03-11-2019, 09:36 AM | #21 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
Could you please elaborate why?
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03-11-2019, 09:50 AM | #22 |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
The wizards do, apparently...
If it is quantifiable, it is subject to analysis. If it is subject to analysis it isn't "not science," it's just a different science. I'm always left wondering why no one is trying to learn anything about it, instead of just learning to do it.
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
03-11-2019, 10:09 AM | #23 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
I could see that on a Scientist's T-Shirt "Magic is just science with lazy analysis. The Wizards would snipe and vetch but what could they do without looking like creeps?
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03-11-2019, 10:23 AM | #24 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
Good point, I've enough training in science to know that not all valid/useful explanations are scientific. Science has defined areas of analysis, that's why it can be science. Magic might be weird enough and art enough to be, like aesthetic judgment or ethics, analyzable, but not reducible to a science.
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03-11-2019, 10:48 AM | #25 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
Is it though? Peter Watts' Echopraxia touches on the crisis of science running into things that work but are extremely impractical to quantify/analyse.
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03-11-2019, 11:01 AM | #26 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
Um, because it's a bad and silly idea?
If the nature of "Reality" was even influenced much less determined by mass belief we'd be living in a hybrid conservative Chinese/Indian paradigm rather than any sort of modern Western Technocracy. Then there's things like the Earth would have been actually flat at one point and if so why would it ever have changed? I could go on but you ought to be getting the idea. If the world was what people thought it was there never would have been any evidence to help change their beliefs.
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Fred Brackin |
03-11-2019, 12:20 PM | #27 | |||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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If the answer to that is that magic doesn't give predictable results, then you've just stated a predictable result: that magic isn't predictable. Much about quantum mechanics isn't predictable either — science has determined that it's got an inherent randomness to it, and that, in itself is a scientific conclusion. So if science studies magic and determines that it's got a fundamental randomness to it, that's still a perfectly valid scientific result. Magic is not fundamentally opposed to science. In some settings magic is fundamentally opposed to technology, but science does not equal technology. Quote:
You can scientifically analyze art. You can analyze properties of pigments, canvas, stone, building materials; you can calculate shapes, structures, frequencies; you can study the effects of art on the brain, the types of art different cultures use, how art influences decision-making and perception of history, why people make art. Science and art are not fundamentally opposed. Quote:
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03-11-2019, 12:26 PM | #28 |
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Alsea, OR
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
There are two, potentially conflated elements of "subjective reality" in RPGs.
Reality level of the materials. Reality shared by PCs. The first is absolutely infuriating, because now, in each subjectivized supplement, I now must decide not only if I will use the supplement in general, but what the reality within is for each setting assertion. Is the narrator of the setting assertion reliable? Is this assertion compatible with other supplements? Further, this was often an apparent attempt to excuse lack of continuity checking. The second issue is that it means I may need to have different descriptions for what something means for different players' characters. Exempli gratia: Mage: The Ascension... If I have a player who's a hermetic, and a player who's in the Anarchy faction... I new need two different views of the same paranormal events. Sure, the shared reality is the same, when not in the Æther. But if they're outside the standard earth, the same location appears differently based upon the tradition. It just upped my prep time. Note that, for me, this does not include "quantum play" - things remaining undefined until defined by player actions or GM fiat. I'm good with indeterminism; I am not good with dual explicit states in contradiction. |
03-11-2019, 04:28 PM | #29 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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Even if you don't know why moving a wand in a particular way produces a shower of sparks, if you know that it does you have a basis to begin experimentation. How does varying the motion change the result? Does teaching the technique to someone but telling them it will produce bubbles instead of sparks have an effect? We still don't fully know the mechanism by which acetaminophen (or paracetamol) or bismuth subsalicylate work, despite both being in widely tested and used for over hundred years.
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
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03-11-2019, 07:48 PM | #30 | ||||
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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