Why not to use explanations for magic that actual “thaumaturgical” traditions used? Basically that reality is a projection of our minds, and sufficiently concentrated and focused minds can change reality in ways that is perceptible for others too, and thus magical rituals and chanting and spells are ways to concentrate and focus the mind. You can also give it a neat theistic angle, such as when god made man in his own likeness it meant also giving him some of his creative power, to make things ex nihilo just with his mind.
“reality is a projection of our minds and magic is ways to concentrate and focus the mind” is too non-reductionist of an explanation. It moves the mystery inside another mystery, instead of actually explaining it.
For example: in this universe minds seem to be made out of brains. But if reality is just a projection of minds, then… brains are made out of minds? So minds are made out of minds? So where does the process hit bottom? Or are we saying existence is just a fractal of minds made out of minds made out of minds all the way down?
In this yes, but if a magical universe is roughly like what people hundreds of year ago thought our universe is, then the brain can simply be a radio receiver getting messages from a ghostly soul.
That doesn’t mesh with the experiments Harry and Hermione performed in chapter 22. Or at least not without a complication penalty that would make alternative explanations more plausible.
Why would intelligence even be a quantity thing? Just because we measure it with IQ tests, it does not mean it is a fungible commodity, the same way how giving a car 1 or 5 stars of safety on a crash test does not simply mean the some cars have more layers of pillows bolted on on that others: it is just a measure of the efficacy of entirely different technologies and processes used. Increasing intelligence probably means learning entirely new kinds and ways of reasoning and approaches to problems.
Why would external things influence intelligence esp. in a magical, fictional universe? Just make it a property of the immortal soul and whatnot and not related to brains and whatnot.
EDIT I googled the term intelligence explosion now and found this:
“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; ”
IMHO this is bogus because it sums up intelligence as one fungible commodity used for different things, like desining machines. But intelligence is simply a measure of various talents and skills. Machine-design skill is part of it, but neither does a machine-designing machine necessarily have intelligence in other fields, nor does a person who is an intelligent lawyer know anything about designing machines, nor would he be necessarily very good at learning it. Perhaps, if we understand intelligence as not knowledge but ability to learn. Which is highly suspicious because it assumes there is no innate, inborn, genetic, or unconscious/circumstantial knowledge used for designing machines or for learning anything else, to the extent that our ability to learn may be quite simply constrained by other kinds of knowledge and not a general information-sponging skill (to intelligently learn is not the same as to memorize, making sense of something requires pre-existing knowledge to relate it to).
If you see intelligence not as an information sponge (because that would be just a memory) but pre-existing knowledge that makes new knowledge learnable in an understood way, you have an NP complete problem of learning new and new information being slower and slower as it needs to be checked against and referenced against everything else, you get logarithmic growth of computing power and intelligence.
And all this our non-magical universe where we don’t even think intelligence is a function of immutable souls. But we don’t have wizards either.
Why not to use explanations for magic that actual “thaumaturgical” traditions used? Basically that reality is a projection of our minds, and sufficiently concentrated and focused minds can change reality in ways that is perceptible for others too, and thus magical rituals and chanting and spells are ways to concentrate and focus the mind. You can also give it a neat theistic angle, such as when god made man in his own likeness it meant also giving him some of his creative power, to make things ex nihilo just with his mind.
“reality is a projection of our minds and magic is ways to concentrate and focus the mind” is too non-reductionist of an explanation. It moves the mystery inside another mystery, instead of actually explaining it.
For example: in this universe minds seem to be made out of brains. But if reality is just a projection of minds, then… brains are made out of minds? So minds are made out of minds? So where does the process hit bottom? Or are we saying existence is just a fractal of minds made out of minds made out of minds all the way down?
In this yes, but if a magical universe is roughly like what people hundreds of year ago thought our universe is, then the brain can simply be a radio receiver getting messages from a ghostly soul.
That doesn’t mesh with the experiments Harry and Hermione performed in chapter 22. Or at least not without a complication penalty that would make alternative explanations more plausible.
because that trivially leads to intelligence explosion
To what? And why?
Why would intelligence even be a quantity thing? Just because we measure it with IQ tests, it does not mean it is a fungible commodity, the same way how giving a car 1 or 5 stars of safety on a crash test does not simply mean the some cars have more layers of pillows bolted on on that others: it is just a measure of the efficacy of entirely different technologies and processes used. Increasing intelligence probably means learning entirely new kinds and ways of reasoning and approaches to problems.
Why would external things influence intelligence esp. in a magical, fictional universe? Just make it a property of the immortal soul and whatnot and not related to brains and whatnot.
EDIT I googled the term intelligence explosion now and found this:
http://intelligenceexplosion.com/en/2011/preface/
“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; ”
IMHO this is bogus because it sums up intelligence as one fungible commodity used for different things, like desining machines. But intelligence is simply a measure of various talents and skills. Machine-design skill is part of it, but neither does a machine-designing machine necessarily have intelligence in other fields, nor does a person who is an intelligent lawyer know anything about designing machines, nor would he be necessarily very good at learning it. Perhaps, if we understand intelligence as not knowledge but ability to learn. Which is highly suspicious because it assumes there is no innate, inborn, genetic, or unconscious/circumstantial knowledge used for designing machines or for learning anything else, to the extent that our ability to learn may be quite simply constrained by other kinds of knowledge and not a general information-sponging skill (to intelligently learn is not the same as to memorize, making sense of something requires pre-existing knowledge to relate it to).
If you see intelligence not as an information sponge (because that would be just a memory) but pre-existing knowledge that makes new knowledge learnable in an understood way, you have an NP complete problem of learning new and new information being slower and slower as it needs to be checked against and referenced against everything else, you get logarithmic growth of computing power and intelligence.
And all this our non-magical universe where we don’t even think intelligence is a function of immutable souls. But we don’t have wizards either.
you might be interested in reading this
Excellent, thanks.