What is magic in your games?

Depends on the author.

>>96063050 (OP)
You first. Detailed and specific.

>>96063057
>>96063066
Magic, is an opinion?

a general catch all term for various forms of supernatural forces

We're really doing this again?

>>96063125
I suppose, if the monist retard shows up for it.

>>96063050 (OP)
what is magic's taxing policy in your games?

"Magic is magic no matter what reee It isn't subjective reee you don't know how words work reee and neither do I reee"

>>96063139
"The rites of Mesopotamian astrologer-priests" and "supernatural effects generated by rituals" may not be the same definition, but both are concrete meanings of the word "magic". They are distinguished not by subjective opinion, but by context.

>>96063155
"No this isn't magic or supernatural it's my religion you ignorant fuckhead, fuck you!"

>What ith magic in your gameth?
It varies depending on the individual game, but the common factor between them all is that each game's magic is beyond the nature of its respective world, because magic is a supernatural or unnatural source of power or force, and doesn't exist in our world, no matter who thinks otherwise or what anyone sees.
Magic doesn't exist in our world, because everything in our world is natural to it; magic can't exist in our world. That's the way it is, regardless of what person sees or thinks.
Because it doesn't exist in our world, those who create works of fantasy like myself are able to decide how magic functions in their works, because fantasy is the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable. Since magic can't exist in our world, it is impossible, but in a work of fantasy revolving around including impossible aspects, magic can exist, and be beyond that world's nature. That's the way it is, regardless of what anyone sees or thinks.
Fantasy can go even deeper than that; a fantasy world's nature can go against the nature of our world, and it wouldn't be magic, because even though it isn't natural to our world, it's how that world works, how that world is, regardless of whether one or two idiotic peons can understand it or not.
These things remain unchanged, and remain unchallenged, no matter how many times this dead horse topic is posted.
You can't recognize shapes, but that doesn't mean the apple isn't round. You can't see color, but that doesn't mean the apple isn't red.

You'll never understand these basic concepts.

>>96063155
If your idea of magic is purely ritual and incantations, then you can just as easily extend this into the world of science... since rituals and incantations are pretty loose in the descriptive sense. String theorists are pretty much a cult following nonsensical rites and speeches that have stagnated science for nearly seventy years.

>>96063196
Don't bother. That anon is fucked in the head.

>>96063193
>Magic doesn't exist in our world, because everything in our world is natural to it;
Saying "magic doesn't exist" is about as useful as saying 'cold doesn't exist', or 'dark doesn't exist', or 'holes don't exist'. Magic is closer to an absence, and the supernatural is an absence of natural understanding.

>>96063179
>No this isn't magic or supernatural it's my religion
Overlap does not make them the same thing, and the point is that "magic" contains multiple discrete concepts that must be distinguished by context which overlap with different things in different ways. The original derivation from the Magi is inseparable from the organized religion, the counter-cultural occultism is contradictory with that. These are independent meanings of "magic", not two examples of one definition.

>>96063196
>If your idea of magic is purely ritual and incantations
My idea of "magic" is a long list of separate definitions, because that's how a great many words work. It's actually quite rare for a word in English to have only one meaning.

>>96063210
So you ARE mistaking me for a different autist! That helps immensely with explaining how you people keep ignoring the point of multiple distinct meanings.

>>96063261
>he's still being buttblasted in the third fucking thread
lmaooooo

>>96063261
You don't know how words/semantics works, and it shows.
>My idea of "magic" is a long list of separate definitions, because that's how a great many words work.
Yes, that's semantics. Magic is "magic". Always has been. It exists in the headspace purely.

>>96063261
So you agree with OP in the other thread that magic is subjective. Got it. Oh wait, you're a non-conscious argument-bot, or crab, so you don't actually acknowledge when you agree with someone or someone else agrees with you.

>>96063283
It's not being buttblasted to simply keep trying to pound that definitions being descriptive means they do not reduce, as the points I am arguing against constantly rely upon.

I have routinely accepted the definition in use by said argument as one that exists, directly calling it "soft science jargon", but note it is not appropriate to the /tg/ context because it doesn't function for game rules.

>>96063294
>It exists in the headspace purely.
No, it is a set of sounds that represents a number of concepts, many of which are trivial to construct counterfactuals where they are readily used phenomena. Stop trying to reduce all meaning to a blurry nothing, you're just spewing pseudo-philosophical drivel of absolutely no relevance to the context of /tg/ because it CAN'T apply to a game for how it undermines the concept of rules.

It's friendship.

>>96063249
>"saying that [thing that can't possibly exist in any form due to how our world works] doesn't exist is about as useful as saying [absences that do exist] don't exist"
He STILL doesn't understand.
And nobody was surprised.

>>96063350
>>>/mlp/

>>96063139
Magic objectively doesn't exist in our world and is objective to a work of fantasy within the functions the work's creator establishes.

>>96063323
Abstract concepts exist in the headspace retard

>>96063354
Absences of information don’t exist? No, ignorance is quite alive.

>>96063312
>So you agree with OP in the other thread that magic is subjective.
No, I agree that is a valid definition, but I disagree on projecting it into all contexts to the active exclusion of definitions that are clear categories of phenomena extant within the counterfactuals.

>>96063390
Only according to the premise that absolutely all cognitive function absolutely must reside in the brain with strict causal relationships to the constituent matter. What makes this reasonable is completely irrelevant to the /tg/ context where afterlives and lingering spirits are commonplace.

Stop insisting that the real condition takes priority over the counterfactual. Engage the hypothetical or SHUT THE FUCK UP.

>>96063561
>but I disagree on projecting it into all contexts
It’s kind of hard to avoid when you can hypothetically deconstruct all contexts and concepts, even fictional.

>>96063620
Not really? The ability to deconstruct does not remove prior definitions, it creates new ones. Logic itself rather quickly stops working when you insist upon abandoning less-deconstructed concepts.

>>96063139
Who are you quoting?

>>96063679
Yes really. Everything can be broken down. Even fiction. All fiction is flawed to some small or large degree. There is no such thing as perfect fiction.

>>96063620
NTA but what utility does this deconstruction have for tabletop games and fiction.
Which are purposefully constructed in a certain way to facilitate enjoyment, fair play, etc.

At this point there's only really two options.

You admit that your definition isn't applicable in all cases despite claims that it's all encompassing.

You admit that it has fuck all to do with /tg/ or fiction in general and has no relevance on the gaming board and has simply been entry level philosophy trolling spread out over three separate threads.
(Although admittedly others are at fault for taking the bait in the first place, Hell I'm guilty of it right now)

>>96063679
Also this from a more intellectual perspective.

>>96063690
Do you screech at everything not strictly game related?

>>96063704
/tg/ - off-topic midwit philosophy

>>96063689
>Everything can be broken down.
But that doesn't change the content of the text. Your reductions do not override the premises of the counterfactual. I don't CARE about your drivel, it is Not Even Wrong because it's a deep-in-the-weeds ivory tower theory that has nothing to do with games, fantasy fiction, or standard use of English and causes severe problems to understanding how each of them ACTUALLY operate.

People still use classical mechanics for a reason. People still study the "high order abstractions" of chemistry and make useful discoveries in it. That something can be reduced to smaller parts or a lower layer does not mean that it's wrong, and the overhead of working with those smaller parts can make it wrong to OBSESS over that the way you are.

>>96063801
Deal with it, then. Fiction is an object that can be deconstructed into its essential essences. I don’t care if you hate that fact. You can compare Star Wars to Christianity. So what? Are you religious or something?

>>96063801
You can use ironic and redundant terminology for the sake of running your game, sure, but it’s still ironically redundant, none the less. Even if you argue magic and miracles and psionics (etc) are the same, these separations, however ironic, still suffice for the sake of the game, especially when the game’s setting consists of ignorant persons with their own opinions. It’s even fun having contradictory cultures, like in our own histories. The Church absolutely took advantage of words. It’s why peasant Christians try to distinguish magic from their religion, while the actual priests just didn’t.

>>96063704
No, but I don't think /tg/ isn't the place for discussion of things that aren't even remotely game related.

Like by making this post you've tacitly admitted that your definition has nothing to do with games, fiction, or any sort of tangential idea with utility.

So why discuss it HERE?

/tg/ is a place for games which is a pretty broadly encompassing topic, but you've managed to create a definition for something that is so useless and lacks any relevant utility.

I guess you can take pride in that, but you can do it elsewhere.

/tg/ is for games, fiction either related to games or applicable to games, worldbuilding (mostly for games, but I don't exactly resent writers that come here for ideas), speculative fiction art, gaming memes, etc.
None of any of the posts of literal "magic is just vibes bro" shitposting has anything to do with any of that.

>>96063846
What inspires tabletop, anon?

>>96063896
Meh I'm done taking the bait at this point.

These threads exist solely to try and trigger autists and let pseuds stroke their tiny dicks about how enlightened they are.

Either fuck off or don't it's not my problem. Hopefully others will also start ignoring you or just have more productive conversations about magic.

>>96063821
>Fiction is an object that can be deconstructed into its essential essences.
Ignoring the combination does not erase that it is in fact a combination, especially when you are insisting upon a construction that requires an "essential essence" explicitly excluded.

>>96063845
>You can use ironic and redundant terminology for the sake of running your game, sure, but it’s still ironically redundant, none the less.
It's only "ironic and redundant" by your crippling incomprehension of words having more than one earnest meaning. For language to function, the differences must be preserved, reducing them out of existence breaks your ability to comprehend the prior writings.

>It’s why peasant Christians try to distinguish magic from their religion, while the actual priests just didn’t.
No, the priests USUALLY did, in a different fashion from the common peasant because the official line was that the only supernatural power was the Lord. The demonologists were ALWAYS a counter-cultural fringe, a context that your insistence on ignoring in favor of pathological monism renders incomprehensible.

>>96063896
How do you BUILD ideas with any of this up to make a game? Because everything you've said seems to me to be solely destructive, not even useful for comparative mythology constructions like Kirkbride's work over in the Elder Scrolls vidya franchise because you keep insisting on discarding the differences instead of moving on to any kind of recombination.

>>96064007
>>96064026
Let me ask you: is Gandalf a wizard or a cleric?

>>96064034
He's an angel.

>>96064034
Tolkien's work is only one inspiration to D&D, projecting its classes back on sources they weren't drawn from is a bullshit gotcha.

>>96064050
>>96064052
So he’s a wizard who is also a greater spirit. Got it. Moses was also a wizard.

>>96064095
Your equivocations are not actually useful.

>>96064095
Are you attempting to make some kind of point?

If so it's lost on me.

>>96063896
A lot of things, but pointless autistic arguments aren't on that list.

>>96063050 (OP)
Depends on the casting class.
>Wizards
Years of study to weave the arcane forces that suffuse the world, placed by the goddess of magic.
>Sorcerer
A natural talent brought about by blood of powerful creatures. They are born with much of this magic energy in their blood
>Cleric
Gifts of power from the divine realms they can use specifically to help the weak and save lives.

The rest are all mixes of this in some way.

>>96064174
Religion and myth and history aren’t pointless autistic arguments? They are.

>>96063704
Screeching at things they don't like is normal for this site; that's how quests got killed.

>>96063395
Absences of information do exist, and have nothing to do with magic.

>>96064482
“I don’t know, therefore magic” has nothing to do with magic? Lol, lmao even.

>>96063050 (OP)
Snort the powdered fetus of a rape victim, recite the Lord's Prayer backwards, and cum in the ass of a still living black goat with its throat cut all within 15 seconds and it will let your post end in repeating numerals.

Oh. In games. Yeah, just like, spell slots for fireballs and shit.

like, everything man

>>96063050 (OP)
A greasy pepperoni fart brapped down your throat, OP.

>>96064007
Different Anon here, but this line caught my attention:
>just have more productive conversations about magic
How productive could a conversation about magic be, when it's completely up to the game designer how their magic works? That is, beyond an exchange of "I do things this way" and "well I do things that way", anyway.

>>96064586
Magic can't exist in our world, so your logic doesn't work.

>>96065133
He can’t answer you. He couldn’t answer in the other two threads either.

>>96065150
Magic can’t exist in fiction either, if you consider that fiction is existent within itself, and can be hypothetically deconstructed, or that magic is only truly real in the brain. Magic IS brain chemistry. Something can look and act 100% magic and still not be treated as such.

Again, saying “magic doesn’t exist” is about as useful as saying cold doesn’t exist, or dark doesn’t exist, or holes don’t exist. These things definitely don’t exist in fiction either.

>>96065176
You’re just going to piss him off again. “What do you mean the fairy people don’t see themselves as magical beings reee- what do you mean the machines of Mordor are magic reeeew-“

>>96065176
I've already given you enough information to put together why you're wrong for so many reasons.
Repeating yourself doesn't make you right, it just makes you stubborn and intolerable.
You'll never understand, no matter how many times it's explained to you.

>>96065176
>if you consider that fiction is existent within itself, and can be hypothetically deconstructed, or that magic is only truly real in the brain.
Yes, if we assume ONLY your deconstructive approach and ONLY your specific jargon definition of magic. The counter-points that have been reiterated dozens of times are that your deconstructive approach is mutually exclusive with stable game rules and your jargon definition of magic isn't the only one.

>Something can look and act 100% magic and still not be treated as such.
And some moron refusing to treat fire as hot doesn't stop them from being burned.

>>96063050 (OP)
Vancian casting but, you know, not shit.

>>96063050 (OP)
>What is magic
baby don't cast me?

>>96063066
kill yourself you gameless faggot, policing /tg/ is not a replacement for actually having games

>>96063050 (OP)
A necessary step to becoming part of the intergalatic civilization.

>>96063050 (OP)
There is no magic. Beings can manipulate soul, essence and/or become avatars of primordial entities. They are all different and work in different ways

>>96065376
Aaah, no answer because no game.

>>96065133
A comparison between the structure and rules of individual systems of magic, both from real life or imaginary worlds is infinitely more productive than this conversation.

It can inform people of the myriad ways actual people perceived magic, share rules and interpretations for magic, give ideas for potential worldbuilding, or just be more fun than reductio ad absurdum.
Sure you may not actually change any minds with these either, but at least people are potentially learning something new.

And even someone calling my preferred interpretation retarded is still more productive than endless waffling about the fact that magic is merely individually interpretive because that's a nothing statement.

For example in a setting I'm working on magic is defined as using the soul to manipulate aether which is the 5th element. Aether cannot be sensed physically, it can only be "felt" with the soul and imagined in the mind.
Because it's not a physical thing but is something interpreting it can cause it to do or make things. Doing this was originally used by the gods to shape the world and was taught to the earliest humans in a basic form.
Humans later developed this into the ability to cast spells which were ritualized and specific forms that could be made more powerful than just moving the aether around and imagining. Because magic works on a principle of editing reality rather than simply wishful thinking and imagination.

Sure this idea is trite, derivative, and to some people probably dumb as fuck, but it's something with legs to actually discuss rather than pointlessly bicker about.

>>96065153
Don't presume to answer for me. I may not give you an answer that satisfies you, but I can provide an answer.

Magic is the manipulation of mana

Nothing more, nothing less

Is my game the mana source (we call it a mana seed) dried up and the flow of mana stopped thousands of years ago

So while it doesn't currently exist many people who know history know what "magic" is and still use it as a funny term "hey, that was just like magic!" and such, much like real life

This thread again?

Magic is literally whatever-the-fuck but apparently this fact pisses off the people who keep screaming at OP for pointing it out.

>>96066734
As long as people continue thinking that magic can be magic no matter the view—it will continue. It is the perfect bait since it draws on leftover religious hangovers; or wanting something to be more special than it is.

>>96066734
Autism is incurable.

>>96063050 (OP)
It's the mechanics of the universe

>>96063125
>Uh, magic is definitionally impossible, because by definition if it can happen, it's possible, and since magic is impossible, it can't happen, and so if happens it must be possible, which makes it science, not magic
Getting so sick of this retarded train thought.

>>96063050 (OP)
Banned

>>96064095
No.

Moses is a Human Cleric.

Gandalf is a Solar in disguise and restricted from using most of his powers.

>>96067008
Isn't that just science?

>>96065376
Every time you react like this, it only tells us what a huge pathetic faggot you are.

>>96067032
No. That's like calling the mental concept of a dog "English". Magic is what science is trying to understand.
In my setting, it's failing quite spectacularly.

>>96067028
>Moses is a Human Cleric.
Not even Jews think this. They aren’t that stupid.

>>96067032
Yes. If it runs, it’s science. If anything exists at all, it will have processes and information to it.
>>96067064
That’s like saying water or fire isn’t science. Of course there’s science to water and fire. There’s science to everything. Period. Saying there isn’t is the equivalent of saying it doesn’t exist.

>>96067015
It's literally three logical fallacies in a trenchcoat, but if you point that out you're now the bad guy for pointing and laughing at Whatismagicanon

>>96066857
You're debating over definitional autism. That's the problem here.
>In my setting, magic has X properties.
>Well, in my setting, it has Y properties!
>YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO DESCRIBE IT THAT WAY, THAT'S FUCKING WROOONG!
This is essentially where we're at on the topic. It's just a bunch of people who are absolutely convinced that their own personal opinion is 100% right, and everyone else is evil and stupid for daring to disagree. Worst part is, because it's just a definitional argument, there's nothing to even talk about.
Even if you can get someone to change their opinion on how to define what magic is, it doesn't actually change anything.
>"That's not magic, it's actually magitech!"
Okay, so if they call it magitech nothing changes except that all the autists fuck off.
It's literally just a bunch of narcissists that cannot fucking stand that other people are allowed to have different opinions, all getting fucking enraged at each other because they're all obsessed with being the smartest person in the room. Cannot fucking stand it, and yet some of the anger's rubbed off.

>>96067080
Science *TO fire and water. Science as in, the attempt to understand something. The thing itself is not science. Moron.

>>96067080
Also:
>If anything exists at all, it will have processes
This is objectively bollocks, and shows you've never seriously played around with alternate existential paradigms.

>>96067118
>Science *TO fire and water
…you really think there are no processes to fire and water? science is everything; if you think it’s not then you’re not educated enough to keep me entertained

>>96067144
>This is objectively bollocks
Um, I don’t know about that Mr. Retard. Something has to first exist to exist, y’know? You even argued other forms of existence, which would have to exist. It’s all still existence. I don’t care how different it is. Sorry.

>>96067118
>he thinks science is just a method to apply
Not. Even. Einstein. Thought. This. There will always be science, waiting in the background, for all fucking time. The music of the spheres is playing its symphony whether you listen in or not.

God damn you’re stupid. You should kill yourself.

And by “You should kill yourself” I mean you should kill your current egotistical model. It’s revolting. Dangerously stupid.

>>96064796
impostor

>>96063050 (OP)
"Magic" is a peasant terminology meaning to affect one's will through some incorporeal means that they do not understand. It is also used more selectively (sometimes) by more educated people to refer to Sorcery, which is the more proper name for the arcane art of accessing the flows of energy that underwrite the material universe, and allow one to alter it through the Will.

To call someone a magician is to imply slight of hand or trickery--a Sorcerer by contrast is employing an esoteric but still very rigorously consistent science of exploring and manipulating energies. There is some debate as to whether it's really a science, given that there are non-empirical elements involved. The process of using magic involves semantic meaning and intent--the juxtaposition between the two inwardly allows you to pull apart the limitations of the human mind in accessing the Akashic realm in which the sausage is made, so to speak. So it might be better called a rational philosophy rather than a science, but in practical terms once you've made ot across that hurdle you have to start testing things practically and that definitely follows the scientific method.

Really it's a sort of multidisciplinary field of natural philosophy, engineering, and linguistics, that then lets you set people on fire with your mind. Cool stuff, requires both a genetic predisposition and a high intellect to be able to do it effectively, and then on top of that you need access to an enormous amount of culturally accumulated knowledge because you'd have to be some kind of extreme savant with massive resources to figure it all out on your own in one lifetime.

Schools of Sorcery develop to formalize these concepts, but these schools all have different philosophic approaches to Sorcery which are largely incompatible. As ideology is broadly downstream of philosophic method, this also leads to the schools typically having sharply divergent values and objectives, hencee the Scholastic Wars.

>>96067184
Science is factually a method to apply and Einstein was not an epistemologist.

>>96066271
>>96067047
Can you take the cocks out of your mouth and actually talk about the tread topic?

>>96067166
>you really think there are no processes to fire and water
No! No I don't, you fucking dunce. You fail. Reread my post and try to parse it again.
>>96067176
Wait, so you're using "process" in a temporally divorced sense? That's idiotic, but I can understand it (nearly every attempt at classifying a nebulous all-purpose aspect of reality is shite, including this one).
>>96067184
Nice dogma you've got there, shame it's got the foundation of any common or garden religidiot's delusion.

>>96067248
wew wait I thought were were going to be talking about magic in here nvm Jesus.

>>96067268
Cope. Physics exists without our involvement or acknowledgement. You hate science or something. Or maybe too really are this stupid. I don’t know.

>>96067184
Yes, science is explicitly the method of understanding, not the phenomena itself.
Fire, water, stars, even black holes are not science they merely exist.

Our understanding of them is built on detailed observation and the scientific method, but they themselves are not "science."

Hell even things like Geology, Astronomy, etc. aren't science either they're fields of study that traditionally use the scientific method and observation. Science is the method not the thing itself.

We call these things sciences as a shorthand because it's easier for children to grasp.

That frequently misquoted: " Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Even specifies technology, which is a creation based on applied understanding (definition mine not from a dictionary), not "science."

So no magic is not science, it could potentially be a field of scientific study in a fictional setting, but that's subject to if it's observable and repeatable which are necessities for the scientific method to function.
(Neither of which are strictly necessary for magic)

>>96067347
>too
you*

That’s what I get for hopping on my phone to hopefully educate another twat.

>>96067355
>Yes, science is explicitly the method of understanding, not the phenomena itself.
Nope. That’s just one side of the coin. Sorry if I trust people like Einstein and Bohr over you pretentious quacks who think they know what they’re talking about.

I don’t even know why you type so much. It’s a load of garbage and you seem to love the word epistemology- which is suspect when you don’t seem to know what semantics is to begin with.

>>96067355
>So no magic is not science
Yes it is.

>>96067355
>So no magic is not science, it could potentially be a field of scientific study
You don’t understand how science works or what physics is. This is like saying that biology isn’t science because it’s a field of science. You are incredibly stupid and I can tell you’re having an ego attack right now, worried about your self image. It’s not going good for you. Thank god you’re on an anonymous website.

>>96067355
>That frequently misquoted: " Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

It’s not actually misquoted when all magic in fiction is overly constructed, or artificially considerate, and all magic in fiction is essentially the invention of the human mind. It is psychologically constructed.

But do go ahead and tank another thread while everyone laughs at you.

>Science is the method not the thing itself.
I don’t think he realizes that the method is inseparable from the reality.

>>96067376
>>96067347
This >>96067285 wasn't a rhetorical question btw. If you aren't going to clarify your terms, I'm gonna have to assume that you're not just an OhMyScience-branded christcuck, but that you also can't imagine a reality absent of chronology lmao

>>96067419
>but that you also can't imagine a reality absent of chronology lmao
That’s still a hypothetical reality, where things happen. This is what you’re not getting. You’re just too stupid. I should feel bad for you but I don’t.

Watch him dump out another wall of nothing-text as he hyperventilates

>>96067406
>It is psychologically constructed
Only from your ((very) limited) perspective.

>>96067439
No. It’s psychologically constructed, full stop, as it’s a work of human-made fiction. All fiction is flawed and easily deconstructed to some degree. It’s all a rickety mechanism.

Good lord. Please stop posting. Or don’t. 4chan is probably perfect for you.

>>96067393
He probably thinks fields of science are sliced like pie slices. He doesn’t see that biology is applied chemistry is applied physics is applied math, etc.

>>96067376
I'm not the one that used the word epistemology that's a different anon.

But I'll leave this here for you anyway.

>The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research. (Einstein 1949, 683–684)

>>96067384
This is a quote from a book he wrote said by a character in the story (Cat's Cradle, Page 97, Paragraph 33, said by Papa Monzano). Not a belief of Kurt Vonnegut himself.

>>96067453
He doesn’t see that physics makes the one who pokes at physics? For shame. I bet he thinks he’s not physics LMAO.

>>96067478
You’re an idiot since you interpreted it that way.

“Magic is science that works” is an ironic quote since ANYTHING that works at all is science, or has science to it. Making a fucking fire is science. How fire is made is science. It’s chemistry. There are chemical reactions. It’s all science.

You cannot separate science from nature.

>>96067393
>You don’t understand how science works or what physics is. This is like saying that biology isn’t science because it’s a field of science.

He's right though. Biology is the study of life, which is a science. Life itself is not a science.

>>96067497
“Science is magic that works” *rather

But the point still stands. If magic is cast or workable at all, it is science.

>>96067513
>He's right though.
Nope.
>Life itself is not a science.
Life is absolutely scientific. Biology. There is science everywhere. Science is itself as simple of repeating processes to figure out processes. You cannot separate processes from processes in a world of causality, since processes are why things are anything at all.


You’re not very smart.

>Life itself is not a science.
Peak derp hours

>>96067497
Science is the interpretation of nature, not nature itself.

Nature predates science. The scientific method was developed by people to understand the world. The world is itself, it's self-demonstrating.

Making a fire is making a fire. There are chemical processes involved that we can seek to understand, but that doesn't suddenly make the act itself science.

I'm not sure where you even get this belief from because it doesn't come up in any philosophy or scientific thought I've ever heard of and I'd like to believe you guys are intelligent.

Albert Einstein famously drew parallels between the purity and pre-established harmony found in Mozart's music and the structure of the universe, suggesting that scientific laws, like sound, were waiting to be discovered. He believed that his theories of relativity were not merely the result of calculation, but rather the product of "pure thought" and an appreciation for the underlying symmetries and beauty in the cosmos. Einstein's love for music, particularly Mozart and Bach, was not just a hobby but an integral part of his creative process, influencing his thinking and inspiring his scientific breakthroughs.

He compared Beethoven to Mozart. One fashioned music, the other copied beauty already within the universe.

>>96067513
He’s not right if you consider that the most famous physicists saw no distinction between science and physics, or nature, so holistic were they.

>>96067574
>Making a fire is making a fire. There are chemical processes involved that we can seek to understand, but that doesn't suddenly make the act itself science.

The act is 100% science. Making the wheel, is science. Sticks are the simplest tools, or technology, of all.

If you can repeat steps to produce an effect. It is science. You can’t separate science from anything, in fact.

>>96067430
Oh so you ARE using "process" in a non-temporal way, LOL. Just say that next time, you fucking plank. Don't make me tease it out of you like the world's dorkiest sub.
I what you're saying though. Lemme give you some advice, and definitions to illustrate how fucking retarded your choice of term is:
>Process
>The act of proceeding
>A series of actions, motions, or occurrences
>A statement of events
All but the last EXPLICITLY refer to a multi-state model. Next time, just say "if it exists, then it has properties". Like a normal fucking two bit armchair philosopher. It's way more comprehendable, and will save you from further embarrassments.

>>96067532
You're welcome to your own definitions but it's not what any professional source says. Science is the study of the natural world. The natural world itself is very obviously not a study of something, it's just a something.

>>96067445
>it’s a work of human-made fiction
Prove it. You'll win a nobel prize, or be put in a loony bin probably.

>>96067602
>Oh so you ARE using "process" in a non-temporal way,
You can’t have processes that aren’t temporal, or causal, sorry. Otherwise you are saying nothing happens. You can just assume everything everywhere every when exists all at once, though. There. Do that.

Listen. I’m not taking you seriously because you keep using words you don’t understand, and you keep typing in capitals like an underaged person.

>>96067248
>To call someone a magician is to imply slight of hand or trickery
How far do you think a stage magician could push faking being a real mage? Needs to be able to fool actual mages too. Fooling normal citizens who MAYBE saw a sorcerer light a cigarette without a match 15 years ago doesn't count.

>>96067621
>Prove it.
Authors aren’t authors? Enough, anon. Just enough.

>>96067532
>Life is absolutely science
Cake is absolutely cooking

Science is quite literally fucking around and finding out, which is itself a process, aiming to find out, or figure out, processes.

There is nothing simpler than science. Shit happens. It’s as simple as that.

Science as a method only works because of itself. Fuck. You need processes to have a process to figure out processes. Causality works with itself.

>>96067597
Is taking a shower science? What about taking a shit?

No, these things are not science because people (usually) aren't observing them, hypothesizing them, experimenting, writing things down, and then drawing conclusions and comparing it to the original hypothesis.

An action taken without consideration is just an action. The scientific method is a method of understanding.
Making a fire can be quantified scientifically.
Making a fire can also just be a person making a fucking fire, no quantification involved.

As I've said anything can be studied scientifically it's just a method of observation and record. The things they're observing aren't "science" though.

>>96067649
Cooking is absolutely an applied science the same way technology is applied science. You’re repeating steps. Processes. To create desired results. That’s science.

>>96067632
You're the one saying they're not, lmao. You're saying that there's this all-empowering level of reality that's the TRVE reality, where nothing is authored. That's what you're saying, when you make the distinction between something authored and "the other", right?
So I'll ask you right back - are authors not authors?

>>96067664
>No, these things are not science because people (usually) aren't observing them
Observation or acknowledgement isn’t required for science. The cavemen were going about the scientific method when they were first making fires and fashioning wheels. The history of science began in ancient Egypt, when the priests were making tinctures for robes, amongst other things.

>>96067584
Honestly, this post helps me understand how bards work in a sense beyond narrative fiat. Thanks, anon.

>>96067673
>You're the one!
Only underage people on the internet open their posts with this.

>>96067668
Well fuck me then, because I just ate science.

>>96067673
Just admit that OP’s had his dick up your ass the entire time, anon. This is getting really silly. I know it’s hard losing an argument on the internet, but you’re not doing yourself a favour either.

>>96067658
Anon, science is screwing around while recording the results. Please keep the difference in mind. It's pretty important.

>>96067697
>ageism ad hominem
Total K. O.

>>96067688
Observation is the very basis of science.
I will give you that the act of doing science predates the codification and popular understanding of the method itself, but it doesn't mean that any action taken or any existing phenomena is science.

The development of the wheel was science. The wheel itself is technology.
Words have meanings and they matter. (Generally)

>>96067701
Yes. Sustenance is chemical, biological. Science. Is there something wrong with that? Do you think defecating has no scientific processes? That you shit more than once implies it.

The replication crisis is the problem that not everything repeatable reproduces the exact same effect—like how the stroke of a paintbrush is never the same. The stool you shit is never the same.

There. You just learned something today.

>>96067709
Hey definitely real anon, yore welcome to attempt an answer :P It does require engaging your brain tho, be warned

>>96067714
Nope.

“Remember kids, the only real difference between fucking around and proper science, is writing it down…” - scientist

Please fuck off.

>>96067721
>Observation is the very basis of science.
Official science, yes, but you’d have to be retarded to think caveman making a fire isn’t a repeated scientific process. There were steps to scientific acknowledgement.

>>96067727
Nah mate, science doesn't exist anymore. I'm digesting it.
I'm so sorry. Guess you'll have to make do with magic or smt

>>96067721
>but it doesn't mean that any action taken or any existing phenomena is science.
No, it is absolutely science. There’s physics everywhere. It doesn’t stop becoming science or physics once we learn about it.

>>96067752
I mean, I think I agree but it kinda depends on whether there was any actual model attempted, any thought process i guess. Or whether they just evolved into it. We don't really know enough about the invention of fire to say.

ITT shitters think they know better than fucking Einstein

inb4 “he’s a Jew what does he know”

>>96067752
NO ALL SCIENCE YOU DENSE RETARD!

CAVEMAN SEE FIRE
CAVEMAN WANT FIRE
CAVEMAN MAKE FIRE
HOLY SHIT A PRIMITIVE FORM OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

STARTS WITH OBSERVATION
SCIENCE IS OBSERVATION AND QUANTIFICATION OF THINGS!

NOT THE THING ITSELF THE THING IS JUST A THING!

>>96067786
einstein was a retard, his wife was the actual genius and he just published all her work in his name on her behalf since she never would have been accepted otherwise

unless you seriously fucking believe that a retard that flunked his way through school and worked a dead end job in a patent office just 'got it' one day and invented much of the underpinnings of the modern world

>>96067715
>>96067730
Sorry, lemme take this win as an opportunity to get my point across - Anon is technically right when he says that fiction is psychologically constructed, because as the key players in our observation of the fiction, we are intrinsically bound to be (and indistinguishable from) it's creators. However, this lack of distinction is only a failing of ourselves, and doesn't necessarily reflect the state in the fiction. For example, I doubt very many of you have stipulated that in your world, everything was created by Anon the Great and Powerful. Not just because it's cheesy, but because it leads to messy ontological borders. It's like when your friend gets a bit too into his waifu and starts talking to the out loud. Maybe that's just a me problem. Anyway - point being, according to the lore of most fictional worlds, they weren't in fact authored by people from our world. And you know what they say - if every room you're in smells like shit, you may have trod on a turd. Or words to that effect.

Honestly, I'm pretty okay with classic vancian casting. At least in a general sense. It just needs improvements. Like not sucking for one. The concept is cool, but actually being a wizard isn't like what people upsell. They are either lying, omitting important things, or playing at a table that ignores half the rules that govern magic.

That said, the idea is sound. You just read the spell. So long as you understand what you are reading, the spell is shoved into your brain. Ready to simply unleash in an instant later. The more you do this (which is the same as studying magic), the more you can shove in your brain at one time. I'd alter the specifics so you the wizard isn't the most trivial to cuck class in actual practice, but the idea is great. Can overlay easily on some other, more esoteric, system. For instance, what's actually going on is far more accessible than wizards teach, but the cover exists for a reason. It focuses the phenomenon into a generally more potent and safe methodology. You won't kill yourself with it in the same way a power lifter can accidentally kill themselves lifting too much stuff. If your 'slots' are spent, that's that. A 'miscast' won't accidentally overwrite your existence to having always been a particular kind of desert dwelling rat either. You just lose the spell for the day. Isn't that nice? You just gain some, entirely manageable, limitations for these protections.

It explains the elitism around it well too. It's pure gatekeeping. Very warranted gate keeping. Granted, you could always do without it. You gain quicker, flexible, on demand power. Just try not to find out why Goku is responsible for sucking up more pure miracle cures than any other person in fiction ever.

>>96063050 (OP)
In Spellbound Kingdoms it's a metaphysical primal force that is so powerful that all people love and fear it. Kings will kill those that dare try to harness it. It imbues all things and allows you to even revoke the gates of death if you channel it enough. A man who loves his wife with all his heart is unkillable until that eternal font of flowering joy is quashed.

>>96067961
Is Doom a type of magic then, or is it a separate thing?

>>96063050 (OP)
A way to gain power that defies the natural way of life.
I divided into 3 categories.
Normal magic gathers power from the natural but it slowly corrupts nature. Nature should slowly heal itself but if too many people use magic it will destroy the world.
Witchcraft gathers power from the demon realm. It is not as efficient as normal magic and sometimes release demons onto world. It also can only reliable be used to cast harm with its side effects being of actually helping others being unreliable.
Miracles gather power from special individuals that selflessly try to help other. It is the rarest and most efficient magic but not many people know much about. The individual that uses miracles usually die young but the magic's effect can be longlasting.

>>96066857
>As long as people continue thinking that magic can be magic no matter the view
Different definitions are not "a view".

>It is the perfect bait since it draws on leftover religious hangovers
No, it's just base willful ignorance on your part.

>>96067080
>That’s like saying water or fire isn’t science. Of course there’s science to water and fire.
"There's science to"=/="is science". You keep reducing intermediary steps required for scientific study out of existence.

>There’s science to everything. Period.
The extreme reliability of it IRL has no bearing on counterfactuals where its premises are declared false.

>>96067106
>It's just a bunch of people who are absolutely convinced that their own personal opinion is 100% right
How many cases of me pointing out definitional variance am I going to have to quote at you to get you to get that it's one, MAYBE two, very weird guys shitting up the entire field of discussion on /tg/ in the face of many attempting to beat basic vocabulary into their head?

>>96067166
>…you really think there are no processes to fire and water?
The true processes governing them are not the numeric expression derived by the scientific method.

>science is everything
Not according to the vast majority of scientists and virtually all the philosophers discussing its premises. You're just a totalizing midwit incapable of seeing the world through more than one lens.

>>96067176
>You even argued other forms of existence, which would have to exist.
But not by the terms of ours, midwit Monist. Expressly dualist counterfactuals, which are common in fantasy fiction, reject utterly crucial premises of yours.

>>96067184
>Not. Even. Einstein. Thought. This.
Einstein is not authoritative in the philosophy of science, his methodology was expressly divorced from observations. By lengthy series of well-reasoned conjecture, but divorced nonetheless.

>>96063050 (OP)
>What is magic in your games?
Imagine the laws of physics as a self-repairing curtain, and reality is kept in check on one side with all its properties dictated by the laws, with "un-physics" being on the other side - a force that can influence all other forces in unnatural ways, and when brought into the world, it presents itself as the effects of magic.
Magic itself? It's the knife that slices the curtain. Incantations, rituals etc. are just the precise guiding of the blade through the fabric.

Can't describe it in a different way.

>>96067191
>And by “You should kill yourself” I mean you should kill your current egotistical model.
Says the one clinging to the idea that the methodological study of a thing is the thing itself and that absolutely all MUST BE one at a deep enough layer no matter how distant from reality a counterfactual gets.

>>96067347
>Physics exists without our involvement or acknowledgement.
"The scientific study of" matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force is not the immutable underlying truth of those things.

>You hate science or something.
No, I just understand that it actively RELIES on not assuming correctness. The process explicitly revolves around falsification, for fuck's sake, it doesn't work without trying to prove yourself wrong!

>>96067376
>Sorry if I trust people like Einstein and Bohr over you pretentious quacks who think they know what they’re talking about.
Their words on the matter are them being pretentious quacks far from their field of expertise. "God does not play dice" and all, there's a decent chance most of the reason we don't have quantum gravity is that Einstein hated any notion of fuzziness to it. Much like you seem to.

>It’s a load of garbage and you seem to love the word epistemology- which is suspect when you don’t seem to know what semantics is to begin with.
What do YOU think semantics is, then, to declare I so badly understand it? All the definitions I'm aware of are about external signals correlating to internal meanings.

>>96067393
>This is like saying that biology isn’t science because it’s a field of science.
The sub-set is not the same as the whole set, save in the very narrow set-theory case of a set that contains only itself.

>You are incredibly stupid and I can tell you’re having an ego attack right now, worried about your self image.
No "ego attack" to this frustration, just "Somebody Is Wrong On The Internet".

>>96068411
>Different definitions are not "a view".
Lol. You’re so warped.

>>96068411
>>96068480
>responding to this many people
Maybe you should take a break.

>>96068411
>Einstein is not authoritative in the philosophy of science, his methodology was expressly divorced from observations.
Oh, so you’re one of those morons who thinks everything is lolsorandom because of quantum uncertainty, eh? Einstein won and string theory is retarded.

Get bent
>>>/sci/16655184
>>>/sci/16711036

>>96068411
The problem is, you're "educating" people about concepts that are purely based on your personal opinion and inventions. Your definitions aren't even general definitions. In other words, this is all a sophist headcanon. You've invented a whole private little cosmology that makes sense to you. Alright. I don't agree with it, nor am I going to acquiesce to you just inventing axiomatic truths and insisting that I have to take it for granted that those truths are correct just because you're already right by default in your little pseud fanfiction universe.
Your entire argument is based on a schizophrenic, childishly incorrect notion about what science even fucking *IS* in the first place. You think there's a direct relationship between the physically testable and the purely conceptual when there's a complete fucking categorical error in comparing the two. Everything you're ridiculously fucked up on comes down to just being too stupid to understand that what you're saying doesn't make any fucking sense because you're making a category error, and every argument you have to the contrary is just some variant of "I'm not making a category error, because I'm not."
It's just circular, fallacious retardation, and you won't learn.

>>96067406
>and all magic in fiction is essentially the invention of the human mind.
So you DON'T understand how to address counterfactuals. Step one is "ignore the author", because the entire point is to think about a thing that is not true.

>>96067418
>I don’t think he realizes that the method is inseparable from the reality.
"Inseparable from" does not make two things equivalent. That the method requires there to be the underlying reality to act upon does not mean the method IS the reality. Science and physics are specifically regarding the methodological side, nature has to do with the reality side.

>>96067430
>That’s still a hypothetical reality, where things happen.
...No, the entire point of a no-chronology reality is that things AREN'T happening, they're just a static set of properties.

>>96067435
Attempting to be thorough in providing counter-arguments to your points does not necessitate panic.

>>96067445
>It’s psychologically constructed, full stop, as it’s a work of human-made fiction.
Doesn't matter, the terms of the argument are the counterfactual internals of the fiction. Stop bloviating about your nigh-psychotic if not outright insane monism and address it.

>>96067483
>He doesn’t see that physics makes the one who pokes at physics?
The field of study does not literally make the man, no. Because in the context of ACTUAL science, that's all physics is, a field of study. Quit equivocating the study with the studied, that's not how the words work.

>>96067497
>since ANYTHING that works at all is science
Science is only the study, not the application. That's the job of engineers, who intentionally do the calculations in ways entirely incompatible with the science because it gives right-enough results easier.

>>96067532
>You cannot separate processes from processes in a world of causality, since processes are why things are anything at all.
Categorizing them is a major part of why the scientific method works.

>>96068547
>It's just circular, fallacious retardation, and you won't learn.
It could be a bot.

>>96068543
It's quantum woo. He's probably some niche cultist too, I'm guessing he's into ontological mathematics or some similar type of religious quackery disguised as science.

>>96063050 (OP)
Put on a tripcode so I can filter you.

>>96068562
He’s certainly religiously minded. These people are impossible to argue with. They’re trapped.

>>96067584
>He believed that his theories of relativity were not merely the result of calculation, but rather the product of "pure thought"
Which is Rationalist epistemology, not Empirical. His great breakthroughs were not scientific in origin, and his biases against things then contentious likely screwed us out of a theory of gravity compatible with quantum physics for decades longer than necessary.

>He’s not right if you consider that the most famous physicists saw no distinction between science and physics, or nature, so holistic were they.
Which has absolutely no bearing on the philosophy of science DEMANDING otherwise for the scientific method to function.

>>96067622
>You can’t have processes that aren’t temporal, or causal, sorry.
So in a non-causal reality there aren't processes.

>You can just assume everything everywhere every when exists all at once, though.
The block universe hypothesis has very serious advocates in theoretical physics.

>I’m not taking you seriously because you keep using words you don’t understand
Says the one who's every attempted definition is outright incompatible with professional use.

>and you keep typing in capitals like an underaged person.
They are merely a substitute for elements of speech not present in text. Would you prefer asterisks as an emphasis marker?

>>96067658
Again with bricking science by reducing it to base trial-and-error... No, it is not, it only works because there are specific parameters required to both sides for it to be science, and so most of history did none.

>>96067668
>You’re repeating steps. Processes. To create desired results. That’s science.
Not if there's no attempt at gleaning new information in those steps. Again, it's a methodology for study, NOTHING more, according to all the people who actually got the advancement going instead of so far along they could ignore epistemology.

>>96067688
>Observation or acknowledgement isn’t required for science.
Yes it is, totalizing midwit

>>96067106
Magic being subjective or perceptive was precisely OP’s point in the other threads to start: that magic is whatever the FUCK, or the “mind’s eye”, or whatever. The autismo hates his guts for even bringing up this topic in thread form. It’s a literal case of “why enter the thread if you’re just going to rage?”.

>>96067284
This is 4chan. We are not beholden to the thread topic and when you act like such a huge, retarded faggot, it only encourages us to mock you more, you gameless, dickless subhuman.

>he’s still going

>>96068650
>magic isn’t whateverthefuck it’s whatever I want it to be reee
Yeah he’s that dumb

>>96068659
>>96068670
Fuck off frog

>>96068411
>>96068480
>>96068557
>>96068629
Impressive stubbornness if nothing else.

>>96067727
>Is there something wrong with that?
The way it disintegrates the epistemology that makes the methodology of study function.

>>96067737
>Nope.
>repeats the exact same sentiment
Not beating the functional illiteracy accusations.

>>96067752
>Official science
Attempting to deflect by begging we split the common and professional usage of the word from your retarded jargon and then accept the LATTER instead of what we actually see other people use is quite stupid of you.

>>96067773
>It doesn’t stop becoming science or physics once we learn about it.
The science and physics is exclusively what we learn about it. They're approximations of the thing, not the thing itself.

>>96067786
About the philosophy of science, yes. Again, his famous works were not empirical, it took DECADES to actually prove most of the predictions because it was so far from any contemporary means of observation.

>>96068504
I did, and then there were over eighty new posts to reply to

>>96068543
>Oh, so you’re one of those morons who thinks everything is lolsorandom because of quantum uncertainty, eh?
Not deep in enough to have a strong opinion about it, and unsure how you got here from his work being on the wrong epistemology. Probably your own over-investment in the matter

>>96068547
>The problem is, you're "educating" people about concepts that are purely based on your personal opinion and inventions.
Do I have to source science, physics, causality, and existence not being synonymous?

>You think there's a direct relationship between the physically testable and the purely conceptual
I think you replied to the wrong post...

>>96068650
>Magic being subjective or perceptive was precisely OP’s point in the other threads to start
That it ABSOLUTELY MUST BE to the exclusion of jargon meanings of the word to WRITE A FUCKING GAME with. I accept it as ONE definition, but keep trying to hammer in that there are others that CAN exist as objective categories in a counterfactual.

>>96068779
>Do I have to source science, physics, causality, and existence not being synonymous?
To the physicist they’re largely synonymous. Physics is the all-science.

>>96068779
>That it ABSOLUTELY MUST BE
The alternative is insisting that magic is a specific thing, to the detriment of contrary takes. Hm. Do reconsider.

>>96063050 (OP)
Supernatural phenomena that is poorly understood even by those who actively and regularly practice it.

What I wouldn't give to have poster count back...

>>96068822
>To the physicist they’re largely synonymous.
Not to most of them, being that causality is a distinct factor in their equations from whether or not something exists. And I'd certainly hope most of them can remember their field is just one of many instead of falling victim to assuming their mastery of "The Science" gives them authority on everything.

>>96068875
>The alternative is insisting that magic is a specific thing, to the detriment of contrary takes.
...No? "The word magic refers to a long list of different things" supports contrary takes far better than "magic is subjective/psychology/ignorance".

>>96068931
>...No?
Yes. You don’t think that magic is subjective. You think they magic is objective. You think that there can be magic always viewed as magic. So give me an example of one.

>>96068931
>Not to most of them
Most physicists agree that nature is existence vice versa, that nature is nature no matter the nature, that physics is the study of everything, and that causality, time, is a vital part of that / allowing for things to happen and progress at all.

>>96068951
>>96068965
Stop. Responding. To It.

>>96068978
They will never learn, just like they will never stop samefagging

>>96068951
>Yes. You don’t think that magic is subjective.
Not ALWAYS subjective, because the word can mean more than one thing. To repeat myself:
>>96063155
>"The rites of Mesopotamian astrologer-priests" and "supernatural effects generated by rituals" may not be the same definition, but both are concrete meanings of the word "magic".

>You think that there can be magic always viewed as magic.
According to select definitions of "magic", especially within counterfactuals that have said definitions be readily in-use phenomena.

>So give me an example of one.
See the self-reply for two. Again, my position is a plurality of definitions, where the breadth of things that can be called "magic" are distinguishable by context as different things despite using one word. Same deal as "literally" being a contranym.

>>96068965
>Most physicists agree that nature is existence vice versa
Citation fucking needed.

>that nature is nature no matter the nature
Irrelevant tautology when your pathological monist premise is rejected.

>that physics is the study of everything
No it is not.

>and that causality, time, is a vital part of that / allowing for things to happen and progress at all.
Rendered irrelevant by the void of merit in the totalizing behind you stating such.

>>96068951
NTA but here.

Magic under the classical Christian definition is the work of demons and thus using magic was always heretical or the work of pagans, distinct from the miracles of god that saints and priests were considered capable of. (This is a pretty gross generalization for the sake of a hypothetical)

Magic under the classical Islamic perspective was divided into two types White magic and Black magic. White magic was seen as legitimate and permissible, black magic was the work Jinns and demons and generally heretical similar to Christianity. These are also still notably distinct from the idea of miracles which are a little more sketchy in Islam, because of how they view God. (Again generalizing here)

These two points of view existed presumably at roughly the same time. So from a macro perspective one can say that magic is subjective.

But from the micro perspective of the individual Christian or Muslim it was not subjective. Magic was defined thing by the beliefs laid out by their religion.

This is the paradigm that fiction and RPGs operate under. Magic is typically a concrete thing with a definition and distinct classification.
Given that magic isn't real to our knowledge in our world we can always take a wider view and claim subjectivity. (Although as previously stated this is mostly a philosophical thing and doesn't really have any historical utility or relevance)
But when engaging with fiction constructed by an author there is no greater authority, thus what the author states is how it is. If the author provides a limited construction of magic with a concrete definition, in the context of that world, that is what magic is.
There's no subjective view in-universe, because it's been objectively defined by the arbiter of the world on a meta level.

That's all the other side's point has been, Magic must have some variety of specific constructions to be useful for discussion.
Claiming perpetual and inherent subjectivity is simply inaccurate.

>>96068922
You and me, bud (we are the same person)
>>96069069
>No it is not
No it is, I had to learn how to draw and read Swahili as part of physics. Not related to anything actually covered in physics, but just because, yknow, it's the study of everything. Also we did yoga and speed.

>>96069161
>No it is, I had to learn how to draw and read Swahili as part of physics. Not related to anything actually covered in physics, but just because, yknow, it's the study of everything. Also we did yoga and speed.
Ah, so you came out of a postmodernist woo diploma mill. Opinion discarded as critical theory slop.

>>96063050 (OP)
Very distinct from advanced technology and science, as it should be

>>96069161
Everyone knows Science is when you sit around, get high, and start jerking each other off with entry level philosophy. Now Magic, on the other hand, is obviously when you write about best-practice DFT protocols for molecular computational chemistry. If you say anything the high school and college dropouts who are in le science fandom will get very mad

In my world, mana is everywhere, and there are trace amounts in and on everything and everyone.
Mages are people born with an extra organ that is like a secondary cardio-vascular system. The organ at the center of it is behind the heart, where their body is can produce mana from.
The idea is that the ambient mana of the world is "raw" and when it enters the bodies of people with this organ, their body is able to synthesize it into something that can then be wielded to create spells.
However, mana is addictive, and mages need to be trained properly to not use too much of it or they are at risk of overloading themselves, taking in more mana than their body can handle and exploding rather violently.

>>96069128
This!
This is why the totalizing monist (OP) is considered a retard. He is utterly incapable of dealing with a hypothetical (the concretely defined magic of a fictional world) because he is lost in the weeds of his own low IQ version of the idea that magic is subjective. He is also thought of as a retard because his ideas surrounding science are fucked up, his butchering of linguistics and semantics is fucked up, and just the general gist of his arguments and mindset.

It also doesn't help that there are a few nitwits in these threads who think very similarly to him. Just absolutely retarded people who mistake the map for the territory, aka science for the Universe. It doesn't help that several great scientists were also fools who fell for this trap, mistaking their own map drawings as the territory itself.

Magic is unscientific. It has causality but there are no rules for it. No, not "unknown rules" or "hidden rules". NO rules. Wizards aren't stupid, they also tend to be accomplished scientists.
Why does waving your hands, saying "Open Sesame", and pointing your finger at a door cause the door to open? Nobody knows.
Spell research does not involve any hypotheses or theories at all. It's just trying random shit, producing a magical effect, seeing if you can reproduce that magical effect in slightly different conditions ( most research paths end here ).
Magic is considered a Spell when it can be cast at any time, any place, and by anyone who follows the instructions. If it can only be cast under specific conditions, at specific times and/or relatively specific places, it's a Ritual.
If the magic can only be done by a specific person, at a specific location, and/or at a specific time then it's considered Sorcery and a mere cheap trick. Like specifically Bob can make someone sneeze if that person is standing around 3 meters away from him in the 7 o'clock direction by saying fiddlesticks. But only at 7:00 in the evening.

>>96063050 (OP)
For the one system I've made that has it, the core setting has it as something everyone has. Like a muscle, it can be trained.

Those who use their Mana to enhance their bodies and techniques with weaponry are Martials. They alter themselves rather than the things around them.

Those who learn to enact their will on the world with Mana are called Full Casters, and they can bolster or hinder others by altering their mana flow, heal wounds, revive the dead in extreme cases, and manipulate the elements. In short, Full Casters are those who exert their will on the world around them rather than amplifying their own bodies.

Half-Casters exist as a midpoint, and are either Martials who use magical tools to enhance their combat ability or cover a gap in their defenses, or those who have split their focus, sacrificing the raw power of specialization for the weaker utility of being a generalist.

It's modern fantasy, so by this point in the timeline, I suppose you could call it a science, but it is an arcane force. You can't just mix two chemicals together to replicate a magical effect, magic requires active use of mana and the knowledge of how to use it. Even an Alchemist is more like something from FMA where it's about transmutation more than science.

This carries over to weapons; while firearms exist, their polymer components make holding magic impossible; only slower-firing, low-capacity weapons made of steel or wood can hold magic, and those are rare and heavy to boot. Thus, swords, bows, crossbows, and similar weapons have a place; they hold magic and can be enchanted. With firearms, you're largely enchanting ammo since it's metal (natural) and therefore can hold magical power, but is expendable, losing the charge once fired.

There are also some Races created through magic rituals (i.e. Kitsune which are basically environmentalist extremist elves who did a ritual involving the goddess of nature).

>>96063050 (OP)
Fuck off George. Until you finish your books you're utterly irrelevant

>>96063050 (OP)
Unused laws of physics that were discarded during the creation of the universe.

>>96063050 (OP)
The joy in players eyes. The memories we all shared. The friendship we all forged. That's my magic, OP.

>>96069182
It's a joke, you total buffoon
Are you actually braindead

>>96069069
>Not ALWAYS subjective, because the word can mean more than one thing.
That’s subjective.

>>that physics is the study of everything
>No it is not.
— ‘Physics is often called the "everything" science because it explores the fundamental laws and principles that govern the universe, from the smallest subatomic particles to the largest structures like galaxies. It provides the foundational framework upon which other sciences, like chemistry, biology, and even aspects of social science, are built. In essence, other sciences are often seen as "applied physics" because their principles can be traced back to the underlying laws of physics.’

>>96063050 (OP)
in my games, magic is just advanced science. usualy people don't even call it magic and look down on those who do, even when they DON'T understand the advanced tech they use

>>96071590
>That’s subjective.
No, because the different meanings can be clear and specific. Insisting that this makes it "subjective" renders you incapable of engaging with discussions revolving around such specific meanings, as these three threads of you relentlessly spinning in circles repeatedly asserting it to the exclusion of any concrete definition well demonstrates.

>— ‘Physics is often called the "everything" science because it explores the fundamental laws and principles that govern the universe, from the smallest subatomic particles to the largest structures like galaxies. It provides the foundational framework upon which other sciences, like chemistry, biology, and even aspects of social science, are built. In essence, other sciences are often seen as "applied physics" because their principles can be traced back to the underlying laws of physics.’
"Often called/seen as" does not mean "is", nor does it make it identical to those other "sub"-fields, nor project it outside the boundaries of science. Even accepting this statement, the sub-set is extremely rarely the same as the whole set, the differentiation by details MATTERS. Insisting that it does not is simply totalizing midwitery, demonstrating a crippling inability to understand why people would ever use a less-accurate approximation because you can't be bothered to consider nuance.

>>96063050 (OP)
It's a seafood dish enjoyed by bikers

>>96063050 (OP)
Obscure secrets of flaws and loopholes in the rules of creation.
Locks are supposed to keep you out, but magic can open them.
Humans aren't supposed to talk to birds, but learning the secret language of the birds and you can.
Space should be connected in a certain way, but if you learn the right paths you can cross the forest much quicker.

>>96063050 (OP)
A game mechanic.

>>96063050 (OP)
Couldn't tell you, it's existed since the earliest recorded history of man as abilities that can be taught and nurtured by a few through knowledge that's been passed down generation by generation
The fey, groups of sentient species much older than man, similarly aren't sure. Some insist it was a gift bestowed upon them by the old gods that are long forgotten while others say was a product of the fey themselves. Regardless, most consider it a mistake that man was ever able to achieve the ability to use it.
tldr who knows, it just works

>>96068653
>all this projection
gayfags

>>96071901
You’re so stupid lol.

>>96075705
Refusing those hopelessly distorted priors is not stupidity, clinging to the nigh-solipsistic circular reasoning of them is.

>>96063050 (OP)
ITT a question about magic in games is answered as if it's a question about the existence or inherent nature or lack thereof of magic in general... for over 200 replies. Grim.

>>96063050 (OP)
My magic is based on Goblins and the different ways you enslave them in objects
Stove? Pop some fire Gobs in and feed them wood, they go into hibernation when not given fuel
Want electricity? Make a large gear contraption, Gob Box with hamster wheels, a copper coil, and feeding tube

>>96076142
Lolok.

>>96063050 (OP)
My friends/players want to play 5e D&D, so it's the Vancian magic system.

I'm kicking around an idea of how to create a magic system that isn't "recipe" based and instead being based more around intent with a much looser list of materials needed for any given spell or ritual. Now, I don't think this would be easy at all to put in D&D or any TTRPG, so it will probably die in my notebooks for the world building I'm never going to do anything with.

>>96071901
>No, because the different meanings can be clear and specific
Different meanings can be clear and specific and still be applied to different words. That’s semantics. Arguing about the meaning of words is semantics. This wouldn’t be the case words weren’t inherently subjective.
>Insisting that this makes it "subjective"
It is subjective. Magic to one is not magic to another. Magic has a ton of baggage. It is either a pejorative or not.

>>96077358
This wouldn’t be the case if* words weren’t inherently subjective.

>>96071901
Also, if your personal meaning for magic is “incantations and rituals”, then you can still easily apply such things to science or technology, like working with AI programs or other interactive interfaces. Machinery is rigid and complex. “Ritualistic” applies.

Christ, the rites and masses and the alleged ‘miracles’ of Christians are all too indistinguishable from magic and witchcraft, and yet they don’t see it that way, the words “magic” and “witchcraft” mean completely different things to them, despite all the ironies, or despite all the shared essence.

>>96068922
Just add flags and IDs

>>96066271
>>96077508

Hey how come you didn't answer this simple yes or no question I posed to you here? Is it because you're a big pussy?

> People who believe in magic can be found in all societies, regardless of whether they have organized religious hierarchies, including formal clergy, or more informal systems. Such concepts tend to appear more frequently in cultures based in polytheism, animism, or shamanism. Religion and magic became conceptually separated in the West where the distinction arose between supernatural events sanctioned by approved religious doctrine versus magic rooted in other religious sources. With the rise of Christianity this became characterized with the contrast between divine miracles versus folk religion, superstition, or occult speculation.

Now replace religion with Science™, and magic with “science”.

>>96077912
All religion is essentially just coping science.

They - the ignorant persons of the past - observed the laws of nature, and the theory was “a fucking god did it”.

>>96063050 (OP)
Mostly derived from diamonds and human sacrifice.

>>96077478
wdyum

>>96077358
>This wouldn’t be the case words weren’t inherently subjective.
Imprecision is not subjectivity. Subjectivity is SPECIFICALLY the word-meaning varying on an individual basis, consistent context-cues distinguishing multiple meanings of one word IS NOT SUBJECTIVE. You're deconstructing the basic coherence of language out of existence at this point.

>Magic to one is not magic to another. Magic has a ton of baggage. It is either a pejorative or not.
Again, this creates a list of different definitions to distinguish by context. Language doesn't function if you reduce this variance to subjectivity. Your position makes it genuinely impossible to hold a discussion about particular takes on magic. Shut the fuck up about it and address the internal state of the counterfactuals where such particulars are objective phenomena.

>>96077384
>Also, if your personal meaning for magic is “incantations and rituals”
One meaning. I have several. They are distinguished by context, not subjective opinion. Because that's how semantics ACTUALLY works, not reducing to wobbly nothing, because the point of semantics is IMPROVING the ability to convey ideas, which requires INCREASING specificity.

>>96077417
>Christ, the rites and masses and the alleged ‘miracles’ of Christians are all too indistinguishable from magic and witchcraft
By your head-up-ass generalizations. The two traditions have more than sufficient differing priors to be distinguished.

>despite all the ironies
According to your ass-backwards semantics that muddles meaning into indistinguishable greys instead of improving the contrast of it.

>despite all the shared essence.
Doesn't erase the differences. They matter. Even if one accepts they're solely sociological, which I do not, they are what gets angry peasants to burn you at the stake.

>>96077912
>sociology jargon
Stop shoehorning a specialized definition into a context it was not made for.

>>96077975
Lol.

>>96077975
>They are distinguished by context, not subjective opinion. Because that's how semantics ACTUALLY works

— ‘Semantics, in linguistics, is the study of meaning in language. It explores how words and sentences convey meaning, and how that meaning is interpreted by speakers and listeners. When someone says "semantics," they are often referring to the study of how words and phrases have different meanings or how the same words can be interpreted differently in different contexts.’

If you’re going by public opinion, then ok, sure, it’s a lot less subjective, but culture is itself born of one’s individual subjection woven into larger networks, propagating, and cultures are themselves subjective...

But, again, the essences that are found in magic are likewise shared in religion and science. From the materialist perspective, where everything is seen as constructed, the things, or building blocks, that lead up to magic and religion are also found in science and technology.

>>96077975
What is magic to you? Go on.

>>96077975
>Language doesn't function if you reduce this variance to subjectivity

You can’t translate some words in some languages to other languages at all. Some words are subjective rather than objective, but hypothetically we should all be able to understand the same meaning, or concept. Even then, these same meanings can be shared amongst different words.

>Shut the fuck up about it and address the internal state of the counterfactuals where such particulars are objective phenomena.

So you’re arguing that magic can be an objective phenomenon in fiction. I really don’t think this is possible since there should still be a hypothetical intelligence (aliens or whatever) capable of understanding it completely to the point where it’s not magic to them, or they didn’t even see it as magic to being with.

>>96078038
>Even then, these same meanings can be shared amongst different words
*depending on the perception.

>>96077975
>Stop shoehorning a specialized definition into a context it was not made for.
What? Magic and miracles are clearly the same thing and you are retarded if you don’t think this. It is all out of the ordinary or momentous circumstances laid down by higher powers. The only real difference is between the higher powers.

>>96077975
>Doesn't erase the differences
There are no differences in essence, merely different word play.

Voodoo, Hoodoo, Mexican folk magic and folk Catholicism have historic magical practices using Psalms, Saints, etc... You had peasants writing grimoires on how to summon angels(Theurgia). You had bishops writing grimoires on how to summon demons(Goeteia), and those (Agrippa) who saw no difference. The ‘thaumaturge’, was simultaneously a man of miraculous feats, or magic; there was no true differentiation.

Christianity in general has plenty of magic in the Bible, its arguable its an occult text itself given the symbolism. Urim and Thurrim (divination), Psalms (incantations), prophecies/visions (self explanatory)...even the more modern charismatic denominations emphasize prayer (intention/incantation) and use Christian dressing as a means of group/energy work. Ever hear the 'Christianese' "speak life" and "intentional xyz"? Not by accident...even the prosperity gospel, megachurch pastors, snake handlers, preachers who use sermons to stir emotions, Sacred Name movement...all of them are forms of magic just as the high church rituals of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions in different forms.

Also historically many Christian mystics have used astrology and angelology (angel work). Saints and saint candles are magic.

All religions involve magic in some form including those who claim to be entirely against it...aligning to a religious law or deity is sympathetic magic...with the Bible its very Saturnian (OT) and much of the traditional modern day Christian celebrations are Solar based (NT).

Natural philosophy (physics back then) was seen as ‘magica naturalis’, or natural magic, including artifice. Knowledge is knowledge (wizard even comes from wise). Just showing a woman a piece of cheese was seen as a spell.

Math was also seen as magic and as a form of divination for many thousands of years,

>>96078018
>how the same words can be interpreted differently in different contexts
So your quote backs my argument. "Different context" is not "subjective", it's an objective conditional.

>If you’re going by public opinion, then ok, sure, it’s a lot less subjective, but culture is itself born of one’s individual subjection woven into larger networks, propagating, and cultures are themselves subjective...
Again, the peasants coming to burn you at the stake don't care. You can't get anywhere if every single step of the discussion you just deconstruct everything to mean nothing in particular. How do you BUILD anything with this? How do you write RULES with this?

>But, again, the essences that are found in magic are likewise shared in religion and science.
Stop insisting that any overlap immediately reduces to synonymy, language doesn't function under such a framework.

>>96078038
>You can’t translate some words in some languages to other languages at all.
We're talking about the meaning of a single word within one language.

>Some words are subjective rather than objective
Very rarely, far more common is contextual variance.

>Even then, these same meanings can be shared amongst different words.
But the different words can also hold separate meanings that aren't shared.

>So you’re arguing that magic can be an objective phenomenon in fiction.
Due to most of the history of the word being particular, thus supporting the counterfactual where said particular definition is an objective phenomenon. Do you just not know what a conditional hypothetical is?

>>96078073
>Magic and miracles are clearly the same thing and you are retarded if you don’t think this.
Not if you bother to count those "higher" powers' properties as part of the definition.

>>96078118
>There are no differences in essence, merely different word play.
There very much are, no amount of stubborn reductionism removes the non-overlapping definitions nor the subtle connotations.

>>96077478
And then we can add mandatory usernames and phone verification and post signatures.

>>96066271
Many such threads.

>>96078461
>”Different contexts” is not “subjective”
Context isn’t subjective?

Listen, a semantic disagreement is a conflict arising from different interpretations of the same words or phrases. It occurs when people are not arguing about the underlying facts or opinions, but rather about the meaning of the terms used to express them. For example, two people might disagree about whether a particular action constitutes "bribery" or whether a particular object fits the definition of a "vehicle". Arguing over bicycles being legally considered vehicles is semantics.

>Again, the peasants coming to burn you at the stake don't care.
Yes, because they saw things they didn’t like as magic. The people they burned at the stake did not. Arguing over whether it was magic or not often occurred before it happened.

>Stop insisting that any overlap immediately reduces to synonymy, language doesn't function under such a framework.
Yes it does. Words evolve and develop future meaning over time. If they didn’t then language wouldn’t be here at all. All the criteria that leads to something being seen as magic is also found in the realms of religion and science, even if the same words aren’t used.

If you consider magic to be a feeling of wonder, or confronting mystery, then that feeling a biologist feels when discovering a new form of deep sea life is a magical one, even if they don’t currently see the word in such a day.

It’s the same with religion. It only started because people had to cope with natural mysteries, making their own theories that played out through ritualistic observation. See>>96078461

Religion and magic are indistinguishable from science if you consider this is how past persons truly thought things worked.

>>96078461
>We're talking about the meaning of a single word within one language.
That meaning might be contradictory in a different language.

>Very rarely
Not really. Semantics is a thing. It’s a big problem at present. Look at liberals, who get quite angry if you say “men can get pregnant” rather than “cismen can’t get pregnant”. Or the whole sex vs gender thing. “What is a man? What is a woman?” Bollocks.

>But the different words can also hold separate meanings that aren't shared.
This is hard to do.

>Due to most of the history of the word being particular, thus supporting the counterfactual where said particular definition is an objective phenomenon.
An objective phenomenon is either seen as magic or it isn’t. Magic has never been objective. Ever.

>>96078461
>Not if you bother to count those "higher" powers' properties as part of the definition.
It’s a matter of scale, not class.

The “wizards” of Egypt that Moses faced were themselves the heralds of their own respective deities.

http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2009/01/moses-magician.html?m=1F

It’s the same with the legendary wizard king Solomon, who bound demons using the authority and approval of God, which is something later Christians attempted..

http://ejmmm2007.blogspot.com/2009/01/solomon-sorcerer.html?m=1

The Greeks saw magic and prophecy as a gift from the god of the sun. That itself is indistinguishable from a miracle. Magic was/is usually the domain of the gods.

Racist Spaniards grabbed Jews to force them to bless their crops, since they saw Jews/Judaism as magical.

People back then didn’t really distinguish magic from miraculous feats. Magic was associated with higher learning in Ancient Greece. The Persian Magi were learned men, or astrologer-priests.

— ‘Pervasive throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia until late antiquity and beyond, mágos (μάγος) was influenced by (and eventually displaced) Greek goēs (γόης), the older word for a practitioner of magic, with a meaning expanded to include astronomy, astrology, alchemy, and other forms of esoteric knowledge. This association was in turn the product of the Hellenistic fascination for Pseudo-Zoroaster, who was perceived by the Greeks to be the Chaldean founder of the Magi and inventor of both astrology and magic, a meaning that still survives in the modern-day words "magic" and "magician".’

>>96078461
>the non-overlapping definitions
What non-overlapping definitions are those? You still haven’t told us what magic is to you. Are you trying to avoid someone going “No that’s not magic”. Are you avoiding others pointing out shared ironies? You seem to respond to everyone in due time, so I find it weird that you wouldn’t respond to >>96078031 and clarify yourself.

>>96079675
See>>96078461
See>>96077923* rather

>>96063050 (OP)
The friends we made along the way.

>>96079675
>See>>96078461
See>>96077923* rather

>>96063050 (OP)
It is unexplianable despite, seemingly, adhering to some sort of rules and laws.
Where it actually comes from and why it follows some sort of rules is unknown, much to the frustration of it's practitioners, who desire to be seen as scholars and not as mystics.

>>96077923
This is a good point.

Law/observation: “I see the stars. They twinkle.”
Theory/conclusion: “They’re clearly the gods.”

How is that any different from physicists observing and theorizing phenomena?

>>96079901
A lot of things in life are overwhelmingly simple made unnecessarily complex.

“If you can’t explain it simply enough, you don’t understand it well enough” - Einstein

>>96079675
>Context isn’t subjective?
Finish reading the sentence, the counter-point is already given.

>Yes, because they saw things they didn’t like as magic.
Reducing it to "things they didn't like" makes the particulars necessary to understand their motives inexplicable.

>Words evolve and develop future meaning over time.
We're debating the present meaning of words as they pertain to game design, not etymology, so this is irrelevant.

>All the criteria that leads to something being seen as magic is also found in the realms of religion and science
According to your semantic argument demanding I use only your definition of these terms. Demonstrate their validity by explaining how one constructs game rules with it, or cease using the point.

>If you consider magic to be a feeling of wonder
And if you consider ADDITIONAL definitions this point disintegrates; it is only when you consider magic to be so to the EXCLUSION of other meanings that your argument functions.

>>96079709
>That meaning might be contradictory in a different language.
Doesn't matter, we're using English as of July 2025. Other languages and other times are irrelevant.

>This is hard to do.
Not at all. "Literally" being a contranym is not the case for the synonyms of its two contradictory meanings.

>Magic has never been objective. Ever.
It is a semantic argument specifically demanding the definition of "magic" have the property of a particular. I have provided two examples function for this in >>96063155. Those meanings are objective criteria.

>>96079763
>It’s a matter of scale, not class
Within the worldview in question, it is. Your position is inapplicable if you cannot accept that.

>People back then didn’t really distinguish magic from miraculous feats.
Which is not people of the "back then" of Middle Ages Europe. I refuse to allow you to keep moving the goalpost to different times and places.

>>96079784
>What non-overlapping definitions are those?
Open a dictionary, I ain't spoonfeeding it again.

>Are you trying to avoid someone going “No that’s not magic”.
On account of "magic" needing to be a fixed category to WRITE A GAME RULE FOR IT.

>You seem to respond to everyone in due time, so I find it weird that you wouldn’t respond to >>96078031 and clarify yourself.
Because I already gave two in my first post on the matter in this thread, and have now referred back to it twice. I will not do so a third should you be a different anon.

>>96079918
>A lot of things in life are overwhelmingly simple made unnecessarily complex.
And a lot more things in life actually need their complexity to function.

>>96079901
>How is that any different from physicists observing and theorizing phenomena?
A causal chain assuming humans can initiate it and a consistent empirical structure to the theories? Reducing to pithy statements of minor similarities loses the details that give us modern technology.

>>96080196
>Reducing it to "things they didn't like" makes the particulars necessary to understand their motives inexplicable.
Reducing? Magic is either a positive or a negative in cultures. It’s a positive in Asia where they don’t really distinguish much between magic and religion, and there’s Taoist sorcery and Buddhist sorcery and Shinto magic and Shinto-Buddhist magic. Christians placed an emphasis on their religious rites and alleged miracles being distinct and distinguished, or standing apart from the rest. The word pagan just meant any non-Christian religion for the most part (but Christianity had absorbed pagan elements in the past, so too).

>We're debating the present meaning of words as they pertain to game design, not etymology, so this is irrelevant.
I can never tell if your whole argument against magic being subjective is based around the psychological reality of it, or your insistence on how this all relates to games. Sure, arguing the subjection, or semantics of magic is useless in a game, I can agree there—but a lot of fantasy games/worlds are taking place in ages of fantastic ignorance so it’s not not-fun to play around with not!Churches refusing to consider their magic to be magic, and to weaponize semantics and ironies for their own gain, like the irl Church did. It’s also fun playing around with ignorance, or just nebulousness, in general.

People back then called the applications of natural science ‘natural magic’, or they didn’t. It depended. But it was the same.

In a lot of fantasy settings the scientist or natural philosopher equivalent is just the wizard.

>According to your semantic argument demanding I use only your definition of these terms.
What do you mean? Magic is inconsistent as a matter of fact.

>Demonstrate their validity by explaining how one constructs game rules with it
I think you’re arguing for the game’s sake over the psychological reality. Why can’t one apply the psychological reality to it?

>>96080196
>We're debating the present meaning of words as they pertain to game design, not etymology, so this is irrelevant.
>Doesn't matter, we're using English as of July 2025. Other languages and other times are irrelevant.

See, you’re arguing “how does this logic apply to games usefully?”. I suppose it is not useful in settings like old Dungeons & Dragons where such definitions or wordplay are inherently ironic or disingenuous, all for the sake of fun (but not so fun to the linguists playing the games wanting to rip their hair out).

That’s fine. Just don’t be frustrated when someone points out that magic has been “it depends on the author” since forever, and “the author” extends to one’s culture.

The most common usage of magic today is either “it’s shit we don’t understand”, or “it’s supernatural; it goes against nature as we know it”, and these can very easily be taken as the same.

>I have provided two examples function for this in >>96063155
Those aren’t really different. Rituals are rituals. If you’re arguing that Zoroastrian rituals are different from, say, Christian or Jewish rituals, then by that points it’s just a matter of superficiality, or purely artistic-ritualistic layout. It’s all Art.

>Within the worldview in question, it is.
Not really. A god is a god. A recipient is a recipient. Sponsorship is sponsorship. A patron is a patron.

>Your position is inapplicable if you cannot accept that.
Not accept what? That the god of one religion isn’t seen as an evil demon by another religion? It happened all the time.

>Which is not people of the "back then" of Middle Ages Europe.
It wasn’t just in Europe. “My god is better than your god! My magic- er, I mean- my miracles, are better than your magic!” is a common occurrence. People of their own religion either saw their doings as magic, or they didn’t. The Zoroastrian Magi didn’t see themselves as magicians, not really, but the Greeks did.

>>96080256
>Open a dictionary, I ain't spoonfeeding it again.
Lol.
>Because I already gave two in my first post on the matter in this thread, and have now referred back to it twice. I will not do so a third should you be a different anon.
Don’t dodge. Tell us what you think magic is.

"the rites of Mesopotamian astrologer-priests"
“supernatural effects generated by rituals"
“taking advantage of physics through ritualistic infrastructure”
“a succulent Chinese meal made by torturing dogs, as they believe the more an animal suffers the better it tastes”

>>96080539
>Reducing?
Removing details to make a point that said details would contradict. Such as painting that following list of traditions as the exact same thing and from this declaring "magic" must be a non-thing as the only commonality you care to notice is them being incorrect conceptions of the world.

>or your insistence on how this all relates to games.
We're on /tg/ in a thread specifically asking about "in your game".

>Sure, arguing the subjection, or semantics of magic is useless in a game, I can agree there
Then stop doing doing it, because the thread is about games.

>but a lot of fantasy games/worlds are taking place in ages of fantastic ignorance
The counterfactual is that the historic ideas are not ignorance. Engage the conditional hypothetical or SHUT THE FUCK UP.

>What do you mean? Magic is inconsistent as a matter of fact.
See, you're doing it again, demanding I accept only your definition to the exclusion of others.

>I think you’re arguing for the game’s sake over the psychological reality.
Because we're on /tg/ in a thread specifically asking about "in your game".

>>96080694
>See, you’re arguing “how does this logic apply to games usefully?”.
Because we're on /tg/ in a thread specifically asking about "in your game".

>Just don’t be frustrated when someone points out that magic has been “it depends on the author” since forever, and “the author” extends to one’s culture.
My frustration is because you won't address the conditional hypothetical where all your /his/-sperging is completely irrelevant because the historic particular definitions are objective phenomena.

>Those aren’t really different.
The overlap is non-total, so they are in fact different meanings

>Not accept what?
That INTERALLY to the worldview, "god" and "demon" are qualitatively distinct categories. Insisting upon relativism is just refusing to address the point.

>It wasn’t just in Europe.
Middle Ages Europe is the only point of reference of this

>>96080721
Demonstrate your reading comprehension by following the directions you quoted. I don't care which of the two.

>>96080776
My point is that do neither override eachother nor muddle into one meaning according to commonality.

>>96081096
>Removing details to make a point that said details would contradict.
What do you mean by this? No matter what you or another claims to be magic, there will always be a “no it’s not magic” counterpoint to it. Magic is ironic innately.

>Then stop doing doing it, because the thread is about games.
Whether it’s useful or useless to a game depends on the game in question.

>The counterfactual is that the historic ideas are not ignorance.
History is without ignorance? Wizards have nothing more to learn? Lol.
>Engage the conditional hypothetical or SHUT THE FUCK UP.
You need to calm down and stop typing (using capitals) like a fifteen year old.

>See, you're doing it again, demanding I accept only your definition to the exclusion of others.
You refusing to accept that it’s inconsistent is just proving that it’s inconsistent. No matter what you believe magic to be, there is going to be a “um, no, it’s not magic” counter take.

>My frustration is because you won't address the conditional hypothetical where all your /his/-sperging is completely irrelevant because the historic particular definitions are objective phenomena.
What’s objective phenomena won’t necessarily be seen as magic, is the point. All perceptions of magic come of historical perceptions, even today. Wanting some phenomena to be magic is fine, but it might not remain magic forever.

>The overlap is non-total, so they are in fact different meanings
A religious ritual is a religious ritual.

>That INTERALLY to the worldview, "god" and "demon" are qualitatively distinct categories.
See the Dwemer in Elder Scrolls.

>>96081127
>My point is that do neither override eachother nor muddle into one meaning according to commonality
Sure. You can apply ritualism to literally anything in a world of causality. Incantations/speech are weirder, though. You have to expect something to react to what you’re saying. It’s either an interface or some intelligence that responds.

The Dwemer:

— ‘There isn't even a word to describe the Dwarven view on divinity. They were atheists on a world where gods exist. [They] are Tamriel's biggest mystery and there should be no end to their enigma…’

The deconstructive scientific perspective is that ‘gods’ like the Aedra and ‘demons’ like the Daedra are just a bunch of aliens being worshiped. They’re another form of life to the Dwemer.

The Dwemer don’t believe in magic in the literal phenomenon sense, as Magicka is just a component in their machinery and infrastructure. Spells are activator buttons and their equivalent of the Mage star sign is the Machinist. Their “tonal magic”, their tonal architecture, makes use of Magicka like the rest of the world’s produce. They call themselves mage-smiths and arcane philosophers. They *describe* the world through an arcane lens, they’re not going around labelling natural phenomena like magic, like other races did with Magicka.

They transcended phenomena and see it (“magic”) as an outlook on nature.

This is 21st century logic on fantasy soil.

The Judeo-Christian God could exist for real and -still- be seen as “just some big sufficiently advanced higher dimensional alien of godlike intellect and proportions.”.

They (the Dwemer) are also shockingly alike Tolkien’s elves, who also don’t see their innate abilities and doings as magic, but rather art/artifice. They’re too familiar with the world. They do see the art of the mind’s eye, or the psychology, however. “Yeah I guess it’s magic—and it’s not like we aren’t poking at our own mysteries.”.

Magic is in the world. It updates itself.

The capital-w wizard won’t necessarily see themselves as a capital-w wizard, if they’re too transcendent for that. They’d sooner see why something is recognized as magic. The lead up: mystery, wonder, and horror, etc, are the building blocks of magic.

>>96081381
Best part of that world, honestly.

This argument at the end of the day is about whether magic remains magic after it’s completely understood and taken for granted. What happens at such a point.

Like, assume the word magic (Magic™) is the word a fictional setting uses for a clear fictional hard science based around some explicit physical phenomena, like a glowing blue substance like Mana™, and you’re still not entirely safe from someone screaming “omg magic!!1” when they see or come across something weirdly out of the ordinary, not necessarily related to that fictional hard science / phenomenon / Mana™.

It’s unavoidably a word for the unknown. It cannot be used as a serious definition for anything. It’s a fallback. A placeholder. A proxy. “Magic”.

Why not do both? Magic as the unknown, but also the known.

>>96081096
>Insisting upon relativism is just refusing to address the point.
Magic and religion, the gods, superstition, etc, have always been relative per culture and this is irrefutable unless you’re a sore loser who insists that his worldview is the right one, which is not the same as insisting that magic is inconstant. Insisting that magic is inconsistent isn’t actually insisting that magic is anything. It’s insisting that magic is inconstant. Per culture. Per mind.

>>96081651
Insisting that magic is inconstant/inconsistent is being interpreted by the autismo as insisting that magic is a specific something, though. “How DARE you say magic is anything! Magic can be different things!”. What the fuck. It’s like being shown the color orange and then disagreeing that it’s the color orange, only to say seconds later “it’s actually orange”. What. The. Fuck.

Example:
>Magic is whatever the fuck
>No magic is whatever the fuck I say it is
>Um yes that’s what I just said
>No you didn’t
>Okay I’m out of here
>I accept your concession
LMAO

>>96081232
>No matter what you or another claims to be magic, there will always be a “no it’s not magic” counterpoint to it.
The counterpoint is simply factually incorrect within the counterfactual.

>Whether it’s useful or useless to a game depends on the game in question.
How do you write a hard game rule using a word if the word has no solid meaning the way you insist of "magic"?

>History is without ignorance?
How is it so difficult for you to understand "things that historic people were wrong about are instead correct"?

>You refusing to accept that it’s inconsistent is just proving that it’s inconsistent.
You're just retreating into naked falsifiability at this point, declaring that me arguing against you is proof of your position.

>What’s objective phenomena won’t necessarily be seen as magic, is the point.
And it doesn't have to be seen as magic to be magic, according to the very long list of particular definitions I have provided two of.

>Wanting some phenomena to be magic is fine, but it might not remain magic forever.
It will when the word is given an explicit definition particular to the game rules and their associated setting. Thus is jargon, a rather essential part of semantics you seem completely uncomprehending of.

>A religious ritual is a religious ritual.
But the Magi are a particular religious organization, and not all religious rituals are attempting supernatural effects.

>See the Dwemer in Elder Scrolls.
Not Medieval Europe, so not the relevant worldview.

>>96081580
>This argument at the end of the day is about whether magic remains magic after it’s completely understood and taken for granted.
No, it's about the boundaries of reducing definitions to common elements with respect to writing rules for a game. One side is steadfastly refusing to address the /tg/ context in favor of relentless /his/ sperging, which I am attempting to counter by dragging them to a conditional hypothetical where the /his/ sperging does not apply.

>>96081713
You underestimate anon’s power to argue for the sake of arguing. It could also be a dedicated troll.

>>96081733
You still have yet to tell us what magic is to you. This is a red flag you don’t know what magic is, or that you don’t want your notion of magic to be deconstructed.

>>96081651
>Magic and religion, the gods, superstition, etc, have always been relative per culture
But I am not bring up a broad selection of cultures, I am bringing up very specifically the archetypal Medieval European witch-hunt. Referring to another time or different worldview altogether is Not Even Wrong, because it is refusing to address the condition stated in favor of forcing a different one.

>>96081713
>Insisting that magic is inconstant/inconsistent is being interpreted by the autismo as insisting that magic is a specific something
No, I'm interpreting it as a refusal to accept any possible solidity of meaning no matter the use-case, because they are CONSTANTLY dragging in ambiguity and strict subjectivity as a response to every possible way of expressing objective variability via context-dependent definitions. Their constructions are mutually exclusive with writing a hard game rule, because they keep making statements like this:
>>96081580
>It’s unavoidably a word for the unknown. It cannot be used as a serious definition for anything. It’s a fallback. A placeholder. A proxy. “Magic”.

>>96081770
>You still have yet to tell us what magic is to you.
Fifth time pointing out I started my arguing in this thread offering two.

>or that you don’t want your notion of magic to be deconstructed.
I don't want any notions of magic deconstructed into a grey sludge of ambiguity! I want them to be left standing as independent meanings of the word, so that those in the past using a particular definition with no irony within their awareness remain intelligible and those today can write a game rule for it without nigh-solipsistic zealous monists screeching that the word CAN'T mean something objective.

>>96081733
>No, it's about the boundaries of reducing definitions to common elements with respect to writing rules for a game.
So you don’t actually care about the logic or the reality of magic/“magic”.

Anons, or OP, could be one-hundred percent correct in their assertions that all magic is ironic of psychological and you’d still not give a fuck because it just doesn’t relate to your own games. Okay. That’s fine. You’re still autistic, though. For not wanting to discuss different interpretations of magic, which is a staple of the fantasy hobby, not just tabletop.

Do you hate that endless magic systems are a thing?

>>96081794
>But I am not bring up a broad selection of cultures, I am bringing up very specifically the archetypal Medieval European witch-hunt.
Irrelevant. You can see parallels all over the world. “My stuff is good! Yours is bad! Mine is better! Yours is worse!”. Ironies at play everywhere.

>>96081794
>I don't want any notions of magic deconstructed into a grey sludge of ambiguity!
But it’s not ambiguous. In a world of materialism we’re allowed to deconstruct things into their essential essences, or components. This extends into abstract psychological concepts.’There’s definitely components leading up to concepts of magic, including accusations of magic. Mystery, wonder, horror, familiarity and unfamiliarity, exposure logic, etc. It’s all there. Words like the occult, the esoteric, the arcane, mysticism, the eldritch, are all denoting much the same essences.

>>96081794
>Their constructions are mutually exclusive with writing a hard game rule, because they keep making statements like this:
>> >It’s unavoidably a word for the unknown. It cannot be used as a serious definition for anything. It’s a fallback. A placeholder. A proxy. “Magic”.
So? That’s not mutually exclusive. Magic IS a placeholder, and games need useful or convenient labels for specific things. Doesn’t mean it’s true or correct, though. What the characters think or perceive isn’t necessarily what the people playing those characters think or perceive, as we are beyond the fourth wall and know a lot better.

>>96081794
>I want them to be left standing as independent meanings of the word
Literally how can you even do this? There is nothing unique about magic that isn’t already shared in religion, or science, to the point where they’re the same, more or less.

>>96081794
>so that those in the past using a particular definition with no irony
All religion/magic is ironic.
>within their awareness remain intelligible
>within their awareness
Religious people often aren’t aware of the ironies so this is fine.

>>96063050 (OP)
Aragorn's Tax Policy

>>96081794
>nigh-solipsistic zealous monists screeching that the word CAN'T mean something objective
Magic is objectively subjective. There. It’s about as objective as can be.

>>96081806
>So you don’t actually care about the logic or the reality of magic/“magic”.
Given the context is explicitly not real-life nor formal logic, what gave you that impression in the first place?

>>96081806
>For not wanting to discuss different interpretations of magic
Again, I'm arguing FOR this AGAINST a totalizing midwit who insists magic MUST be a muddled not-thing:
>>96081580
>It’s unavoidably a word for the unknown. It cannot be used as a serious definition for anything. It’s a fallback. A placeholder. A proxy. “Magic”.

>>96081824
>Irrelevant.
No, it is who is spewing irrelevant bullshit, because you are continuously insisting on dragging every single point off to your own terms instead of addressing them on the terms they are made.

>>96081856
>But it’s not ambiguous.
The subjective feeling is in fact ambiguous.

>>96081883
>That’s not mutually exclusive.
"It cannot be used as a serious definition for anything" is in fact mutually exclusive with providing a serious definition for a game element.

>Doesn’t mean it’s true or correct, though.
It is in the counterfactual that explicitly states so.

>as we are beyond the fourth wall and know a lot better.
What we know "better" is irrelevant to the counterfactual exercise of the fantasy setting, because its internals do not work like our world and so statements rooted in our world as you keep making can be untrue.

>>96081914
>Literally how can you even do this?
By noticing the Venn diagram of the separate meanings is not a perfect circle. No matter how close it gets, so long as the overlap is not total the difference is valid to track.

>>96081933
>All religion/magic is ironic.
According to your incredibly anachronistic constructions, not their contemporary worldviews. The point I make therein is concerned exclusively with the latter

>Religious people often aren’t aware of the ironies so this is fine
Clipping off the back-testing of definitions doesn't remove their relevance.

— The term “magic” is characterized by a complex etymology and by a multifaceted semantic field. Throughout western history, discourses on magic have typically performed one of two social functions: ostracization and othering on the one hand, and fascination and self-identification on the other. While powerful anti-magical discourses set the dominant social, political, and legal attitudes toward magic for millennia, at least from late antiquity onwards a practitioner discourse flourished in parallel, leading to the development of “western learned magic,” a textual-ritual tradition that employed strikingly positive notions of magic. Such positive notions have, over the course of the last few decades, become widespread and influential motifs in popular media, contemporary spiritualities, and new religious movements. In the light of this surprising reversal of the long-term historical trend, it seems reasonable to argue that classical sociological theories of secularization and disenchantment have been proven wrong. In sum, magic is anything but a self-evident signifier. Rather, it is a complex cultural concept and a critical category in the study of religion that calls for nuanced modes of redefinition and retheorization.

— Early sociological interpretations of magic by Marcel Mauss and Henri Hubert emphasized the social conditions in which the phenomenon of magic develops.[1] According to them, religion is the expression of a social structure and serves to maintain the cohesion of a community (religion is therefore public) and magic is an individualistic action (and therefore private).

— Ralph Merrifield, the British archaeologist credited as producing the first full-length volume dedicated to a material approach to magic,[2] defined the differences between religion and magic: "'Religion' is used to indicate the belief in supernatural or spiritual beings; 'magic', the use of practices intended to bring occult forces under control and so to influence events; 'ritual', prescribed or customary behaviour that may be religious, if it is intended to placate or win favour of supernatural beings, magical if it is intended to operate through impersonal forces of sympathy or by controlling supernatural beings, or social if its purpose is to reinforce a social organisation or facilitate social intercourse".

>>96082005
>>96082013
I repeat:
>it's about the boundaries of reducing definitions to common elements with respect to writing rules for a game.
We are not having a sociology discussion, so sociology papers are not a valid citation.

>>96081969
>Given the context is explicitly not real-life nor formal logic
You can apply deconstructive logic into fiction. It works.

>Again, I'm arguing FOR this AGAINST a totalizing midwit who insists magic MUST be a muddled not-thing:
So you’re agreeing with him. Because that is what he’s arguing. Magic’s already a non-thing since it “depends on the author”. Historically this is proven by all the ironies, inconstants and contradictions.

He’s pointing out how easy the word is to use. Does it bewilder? Is it heretical? Is it ignorance? Is it scary? Magic.

>>96081969
>"It cannot be used as a serious definition for anything" is in fact mutually exclusive with providing a serious definition for a game element.
No it’s not. Magic is the equivalent of putting a big red X over something for the ease of play. Magic is an easy proxy, or placeholder.

>It is in the counterfactual that explicitly states so.
Nope.

>According to your incredibly anachronistic constructions, not their contemporary worldviews.
Contemporary worldviews is precisely what made it ironic. It’s precisely why magic and miracles were ironic. Even the priests behind closed doors knew this.

>>96082031
Nope. They are absolutely showcasing something valid and substantial here.

If you think magic and miracles aren’t the same, you’re going to lose this debate.

You’re arguing because you don’t want to be wrong. It’s an argumentative pang.

>>96081969
Those contemporary world views are themselves anachronistic constructions.

>>96063050 (OP)
Magic is heretical and you don't need it if you have the power of God on your side.

No matter how ritualistic, how religious, or how woo woo wonky doo doo your magic is in a given fictional world, there’s still a hypothetical angle where it won’t be seen as religious or magical or woo woo wonky doo doo.

But you’re arguing with the guy who says aliens can simultaneously know everything and not know everything.

>these aliens know all of physics, and they land on some world and see a person doing something they don’t understand—that’s magic
>but you just said they know everything about physics

He genuinely can’t think. He can’t do hypotheticals.

What’s funny is that it’s technically impossible to avoid magic being some sufficiently advanced technology since it’s always so goddamn constructed for the sake of the story. If magic was truly natural (and by natural I mean non-artificial) it wouldn’t lend itself the way it does in 99.9999% of fiction.

There’s always some sort of intent behind it, even when it’s some energy that permeates everything.

>>96082058
>You can apply deconstructive logic into fiction. It works.
But the separation from reality means that his relentless reference to it for the deconstruction is essentially guaranteed to bear overwhelmingly inaccurate conclusions.

>Historically this is proven by all the ironies, inconstants and contradictions.
Which is wholly irrelevant to the counterfactual where the phenomena purported by the IRL magic-users actually work as self-consistent and reliable processes.

>So you’re agreeing with him.
You don't seem to understand the exclusivity of his rhetoric, or how that causes problems for game rules.

>>96082074
>Magic is the equivalent of putting a big red X over something for the ease of play.
Not when you have numerous varieties of supernatural effect the rules must distinguish between. The particulars you insist upon ignoring to hyper-focus on the deconstructed commonalities are what this jargon formation draws on to be sensible to the masses, which you are pointedly not among. And because definitions are descriptive, this makes your exclusion of concrete meanings incorrect.

>Nope.
Yes, because the entire point is a conditional hypothetical where this premise of yours is wrong. It's a counter-factual, it's definitionally declaring true things false.

>Contemporary worldviews is precisely what made it ironic.
Doesn't work retroactively.

>>96082082
>If you think magic and miracles aren’t the same, you’re going to lose this debate.
The worldview that established them as separate terms was self-consistent, therefor it is a logically coherent counterfactual for the principles of said separation to be accurate descriptions of differing phenomena, therefor they are not the same in all contexts including fictional.

>You’re arguing because you don’t want to be wrong.
No, I'm arguing because I don't want this to touch a playgroup, because it fundamentally refuses the jargonizing logic of game rules.

>>96081969
>No, it is who is spewing irrelevant bullshit, because you are continuously insisting on dragging every single point off to your own terms instead of addressing them on the terms they are made.
Do you really think there’s a difference between a fluffy blue monkey giving out gifts and a fluffy red monkey giving out gifts. What if they’re literally just dyed differently. What if it’s literally just a club sponsor.

>>96082161
>But the separation from reality means that his relentless reference to it for the deconstruction is essentially guaranteed to bear overwhelmingly inaccurate conclusions.
No. It’s guaranteed to bear overwhelmingly accurate conclusions if all he’s pointing out is that magic is impossible to pin down objectively. Again, if fucking math was seen as magic for thousands of years, why not literally anything else?

>You don't seem to understand the exclusivity of his rhetoric, or how that causes problems for game rules.
So you’re disagreeing and arguing he’s wrong purely because his correct notion isn’t all that helpful to games. It doesn’t matter if he’s correct. You’re just arguing about something completely separate. He is applying realism logic to it and you don’t like that. You only want to apoly unrealistic game logic. Contrary to popular belief, some people value realism in their games.

>>96082161
>The worldview that established them as separate terms was self-consistent
Impossible. That worldview was born of an ironically flawed worldview. You can only pretend it’s not flawed. That veil of ignorance may even be the point of the setting.

>>96082161
>Not when you have numerous varieties of supernatural effect the rules must distinguish between
Lol. People split magic groups into Magic and Miracles, or Arcane and Divine, or psionics and technology, etc, all the time. It’s disingenuous in regards to history or human psychology, but it works.

The point is that “magic” can be applied to any of them. In some way. Miracles are magic by any other name.

Game labels don’t have to be accurate or not ironic.

>>96082121
>there’s still a hypothetical angle where it won’t be seen as religious or magical or woo woo wonky doo doo.
And that angle can simply be factually incorrect.

>But you’re arguing with the guy who says aliens can simultaneously know everything and not know everything.
The argument depends on the far more widespread view that physics does not encompass all things, and so knowing all of it does not mean knowing everything.

>He can’t do hypotheticals.
Says the one who cannot grasp the hypothetical of specific archaic conceptions of "magic" being objective phenomena.

>>96082145
Your inability to suspend disbelief or ignore the hand of the author to address the internal context of the fiction makes most of what you say irrelevant, but noted.

>>96082162
>Do you really think there’s a difference between a fluffy blue monkey giving out gifts and a fluffy red monkey giving out gifts.
Yes. Them being different colors MAY be irrelevant, but the difference nonetheless exists.

>>96082189
>It’s guaranteed to bear overwhelmingly accurate conclusions if all he’s pointing out is that magic is impossible to pin down objectively.
Not inside the counterfactual. That is in fact the DEFINING FEATURE of the counterfactual, that there is an objective phenomenon closely fitting a particular meaning of "magic" drawn from a specific archaic conception of it.

>Again, if fucking math was seen as magic for thousands of years, why not literally anything else?
Math doesn't call up a demon to rape your mother.

>So you’re disagreeing and arguing he’s wrong purely because his correct notion isn’t all that helpful to games.
Because we're on /tg/ in a thread specifically asking about "in your game"

>He is applying realism logic to it and you don’t like that.
Because we're on /tg/ in a thread specifically asking about "in your game"

>You only want to apoly unrealistic game logic.
No, I want the option to apply unrealistic game logic, which the reductions exclude

>>96082223
>It’s disingenuous in regards to history or human psychology
The former of which is wholly irrelevant to the counterfactual and the latter has nothing to do with the /tg/ context.

>Game labels don’t have to be accurate or not ironic.
They do, however, need to be fixed and specific, which your repeated response of people inside the counterfactual expressing doubt being sufficient to introduce the full reduction disallows.

>>96082161
>The worldview that established them as separate terms was self-consistent, therefor it is a logically coherent counterfactual for the principles of said separation to be accurate descriptions of differing phenomena, therefor they are not the same in all contexts including fictional.

Go ahead. Explain how they’re different. I’ll wait. If both miracles and magic are just names for different gifts from good or and evil beings of the same race, then it isn’t truly different.

Magic is certainly miraculous, and ‘black miracles’ are certainly witchcraft, like the alleged “witch cults” of Europe that were never actually confirmed to exist…

You can replace magic with miracle and miracle with magic incredibly easily.

>>96082253
>Says the one who cannot grasp the hypothetical of specific archaic conceptions of "magic" being objective phenomena.
Magic can’t be hypothetically objective. Not when there’s also going to be a hypothetically objective way of not seeing it as magic. This is what you’re not getting.

As another said before, you seem to want magic to remain magic no matter what.

I think these threads need some examples of non-Earth-based ideas of what an objective magic would look like.

Let's take Nethys from Pathfinder. Nethys is the once-human god of magic and knowledge, a man-god driven insane by omniscience as he ascended to divinity.
His edicts are to spread the knowledge and use of magic and spellcasting at all opportunities and to shun mundane or nonmagical means.

"To some, magic is a powerful weapon. To others, it’s a malleable tool. And to a few, it’s a source of purpose. With an understanding of spellcasting, creatures can cause fire to erupt from their hands, call otherworldly beings to aid them, bewitch the senses, and even bring the dead back to life."

Id like any of the anons who think magic cannot be objective, and especially the totalizing midwit, to figure out what these sentences mean under their definition of magic. Especially since the god of knowledge refers to spellcasting and magic as similar but not the same thing. Remember, this an objective definition within a game system and setting. There may be people in-universe who confuse something mundane as magical, but there is a quantifiable objective magic as understood and related by the literally omniscient god of magic and knowledge.

>>96082253
>Your inability to suspend disbelief or ignore the hand of the author to address the internal context of the fiction makes most of what you say irrelevant, but noted.
The author is responsible for the internal context. An intelligent being. Intent. It’s all artificial. Art.

>>96082253
>Yes. Them being different colors MAY be irrelevant, but the difference nonetheless exists.
Okay but to smart people it’s still just a monkey. The layer is now [monkeys who give out gifts], not [monkeys who are all different colours]. There could be other monkeys out there.

Like, sure, all humans are different, but we’re all still human. If that’s the kind of difference you’re going for… sure.

>>96082303
And your reply is meaningless drivel, as the only magic that exists is in fiction. You want us to stop using the term magic despite it being a useful word to describe certain actions, phenomena, and properties of fictional or unreal things.

>ctrl + f ‘counterfactual’
>28 results

Okay so you’re actually arguing with a demented autistic person who has a very poor vocabulary and thus a very poor IQ.

>>96082331
>And your reply is meaningless drivel, as the only magic that exists is in fiction
Actually, magic can’t even exist in fiction, going by this logic. If we’re to assume that a fiction exists within itself, there will be a hypothetical point where it’s all seen as perfectly natural, and not magical, and by that point magic is an opinion.

Oh well!

>>96082331
>You want us to stop using the term magic despite it being a useful word to describe certain actions, phenomena, and properties of fictional or unreal things.
He’s never once argued this, only pointed out that it’s a very nebulous and soft word prone to subjective perception, or just the field of ignorance, the unknown, etc.

>>96082294
The argument is that magic can’t even exist in fiction if you assume that fiction exists within itself—and is thus fictionally, internally consistent physics waiting to be understood and unraveled, and thus is no longer being seen as magic.

At such a point magic survives within the mind’s eye. It’s a descriptor not a definer.

Much like how the Bene Gesserit in Dune are “witches” due to their occult methods, sciences, etc. Or how some groups in the Star Wars setting internet the Force as a form of magic, like the Sith, but the living Force itself does not. God would not see Himself as a God the same way we do.

>>96082334
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/counterfactuals/#CounPhil
No, hes using it right. You're just retarded.

>>96082349
And yet plenty of beings in these fictional worlds, even omniscient ones, who call it magic and wish to spread it by that name.

>>96082354
That is absolutely not what the totalizing midwit argued, as shown by >>96082349. Seriously, which one of you is right?

>>96082394
Wow, a post responding to explicit questions with absolutely no reference to said post. No actual response beyond a boilerplate nonanswer as if taken from a script.

> Label [insert weird energy capable of doing anything here] Magic™
> Some [insert weird energy capable of doing anything, and more, here] shows up suddenly

So like, do we not call the clearly more magical thing magic? Clearly the Magic™ title belongs to the more magical thing…

>>96082420
>And yet plenty of beings in these fictional worlds, even omniscient ones, who call it magic and wish to spread it by that name.
Sure, but by that point it’s an opinion. It’s the equivalent of a human declaring himself magical or divine or godlike to ants. Other humans will roll their eyes.

Do you really think God’s miracles are capital-m Miraculous to God? Don’t be silly.

>>96082273
>of the same race
Trivial then, God and demons are clearly distinguished categories within the worldview.

>You can replace magic with miracle and miracle with magic incredibly easily.
Not within the quasi-Christian counterfactual.

>>96082287
>Magic can’t be hypothetically objective.
Of course it can, all it takes is an opposing semantic argument declaring the definition to be one of the particular ones you insist on reducing out of existence. The purpose of the hypothetical is making this a higher-order conclusion, because the specific archaic conception has a matching phenomenon to point to as "magic" to tell contrary conceptions they're wrong.

>As another said before, you seem to want magic to remain magic no matter what.
In the format of multiple distinct definitions, on account of this being necessary to have stable game rules and understand past writings. Things can meet some but not others, yet at the same time your construction stops being the case because it becomes a valid response to your waffling about to declare the particular definition and explain how the thing meets it.

>>96082303
>The author is responsible for the internal context.
But the point is solely of the internal context. To insist on addressing the author is Not Even Wrong because it's simply a refusal to engage.

>>96082312
>The layer is now [monkeys who give out gifts], not [monkeys who are all different colours].
There are no layers. There are simply lists of properties of each monkey, which can be categorized in various ways to define different subsets of "monkey". Similarly, there are lists of properties of each particular meaning of the word "magic". I insist that this not be reduced to only the sociology jargon so that historic and game rule subsets can be understood consistently.

>>96082420
That’s exactly what he’s been arguing. You can use magic as a label, but it’s still soft, or nebulous. Not a hard definition. It is easily deconstructed.

>>96082476
>Not within the quasi-Christian counterfactual.
Yes you can. Christians were attempting white magic, or summoned miracles, all the time. That you don’t know this speaks volumes of your lacking knowledge. You have fat Mexican women sacrificing chickens to Mother Mary.

>It's still going
Wow

>>96082420
>No actual response beyond a boilerplate nonanswer as if taken from a script.

You seem mad. Like Christians when I tell them their God is a giant dimensional extraterrestrial. Abloobloobloo.

>>96082476
>There are no layers
Yes there are. You’re living in a world of materialism. Sorry.
>There are simply lists of properties of each monkey, which can be categorized in various ways to define different subsets of "monkey".
They’re all still monkeys. Their properties are simply traits of character, like how the gods are all gods of different attributes. A grumpy monkey is still a monkey like the sad monkey.

>>96082498
You talk like this in real life?

>>96082476
>Of course it can
It can’t. For every instance of you insisting that magic can be objective, I can find a counter take. Every “objective” I’ve seen take isn’t actually objective.

You’re free to try though. I’ve yet to meet one who could.

>>96082454
They're both magic, but there will be specific terms for each.
Spellcasting is magic, but so are angels and demons and strange beasts performing their inherent supernatural powers. Two sources of magic are both still magic.

>>96082468
>Do you really think God’s miracles are capital-m Miraculous to God?
Yes and he knows exactly how he did them. And no, I have not mispoken.

>It’s the equivalent of a human declaring himself magical or divine or godlike to ants.
It really isn't when gods are a distinct thing with distinct properties not matched by some random human thinking theyre lords over some random insects. Your problem is that you are incapable of understanding clear definitions and distinct categories of things in fiction which in real life are not distinct because they dont exist. I can distinguish between the two, where you seem incapable.

This inability is related to IQ and general intelligence. All you have is rationalizations and weird excuses you use to refuse to understand and operate within hypotheticals, aka all of fiction.

>>96082349
>Actually, magic can’t even exist in fiction, going by this logic.
Which I reject for refusing to allow "magic" to perform a basic function of language.

>If we’re to assume that a fiction exists within itself, there will be a hypothetical point where it’s all seen as perfectly natural, and not magical, and by that point magic is an opinion.
And if we are to assume "magic" and "nature" begin as objective categories referring to objective phenomena?

>>96082394
>and thus is no longer being seen as magic.
And if "magic" does not necessitate ignorance?

>>96082454
>So like, do we not call the clearly more magical thing magic?
As the setting has decided upon a particular definition, the more-magical thing either fits it and so is a higher order of magic, or something about it fails that particular definition and so there is no issue to it not being magic. It's only when you assume your specific reductive conclusion of what magic MUST mean informed by sociology jargon that the problem emerges.

>>96082468
>Do you really think God’s miracles are capital-m Miraculous to God?
If they're a qualitatively distinct manner of action from anything any other than God can do, there is no issue with such a position. It's only with you insist upon projecting the difference between the strict monist materialist conception of man and animal upward that the question becomes a rhetorical "no".

>>96082485
>Christians were
"Quasi-" and "counterfactual" are terms chosen specifically to exclude your compulsive reductions. Within the context, they do not

>>96082521
>You’re living in a world of materialism.
The subject is of counterfactual other-worlds that need not be

>Their properties are simply traits of character, like how the gods are all gods of different attributes.
It is logically sound to declare "gods" only those among one subset of attributes, with a different term used for the whole set. "The Sole Unmoved Mover" is quite the sensible attribute to distinguish

All magic is natural. All magic is alien.

Renaissance magic was all about the distinction between natural man-made magic and unnatural magic-magic made by demons and angels and gods and such (and as such, natural to the minds of demons and angels and gods). The act of calling on a patron (summoning magic - Theurgy, Goetia, etc) was seen as the greater magic, while classical magic (that of miracle working, or Thaumaturgy) was seen as lesser magic, and the latter was usually from the former, or enhanced by the former. Whether nature was seen as a form of magic depended on the natural philosopher. “If you don’t see nature and science as magical or divine, then you don’t really appreciate nature and science so you?” was an easy argument starter. People were already in denial about Christian rites and masses being indistinguishable from witchcraft. Indeed, the greatest of reputed magical feats had been about unifying with the Godhead, or petitioning angels, etc.

People like Pliny the Elder (or one of the Plinys) in antiquity had assumed that all magic/sorcery/witchcraft/etc was just the equivalent of aliens (‘demons’) playing around with humans, and it’s all bullshit without such patrons, “but you should still entertain superstition just in case these demons are around to implement such stupidity”. It extends to the spirits, the gods, etc. Magic always just been veiled nature. “Magic”. It is Art enforced. It lies inside the mind’s eye. Even Aleister Crowley (a coiner of ‘Magick’ to separate it from stage magic) had acknowledged in the end that all magic IS a stage of some kind. There is no grander stage or black box than the black abyss that is deepest space. Nothing more alien. Magic IS the alien. This is also why science fiction is a lot more magical/fantastical than plain or typical fantasy, if done right. Magic is the product of alien exposures. “I don’t like it, therefore witchcraft”.

>>96082534
>I can find a counter take.
Outside the boundaries of the argument.

>Every “objective” I’ve seen take isn’t actually objective.
Only because by "objective" you seem to pre-condition "applicable in real life" and "tautologically true", making your position practically unfalsifiable.

>>96082540
>Spellcasting is magic, but so are angels and demons and strange beasts performing their inherent supernatural powers.
Yeah, but to people who aren’t stupid the supernatural is an oxymoron and can’t actually exist.
>Two sources of magic are both still magic.
That’s just making it non-objective. Especially when what is seen as magical to one is not going to be seen as magical to another.

>>96082540
>Yes and he knows exactly how he did them. And no, I have not mispoken.
No. Because they’re not miraculous to God, the same way the abilities of the elves in Tolkien aren’t magic to them, or how to Eru everything is just Song. They take it in stride. It’s not magical. Whether it’s magical depends on their view, as the psychology isn’t there.

>MAGIC
noun
mag·ic ˈma-jik
1a: the use of means (such as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces
b: magic rites or incantations
2a: an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source
b: something that seems to cast a spell : enchantment
3: the art of producing illusions by sleight of hand

magic
adjective
1: of or relating to magic
2a: having seemingly supernatural qualities or powers
b: giving a feeling of enchantment

magic
verb
magicked; magicking

transitive verb
: to produce, remove, or influence by magic

Man, so much of this thread would be solved if people would refer to which defitnion of magic they are using when they write it. So here's a handy reference taken from Merriam Webster on the definitions of magic.

>>96082540
>It really isn't when gods are a distinct thing with distinct properties not matched by some random human thinking theyre lords over some random insects.
Okay but to those gods that’s just what they are. They’re lording over the equivalent of insects. Arguing they ARE gods is like arguing sufficiently godlike aliens are gods, which is also fair.

>>96082540
>This inability is related to IQ and general intelligence.
Lol.
>All you have is rationalizations and weird excuses you use to refuse to understand and operate within hypotheticals, aka all of fiction.
Fiction isn’t omnipotent. Omnipotence is a paradox. You’re arguing that fiction can be real within itself without being real within itself. Weird.

>>96082600
>It’s not magical
It is. It just doesn't spark wonder. Nowhere in any definitions of magic is wonder needed. Only stuff that contravenes natural forces through supernatural power, and God is a supernatural power above reality, contravening natural forces through his miracles.

>>96082589
>Yeah, but to people who aren’t stupid the supernatural is an oxymoron and can’t actually exist.
To people who aren't cripplingly incapable of entertaining world-states other than the one they accept it's entirely sound.

>That’s just making it non-objective.
No, it's saying that "magic" is a shared underlying property of the two different things.

>Especially when what is seen as magical to one is not going to be seen as magical to another.
There is no "seen as", it's a force of its own like elecromagnetism is to us within the context of the counterfactual that is Pathfinder lore.

>>96082605
Tried it before, didn't work.

>>96082606
>Okay but to those gods that’s just what they are.
Which as it's according to distinct properties is perfectly fine for them to call "godhood", much as we self-identify as sapient as a factor making us higher beings than insects.

>>96082550
>And if "magic" does not necessitate ignorance?
Kind of hard not to when it’s the go-to word for anything we don’t understand or blows our minds.

It’s kind of hard to keep something being called magic when it’s so closely associated with general ignorance and the disenchantment narrative frequently shows up in academia and higher learning.

>>96082569
>Outside the boundaries of the argument
Nope. Literally any fictional example of magic you can give me can very easily be chalked up to fictional physics/nature or the province of alien intelligences that reinforce artistic ignorance. It’s all thought out.

>>96082620
>Fiction isn’t omnipotent.
It is defined as contradicting our reality, something you seem to struggle understanding.

>You’re arguing that fiction can be real within itself without being real within itself.
No, we're arguing that a different reality where your poorly-if-at-all stated premises are wrong is valid. You simply fail to engage with that because you insist absolutely all possible realities adhere to monist materialism subject to empirical reduction of processes.

>>96082622
>It is. It just doesn't spark wonder
It isn’t. It doesn’t spark wonder. It doesn’t have mystery. It’s just physics to the physicist. Sorry! You deeply want people to use the words you want to use. That’s the same sort of cancer trannies try to do. Stop it.

>>96082624
>Which as it's according to distinct properties is perfectly fine for them to call "godhood", much as we self-identify as sapient as a factor making us higher beings than insects.
Cool, except humans are practically gods to ants, the same way the we are ants to the gods. If you think the gods can’t conceive of things bigger than themselves…

Assuming a god considers himself a god is also essentially applying human levels of hubris on to the thing they worship.

>>96082633
>Kind of hard not to when it’s the go-to word for anything we don’t understand or blows our minds.
According to sociology papers, which are not relevant for this context.

>and the disenchantment narrative frequently shows up in academia and higher learning.
Which have nothing to do with the internals of the counterfactual.

>>96082642
>Literally any fictional example of magic you can give me can very easily be chalked up to fictional physics/nature
Which does not preclude being "magic" according to the historic particular definitions.

>or the province of alien intelligences that reinforce artistic ignorance.
Or it just is that convenient for unknowable-to-us reasons. Stop ignoring the border and consider only the hypothetical in question.

>>96082648
>It is defined as contradicting our reality, something you seem to struggle understanding.
Lol. There are limits to fiction. An author for instance cannot write a fiction where math doesn’t exist. Even a zero is a one. Nothingness is a something. Non-existence isn’t a thing. It’s the smallest point of existence.

Omnipotents can’t exist in fiction. Sorry. It is a paradox. It can only be seemingly omnipotent.

>>96082633
>Kind of hard not to when it’s the go-to word for anything we don’t understand or blows our minds.
It really isn't, I've seen precious few people use it that way, except for the few people in this thread going out of their way to use it like that. Even Merrriam-Webster doesnt include that as a definition or part of a definition.

>>96082655
I fucking knew it, these threads were some new front in wonderfag trolling. Please give me a definition of magic from a dictionary that includes wonder and ignorance as an explicit part of its definition.

>>96082672
>According to sociology papers, which are not relevant for this context.
Nope they are very relevant since magic was born out of the social sphere. It’s not born out of objective natural phenomena.

>Or it just is that convenient for unknowable-to-us reasons
There are limits to convenience. Arguing magic/superpowers just show up in some random natural fashion is the equivalent of arguing that a perfectly carved and signed statue of Buddha having gay sex with Jesus could just naturally, randomly formate into being, without any intelligent life to conceive of it and then build it.

Magic is very much a too good to be true situation going by unintelligent nature and causality alone.

>>96082655
>You deeply want people to use the words you want to use.
The difference is that we have centuries of people using it other ways more consistent with that than yours, and at least in my case I want each preserved including yours as but one among many rather than some overriding principle of interpretation. Because yours isn't actually useful for that outside the handful of sociology papers you got it from.

>Assuming a god considers himself a god is also essentially applying human levels of hubris on to the thing they worship.
I don't see an issue, we literally coined a word that means "human-like intelligence" and proceeded to use it heavily in ethical discourse regarding conservation of select animals and ethics of hypothetical alien life.

>>96082687
>There are limits to fiction.
Which lie well below "magic never became subjective and nature never became all-encompassing because the historic conceptions from before that are true".

>>96082648
>No, we're arguing that a different reality
A different reality is still a reality, however fictional, within itself. This means physics logic/sense can be applied.

>>96082704
>It really isn't
Oh but it is. “It may as well be magic”.
>I've seen precious few people use it that way
Yeah because you don’t leave your house and you don’t have any friends.
>Even Merrriam-Webster doesnt include that as a definition or part of a definition.
Doesn’t have to. Stage magic IS magic. Cope I guess. All magic is a veil of some kind, otherwise it’s subject to people who may not consider it magic. D’oh!

>>96082704
>I fucking knew it, these threads were some new front in wonderfag trolling. Please give me a definition of magic from a dictionary that includes wonder and ignorance as an explicit part of its definition.
Please give me an example of magic that is fool proof or protected from being seen as not magic in time.

Yes, wonder and mystery are massive components of magic, and you’re at a big loss in this argument if you don’t think so.

>>96082718
>The difference is that we have centuries of people using it other ways more consistent with that than yours
It doesn’t matter how culturally consistent it is when it’s still contradictory to other cultures that don’t approach the word in such a way. Again, magic and miracles are the same fucking thing.

>I don't see an issue, we literally coined a word that means "human-like intelligence" and proceeded to use it heavily in ethical discourse regarding conservation of select animals and ethics of hypothetical alien life.
The reason why is because God would be incredibly disappointed had a Christian told him they took everything in the Bible at face value. Only a truly deceiving alien intelligence would approve of this. You’re basically telling God you’re stupid. Or you’re assuming God is stupid if you assume he’d believe the falsely relayed stories of mankind.

Magic is science we don’t understand yet. Simple as. Anyone who disagrees is a religious nut head.

>>96082716
>Nope they are very relevant
Every scientist worth a shit would call you an idiot misusing science. Scientific jargon and discussions are useful only within the discipline itself, and using it outside of that is a misuse of science designed to either mislead or misinform.

There's a reason the observer effect, a term in quantum mechanics, is so widely abused by Creationists, Christian Scientists (not scientists who are Christian), conspiracy theorists and woowoo spreaders, and other griting conartists. Its because of shitwits like you misusing terms and ideas from scientific disciplines to further inane and asinine arguments.

>>96082745
Of course wonderfag is an idiot who cant tell the difference between stage magic and its artifice, and the supernatural spells and powers of D&D, mythology, and folklore.

>>96082716
>Nope they are very relevant since magic was born out of the social sphere.
According to sociologists, who are payed for making their intellectual work look important.

>It’s not born out of objective natural phenomena.
It is in the counterfactual.

>There are limits to convenience.
Not for the purposes of counterfactuals devised to press logical points. Refusing them based on being "too convenient" is simply a refusal to engage.

>Magic is very much a too good to be true situation going by unintelligent nature and causality alone.
According to your ass-backwards understanding of "nature" and "causality". Emergent complexity and self-organizing systems are not exactly rare.

>>96082735
>This means physics logic/sense can be applied.
But the different conditions mean the conclusions can differ.

>>96082745
>Oh but it is. “It may as well be magic”.
"May as well be" =/= "is". Analogous does not mean synonymous.

>otherwise it’s subject to people who may not consider it magic
Those people can be wrong, a possibility you continue to not address.

>>96082757
>and you’re at a big loss in this argument if you don’t think so.
No, that's just you insisting on being Not Even Wrong.

>>96082778
>It doesn’t matter how culturally consistent it is when it’s still contradictory to other cultures that don’t approach the word in such a way.
Contradictory meanings are no issue, take a look at contranyms like "literally".

>The reason why is because God would be incredibly disappointed had a Christian told him they took everything in the Bible at face value. Only a truly deceiving alien intelligence would approve of this. You’re basically telling God you’re stupid. Or you’re assuming God is stupid if you assume he’d believe the falsely relayed stories of mankind.
...What relevance does this have to the subject of God taking a similar position on divinity because the very properties that have us ascribe it to Him can be witnessed by Himself?

>>96082794
>Every scientist worth a shit would call you an idiot misusing science
Most scientists would agree with me that magic isn’t anything but psychology. That of artistic ignorance. Religion has no power outside of the human brain. You just hope it moles human brains, communities, for the better.

Yes. Magic is a stage. A veil. A curtain. It always has been. We can extend this to science since we as a species are always trying to tear down more veils and curtains. Gravity is borderline magic to us, just like the alien UFO.

>>96082789
>Anyone who disagrees is a religious nut head.
Or is just interested in being able to understand what the fuck they're saying on their terms instead of pulling up the ladder on the long history of reducing ignorance.

>>96082820
>Most scientists would agree with me that magic isn’t anything but psychology.
Show me the scientists outside sociology who agree with the sociology jargon to the exclusion of the popular usage.

>>96082820
>Most scientists would agree with me that magic isn’t anything but psychology.
No, because many of them would understand the difference between real world magic and its lack of veracity and realness leading to widely differing ideas of what constituted magic, and the fictional worlds of D&D, mythology, and folklore that they play in when doing ttrpg stuff.

They wouldn't act like the wonderfags or autists like you in these threads.

>>96082816
>According to sociologists
No, according to common sense. All religion and magic is born from stage magic logic. The ancients looking to the night sky and seeing the stars as the gods is a very good metaphor for the stage. Existence is both stage and magician.

>It is in the counterfactual.
Afraid not.

>Not for the purposes of counterfactuals devised to press logical points. Refusing them based on being "too convenient" is simply a refusal to engage.
>According to your ass-backwards understanding of "nature" and "causality". Emergent complexity and self-organizing systems are not exactly rare.

You’re not very intelligent. Ever hear the phrase “nature doesn’t work in right angles?”. 21st century infrastructure wouldn’t just spontaneously appear without the necessary intelligent lifeforms to conceive of it and then produce it.

Nothing about this is “ass backwards”, it’s just causality. Something either progresses intelligently or unintelligently. Expecting physics to just give you kiddo superpowers is too convenient.

>But the different conditions mean the conclusions can differ
Not really. Logic is why anything exists at all. There’s always going to be a background to the foreground. Always.

>Those people can be wrong, a possibility you continue to not address.
They’re wrong for not considering it magic? See, you want magic to be magic no matter what! You keep doing it.

>No
Yes. Give me an example of magic that will always be seen as magic. I’ll wait. I’ve asked you five times now. You’re still avoiding it. Probably because you know you can’t!

>...What relevance does this have to the subject of God taking a similar position on divinity
It’s relevant because gods may not look at themselves as gods if they’re not the malicious deceiving type of gods. God is divine to us. His miracles aren’t miraculous to him. It’s just what he does.

It’s actually incredibly disrespectful to assume God thinks like a human.

>>96082794
>Of course wonderfag is an idiot who cant tell the difference between stage magic and its artifice, and the supernatural spells and powers of D&D, mythology, and folklore.

And you’re too stupid to think interchangeably. You truly think that a fiction isn’t real within itself, or has no nature/physics to its processes. If you aren’t stupid, you’d realize that the supernatural can’t exist even in fiction since fiction contains its own nature, and the supernatural is just veiled nature.

Simple as. You can only cope for some reason.

>>96082847
>No, because many of them would understand the difference between real world magic and its lack of veracity and realness leading to widely differing ideas of what constituted magic, and the fictional worlds of D&D, mythology, and folklore that they play in when doing ttrpg stuff.
Actually, most physicists wouldn’t pretend that fiction doesn’t contain its own physics or internal logic. So, you’re quite wrong on that. Magic to the physicist IS physics. Fictional, exotic physics.’

>>96082847
>They wouldn't act like the wonderfags or autists like you in these threads.
They would. They see the wonder and the mystery in nature, the world itself, not some specific retarded notion of what magic is. It’s just a feeling, moron.

>>96082816
>According to your ass-backwards understanding of "nature" and "causality". Emergent complexity and self-organizing systems are not exactly rare.
>are not exactly rare
Nature/evolution is blind complexity. It has no intent. Intentional, artistic complexity isn’t found anywhere else but intelligent life like humans to support it.

As an example, biology is a lot less complex than artificial intelligence, and yet still loses to it.

>>96082816
>Emergent complexity and self-organizing systems are not exactly rare.

Wait. Do you actually think that a statue of Buddha fucking Jesus in the ass would naturally come into being? Asking for real here.

>>96082893
>No, according to common sense.
Comparative analysis of centuries of usage across thousands of miles as needed to extract this not-thing from "magic" is not "common sense".

>Afraid not.
The counterfactual is explicitly "the rituals work". The entire point is that the thing you keep referring to for your argument is false.

>Ever hear the phrase “nature doesn’t work in right angles?”
It is not precluded by logic itself, making it merely a constraint of our world.

>21st century infrastructure wouldn’t just spontaneously appear without the necessary intelligent lifeforms to conceive of it and then produce it.
Unless the optimization functions we devised that led to us assembling them arise from the different natural laws internal to a counterfactual.

>Expecting physics to just give you kiddo superpowers is too convenient.
The same way that remotely recognizable chemistry only functions with exactly three spatial dimensions and over a dozen physical constants in an incredibly narrow band? Are you just completely unaware of the fine-tuning problem?

>Logic is why anything exists at all.
Logic is a conscious process requiring an intelligence.

>They’re wrong for not considering it magic? See, you want magic to be magic no matter what!
According to one of many particular definitions in use, not as an all-consuming singular meaning.

>Give me an example of magic that will always be seen as magic.
That's not the question of the thread. That's not even sensible to the context of the question.

>You’re still avoiding it.
Because I don't care about your semantic argument, I'm trying to drag your head out of your ass past the boundary of the conditional hypotheticals and into addressing points on the terms of others.

>It’s relevant because gods may not
They also may.

>His miracles aren’t miraculous to him.
Why MUST this be so?

>It’s actually incredibly disrespectful to assume God thinks like a human.
And yet you seem so sure he thinks like YOU.

>>96082912
>And you’re too stupid to think interchangeably.
Says the one who cannot let go of an enormous mass of IRL priors to consider anything else.

>You truly think that a fiction isn’t real within itself, or has no nature/physics to its processes.
No, we just think that's not important in the ways you insist in must be.

>Magic to the physicist IS physics.
You've still yet to substantiate any outside sociology using the word this way.

>Actually, most physicists wouldn’t pretend that fiction doesn’t contain its own physics or internal logic.
This does not bind them to your chain of reduction that requires magic be a subjecting feeling. They tend to be better about addressing arguments on the arguments' own terms instead of asserting their preconceptions.

>>96082938
>They see the wonder and the mystery in nature, the world itself, not some specific retarded notion of what magic is.
The specific "retarded" notion is separate from the adjective and sociology jargon you refuse to let go of, because words can have more than one particular meaning.

>>96082962
What's intent got to do with natural laws spitting out an immense variety of consistent patterns across all known scales and evolutionary processes creating numerous fitting mechanisms? We still use analogue model simulations for no few tasks because of what remains unknown, some of which are direct applications of organisms that don't even have nervous systems like slime mold.

>>96082975
>Do you actually think that a statue of Buddha fucking Jesus in the ass would naturally come into being?
It's no different to the incredibly long list of very narrow constraints needed for us to exist.

>>96083004
>Comparative analysis of centuries of usage across thousands of miles as needed to extract this not-thing from "magic" is not "common sense".
Yes it is. You hate materialism.

>The counterfactual is explicitly "the rituals work".
By way of causal logic, they can only work because of intelligences reinforcing them, similar to how Pliny (one of the Plinys) the Elder assumed all rituals and incantations were bullshit, “but should still be entertained in case the powers-that-be are around to enforce such bullshit”. You are playing into a ruse that rewards.

Unintelligent nature/causality would not evolve to such a point where it entertains things like human art forms like religious ritual or blood sacrifice.

>Unless the optimization functions we devised that led to us assembling them arise from the different natural laws internal to a counterfactual.
>It is not precluded by logic itself, making it merely a constraint of our world.
The formation of such infrastructure still implies intelligence nonetheless, however different such a universe is, or could be. We absolutely look to the universe for the signs of intelligent life. Some things can’t be formed by the universe alone.

>Are you just completely unaware of the fine-tuning problem?
Are you? If humans evolved to shoot fire from their hands we wouldn’t be human anymore at all. Humans evolving to shoot fire from their hands in human shape is a sign that something intelligent did that. It considers conservation of mass; where a flame comes from, etc. Obviously higher dimensions. Otherwise you’d need a sack of fuel to burp out fire, and not from the hands.

>Logic is a conscious process requiring an intelligence.
Intelligence doesn’t require consciousness. :^)

>>96083004
>Why MUST this be so?
Is breathing miraculous to you?

>>96083095
I’m really starting to think you just hate physics or science or something, and are low key religious. I have nothing against religious people but I’m not used to this level of physical denial.

>>96083095
>What's intent got to do with natural laws spitting out an immense variety of consistent patterns across all known scales and evolutionary processes creating numerous fitting mechanisms?
Because mathematical odds alone can only do so much without intelligence as one of its variables. You’re not going to find a naturally occurring Dyson sphere for instance.

>>96083004
>They also may.
Kind of like how one may or may not consider something magic? ;^)

>>96083095
>This does not bind them to your chain of reduction that requires magic be a subjecting feeling
WELL, tough shit. Magic is nothing else to a physicist. They’re in their right to consider chemistry magic. It’s just not hocus pocus. It’s real, raw, reality. Even a wizard’s fireball is made of fire. Physics.

NEW THREAD
Migrate

>>96082802
>>96083367
>>96083397

What if there’s a species or society of robot that’s so rational it literally cannot consider anything magic. It just leaves it blank for later. “Unknown”.

Magic and miracles are the same
Magic and mad science are the same
Magic and machines are the same
Magic and psionics are the same

Fantasy and science-fiction are the same

>They’re wrong for not considering it magic? See, you want magic to be magic no matter what! You keep doing it.

I think he can’t handle being called out. I wonder who shat on his magic system so hard he refuses to acknowledge that other takes exist.

>>96066842
>"Magic is whatever we make of it"
>"...Yeah, sure."
>"Therefore, magic must be real life physics."
>"...Anon, no, that doesn't make sens-"
>"REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE YOU'RE JUST MAD BECAUSE YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND MY LOGIC STUPID STPID YOU SO STUPID"
>"What, no, we already agreed magic is made up shit, that doesn't mea-"
>"REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE YOU PROLES DON'T UNDERSTAND MY SUPERIOR LOGIC MENTAL INFERIORS REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
>"Christ, whatever, do whatever you want you sad fuck"
>"SEE?! SEE HOW THEY CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH?! I'M SO SMART AHAHAHAHAHAHA *drowns himself in pizza rolls*"