studies showing that we, as individuals, are able to markedly change our emotions and even personalities based on what we WANT ourselves to be. You know that old rule about, "If you want to be a good person, but aren't feeling very generous, ACT generous, and it'll grow on you"? Well, that's actually been shown to be true. Similarly, by outwardly acting more confident, we can make ourselves more confident. I just read an article about how people who schedule, plan, and organize their lives are less likely to show signs of Alzheimers when they're older. All of these things happen because our actions release different chemical triggers to the brain -- which make us act differently. That's a complicated feedback mechanism and it's one we don't understand well yet, but it's not likely to be magic.
*shrug* I remain a skeptic. 
--- -- YAR! |
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10/3/2007, 4:46 pm
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Reythia
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
Exactly, Meadows. That's precisely the kind of test that needs to be run to prove whether or not magic works.
Also, I dug up the article I read about how fake acupuncture works almost as well as real acupuncture does (44% improvement vs 47%). It's a good example of the type of experiment that should be run.
Acupunture Works for Back Pain
--- -- YAR! |
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10/3/2007, 6:14 pm
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Blitzen
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
Going back to the placebo example, it is probably biochemistry. Thinking that you've been given a cure may trigger a hormonal change (ie a mood, eg happy) that results in the secretion of something or other from certain glands and helps out the healing process or something. Fine. Great.
The job example - sure, psychology. But just because something is "psychology" or something is "biochemistry" does not mean that it isn't magic. I gave you the definition of magic as I see it, and these examples clearly fit the definition.
And as to tests - there was a Russian girl a few years back from a tiny village no one had ever heard of who was said to be able to look inside people's bodies. When interviewed by the press, she correctly diagnosed one with early stage cancer. Over several months every sort of test was done, and everyone seemed convinced - then suddenly, there were never any more reports about her.
If these tests were carried out, and magic was shown to exist, I doubt we would ever hear about it ( and no this isn't a government hush up theory). I just don't think the press would report on it.
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10/3/2007, 7:25 pm
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Reythia
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
quote:
Blitzen wrote:
The job example - sure, psychology. But just because something is "psychology" or something is "biochemistry" does not mean that it isn't magic. I gave you the definition of magic as I see it, and these examples clearly fit the definition.
quote:
And from before:
Magic is... the ability to alter things by the power of your mind (essentially).
This seems a very broad description of magic to me. After all, everything we consciously choose to do is caused by the power of our minds. Is it magic that I build a house, based on the design I thought of and the labor that my brain's synapses forced my body to complete? Is it magic that I convince my stubborn gramma to go see a doctor, by the power of my words (which are created through the use of my mind)?
Any time we interact with anything -- a person or a thing -- we are likely to alter it in some way. If you want to call that "magic", that's fine, but I think most people would just call it "life".
--- -- YAR! |
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10/3/2007, 7:46 pm
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Blitzen
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
Not that broad. Your talking about your mind telling your body to do something. I'm talking about your mind doing it. Things like hypnosis.
By the way, we're way off on a tangent here.
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10/3/2007, 9:47 pm
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QS2
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Re: Magic in the "Real World"
Just to be really really clear here, any sufficiently developed magical system is actually scientific/technological. It would just be a different universe then ours, a speculative universe I suppose.
As such when we talk about magic in the real world, these are things without an actual rational explanation, else they would get quickly pulled into the scientific sphere as they explain its mechanisms.
I hope this will help steer the conversation a bit towards topic again.
PS Hypnotism is via power of suggestion and thus not magical bu | |