| From: | Kyoto the Angel dann1@********.erols.com |
|---|---|
| Subject: | [OTing underway] what the heck is magic, anyway? [was: Re: fox special: when MetaBeings attack!] |
| Date: | Tue, 16 Feb 1999 12:59:13 -0500 |
>
> I was about to send off what I thought was an good "yes" suggestive
>argument, concerning mostly the capabilities of ASIST technology. but, I
>decided the whole question of this rests on another question, one that
seems
>pretty impossible to answer.
>
> what they heck *is* magic, anyway? ... is it an intangible force that
>most of us are dead to? is it an aspect of the universe mundanes are tuned
>out to by nature? if so, how far removed is magic from the domain of
normal
>human (mundane) comprehension?
>
> for instance, it's not impossible to imagine what it would be like to
>perceive as a bat, via ultrasound. no color, but heavy emphasis on
>textures. density of an object would be obvious, because of how it
absorbed
>your sonic emissions. non-reflective materials would be foggy, faded, and
>fuzzy. a room with too much material, too reflective, could be
>overwhelming, confusing, kinda like too much light (glare).
>
> on the other hand, what would it be like to be a being of energy, living
>in the depths of space where triangles don't necessarily have 180degrees,
>zipping around and through black holes--where most rules of the universe
>hopelessly break down, feeding off I dunno...dark matter? granted I'm a
>high school student who hasn't even taken physics yet, so I don't know what
>the heck I was just talking about in that question, but the point was I
>tried for something that would be hard to imagine. and my point of points
>was,
>
> how close can we come to imagining this magic? as I said, seeing with
>ultrasound isn't that bad. shadowrunners can don ultrasound goggles. this
>isn't quite the same as [ultrasound.data-->brain evolved to compute
>ultrasound.data]...in fact it's more like [ultrasound.data...converted to
>optical.data-->brain evolved to compute optical.data]. but though it's not
>quite the same thing both ways, ultrasound and (our)light spectrum vision
>are pretty analogous, so not much is lost in the translation. we can
safely
>say, I think, that it's easy to approximately "know" what it's like to
>experience things from a bat's "eyes".
>
> but, but, but... how possible would it be to convert magical sensations
>to something the rest of the 5 senses can process? I mean, it would be
>possible, but how close a translation could be done?
>
>...,
>
> hehe, I was wondering about the feeling I was getting that my "argument"
>wasn't going anywhere, then I remembered, all I'm doing is spouting a
>million questions.
>
> so I guess, what this does to the issue to me is: you could try to
>convert magical experiences into mundane-understandable experiences, but it
>all depends on how close magic is to the universe we're used to, and how
>accurately you could analo-gize it.
>
>******
>
> a thousand apologies if any of you find what I wrote painfully-long,
>incomprehensible, philosopher's babble...I can get like that sometimes when
>I start writing, occasionally.
>
> if you thought my letter was interesting, thoughts please? I'm realize
>this is going off-topic a bit, but I think the unresolvable issue of "what
>the heck is magic, anyway?" is interesting.
>
>
>
Well, to give you *my* opinion, I would say it's not possible to get even
close, because magic and technology are so far apart. I mean, for instance,
technology in the SR world, as you said, can mimic a bat's sonic method of
sensing his environment, but that's only because technology has evolved to a
point where it can mimic things on a biological level. But, I don't think
that magic is a biologically based thing, it's based ethereally, in that
which isn't physically present, and hence, unable to be modified, or
mimicked by technology. Just to give a little back up to that, whenever you
get *any* cyber-ware implanted in your body, it takes away from your magical
ability, which to me, proves quite soundly, that they are incapable of
interacting on any level.
Kyoto the Angel
AIM: AngelKyoto
ICQ: 29713335
