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[TheNewerMartianEmperor]

Interestingly, in the Old World of Darkness, reality was consensual, and magic was just enforcing ones belief system onto the local reality. Science was actually the belief system enforced by the world-spanning conspiracy, which claimed that it's magic was just ultra-advanced science, which it technically was.

However, peoples disbelief causes paradox, which is essentially the universe rebounding on you. Supertech caused this as well, but to a lesser degree then what is blatantly magic.

[Muz]

To some extent, I think Magic vs Tech makes sense. I see magic as well, like some overpowering force that can create and destroy worlds. You don't control it, you manipulate it. Using magic is something like taking a river and using the force of the stream to propel things. I imagine a fireball to be something like collecting fire mana around you and throwing it, without knowing at all how it works.

Tech is something detailed and very precise. It's like damming up the river, getting hydroelectric power, then using the electric power to propel things.

Tech attempts to control something, Magic attempts to let it run free and manipulate it.

I'd say that Magic would break ultra-precise technology just because it's so unstable. Guns and clocks are too precise to work with magical auras. Computers would just go crazy. Think of it sort of like a powerful electromagnetic force.

You could probably get a gun to work near Magic, but you'd have to have some anti-chaotic shield to keep the bullet from wobbling too much in the barrel or something.

[Nadaka]

In that case Muz: Then by your definition, for most of its history, steel was a form of magic.

[Jualin]

In that case Muz: Then by your definition, for most of its history, steel was a form of magic.

I think he was being a bit more philosophical than that. Instead of technology being the absence of imprecision, he was stating the ideal of technology is to be infinitely precise whereas the ideal of magic is that it works because a wizard says so.

[qwertyuiopas]

The question, then, is where does the magic user get the power to fuel the magic?

Everywhere around them? Thne they are a walking anti-technology field.


But what if they had to specify the source of the energy, or even if they didn't, if nothing was latered until power was needed?
Coexistance until the magic user actually did something, and the most powerful would likely have an artifact set up in advance that draws power for them from a distant location, so that they may optionally allow technology to proceed without consequence for their abilities.

[Muz]

Eh, it's hard to say what I mean. I wouldn't say that steel is magic.. I'd say that catapults come closer. They don't control it, they just estimate. I mean, who controls magic.. magic always controls them. Wizards mix in random crap, then poof, he revives some dead guy into a zombie. He memorizes the same random crap, does it again, and it's a spell.

Higher level magicians know which random crap does something and which don't, so they mix it together to produce bigger spells. It's well, instinctive, and bad things could happen without anyone expecting it.

If someone makes a magic sword, it'd come with side effects like the glowing. Sometimes it talks and hums. Magic bullets might vibrate in the gun. They might heat up suddenly and blow up the gunpowder. A good mage could probably tone down the side effects, but the average noob mages can't find a way to handle it.

So, yeah, you could make a magic sword, magic armor, fireballs. But it won't work that well with precise technology. I mean, when your equipment can't handle a few specks of dust, you wouldn't want a fricking mage in your clean room.

[Zironic]

Some one said that technology doesn't work with magic because magic breaks the laws it needs to function. This goes against all technology which is based upon finding and changing the laws to accommodate the reality we can observe. If tomorrow, scientist found they could avoid gravity, then the technology would accommodate a.k.a scientists would run experiments with this new tech and try to find out exactly how it works. Once, done, they make it fit as best as it can with their laws, changing ones that need to be. If magicians really could create fireballs from nothing, there would be huge reactors in which magicians would be paid to heat water all day, or maybe they'd experiment and find how the magician does it and simply create heat.

[Sean Mirrsen]

There's nothing wrong if technology is created from magic, as that would be a given. A railway car can move with a locomotive or a telekinetic child in the back, the result's the same. There's trouble brewing when magic meets existing technology. Applied to the current world, it means that if someone can throw around fireballs, he either violates some basic laws of thermodynamics or somehow draws heat from surroundings. If he tries any of that stuff near a nuclear reactor, the whole system might go haywire because heat will either disappear or build up in the system - leading to a shutdown or a meltdown, respectively.
The problem with "sufficiently advanced technology" is that it frequently depends on some very fine laws to function. Add an unknown element that somehow breaks those laws, and you won't be able to predict what will happen to your tech.

[RAM]

Add an unknown element that somehow breaks those laws, and you won't be able to predict what will happen to your tech.

Which is why DF needs magic!

[qwertyuiopas]

...If he tries any of that stuff near a nuclear reactor, the whole system might go haywire because heat will either disappear or build up in the system - leading to a shutdown or a meltdown, respectively. ...

However, the fraction of the reactor that is volitile like that is much smaller. If he took heat from the cooling system's output, or the inside of a wall, there wouldn't be much of a problem.

Large machinery has safer spots than others.

[Nadaka]

Muz: by your expanded definition, steel is even more magical.

First it fell from the sky, a gift from the gods when the best blade was chipped from flint or ground from a horn of a beast. Thousands of years later, by random occurrence it was rediscovered in what would have otherwise been normal iron. No one knew how it happened exactly, or what components were required, which ones ended up as slag and which ones were incorporated. All they could do is replicate the process and hope it worked. Aside from the first sentence all that also applies to bronze, except that the metallurgy was figured out by trial and error before the science of molecular chemistry took over in the last few centuries.

A catapult used the same tensioning technology as a bow or cross bow on a larger scale. Ballistic motion had been studied and known for a very long time with fairly accurate estimation. The guesswork involved was on the part of the barely trained crew and the inaccuracy from the inconsistency and loose fit of a machine assembled on the site of a battle field.


EDIT: I also don't see why technology is the one that would give way when exposed to magic. If anything it would be the other way around. Technology "just works", magic is unknown and seemingly random. Perhaps the spirits that magicians entice to act do not inhabit technology, or require the consistant belief of an irrational mind to function.

[Muz]

No, no, I'm not saying that it's because Magic is mysterious. I'm saying it's because it's an uncontrollable force.

Technology always makes some assumptions on the laws of physics. With a sword, you don't make any assumptions. When any kind of engineering comes in, you assume a certain amount of gravity, of force, resistance, density, etc. Magic just messes with the laws of nature, at least when you have stuff like elemental magic. Maybe life/death magic isn't so bad.


Hehe, being an electronic engineer, there's a hell lot of things in my field where things can go wrong. A tiny change screws everything. But by tossing around a lot of protection, you keep things from messing up, and your computer runs stable, even when people blast it with thousands of volts.

So, I think, Earth technology would mess up near magic. Technology in a world full of magic would probably develop more slowly, and precision tech, like guns and airplanes would probably be designed with anti-magic protection on the sensitive bits.

Also, I think something like a magical train could work, if it wasn't mixed together. A coal engine would work. A magical engine would work. A coal engine powered by magical fireballs would need some customization to handle surges in magic fire.

[Sean Mirrsen]

(edit: ninja'd by Muz. This is a reply to Nadaka's post)
Heh. Actually, it's both ways. Magic also "just works". It's just technology we don't have an explanation for yet. Magic, at its core, still operates on real-world principles. We don't know how magic works (because it's magic), but let's presume a wizard's magic wand of lightning strike +3 is actually interwoven with some sort of hypermagnetic material in a strange configuration, that makes it able to store and release electric charges. The wand, when activating, would seriously mess up compasses and nearby pacemakers, but a large industrial electromagnet will just as well prevent the intricate magnetic field pattern from forming. It would likely be weirder than that (maybe the little artificial rubies in your wristwatch resonate with it and throw its operation off?), but that's the basic principle.

I'm really tempted to find a scientific explanation to various "magic" tricks we see on TV. Not the illusionists, but rather actual "magic". Some guy on a talent show in Moscow got high scores with just bending spoons. And "beheading" spatulas by shaking them up and down. Since he only uses metals and focuses on the thinnest parts of the things, I'd suspect he somehow temporarily affects the metal's molecular structure. It's not heating, it would have to be something much more efficient, but its effect is the same.
(Unless it's all a trick, yes. But I somewhat doubt he'd be able to score so high on a show hosted by the 1st Channel, with just a trick. He's not even holding the damn things, he just puts 'em on his open palm and strokes them with a finger until they bend! If anything, he deserves bonus points for a new take on an old trick.)

[Servant Corps]

By the way, I disagree with "Clap your hands if you believe". I'll need to create a new thread to explain why I don't like that. I'll stick with saying "Ignorance of magic does not give scientists immunity to fireballs".

[Jualin]

By the way, I disagree with "Clap your hands if you believe". I'll need to create a new thread to explain why I don't like that. I'll stick with saying "Ignorance of magic does not give scientists immunity to fireballs".

That's perfectly reasonable. If one wishes to throw a fireball, one expects to be able to do something with that fireball. If anything you could do with that fireball could be negated by by a child closing his eyes and shouting "nuh-uh" we would be on a fast track to degrading any organized system into a prekindergartener's spat.

But once again, we are dealing with ideals. We often fall short of ideals, and I believe any system that tries to incorporate magic and technology should be no different.

Instead of absolutes, we should have magic-like technology and technology-like magic. The magic should be anchored into the technology so it is not entirely dependent on child-like whims. If I was to create a fireball and throw it, I want it to have an impact. If a child wants to extinguish the fireball, I want him to actually break a sweat doing it. There are a number of ways to do this, each with their own little questions and caveats that have to be independently resolved. This is a good resource for a variety of them, at least for the tech-like magic side of things. As for the magic-like tech, that subject is far more vague in my mind.