If you had a choice, what would you prefer, science or magic?

skykiii

skykiii

kiwifarms.net
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Jun 17, 2018
I notice the modern world, even here on Kiwi Farms, is very science-oriented. Like any time we talk about ideology at some point someone is always like "part of the problem is its unscientific." Nobody ever says an idea is wrong because its Magically Undelicious.

And I understand why that is, of course--science is the easy way, particularly because Satan has tricked us into believing magic isn't real (even though the survival of humanity through til today doesn't make sense without it).

.... But let's just say you had a choice: You could live in either the world we all think we live in, where science and "reason" are the order of the day... or a world where wizards are explicitly real?

And funny thing... that's not exactly a binary choice. Megaman is a science world and yet its still little like modern Earth (no genderspecials, for one--that's Mighty Number Nine's department). Likewise Magic gives you a spectrum (not just the autism kind) where you can either have Vancian, or everything requires physical reagents, or Disney magic, or Harry Potter magic where it basically works like a superpower... and probably tons of others I'm forgetting because I'm unfortunately not autistic enough to remember ever book I ever read...

Basically, three questions:

ONE - Science or Magic?

TWO - What kind of science or magic?

THREE - What would you do if you lived in this ideal world?
 
The problem is that magic fantasy is mostly appealing specifically because nobody treats it like it would be treated in the real world.

Everyone in these fictional universes makes a token attempt to study and understand magic for the purpose of narrative, but mostly they seem pretty lackadaisical about living with something that can rewrite the fabric of their reality at any time which they have little understanding of.

There's not much attempt to justify what's happening with known natural laws, nobody's in sterile labs writing papers on the exact Gs exerted by levitation spells and the exact physical foundations of what causes the process of "magic" to happen, or studying where the energy for magic to happen comes from and how to convert it to a common resource like electricity.

There's no massive "magic regulation" industry with goverment contracts researching ways to control when and how people can use magic; realistically in these worlds the business of stopping people from using magic would be as big as the business of helping people use it. Usage of anti-magic devices in all businesses and public spaces would be the norm.

Basically institutions would have access to it for tech, weapons, and research purposes, and normies could maybe use it under certain specific circumstances like they can use guns and fireworks, but otherwise magic would be totally off limits for casual public use.


Basically it would become science. If it's a predictable and observable phenomenon, then it's just unexplored science.

Eventually it would be totally mundane, no different than all the kind of miraculous things in our world that everyone eventually becomes blind to, or which eventually get gated off because the average person can't be trusted with it.

So my point is that magic universes are gay. They only seem fun because they're presented in a fantasy setting with very skewed priorities.
 
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Ultrapenguin said:
Basically institutions would have access to it for tech, weapons, and research purposes, and normies could maybe use it under certain specific circumstances like they can use guns and fireworks, but otherwise magic would be totally off limits for casual public use.
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How can you make it "off limits" though?

I guess this would depend on what kind of universe it is--if its one of those where magic requires arcane formulae and large fuck circles, just prevent people from learning the proper runes or whatever. But if its the kind where magic can be done with enough willpower or whatever, I can't see the government regulating that.

It's a problem I always had with things like Mutant Registration Acts in comic books: you can't just turn mutant powers on or off. And if you have, say, Cyclops' optic beams, all the laws in the world can't prevent you from using them if you really want to. And such a person could be born anywhere, anytime, any place.

And in a magic universe, there would also be gods and demons, and I can't see governments controlling those things unless said beings want to be controlled by us fleshbags.

(This is, admittedly, one reason I prefer "magic" in this case. Science can indeed be restricted, and often has been. But banning magic is a little like banning oxygen or banning grass from growing, or like that one King who literally tried to control the tides--its worth noting that said king was doing it explicitly to prove there's a limit to man's control over the world).
 
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Tell me, what do you think of the 21st century?
 

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science offers systematic understanding through evidence and experimentation, while magic invokes wonder and taps into the mystical, catering to emotional and imaginative aspects of human experience. That said, i'd rather go to a western hospital than some bug headed, nose boned voodoo nigger if i break my leg etc.
 
The Connected Nose said:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
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I've always hated this quote.

I mean, its true in a way (depending on the form of magic), but it also kinda misses the point.

It's sort of like saying "there's no difference between boys and girls, both are human beings." But then take any cute little sister character from anime, and then try to imagine if it was a male character with the exact same behavior... it would be weird.

Or like the example I posted earlier: a government controlling technology makes sense. A government controlling magic is extremely context-dependent.
 
skykiii said:
take any cute little sister character from anime, and then try to imagine if it was a male character with the exact same behavior
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Back when I was a kid when I was extremely fucking gay and annoying (around 12-13), I would act like the anime imouto stereotype around my older sister to piss her off mostly. I don't think it ever worked, she found it endearing and I eventually stopped doing it when I realized just how embarassing it was. This was in the early 2000's when weeb shit was just starting to seep into my rural shithole.
 
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Magic would definitely beat out science for me. Science has a bunch of cool stuff going for it and lazer beams are pretty cool but magic (depending on the system) can directly fuck with the very probability of different circumstances and totally fuck some shit up.
 
Ultrapenguin said:
The problem is that magic fantasy is mostly appealing specifically because nobody treats it like it would be treated in the real world.

Everyone in these fictional universes makes a token attempt to study and understand magic for the purpose of narrative, but mostly they seem pretty lackadaisical about living with something that can rewrite the fabric of their reality at any time which they have little understanding of.

There's not much attempt to justify what's happening with known natural laws, nobody's in sterile labs writing papers on the exact Gs exerted by levitation spells and the exact physical foundations of what causes the process of "magic" to happen, or studying where the energy for magic to happen comes from and how to convert it to a common resource like electricity.

There's no massive "magic regulation" industry with goverment contracts researching ways to control when and how people can use magic; realistically in these worlds the business of stopping people from using magic would be as big as the business of helping people use it. Usage of anti-magic devices in all businesses and public spaces would be the norm.

Basically institutions would have access to it for tech, weapons, and research purposes, and normies could maybe use it under certain specific circumstances like they can use guns and fireworks, but otherwise magic would be totally off limits for casual public use.


Basically it would become science. If it's a predictable and observable phenomenon, then it's just unexplored science.

Eventually it would be totally mundane, no different than all the kind of miraculous things in our world that everyone eventually becomes blind to, or which eventually get gated off because the average person can't be trusted with it.

So my point is that magic universes are gay. They only seem fun because they're presented in a fantasy setting with very skewed priorities.
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This is a very good take- did you know the biggest reason the Catholic Church IRL denounced the practice of Alchemy was because they were worried if the supposed knowledge of transmuting lead to gold became commonplace, then the economy would be fucked raw by a huge surplus of transmuted gold (like what actually happened when Mansa Musa made the Hajj and subsequently tanked Egypt's entire economy for decades)

If magic were real I could absolutely see organized crime groups using the powers of conjuring to produce counterfeit money (and possibly luxury goods like Rolex watches) en masse like a Mage gearing his guild up for Naxx in vanilla WoW. Magic could also be used for fake IDs and credit card fraud most likely.
 
I prefer my magical orb that lets me belittle gender confused individuals from far away distances.
 
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