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[Hanslanda]

Schrodinger's cat is alive? o_O

Well only if you peek a little bit.

O_o

A little known fact is that Shrödinger's cat is not an example of how Quantum physics works. Shrödinger devised this example to show why he believed The Copenhagen intrepretation of Quantum physics to be wrong.

I like that the article basically said, "We could use this to build awesome things! As long as we don't know how it works, it will work perfectly!"

[10ebbor10]

"Any sufficiently advanced complicated technology is indistinguishable from magic."
— Arthur C. Clarke

[Kogan Loloklam]

"Any sufficiently complicated technology magic is indistinguishable from magic technology."
-Arthur C. ClarkeMe

I'm sick of Clarke's quote tossed around. The truth is that the unexplainable will be explained by the society's common blanket explination. Once that was magic and religion, today it's science. There could be a genuine magic act and god could appear in person, and the vast majority of people would still believe there's a perfectly good scientific explination. I often wonder if our society of the future ruled by the cabal of space wizards will find our belief in rational thought quaint.

[Fenrir]

Considering that rational thought simply means "thought that is consistent with the way things actually are", unless future people are insane or stupid, they won't. If magic (whatever that would mean) is demonstrable, then it's the rational, scientific conclusion.

[i2amroy]

Of course the real question then is "what is magic?" I mean in the past we once defined magic as the apparent bending or breaking of the "laws" of science. What you need to realize though is that most laws of physics can be bent or even broke (or at least put on a very good illusion of having done so) with the right amount of power. Think about the speed of light. While you can't actually break it, you can give the appearance of doing so to a static observer by simply warping the space Stark Trek style. The laws of physics aren't broken if you know what's happening, but they would very well appear to break for any person who did not.

So even if an omnipotent being did reach out and do something, it's not that they are performing "magic", it's that they are simply pouring enough energy into the scenario that what they are doing is no longer against the rules. And even if they do somehow come up with something that is truly a bend or break in the rules then that still isn't magic, it just means that we need to rewrite the laws to include for that scenario.

We could have crazy laws like "God can bend space through unknown methods to create a burning light that he is able to speak through", but all that represents is a whole in our current knowledge of science, not magic, due to the simple fact that we can write a law about it.

[Kogan Loloklam]

See, there ya go, waving technology around to explain the potential of Magic. This is how those Space Wizards will get power. You and your rational mind have doomed us all!

[Kogan Loloklam]

See, how do you explain this double post without space wizards? The answer is simple. SCIENCE! Your scientific mind is so predictable.

[Montague]

Isn't Star Wars basically about Space Wizards?

I'm inclined to believe that the central conflict in mankind's future will not be about rationality and science against mysticism, but rather the struggles of Samurai Space Wizards against Nazi Space Wizards.

[GlyphGryph]

I fail to see how science isn't simply a formally organized system for studying magic (aka physics, full of it's invisible forces and strange behaviour), or how there could exist a system of magic that we couldn't apply science to.

I'm pretty sure all science taught us is that magic is hard and requires several ingredients and components.

[kaijyuu]

Mhmm. If "magic" were to suddenly pop up, we'd scientifically determine the rules it abides by and add it to our knowledge of how the universe works. Just like everything else.

Quantum physics is pretty magical, after all

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Quantum physics is mostly just us realizing the implications of scale for physics. We've always known an object's size effects how it interacts with the rest of reality, quantum physics is but the exploration of this property with very small things.

[GlyphGryph]

Magic is why gravity and electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces.

Clearly.

[Kogan Loloklam]

See, now if Magic was the absence of rules and applied whim, attempts to explain it with science would be like explaining science as magic.

The point is, Clarke is wrong, our  society has advanced to a point where there is nothing that can happen that will be thought of as magic, even if magic was real it would still be called science we don't understand yet.

[GlyphGryph]

... that is the point of the law, in fact. That the two become indistinguishable.

See, now if Magic was the absence of rules

Which it has pretty much never, ever been

attempts to explain it with science would be like explaining science as magic.

Science is the method by which we discover how to do magic

[kaijyuu]

Many versions of magic are based on "whims" or "wishes," either of people or deity type figures, so it'd certainly be different than the regular scientific method. Still scientifically determinable as to how everything works, but the rules would be written along the lines of "if X deity wishes it."