Presumably we call whatever we can’t explain “magic” before we understand it, at which point it becomes simply a part of the natural world. This is what many fantasy novels fail to account for; if we actually had magic, we wouldn’t call it magic. There are thousands of things in the modern world that would definitely enter the criteria for magic of a person living in the 13th Century.
So we do have magic; but why doesn’t it feel like magic? I think the answer to this question is to be found in how evenly distributed our magic is. Almost everyone in the world benefits from the magic that is electricity; it’s so common and so many people have it that it isn’t considered magic. It’s not magic because everyone has it, and so it isn’t more impressive than an eye or an opposable thumb. In fantasy novels, the magic tends to be concentrated into a single caste of people.
Point being: if everyone were a wizard, we wouldn’t call ourselves wizards, because wizards are more magical than the average person by definition.
Entropy dictates that everything will be more or less evenly distributed, and so worlds from the fantasy books are very unlikely to appear in our universe. Magic as I’ve loosely defined it here does not exist and it is freakishly unlikely to. We can dream though.
Eliezer Yudkowsky is kind of a god around here, isn’t he?
Would you happen to know what percentage of total upvotes on this website are attributed to his posts? It’s impressive how many sheer good ideas written in clear form that he’s had to come up with to reach that level. Cool and everything, but isn’t it ultimately proof that LessWrong is still in its fledgling stage (which it may never leave), as it depends so much on the ideas of its founder? I’m not sure how one goes about this, but expanding the LessWrong repertoire in a consequential way seems like a good next step for LessWrong. Perhaps that includes changing the posts in the Library… I don’t know.
Anyhow thanks for this comment, it was great reading!
Right, but if LessWrong is to become larger, it might be a good idea to stop leaving his posts as the default (the Library, the ones being recommended in the front page, etc.) I don’t doubt that his writing is worth reading and I’ll get to it, I’m just offering an outsider’s view on this whole situation, which seems a little stagnant to me in a way.
That last reply of mine, a reply to a reply to a Shortform post I made, can be found after just a little scrolling on the main page of LessWrong. I should be a nobody to the algorithm, yet I’m not. My only point is that LessWrong seems big because it has a lot of posts but it isn’t growing as much as it should be. That may be because the site is too focused on a single set of ideas, and that shooes some people away. I think it’s far from being an echo chamber, but it’s not as lively as I would think it should be.
As I’ve noted though, I’m a humble outsider and have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m only writing this because often outsider advice is valuable as there’s no chance in getting trapped into echo thinking at all.
I think there is another reason why it doesn’t feel like magic, and in order to find it, we have to find the element that changed the least: The human body and brain didn’t get affected by the industrial revolution, and humans are the most important part of any societal shift.
What do you mean? What I read is: magic is subjective, and since the human brain hasn’t changed in 200,000 years nothing will ever feel like magic. I’m not sure that’s what you meant though, could you explain?
I’m still new to this, but I can say I love a culture where there is a button for retracting statements without deleting them. I will most likely have to use it a lot as I progress around here.
What is magic?
Presumably we call whatever we can’t explain “magic” before we understand it, at which point it becomes simply a part of the natural world. This is what many fantasy novels fail to account for; if we actually had magic, we wouldn’t call it magic. There are thousands of things in the modern world that would definitely enter the criteria for magic of a person living in the 13th Century.
So we do have magic; but why doesn’t it feel like magic? I think the answer to this question is to be found in how evenly distributed our magic is. Almost everyone in the world benefits from the magic that is electricity; it’s so common and so many people have it that it isn’t considered magic. It’s not magic because everyone has it, and so it isn’t more impressive than an eye or an opposable thumb. In fantasy novels, the magic tends to be concentrated into a single caste of people.
Point being: if everyone were a wizard, we wouldn’t call ourselves wizards, because wizards are more magical than the average person by definition.
Entropy dictates that everything will be more or less evenly distributed, and so worlds from the fantasy books are very unlikely to appear in our universe. Magic as I’ve loosely defined it here does not exist and it is freakishly unlikely to. We can dream though.
Related:
“If You Demand Magic, Magic Won’t Help”
“Excluding the Supernatural”
“Joy in the Merely Real”
“Mundane Magic”
Eliezer Yudkowsky is kind of a god around here, isn’t he?
Would you happen to know what percentage of total upvotes on this website are attributed to his posts? It’s impressive how many sheer good ideas written in clear form that he’s had to come up with to reach that level. Cool and everything, but isn’t it ultimately proof that LessWrong is still in its fledgling stage (which it may never leave), as it depends so much on the ideas of its founder? I’m not sure how one goes about this, but expanding the LessWrong repertoire in a consequential way seems like a good next step for LessWrong. Perhaps that includes changing the posts in the Library… I don’t know.
Anyhow thanks for this comment, it was great reading!
The Creator God, in fact. LessWrong was founded by him.
All of the Sequences are worth reading.
Right, but if LessWrong is to become larger, it might be a good idea to stop leaving his posts as the default (the Library, the ones being recommended in the front page, etc.) I don’t doubt that his writing is worth reading and I’ll get to it, I’m just offering an outsider’s view on this whole situation, which seems a little stagnant to me in a way.
That last reply of mine, a reply to a reply to a Shortform post I made, can be found after just a little scrolling on the main page of LessWrong. I should be a nobody to the algorithm, yet I’m not. My only point is that LessWrong seems big because it has a lot of posts but it isn’t growing as much as it should be. That may be because the site is too focused on a single set of ideas, and that shooes some people away. I think it’s far from being an echo chamber, but it’s not as lively as I would think it should be.
As I’ve noted though, I’m a humble outsider and have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m only writing this because often outsider advice is valuable as there’s no chance in getting trapped into echo thinking at all.
I think there is another reason why it doesn’t feel like magic, and in order to find it, we have to find the element that changed the least: The human body and brain didn’t get affected by the industrial revolution, and humans are the most important part of any societal shift.
What do you mean? What I read is: magic is subjective, and since the human brain hasn’t changed in 200,000 years nothing will ever feel like magic. I’m not sure that’s what you meant though, could you explain?
I’ll admit, I didn’t actually think all that well here.
I’m still new to this, but I can say I love a culture where there is a button for retracting statements without deleting them. I will most likely have to use it a lot as I progress around here.