37. Any possibility automatically becomes real, whenever someone justifiably expects that possibility to obtain.
Discussion: Just expecting something isn’t enough, so crazy people don’t make crazy things happen. The anticipation has to be a reflection of real reasons for forming the anticipation (a justified belief). Bad things can be expected to happen as well as good things. What actually happens doesn’t need to be understood in detail by anyone, the expectation only has to be close enough to the real effect, so the details of expectation-caused phenomena can lawfully exist independently of the content of people’s expectations about them. Since a (justified) expectation is sufficient for something to happen, all sorts of miracles can happen. Since to happen, a miracle has to be expected to happen, it’s necessary for someone to know about the miracle and to expect it to happen. Learning about a miracle from an untrustworthy (or mistakenly trusted) source doesn’t make it happen, it’s necessary for the knowledge of possibility (and sufficiently clear description) of a miracle to be communicated reliably (within the tolerance of what counts for an effect to have been correctly anticipated). The path of a powerful wizard is to study the world and its history, in order to make correct inferences about what’s possible, thereby making it possible.
(Previously posted to the Jan 2012 thread by mistake.)
One more item for the FAI Critical Failure Table (humor/theory of lawful magic):
37. Any possibility automatically becomes real, whenever someone justifiably expects that possibility to obtain.
Discussion: Just expecting something isn’t enough, so crazy people don’t make crazy things happen. The anticipation has to be a reflection of real reasons for forming the anticipation (a justified belief). Bad things can be expected to happen as well as good things. What actually happens doesn’t need to be understood in detail by anyone, the expectation only has to be close enough to the real effect, so the details of expectation-caused phenomena can lawfully exist independently of the content of people’s expectations about them. Since a (justified) expectation is sufficient for something to happen, all sorts of miracles can happen. Since to happen, a miracle has to be expected to happen, it’s necessary for someone to know about the miracle and to expect it to happen. Learning about a miracle from an untrustworthy (or mistakenly trusted) source doesn’t make it happen, it’s necessary for the knowledge of possibility (and sufficiently clear description) of a miracle to be communicated reliably (within the tolerance of what counts for an effect to have been correctly anticipated). The path of a powerful wizard is to study the world and its history, in order to make correct inferences about what’s possible, thereby making it possible.
(Previously posted to the Jan 2012 thread by mistake.)