I definitely think electromagnetism is magical from our perspective.
Everything else is pretty crude and we have to start looking inward for anything resembling magic.
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2025
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I argue that magic doesn't exist by definition. If it actually, provably, exists we define it as not magical. Why isn't magnetism considered magic? Because it exists and can be studied.
I saw something once along the lines of "if there was a novel where they harnessed a magical force that was thought to come from the sky, and it was used for everything, like powering devices that keep food fresh, and long distance communication, and said the majority of people had no idea of how it worked we'd call it lazy writing, but that's just a description of electricity" paraphrased a bit, but ye :3
Plus we can imbue crystals with thought and knowledge by inscribing them with complex runes and commanding them in a special language.
Main difference is that, in fiction, the "imbuing" doesn't require a billion-dollar fab.
I mean, there are a few intrepid techno-wizards trying to do it themselves, but it's a far cry from what Big Magic can manage.
Yes, but that bullion dollar industry only grew over time. The first crystals were made in small labs pushing the edge of magic. If you let a magical world develop industrialization long enough, surely they will try to optimize their magic as far as possible as well
That's how you tear down the fabric of space and demons ruins the world though.
looks at climate change
Oh...
We used lightning to trick rocks into thinking.
Teaching sand to think was a mistake.
And yet you used sand to transmute this missive into the aether. Curious!
I saw one comment and was sure it'd be the Arthur C. Clarke quote. I like your one, I hadn't seen it before.
Give the book Ra by Qntm a read
The synopsis is strikingly similar... It's not lazy writing, I really enjoyed that book.
Software is the closest thing we have to magic spells. You need to know the correct "activation words" and make sure they follow the correct order. If that aligns, your magic spell works; suddenly there's something on the screen that just wasn't there before. Congratulations, you completed your first summoning.
And the magic words are powered by magic stones that we write certain sigils in it to make it think.
Don't forget to hit the sigils with lightning
Techno-mages enter the chat
lol no. Software is just a written form of logic.
Writing incomprehensible hexes onto stone wafers then harnessing lightning to make them think is where it is at.
Have you read SICP?
I cast Alexa Play Back To The Jungle By Michael Guy Bowman
Me when I draw ritual sigils in silicon to summon demons that mimic the speech of humans to decieve us (I asked ChatGPT to explain special relativity)
As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Came here expecting someone to have posted this quote, was not disappointed.
I think the MCU of all places summed this up perfectly and I think it was in Thor: The Dark World where Jane has fuck knows what and they operate on her in Asgard and she's giving medical terms and they're like "WTF just hook her up to the whoziwhatzhit and she'll be fine."
Magic, by definition, is supernatural. If you know how it works it's not supernatural ... thus not magic.
Show a sentinelese person a smartphone, they're gonna say it's magic.
I wouldn't count on it.
Most people don't understand how most technologies work, but they still don't call it magic. We know that someone understands how it works, because they build it. I'm pretty sure the Sentinelese are capable of understanding that concept as well.
I dunno about that. The sentinelese don't even have a written language or engage in agriculture, if you show them a glassy black rectangle covered in strange glyphs, that squawks and speaks without a mouth, and glows like a fire while remaining cold to the touch, how can they assume it's anything but an enchanted object? I can't imagine they have the slightest clue of the simplest procedures for constructing something like that, they don't know what a diode or a battery is or how doping works. They don't even understand electricity.
You can also look at the cargo cults of Melanesia. They saw WW2 operations in the area and interpreted them as rituals to summon goods (cargo) from their deities. How does a member of a non-industrial society interpret an airdrop if they have little to no concept of airplanes, parachutes, or even advanced metallurgy?
Sure, if you just toss a phone on the island and let them try to figure it out with no context, some might reach the conclusion that it's magic.
But if you actually show it to them in person, it don't think it would be hard to convince them it's man-made. They are familiar with tools and making stuff and the fact that there are other people that have stuff they don't have.
Well yeah, if you explain magic it stops being magic, that's how magic is. If you explained the magic of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings using advanced quantum physics or something you'd turn it into an explainable, mundane world, like what we have done with the real world. But the magic remains under different terms.
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What if magic was real, but required speaking actual magic words and we just haven't figured out the right words?
Psychopaths have figured out how to manipulate, or cast a charm spell on people. That’s pretty magical to me. Those are still words, so I’m going to count them as magic words.
Not really a Hollywood style incantation, but results speak for themselves.
What if humans are actually remotely controlled by small alien ants?
I think it's magic how the sum time sunk into a thing can be greater than the time it took to make the thing.
It's magic when 20 hours goes into a painting and it generates (5 minutes * 300) worth of emotions.
It took Tolkein more energy / emotion to make LotR than I'm willing to give appreciating it. But everyone combined has certainly outweighed what Tolkein put in. It's magic to me to think of "free" "emotion hours".
Everything else is so... crass. Transactional. A battery that holds X energy means the sum energy people can extract would be X at best. I have 7 hotdogs and so at most 7 people can each have one.
But art? Games? Puzzles? It's magic how there's basically infinite energy inside.
I think it’s magic how the sum time sunk into a thing can be greater than the time it took to make the thing.
It’s magic when 20 hours goes into a painting and it generates (5 minutes * 300) worth of emotions.
This is why I like music. I'm not spending 100 hours to make something someone will look at for 10 seconds.
I played this guitar part for 5 mins? You listen to it for 5 mins. (creation time may be multiplied by fuckups and overdubs/additional tracks)
I kindof agree but I'd phrase it the other way round: people always tended to call things they don't understand Magic.
The inverse of Clark's saying: sufficiently explained magic is indistinguishable from science (credit: Girl Genius webcomic)
Technology deals with mostly physical things, magic is mostly non physical. This isn't some official definition just a better one. Real magic doesn't deal with matter or energy in the ways most people are familiar with it.
Fire, electricty, gravity and magnetism is magic, and you cant convince me otherwise.
ILLUSIONS
Magic was never real. It was technology all along.
People were incredibly stupid when the churches didn't allow education for the masses.
A Yo-Yo would have made you a magician. It's not a magical feeling to be worshipped by idiots for knowing how a Yo-Yo works. It's just sad.
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