Settings like Dungeons & Dragons, or any fiction with a hard enough magic system really, will rely on this sort of logical thinking to even narratively exist, being so damn conveniently contrived, or just artificially arbitrary. Hidden, occult infrastructure. These are *games*. All myth, folklore, religion, etc, come across as games too.
You can’t really argue that magic in -any- fiction -isn’t- intelligent, or intelligently made, in some way. Because it definitely is. Even if it’s just the damn author.
[...]
I apologize for thinking several steps ahead of you.
Any "setting" whose magic doesn't have the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills itself is decidedly not intelligent. More often than not, a work of fantasy will have its magic be a power with no conscious or subconscious will.
So what makes you think it is always intelligent in every work ever when there are so many examples where it isn't?
>More often than not, a work of fantasy will have its magic be a power with no conscious or subconscious will.
That nonetheless still behaves like
Imagine if gunpowder ONLY functioned in a specific barrel size/shape of a penis, one engraved with ‘peepee’ in Latin, and ONLY if you spoke ‘cum diablo!’ before pulling the trigger.
I think that’s the kind of “conveniently constructed” or “artificially sophisticated” he’s referring to, anon. Not your fault you can’t dissect a spell using logic.
Fireball *only* shoots in a straight line, from your middle finger, after screaming “Bababooie!”. Also, you had to roll into a ball a mixture of bat poop (guano) and sulphur, and no matter how much you add to it the mixture it ALWAYS produces the SAME size of Fireball.
Magic like that is like pushing invisible buttons on an invisible machine. Is it ‘behind’ our dimensional perceptions? Maybe. But it’s still heavily artificial. Who built it? The gods? The grand wizard of the world? Doesn’t really matter, since it would require an intelligence either way.
Settings like Dungeons & Dragons come across as closer to science-fiction when you bother to analyze how robotic it is.
This is the sort of logic you people are missing. Again, this thread right here: [...]
Yeah, if I discovered a substance that enabled me to run like the Flash, or fly like Superman, or shoot fire from my hands like Pyro, I’d IMMEDIATELY think “who made this?”. Not “oh my god it’s just like oil”.
Especially if it’s an endless spell list of endlessly variable effects. For some reason bending space to “blink” ten meters away is lower level spell than what is essentially a fricking grenade/bomb (yes, fireball).
A fireball coming from the band is infinitely less believable than someone just up and spontaneously combusting, because why the frick does the fire come from the hands? Why not the ballsack? Christ.
First things first, you are straying from the core of the argument which was: >Is magic just hidden AI?"
And most people answered that no, it most of magic doesn't work like hidden AI, due to being set of impersonal rules of reality without a will of its own, no consciousness and no intellect to speak of.
Your current argument is that magic is too convenient to not be intelligently designed, but it it's moving the goalposts since there are plenty of systems that are intelligently designed without being based on "hidden AI".
>there are plenty of systems that are intelligently designed without being based on "hidden AI".
If it’s intelligently designed, how is it not artificial?
You guys are making OP look like a genius.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Artificial (made by somebody on purpose, using their intelligence) =/= Artificial Intelligence (artificially made intelligence)
It's literally basic logic. All AIs are artificial, not all artificial things are AIs. Hammers are artificial and famously mindless.
3 months ago
Anonymous
The crux of this thread is about how intelligent the magic is. Or at least that one anon, if not OP.
I don’t care if AI falls into it. It’s a no brainer. All magic is artificial. I agree with that.
Anyway, beside your point about "convenient" design not being related to main argument, there are two basic in universe explanations for it: >For magic as evolved trait
You don't shot fireball from ballsack, because people with magic ballsacks castrated themselves using their powers and didn't pass their genes. Magic coming out from your hands makes as much sense as snake venom coming out of their teeth or your opposable thumbs being on your hands instead of your feet. These solutions just worked out better. >magic as science/craft/art
Spells are designed by mages so obviously no sane person crates balls targeted fireball the same way nobody makes balls operated jackhammers.
What you would THINK wouldn't change what it IS. What level the spell is or from whence it is cast doesn't make it an intelligence. What you think is believable doesn't change the facts.
Magic, along with other supernatural forces, functions in ways that no author can explain, because no mind could understand such an explanation, because nobody has the senses to even draw a frame of reference to. Just because it operates outside of what we can understand, doesn't automatically give it a mind and memory. That is something you CAN DO, but isn't ALWAYS TRUE for every magic.
If a work doesn't explicitly state magic is conscious, it's best to come to the simplest conclusion and assume it isn't.
Don't bother, anon.
This is one of those threads where the OP is arguing something else using /tg/ concepts. Specifically he's attempting to use the logic of theist arguments of intelligent design on /tg/ settings, for some reason. Probably autism. Or ego.
3 months ago
Anonymous
I did get pretty strong creationist vibes from this thread, so good to hear that at least one anon thought the same.
More interesting question: What are some GOOD setting where magic is either definitely AI or might be AI?
I think the Endless universe is criminally underrated, and it has definitely AI magic. The precursors, called the Endless, basically made a universal internet out of nanomachines, Dust, which certain people can access and manipulate. The Endless die out, but Dust still exists. New civilizations come up and nearly all of their developments are affected by the presence of Dust and what it can do. Dust can basically emulate anything you'd think magic can do, as well as being a major boon to manufacturing and all sorts of other things.
The different races of the Endless universe are very unique and interesting. Its sad there isn't an official RPG, either of the medieval setting or the scifi one.
All magic everywhere is too convenient for it not to be the invention of some intelligence. Like a game of some sort. All of it is entertained. But by what?
Even without overt magic, humans will consider things magical all on their own. It’s how religions started. “Those shiny dots in the night sky? They’re gods.”.
This wigga never heard of evolution >have a multiverse of infinite bullshit >a percentage of these have convenient magic >tards look at this and think “it must be intelligently designed!”
You ARE the stargazer
Anon, if the magic comes from the hands, the eyes, the forehead, etc, it isn’t natural. It wouldn’t evolve up to such a point naturally. It just wouldn’t. Progression happens in one of two ways. Naturally or intelligently/artificially.
before you give yourself a brain aneurysm.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Too late, lol. That’s hilarious tho. Literally unable to articulate his logic, kinda sad
>RPG >Unknown Armies adept magic - it's directly your will/obsession combined with symbological matrix of the world. >Double Cross - mutant powers aren't AI by definition of being part of you. >Mage: The Awekening - magic works via platonic ideals, not working with outside intelligence.
The issue with your statement is that it's based on the assumption that magic works on basis of asking magical supercomputer to do stuff, instead of either doing stuff with your own power or by interacting with set, mindless and will-less rules of the natural world.
Author is a being existing outside the story's verse that doesn't come into consideration. Again, Unknown Armies adept powers aren't externally designed or managed, being rooted in personal will of user (with some backwash from wills of others). Double Cross powers aren't managed by external intellect, etc.
All magic everywhere is too convenient for it not to be the invention of some intelligence. Like a game of some sort. All of it is entertained. But by what?
Even without overt magic, humans will consider things magical all on their own. It’s how religions started. “Those shiny dots in the night sky? They’re gods.”.
This argument is based on the idea that magic cannot be logically arranged and follow patterns and rules without being deliberately designed. I mean, friction allowing us to start fire with sticks to warm up and cook up food is also convenient.
Imagine if gunpowder ONLY functioned in a specific barrel size/shape of a penis, one engraved with ‘peepee’ in Latin, and ONLY if you spoke ‘cum diablo!’ before pulling the trigger.
I think that’s the kind of “conveniently constructed” or “artificially sophisticated” he’s referring to, anon. Not your fault you can’t dissect a spell using logic.
Fireball *only* shoots in a straight line, from your middle finger, after screaming “Bababooie!”. Also, you had to roll into a ball a mixture of bat poop (guano) and sulphur, and no matter how much you add to it the mixture it ALWAYS produces the SAME size of Fireball.
Magic like that is like pushing invisible buttons on an invisible machine. Is it ‘behind’ our dimensional perceptions? Maybe. But it’s still heavily artificial. Who built it? The gods? The grand wizard of the world? Doesn’t really matter, since it would require an intelligence either way.
Settings like Dungeons & Dragons come across as closer to science-fiction when you bother to analyze how robotic it is.
This is the sort of logic you people are missing. Again, this thread right here:
[...]
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Doesn’t really matter, since it would require an intelligence either way.
Not at all. Coincidence can easily explain it.
This is the same logic that theists use to explain a "tailored" universe. You're looking at things in a too anthropocentric way. Take your obviously DnD inspired example. While those things are how a wizard might produce a fireball, there are other creatures that produce fireballs in other ways. The rules for how a fireball is produced just happen to be available to humanoid creatures, but how many magics are out there that can't be produced by humanoid anatomy?
Magic in this sort of arrangement could be like a universal set of strings, and plucking those strings randomly occasionally produces a song (spell). There need not be an intelligence that arranged those strings or mediates what is a song.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Coincidence can easily explain it.
Suuuuure, a 10/10 supermodel blonde, blue-eyed mermaid is suuuuurely coincidence. Nevermind spells that function like cellphone apps.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Your line of thinking is >the mermaid is a blond blue-eyed bombshell > these are things we are attracted to > therefore the world was built with us in mind
But applying Occam’s razor, we have far less assumptions with: >survival of the fittest > for mermaids, fitness = attractiveness towards their prey
Mermaids are attractive because attractive mermaids survive.
Unrelated: Could you give an example of something that you would consider a coincidence?
3 months ago
Anonymous
Anon, a realistic "mermaid" would evolve to be overly blubbery to deal with the cold depths, hairless, and horribly toothed. Probably predators.
Stop humanizing evolution so conveniently.
3 months ago
Anonymous
you're responding to a flat earther
3 months ago
Anonymous
So what?
3 months ago
Anonymous
Well isn’t that exactly what mermaids are like, underneath the magic? Besides, we’re talking about the survival of magical effects, not biology.
Like let’s take creationistanon’s penis fireball, for example. Spells “survive” by being used and useful (like any other tool or skill). Considering that evolution already incentivises a concealment of genitalia, which spell do you think is more likely to be forgotten? The fireball cast through the hands, or the fireball cast through the dick?
you're responding to a flat earther
Nope, nice strawman attempt but flerthing actually requires more gymnastics nowadays than sphereoids.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Besides, we’re talking about the survival of magical effects, not biology.
It’s not biology, it’s causality. Biology falls into it. Either something progresses naturally/unintelligently, or it progresses artificially/intelligently. There is no third alternative. Domestication is an act of intelligence.
3 months ago
Anonymous
A fair point about causality. But your distinction between natural and artificial is lacking. If you defined what intelligence is, that might help, but so far all you’ve done is make ants very proud of how intelligent they are.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Artificial:
— ‘made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural.’
Yes, ant hills are artificial. You can definitely argue the artificial as natural, by way of it being a natural expectation.
3 months ago
Anonymous
I was referring to domestication, not construction. But sure, that too.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Your error, repeatedly, is assigning intelligent design at the moment things appear "too convenient."
Since this is a thinly veiled creationist argument, lets use a classic argument against a "convenient" universe.
Imagine a natural depression in a field. Now imagine it rains, filling this depression. Later on you walk by and you say "wow, its incredibly convenient that the pool of water is exactly the shape of that depression!" But of course you wouldn't say that, because you know that the water is shaped to the size and outline of the cavity. Similarly if some creature, like mosquito larva were living in that pool, they might think "ah this pool must be designed for me, because it is deep enough and wide enough that I can live here!" When in reality it wouldn't be alive to say that if the pool were not deep and wide enough for it to live there. It would simply not be alive to even say that.
To put this whole argument back together again, magic in these systems can easily be explained as useable to humanoids in the setting, because if it weren't, we wouldn't be playing it. No intelligence needed. Furthermore, to use the example up thread, humanoids don't use fireballs fired from their dicks, because those that do tend to die, while the ones who figured out how to fireball from their hands don't tend to die. Again, no intelligence needed.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Since this is a thinly veiled creationist argument
LOL Stopped reading here
You sound insane and unhinged
3 months ago
Anonymous
I think he’s talking to the moronic OP
3 months ago
Anonymous
OP isn’t moronic if he says all magic comes across as artificially made tho, because thats just common sense; people who lack common sense get triggered when they’re confronted by it; they subconsciously view themselves as stupid for their failings to see such simple sense
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Source: my ass
3 months ago
Anonymous
Wait, do you seriously think an author is incapable of writing error into their work?
Listen, if an author writes shit like “magic is the opposite of science and wizards can’t use technology” then you’re absolutely allowed to point out how dumb that sounds, and how a wizard’s staff -is- a piece of technology.
I am allowed to educate. You’re just butthurt about it.
3 months ago
Anonymous
No, I don’t think that. I DO seriously think that most people don’t consider magic a constructed thing. And I seriously think you’re talking out your ass when you say otherwise.
3 months ago
Anonymous
> I DO seriously think that most people don’t consider magic a constructed thing.
Then they’re idiots, and so are you. The fact that fantasists today are already endlessly arguing over what is/isn’t magic proves that. Magic to one is not magic to another. Magic is what you make of it. Frick.
You are so behind on your thinking skills. I don’t like insulting you, but I have to. I have no patience with morons in a world of morons. You’ve already ruined so many of my hobbies with your horse shit logic. How can I trust you at all?
Next you’re going to tell me that math/quantification (1s and 0s) are human inventions.
3 months ago
Anonymous
It’s not common sense if it’s not common sense, dumbass. Just accept you’re a weirdo outlier and be bold about it, don’t hide behind a nonexistent supposed consensus
3 months ago
Anonymous
>you’re absolutely allowed to point out how dumb that sounds
That doesn't sound dumb at all, though, it sounds absolutely kino. >a wizard's staff -is- a piece of technology.
No it's not, especially if the author has already established that magic and technology as concepts within the universe are in opposition.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>No it's not
Yes it is. Technology is just applied science. Both sides of the same coin. Making a fire is a science. The wheel is a piece of technology.
If anything works at all, it is science. This is why you cannot actually separate science from magic. Magic is a matter of nuance. It exists the same way holes, cold or darkness exists. Absences. It doesn’t exist, in order to exist.
I guess OP really isn’t dumb after all. You guys are!
3 months ago
Anonymous
No one even attempted to refute this. This general is in-majority populated by absolute dumbasses, wow.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Because it’s a moronic shifting of goalposts that can be countered by simply shifting the goalposts. >magic is tech >not if it’s not >but tech is applied science >then magic is not applied science
Try not being a fatheaded gay and people might give you a single shred of the respect you’re so obviously lacking
3 months ago
Anonymous
That’s also not the kind of convenience he is poking at here
Imagine if gunpowder ONLY functioned in a specific barrel size/shape of a penis, one engraved with ‘peepee’ in Latin, and ONLY if you spoke ‘cum diablo!’ before pulling the trigger.
I think that’s the kind of “conveniently constructed” or “artificially sophisticated” he’s referring to, anon. Not your fault you can’t dissect a spell using logic.
Fireball *only* shoots in a straight line, from your middle finger, after screaming “Bababooie!”. Also, you had to roll into a ball a mixture of bat poop (guano) and sulphur, and no matter how much you add to it the mixture it ALWAYS produces the SAME size of Fireball.
Magic like that is like pushing invisible buttons on an invisible machine. Is it ‘behind’ our dimensional perceptions? Maybe. But it’s still heavily artificial. Who built it? The gods? The grand wizard of the world? Doesn’t really matter, since it would require an intelligence either way.
Settings like Dungeons & Dragons come across as closer to science-fiction when you bother to analyze how robotic it is.
This is the sort of logic you people are missing. Again, this thread right here: [...]
Rain is convenient but perfectly natural. Rain shops the shape of dicks? Yeah, nah, some alien did that. There is no other way or explanation really.
3 months ago
Anonymous
There is: >raindrops take the shape of dicks because it’s in their molecular makeup to organise like that.
I would accuse you of being in creative, but snowflakes exist, you’re just stoopid.
3 months ago
Anonymous
So quantum physics is conveniently penis shaped now too, is it?
You don’t see how fricking absurd you look right now lol
How about the face of Hitler instead of a penis?
3 months ago
Anonymous
Why not? Because you’d personally find it unbelievable? Unbelievable shit happens all the time, for example I’m having trouble believing you’re this dense.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Already got you here
Go ahead, please try explaining to me why every raindrop being the face of Hitler, a person sourced to a specific planet, wouldn’t require an humorous alien intelligence of some kind to justify?
You do know rain exists elsewhere in the universe, right?
Explain to me how Hitler’s face is a universal constant.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Explain why a universal constant is a universal constant
I diagnose you with chronic moronation and recommend a series of marmoset brain transplants to improve your intellect.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Um, that’s not what he asked.
3 months ago
Anonymous
It literally is. It’s like having 299792458 games on steam, and going “hey wait a minute! That’s the speed of light! Why is the speed of light coincidentally equal to my games list? Bwaahhhh??? Must be an author!”
3 months ago
Anonymous
Nope. Not what he asked. You dodged the question. You’re panicking now. I am no longer invested in this topic since you’re going out of your way to miss it. Many such cases.
3 months ago
Anonymous
My dude, a lot of functions in IRL quantum physics do look dick like.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Show me one (1) physics phenomenon that looks like a dick and balls, that isn’t just a lone case.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Rain shops the shape of dicks? Yeah, nah, some alien did that. There is no other way or explanation really. >He's never watched clouds go by and pointed out the ones shaped like dicks to his friends
I think he’s talking to the moronic OP
Its the same argument in both cases. Convenience is not an argument for intelligent design. Only the unimaginative or people willfully twisting or ignoring facts and coincidence or their own biases tend to make that argument.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>He's never watched clouds go by and pointed out the ones shaped like dicks to his friends
Is every cloud the shape of a dick? Because if so, then yes, I’d assume some alien fricker is responsible for this level of blatant artistic humor.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Convenience is not an argument for intelligent design
Of course it is. Nature isn’t convenient. It’s “convenient” only by way of survival.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Nature is neither convenient nor inconvenient. It just is what it is. Its a human conceit that things are easier or harder for us. We take a look at what has evolved or the basic conditions and say "gee it sure is convenient that these trees have fruit" but in reality that fruit developed as a method to transport seeds, with no intelligence involved in its creation. Or "gee its sure convenient that all these animals have meat we can eat" but in reality, we can eat animal flesh because we evolved to eat animal flesh. The animals are not here for our convenience.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Go ahead, please try explaining to me why every raindrop being the face of Hitler, a person sourced to a specific planet, wouldn’t require an humorous alien intelligence of some kind to justify?
You do know rain exists elsewhere in the universe, right?
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Argument Ad Absurdum
That isn't even an extrapolation of what is being said in this thread.
3 months ago
Anonymous
You can’t do it! That’s the kind of artificial OP is getting at, and you can’t even detect it! You’re just an idiot! You see floating head of Hitler, and you really think to yourself “nature allowed this to happen, no intellect whatsoever”. Lol.
These are also games. So by default any sort of magic is going to come across as contrived or robotic, as
Settings like Dungeons & Dragons, or any fiction with a hard enough magic system really, will rely on this sort of logical thinking to even narratively exist, being so damn conveniently contrived, or just artificially arbitrary. Hidden, occult infrastructure. These are *games*. All myth, folklore, religion, etc, come across as games too.
You can’t really argue that magic in -any- fiction -isn’t- intelligent, or intelligently made, in some way. Because it definitely is. Even if it’s just the damn author.
[...]
I apologize for thinking several steps ahead of you.
puts it.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Why does hitler look like raindrops? You won’t be able to answer this.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Glad to see not all of Ganker has intelligently-designed themselves a third chromosome.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>magic in these systems can easily be explained as useable to humanoids in the setting, because if it weren't, we wouldn't be playing it. No intelligence needed.
The author intelligently made it so. His fictional physics conformed to suit the author’s needs.
3 months ago
Anonymous
So? The author doesn't exist in-setting. His existence isn't relevant to what's natural and what's artificial in the setting.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>The author doesn't exist in-setting
That doesn’t excuse the fiction from being absurd to the point where it could only -be- the creation of some silly author.
You are numerous steps behind in this conversation.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Most fiction, however, isn't absurd in that way. Some fiction being absurd int hat way isn't really relevant to this thread's topic.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Most fiction, however, isn't absurd in that way.
All fiction breaks down the more you analyze it. Cope. Star Trek isn’t science-fiction to the sufficiently educated physicist, it is fantasy by that point. Tough shit, buddy.
All fiction everywhere is varying shades of silly. No exception.
3 months ago
Anonymous
You don't know what silly means, and whether science fiction holds up under scrutiny has pretty much nothing to do with how magic works in fantasy settings.
3 months ago
Anonymous
You’re adorable.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>whether science fiction holds up under scrutiny has pretty much nothing to do with how magic works
When I hear sound in space, in any sci-fi, my first thought is “magic”.
Space does not work that way!
3 months ago
Anonymous
Okay, anon. That remains irrelevant to the discussion at hand, but okay.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Nah, it’s pretty fricking relevant.
3 months ago
Anonymous
No, your autism is completely irrelevant.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Anyone who disagrees with this post is automatically a fricking loser in this argument.
3 months ago
Anonymous
This is true, with the caveat that reality is just as silly (if not moreso) than fiction
3 months ago
Anonymous
I agree, but reality at least makes (fundamental) sense by way of it existing, and anything contrary to that is just “woah, weird”, which is subjective.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Just do me a favour for a second.
Imagine a world that looks, to you, like it should be the creation of an author, but isn’t.
Get back to me when you’re done.
3 months ago
Anonymous
The author is God. He's extrapolating using his creationist playbook of arguments.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Fact is Earth is a colony and the Owner is returning.
3 months ago
Anonymous
The Material Components of Spells is also something gravely overlooked by almost everyone. Some of that shit is hard to find, yo
Anon, if the magic comes from the hands, the eyes, the forehead, etc, it isn’t natural. It wouldn’t evolve up to such a point naturally. It just wouldn’t. Progression happens in one of two ways. Naturally or intelligently/artificially.
Except it is explicitly natural part of human being in UA, with adept magic being learnable by people with sufficiently developed souls. There are even known biological diseases that interfere with magic. Also, why not? Evolution does favour solutions based on using existing organs instead of growing completely new ones.
The Supernal in MtAw is definitely “alive” in some form, lol. Similar to the God-Machine. They are non-entity entities. Each Watchtower is a rank 10 being. The Primal Wild is given as an example one. The Exarch of Forces -is- violence and warfare. Concepts are 100% alive. Unknown Armies also/similarly consists of intelligences bigger than you.
There are beings of magic in Mage, but the magic itself doesn't depend on mediating with them but on the rules of the realm of the ideas. As for UA, I did specify Adept Magic, which depends on your mind and soul instead of Avatar Magic.
Imagine if gunpowder ONLY functioned in a specific barrel size/shape of a penis, one engraved with ‘peepee’ in Latin, and ONLY if you spoke ‘cum diablo!’ before pulling the trigger.
I think that’s the kind of “conveniently constructed” or “artificially sophisticated” he’s referring to, anon. Not your fault you can’t dissect a spell using logic.
Fireball *only* shoots in a straight line, from your middle finger, after screaming “Bababooie!”. Also, you had to roll into a ball a mixture of bat poop (guano) and sulphur, and no matter how much you add to it the mixture it ALWAYS produces the SAME size of Fireball.
Magic like that is like pushing invisible buttons on an invisible machine. Is it ‘behind’ our dimensional perceptions? Maybe. But it’s still heavily artificial. Who built it? The gods? The grand wizard of the world? Doesn’t really matter, since it would require an intelligence either way.
Settings like Dungeons & Dragons come across as closer to science-fiction when you bother to analyze how robotic it is.
This is the sort of logic you people are missing. Again, this thread right here: [...]
That's just translating DnD bullshit gameplay conventions to the actual game lore, with added element of deliberately absurd yapping.
In Unknown Armies you can actually personalize adept spells. Sure, it takes effort to make an completely new one, but that's the difference between following established procedure and creating a new one. And before you ask who build these rules - you did it. Adepts are guys building these rules.
Beside, even if we take your example at face value it's just the example of procedure producing a specific reaction. Your example tells us nothing about underlying mechanics except the fact that you need an exact procedure. Also, your assumption that you can't change the parameters of fireball by tinkering with material components is based on gameplay abstraction, not the diegetic setting element.
>but the magic itself doesn't depend on mediating with them
Yes it does lol. You literally need a Watchtower to create an Imperial spell to awaken *any given mage*. There is no exception! If you’re going to argue with OP, at least get your lore right.
Evolution is about as “intelligent” as a blind idiot. Despite it somehow knowing that prey animals cannot see orange, which translates as green to prey sight (green fur does not exist in nature), evolution does not give a flying frick about where your laryngeal nerve is located. It makes do with one dimensional causality.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Exactly. Which is why magic evolving with ties to how animal perceives and influences the world already makes perfect sense.
3 months ago
Anonymous
evolution doesn’t “do” or “know” anything, you fricking imbecile, evolution is just units with beneficial mutations living longer and thus procreating more than units without those genes
hence how humans have 5 different evolutions to breaking the lactose intolerance gene on different continents, because drinking milk makes you stronger so you live longer and have more kids, there’s nothing intelligent about it, some guys on different continents mutated in 5 different ways that all did the same thing and let them frick more
3 months ago
Anonymous
>herp derp
3 months ago
Anonymous
>evolution doesn’t “do” or “know” anything
That's what that post is getting across you speed reading dumbass
"Intelligent"
3 months ago
Anonymous
>herp derp
>despite it somehow knowing >it makes do
samegay harder, imbecile
3 months ago
Anonymous
Ah, you're an illiterate. You can't into figures of speech. Poor, sad little frick. Probably ESL.
The Supernal in MtAw is definitely “alive” in some form, lol. Similar to the God-Machine. They are non-entity entities. Each Watchtower is a rank 10 being. The Primal Wild is given as an example one. The Exarch of Forces -is- violence and warfare. Concepts are 100% alive. Unknown Armies also/similarly consists of intelligences bigger than you.
Culture, their tech is magic but there is some stuff that Minds cannot fully grasp or care to frick with. The shit they dont understand is also just a technologic skill diff, the entity either comes from another dimension or sublimed
>That’s like saying I wrote your post
You definitely caused that post with your question. But you didn't write it.
His parents definitely made his DNA, however.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Nah, I had equivalent input into the writing of that post as his ‘rents did in writing the string of code that’s been the product of a millennia-old process originating all the way back in the primordial soup. They aren’t the authors, they didn’t even create their own contributions. They’re the robot arm putting the label on a heinz ketchup bottle, and you’re calling them the source of the sauce? Nah, famgooli.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>They aren’t the authors, they didn’t even create their own contributions.
That's illogical. An anthill is still created by ants even if they don't consciously understand architecture or why they make the design decisions they do. By your logic, no athlete actually does anything other than train because during events their bodies mostly respond to unconscious triggers induced by training. To whit, no one actually invents anything because the imagination is also induced by unconscious triggers, and thus there are no authors, no creators, and we are all just meat puppets that serve no function beyond existing for the whims of some theorized higher power, if that even exists... otherwise we are just inanimate dolls in an inanimate universe acting out movements induced by electrochemical reaction.
I reject your moronic premise.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>thus there are no authors, no creators, and we are all just meat puppets that serve no function beyond existing for the whims of some theorized higher power, if that even exists
A correct deduction, and my answer to
But who built the computer? The code?
> I reject your moronic premise
Then you must recognise me as the author of your post and, to whit, acknowledge that said post is written in bad faith by one who is merely arguing for argument’s sake (with himself)
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Then you must recognise me as the author of your post
Again you're failing at logic. You are the impetus and inspiration for my post, I am the author. One hand acts, the other motivates action. You misconstrue cause for effect.
3 months ago
Anonymous
You are arguing both for and against Theseus’ ship. I am the entire fricking Heinz factory. Respect me.
3 months ago
Anonymous
This (me) was meant for
>Then you must recognise me as the author of your post
Again you're failing at logic. You are the impetus and inspiration for my post, I am the author. One hand acts, the other motivates action. You misconstrue cause for effect.
(also me)
3 months ago
Anonymous
That post (
>Then you must recognise me as the author of your post
Again you're failing at logic. You are the impetus and inspiration for my post, I am the author. One hand acts, the other motivates action. You misconstrue cause for effect.
me) was not yours (you). Go frick yourself [you (also you)].
>be human leader >be in charge of mission to pandora >flip coin to choose a hemisphere >liberally apply thermobaric munitions to entire hemisphere >land in most mineral rich region of the pandoran hemisphere which you have just swept clean of all life by fire >send patrols to equatorial edge of wasteland to keep natives out >stripmine entire hemisphere >by the time any uproar from earth stops your operation >you've already gotten all of the minerals from the dead hemisphere >you're already slant-mining into the rock under the live hemisphere to take those minerals without bothering anyone on the surface >fully half of the na'avi "peoples" and the entire pandoran ecology survives unharmed >retire wealthy
>spend more money on the explosives/transport of said explosives to glass a hemisphere than you will get from the mining expedition >have organs repurposed by your creditors
>Anon, unobtanium is literally required to save humanity from extinction.
This is fanon based on three-steps-removed reading of material from a book via a wiki. Unobtainium is used in the maglev system on Earth but they have photobioreactors and use spirulina as a primary foodstuff, there's no reason they need maglevs to get food to people's mouths. The RDA is just a megacorp using an artificial monopoly to jack up the price of an already-valuable good to the point that you can sort of handwave the tens of trillions of dollars worth of antimatter they burn every time they go from Sol to Alpha Centauri.
unobtanium also isn't a motivation in avatar 2, by that point the elite has decided Earth is fricked and humanity (read: the RDA board of directors and their friends) needs to evacuate and colonize pandora, where they can destroy a new world while hopped up on whale immortality serum
You don't even need to do that.
There's no reason to preserve the biosphere except for academic purposes. It's naturally toxic to human biology.
The Na'vi are perma-stoneage mongaloids, they cannot detect dangerous extra-terrestrial activities let alone stop them.
If humanity were serious about wiping the Na'vi out, and sensible enough to act from orbit rather than putting boots on ground, then it wouldn't even be a contest. Humanity would be fighting on a whole different dimension to their opponent, able to launch hostile actions against the Na'vi with total impunity.
For example. >Humans choose several sufficiently large asteroids floating around nearby and nudge it onto a collision course with Pandora.
What are the Na'vi or their world spirit going to do about that except mald and cry uncontrollably?
When the planet has been converted to a barren, atmosphere-free rock, begin mining operations.
Yes.
In the distant future, the human species upload themselves into virtual realities completely indistinguishable from reality.
Humans no longer exist in real-space. No longer suffer the crudity of flesh.
Some of these virtual realities have manipulated physics-systems, which in some instantiations is know as magic
The systems of magic differ across the infinite simulated realities, some with harder rules, some with more arbitrary results
All these realities are controlled and maintained by the god-like AI that controls the system
The inhabitants of these realities will go on for ever, until the death of the sun, when all local processing power is extinguished
...
How do we escape the infinite prison we created for ourselves?
Unsounded's magic system is pretty cool, you give commands to the "system console" of the universe and can reassign meta aspects, but the interesting part is that there's normal physics underneath so if you assign stone to be liquid then it will normalize to being "lava" since that's what liquid stone is supposed to be.
Also if you get the syntax wrong the universe will delete you starting with the skin
>magic is just sufficiently advanced technology >implying sufficiently advanced technology isn’t magic
The future looks more magical than whatever shit past people could come up with.
Imagine showing a medieval person a mathematical diagram today, demonstrated through mirrors or some shit. Try explaining the quantum world to them.
I guarantee you alien tech would look downright surreal to us, even today.
Contrived spell lists can be game mechanical abstractions that don't perfectly match in-setting realities, or the best tools and procedures humans have come up with to harness and interact with a force that in itself is not so neat and convenient.
Something like Pandora wouldn’t happen naturally without some sort of guiding intelligence. It’s like a fantastical carbon copy of Earth! Almost as though… a human wrote it…
This goes double for whatever “Eywa” is. Perhaps it’s even that guiding intelligence.
Its another >OP refuses to actually state terms and definitions and so is free to argue circularly and move those terms and definitions around in order to claim victory no matter how many times he's blown the frick out
episode
Magic is just misinterpretation or exaggeration of high tech, knowledge and stuff that were barely understood (or not at all) or described with inappropriate terminology that warped with time
A surprising amount of tropes have origins in archaic contact with high technology or knowledge that people couldn't understand or described in ways that couldn't be understood by people of posterity either because of lack of references and/or necessary level of tech knowledge to decipher what the description is actually describing
Only today we are beginning to understand some of the "magical" stuff that were witnessed in the past
Many concepts we have about of magic and fantasy is the result of cargo cult-like phenomenons and with a more modern understanding of technology many of those things can actually be identified and solved
In some cases people take some description of mythological things too literally
Flying chariots weren't literal bronze age chariots flying
The "biblically accurate angels" are taken too literally and some engineers have tried to draw something based on those description resulting in ufo-like vehicles (which are very present in a lot, *a lot*, of ancient texts if put under scrutiny)
We have relatively recent examples of descriptors that aren't just literal, but descriptions of function or a comparison with most similar thing they knew: amerindians and the "iron horse" referring to trains, and all the names they had to come up to refer to the horse (mysterious dog, the big dog of the white man, the deer dog, ecc.)
Fun fact:
Even the magic wand imagery is not original fantasy; even today in some ufological cases people report that they were paralyzed by beings pointing a wand-like object to them
Anyway, how the modern depiction of "magic" came to be is irrelevant, even though fascinating
Magic is commonly a different thing in literature from classic technology
>even today in some ufological cases people report that they were paralyzed by beings pointing a wand-like object to them
I always found this very funny in UFO talk.
>even today in some ufological cases people report that they were paralyzed by beings pointing a wand-like object to them
I always found this very funny in ufo talk.
"Holy freaking crap, it's like that time I ran into an alien with a wand"
He’s a lost cause, just look at how many times he’s been dunked on with shit he can’t answer, and yet he’s STILL seething about how gigabrained he is. Terminal pseud.
I would say yes, to the degree that every typical magic system has a degree of omnipresent, low level sentience to it. That's not to say that magic should be technological, but that there's something in these settings that interprets the will of these mortals who are drawing from and using magic power.
If your magic consists of floating and rotating runes that circle your hands as you cast spells, etc, it is clearly artificial and artistically made to be that way. Who the hell built such a system? Are mages poking at an invisible mechanism? Seems to be the case. Like a gun that’s already been shaped. Nature doesn’t give a flying frick about human notions of art. Runes and other artsy arcane hocus pocus symbols wouldn’t so conveniently turn up so consistently in nature for this to be the case. Coincidence can only go so far.
Aliens, AI, “the gods”, all work. Even just the human imagination is convenient enough for something to be called “magic”. It’s how religions start.
Not universally, no.
There is nothing universal about magic, except for it being a supernatural or unnatural power, because it isn't real.
Settings like Dungeons & Dragons, or any fiction with a hard enough magic system really, will rely on this sort of logical thinking to even narratively exist, being so damn conveniently contrived, or just artificially arbitrary. Hidden, occult infrastructure. These are *games*. All myth, folklore, religion, etc, come across as games too.
You can’t really argue that magic in -any- fiction -isn’t- intelligent, or intelligently made, in some way. Because it definitely is. Even if it’s just the damn author.
I apologize for thinking several steps ahead of you.
Any "setting" whose magic doesn't have the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills itself is decidedly not intelligent. More often than not, a work of fantasy will have its magic be a power with no conscious or subconscious will.
So what makes you think it is always intelligent in every work ever when there are so many examples where it isn't?
>More often than not, a work of fantasy will have its magic be a power with no conscious or subconscious will.
That nonetheless still behaves like
Yeah, if I discovered a substance that enabled me to run like the Flash, or fly like Superman, or shoot fire from my hands like Pyro, I’d IMMEDIATELY think “who made this?”. Not “oh my god it’s just like oil”.
Especially if it’s an endless spell list of endlessly variable effects. For some reason bending space to “blink” ten meters away is lower level spell than what is essentially a fricking grenade/bomb (yes, fireball).
A fireball coming from the band is infinitely less believable than someone just up and spontaneously combusting, because why the frick does the fire come from the hands? Why not the ballsack? Christ.
>band
hand*
First things first, you are straying from the core of the argument which was:
>Is magic just hidden AI?"
And most people answered that no, it most of magic doesn't work like hidden AI, due to being set of impersonal rules of reality without a will of its own, no consciousness and no intellect to speak of.
Your current argument is that magic is too convenient to not be intelligently designed, but it it's moving the goalposts since there are plenty of systems that are intelligently designed without being based on "hidden AI".
>is it intelligent
>is it artificial
Yes, these are two separate questions.
>there are plenty of systems that are intelligently designed without being based on "hidden AI".
If it’s intelligently designed, how is it not artificial?
You guys are making OP look like a genius.
Artificial (made by somebody on purpose, using their intelligence) =/= Artificial Intelligence (artificially made intelligence)
It's literally basic logic. All AIs are artificial, not all artificial things are AIs. Hammers are artificial and famously mindless.
The crux of this thread is about how intelligent the magic is. Or at least that one anon, if not OP.
I don’t care if AI falls into it. It’s a no brainer. All magic is artificial. I agree with that.
Why would it come from the ballsack? Why not the hands?
Anyway, beside your point about "convenient" design not being related to main argument, there are two basic in universe explanations for it:
>For magic as evolved trait
You don't shot fireball from ballsack, because people with magic ballsacks castrated themselves using their powers and didn't pass their genes. Magic coming out from your hands makes as much sense as snake venom coming out of their teeth or your opposable thumbs being on your hands instead of your feet. These solutions just worked out better.
>magic as science/craft/art
Spells are designed by mages so obviously no sane person crates balls targeted fireball the same way nobody makes balls operated jackhammers.
What you would THINK wouldn't change what it IS. What level the spell is or from whence it is cast doesn't make it an intelligence. What you think is believable doesn't change the facts.
Magic, along with other supernatural forces, functions in ways that no author can explain, because no mind could understand such an explanation, because nobody has the senses to even draw a frame of reference to. Just because it operates outside of what we can understand, doesn't automatically give it a mind and memory. That is something you CAN DO, but isn't ALWAYS TRUE for every magic.
If a work doesn't explicitly state magic is conscious, it's best to come to the simplest conclusion and assume it isn't.
Don't bother, anon.
This is one of those threads where the OP is arguing something else using /tg/ concepts. Specifically he's attempting to use the logic of theist arguments of intelligent design on /tg/ settings, for some reason. Probably autism. Or ego.
I did get pretty strong creationist vibes from this thread, so good to hear that at least one anon thought the same.
>not universally
There is no structure to the universe?
eywa-nna suck my nuts
Depends on the setting
More interesting question: What are some GOOD setting where magic is either definitely AI or might be AI?
I think the Endless universe is criminally underrated, and it has definitely AI magic. The precursors, called the Endless, basically made a universal internet out of nanomachines, Dust, which certain people can access and manipulate. The Endless die out, but Dust still exists. New civilizations come up and nearly all of their developments are affected by the presence of Dust and what it can do. Dust can basically emulate anything you'd think magic can do, as well as being a major boon to manufacturing and all sorts of other things.
The different races of the Endless universe are very unique and interesting. Its sad there isn't an official RPG, either of the medieval setting or the scifi one.
>Depends on the setting
No. Name me one (1) magic system that isn’t intelligent or intelligently considered. You can’t.
>isn’t intelligent or intelligently considered
What did he mean by this?
All magic everywhere is too convenient for it not to be the invention of some intelligence. Like a game of some sort. All of it is entertained. But by what?
Even without overt magic, humans will consider things magical all on their own. It’s how religions started. “Those shiny dots in the night sky? They’re gods.”.
This wigga never heard of evolution
>have a multiverse of infinite bullshit
>a percentage of these have convenient magic
>tards look at this and think “it must be intelligently designed!”
You ARE the stargazer
Read
before you give yourself a brain aneurysm.
Too late, lol. That’s hilarious tho. Literally unable to articulate his logic, kinda sad
>RPG
>Unknown Armies adept magic - it's directly your will/obsession combined with symbological matrix of the world.
>Double Cross - mutant powers aren't AI by definition of being part of you.
>Mage: The Awekening - magic works via platonic ideals, not working with outside intelligence.
The issue with your statement is that it's based on the assumption that magic works on basis of asking magical supercomputer to do stuff, instead of either doing stuff with your own power or by interacting with set, mindless and will-less rules of the natural world.
You’re an idiot. All of that is intelligently considered. You’re not even on the same level of thought.
What do you think the author is?
Oh. Its moronic.
Or high off his shitty 100 level philosophy class's farts.
Basically the same thing
Philosophy 101 Moron here.
That anon is just moronic
Author is a being existing outside the story's verse that doesn't come into consideration. Again, Unknown Armies adept powers aren't externally designed or managed, being rooted in personal will of user (with some backwash from wills of others). Double Cross powers aren't managed by external intellect, etc.
This argument is based on the idea that magic cannot be logically arranged and follow patterns and rules without being deliberately designed. I mean, friction allowing us to start fire with sticks to warm up and cook up food is also convenient.
Imagine if gunpowder ONLY functioned in a specific barrel size/shape of a penis, one engraved with ‘peepee’ in Latin, and ONLY if you spoke ‘cum diablo!’ before pulling the trigger.
I think that’s the kind of “conveniently constructed” or “artificially sophisticated” he’s referring to, anon. Not your fault you can’t dissect a spell using logic.
Fireball *only* shoots in a straight line, from your middle finger, after screaming “Bababooie!”. Also, you had to roll into a ball a mixture of bat poop (guano) and sulphur, and no matter how much you add to it the mixture it ALWAYS produces the SAME size of Fireball.
Magic like that is like pushing invisible buttons on an invisible machine. Is it ‘behind’ our dimensional perceptions? Maybe. But it’s still heavily artificial. Who built it? The gods? The grand wizard of the world? Doesn’t really matter, since it would require an intelligence either way.
Settings like Dungeons & Dragons come across as closer to science-fiction when you bother to analyze how robotic it is.
This is the sort of logic you people are missing. Again, this thread right here:
>Doesn’t really matter, since it would require an intelligence either way.
Not at all. Coincidence can easily explain it.
This is the same logic that theists use to explain a "tailored" universe. You're looking at things in a too anthropocentric way. Take your obviously DnD inspired example. While those things are how a wizard might produce a fireball, there are other creatures that produce fireballs in other ways. The rules for how a fireball is produced just happen to be available to humanoid creatures, but how many magics are out there that can't be produced by humanoid anatomy?
Magic in this sort of arrangement could be like a universal set of strings, and plucking those strings randomly occasionally produces a song (spell). There need not be an intelligence that arranged those strings or mediates what is a song.
>Coincidence can easily explain it.
Suuuuure, a 10/10 supermodel blonde, blue-eyed mermaid is suuuuurely coincidence. Nevermind spells that function like cellphone apps.
Your line of thinking is
>the mermaid is a blond blue-eyed bombshell > these are things we are attracted to > therefore the world was built with us in mind
But applying Occam’s razor, we have far less assumptions with:
>survival of the fittest > for mermaids, fitness = attractiveness towards their prey
Mermaids are attractive because attractive mermaids survive.
Unrelated: Could you give an example of something that you would consider a coincidence?
Anon, a realistic "mermaid" would evolve to be overly blubbery to deal with the cold depths, hairless, and horribly toothed. Probably predators.
Stop humanizing evolution so conveniently.
you're responding to a flat earther
So what?
Well isn’t that exactly what mermaids are like, underneath the magic? Besides, we’re talking about the survival of magical effects, not biology.
Like let’s take creationistanon’s penis fireball, for example. Spells “survive” by being used and useful (like any other tool or skill). Considering that evolution already incentivises a concealment of genitalia, which spell do you think is more likely to be forgotten? The fireball cast through the hands, or the fireball cast through the dick?
Nope, nice strawman attempt but flerthing actually requires more gymnastics nowadays than sphereoids.
>Besides, we’re talking about the survival of magical effects, not biology.
It’s not biology, it’s causality. Biology falls into it. Either something progresses naturally/unintelligently, or it progresses artificially/intelligently. There is no third alternative. Domestication is an act of intelligence.
A fair point about causality. But your distinction between natural and artificial is lacking. If you defined what intelligence is, that might help, but so far all you’ve done is make ants very proud of how intelligent they are.
Artificial:
— ‘made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural.’
Yes, ant hills are artificial. You can definitely argue the artificial as natural, by way of it being a natural expectation.
I was referring to domestication, not construction. But sure, that too.
Your error, repeatedly, is assigning intelligent design at the moment things appear "too convenient."
Since this is a thinly veiled creationist argument, lets use a classic argument against a "convenient" universe.
Imagine a natural depression in a field. Now imagine it rains, filling this depression. Later on you walk by and you say "wow, its incredibly convenient that the pool of water is exactly the shape of that depression!" But of course you wouldn't say that, because you know that the water is shaped to the size and outline of the cavity. Similarly if some creature, like mosquito larva were living in that pool, they might think "ah this pool must be designed for me, because it is deep enough and wide enough that I can live here!" When in reality it wouldn't be alive to say that if the pool were not deep and wide enough for it to live there. It would simply not be alive to even say that.
To put this whole argument back together again, magic in these systems can easily be explained as useable to humanoids in the setting, because if it weren't, we wouldn't be playing it. No intelligence needed. Furthermore, to use the example up thread, humanoids don't use fireballs fired from their dicks, because those that do tend to die, while the ones who figured out how to fireball from their hands don't tend to die. Again, no intelligence needed.
>Since this is a thinly veiled creationist argument
LOL Stopped reading here
You sound insane and unhinged
I think he’s talking to the moronic OP
OP isn’t moronic if he says all magic comes across as artificially made tho, because thats just common sense; people who lack common sense get triggered when they’re confronted by it; they subconsciously view themselves as stupid for their failings to see such simple sense
>Source: my ass
Wait, do you seriously think an author is incapable of writing error into their work?
Listen, if an author writes shit like “magic is the opposite of science and wizards can’t use technology” then you’re absolutely allowed to point out how dumb that sounds, and how a wizard’s staff -is- a piece of technology.
I am allowed to educate. You’re just butthurt about it.
No, I don’t think that. I DO seriously think that most people don’t consider magic a constructed thing. And I seriously think you’re talking out your ass when you say otherwise.
> I DO seriously think that most people don’t consider magic a constructed thing.
Then they’re idiots, and so are you. The fact that fantasists today are already endlessly arguing over what is/isn’t magic proves that. Magic to one is not magic to another. Magic is what you make of it. Frick.
You are so behind on your thinking skills. I don’t like insulting you, but I have to. I have no patience with morons in a world of morons. You’ve already ruined so many of my hobbies with your horse shit logic. How can I trust you at all?
Next you’re going to tell me that math/quantification (1s and 0s) are human inventions.
It’s not common sense if it’s not common sense, dumbass. Just accept you’re a weirdo outlier and be bold about it, don’t hide behind a nonexistent supposed consensus
>you’re absolutely allowed to point out how dumb that sounds
That doesn't sound dumb at all, though, it sounds absolutely kino.
>a wizard's staff -is- a piece of technology.
No it's not, especially if the author has already established that magic and technology as concepts within the universe are in opposition.
>No it's not
Yes it is. Technology is just applied science. Both sides of the same coin. Making a fire is a science. The wheel is a piece of technology.
If anything works at all, it is science. This is why you cannot actually separate science from magic. Magic is a matter of nuance. It exists the same way holes, cold or darkness exists. Absences. It doesn’t exist, in order to exist.
I guess OP really isn’t dumb after all. You guys are!
No one even attempted to refute this. This general is in-majority populated by absolute dumbasses, wow.
Because it’s a moronic shifting of goalposts that can be countered by simply shifting the goalposts.
>magic is tech
>not if it’s not
>but tech is applied science
>then magic is not applied science
Try not being a fatheaded gay and people might give you a single shred of the respect you’re so obviously lacking
That’s also not the kind of convenience he is poking at here
Rain is convenient but perfectly natural. Rain shops the shape of dicks? Yeah, nah, some alien did that. There is no other way or explanation really.
There is:
>raindrops take the shape of dicks because it’s in their molecular makeup to organise like that.
I would accuse you of being in creative, but snowflakes exist, you’re just stoopid.
So quantum physics is conveniently penis shaped now too, is it?
You don’t see how fricking absurd you look right now lol
How about the face of Hitler instead of a penis?
Why not? Because you’d personally find it unbelievable? Unbelievable shit happens all the time, for example I’m having trouble believing you’re this dense.
Already got you here
Explain to me how Hitler’s face is a universal constant.
>Explain why a universal constant is a universal constant
I diagnose you with chronic moronation and recommend a series of marmoset brain transplants to improve your intellect.
Um, that’s not what he asked.
It literally is. It’s like having 299792458 games on steam, and going “hey wait a minute! That’s the speed of light! Why is the speed of light coincidentally equal to my games list? Bwaahhhh??? Must be an author!”
Nope. Not what he asked. You dodged the question. You’re panicking now. I am no longer invested in this topic since you’re going out of your way to miss it. Many such cases.
My dude, a lot of functions in IRL quantum physics do look dick like.
Show me one (1) physics phenomenon that looks like a dick and balls, that isn’t just a lone case.
>Rain shops the shape of dicks? Yeah, nah, some alien did that. There is no other way or explanation really.
>He's never watched clouds go by and pointed out the ones shaped like dicks to his friends
Its the same argument in both cases. Convenience is not an argument for intelligent design. Only the unimaginative or people willfully twisting or ignoring facts and coincidence or their own biases tend to make that argument.
>He's never watched clouds go by and pointed out the ones shaped like dicks to his friends
Is every cloud the shape of a dick? Because if so, then yes, I’d assume some alien fricker is responsible for this level of blatant artistic humor.
>Convenience is not an argument for intelligent design
Of course it is. Nature isn’t convenient. It’s “convenient” only by way of survival.
Nature is neither convenient nor inconvenient. It just is what it is. Its a human conceit that things are easier or harder for us. We take a look at what has evolved or the basic conditions and say "gee it sure is convenient that these trees have fruit" but in reality that fruit developed as a method to transport seeds, with no intelligence involved in its creation. Or "gee its sure convenient that all these animals have meat we can eat" but in reality, we can eat animal flesh because we evolved to eat animal flesh. The animals are not here for our convenience.
Go ahead, please try explaining to me why every raindrop being the face of Hitler, a person sourced to a specific planet, wouldn’t require an humorous alien intelligence of some kind to justify?
You do know rain exists elsewhere in the universe, right?
>Argument Ad Absurdum
That isn't even an extrapolation of what is being said in this thread.
You can’t do it! That’s the kind of artificial OP is getting at, and you can’t even detect it! You’re just an idiot! You see floating head of Hitler, and you really think to yourself “nature allowed this to happen, no intellect whatsoever”. Lol.
These are also games. So by default any sort of magic is going to come across as contrived or robotic, as
puts it.
Why does hitler look like raindrops? You won’t be able to answer this.
Glad to see not all of Ganker has intelligently-designed themselves a third chromosome.
>magic in these systems can easily be explained as useable to humanoids in the setting, because if it weren't, we wouldn't be playing it. No intelligence needed.
The author intelligently made it so. His fictional physics conformed to suit the author’s needs.
So? The author doesn't exist in-setting. His existence isn't relevant to what's natural and what's artificial in the setting.
>The author doesn't exist in-setting
That doesn’t excuse the fiction from being absurd to the point where it could only -be- the creation of some silly author.
You are numerous steps behind in this conversation.
Most fiction, however, isn't absurd in that way. Some fiction being absurd int hat way isn't really relevant to this thread's topic.
>Most fiction, however, isn't absurd in that way.
All fiction breaks down the more you analyze it. Cope. Star Trek isn’t science-fiction to the sufficiently educated physicist, it is fantasy by that point. Tough shit, buddy.
All fiction everywhere is varying shades of silly. No exception.
You don't know what silly means, and whether science fiction holds up under scrutiny has pretty much nothing to do with how magic works in fantasy settings.
You’re adorable.
>whether science fiction holds up under scrutiny has pretty much nothing to do with how magic works
When I hear sound in space, in any sci-fi, my first thought is “magic”.
Space does not work that way!
Okay, anon. That remains irrelevant to the discussion at hand, but okay.
Nah, it’s pretty fricking relevant.
No, your autism is completely irrelevant.
Anyone who disagrees with this post is automatically a fricking loser in this argument.
This is true, with the caveat that reality is just as silly (if not moreso) than fiction
I agree, but reality at least makes (fundamental) sense by way of it existing, and anything contrary to that is just “woah, weird”, which is subjective.
Just do me a favour for a second.
Imagine a world that looks, to you, like it should be the creation of an author, but isn’t.
Get back to me when you’re done.
The author is God. He's extrapolating using his creationist playbook of arguments.
Fact is Earth is a colony and the Owner is returning.
The Material Components of Spells is also something gravely overlooked by almost everyone. Some of that shit is hard to find, yo
>“Bababooie!”
Lost it.
There is no author. Tolkien didn’t write the hobbit, because there is no Tolkien in middle earth.
Wow, you really are a confined sort of thinker, totally incapable of transcendent thought. I pity your ass.
Your philosophy professor isn't marking your posts. You don't have to be a pedantic moron here.
On the contrary, I am able to imagine infinite separate realities, while you remain a single-system caveman.
Anon, if the magic comes from the hands, the eyes, the forehead, etc, it isn’t natural. It wouldn’t evolve up to such a point naturally. It just wouldn’t. Progression happens in one of two ways. Naturally or intelligently/artificially.
Except it is explicitly natural part of human being in UA, with adept magic being learnable by people with sufficiently developed souls. There are even known biological diseases that interfere with magic. Also, why not? Evolution does favour solutions based on using existing organs instead of growing completely new ones.
There are beings of magic in Mage, but the magic itself doesn't depend on mediating with them but on the rules of the realm of the ideas. As for UA, I did specify Adept Magic, which depends on your mind and soul instead of Avatar Magic.
That's just translating DnD bullshit gameplay conventions to the actual game lore, with added element of deliberately absurd yapping.
In Unknown Armies you can actually personalize adept spells. Sure, it takes effort to make an completely new one, but that's the difference between following established procedure and creating a new one. And before you ask who build these rules - you did it. Adepts are guys building these rules.
Beside, even if we take your example at face value it's just the example of procedure producing a specific reaction. Your example tells us nothing about underlying mechanics except the fact that you need an exact procedure. Also, your assumption that you can't change the parameters of fireball by tinkering with material components is based on gameplay abstraction, not the diegetic setting element.
>but the magic itself doesn't depend on mediating with them
Yes it does lol. You literally need a Watchtower to create an Imperial spell to awaken *any given mage*. There is no exception! If you’re going to argue with OP, at least get your lore right.
Evolution is about as “intelligent” as a blind idiot. Despite it somehow knowing that prey animals cannot see orange, which translates as green to prey sight (green fur does not exist in nature), evolution does not give a flying frick about where your laryngeal nerve is located. It makes do with one dimensional causality.
Exactly. Which is why magic evolving with ties to how animal perceives and influences the world already makes perfect sense.
evolution doesn’t “do” or “know” anything, you fricking imbecile, evolution is just units with beneficial mutations living longer and thus procreating more than units without those genes
hence how humans have 5 different evolutions to breaking the lactose intolerance gene on different continents, because drinking milk makes you stronger so you live longer and have more kids, there’s nothing intelligent about it, some guys on different continents mutated in 5 different ways that all did the same thing and let them frick more
>herp derp
>evolution doesn’t “do” or “know” anything
That's what that post is getting across you speed reading dumbass
"Intelligent"
>despite it somehow knowing
>it makes do
samegay harder, imbecile
Ah, you're an illiterate. You can't into figures of speech. Poor, sad little frick. Probably ESL.
The Supernal in MtAw is definitely “alive” in some form, lol. Similar to the God-Machine. They are non-entity entities. Each Watchtower is a rank 10 being. The Primal Wild is given as an example one. The Exarch of Forces -is- violence and warfare. Concepts are 100% alive. Unknown Armies also/similarly consists of intelligences bigger than you.
Alderamin?
Culture, their tech is magic but there is some stuff that Minds cannot fully grasp or care to frick with. The shit they dont understand is also just a technologic skill diff, the entity either comes from another dimension or sublimed
Nanomachines, son.
underrated comment
no, but it IS neural
Frank Herbert did it better
If they aren't allowed to set stone upon stone how do they make their arrowheads?
They get them from praising James Cameron's shitty personal politics.
Difference between setting (permanently placing) and clipping. Ejwah got rules-lawyered.
are na'vi extremely precious and lovely?
Yes. The answer is yes.
>that goblin smile
you have shit taste.
No, magic is computer code hacking.
But who built the computer? The code?
Who built your dna code?
mom and pops
That’s like saying I wrote your post
>That’s like saying I wrote your post
You definitely caused that post with your question. But you didn't write it.
His parents definitely made his DNA, however.
Nah, I had equivalent input into the writing of that post as his ‘rents did in writing the string of code that’s been the product of a millennia-old process originating all the way back in the primordial soup. They aren’t the authors, they didn’t even create their own contributions. They’re the robot arm putting the label on a heinz ketchup bottle, and you’re calling them the source of the sauce? Nah, famgooli.
>They aren’t the authors, they didn’t even create their own contributions.
That's illogical. An anthill is still created by ants even if they don't consciously understand architecture or why they make the design decisions they do. By your logic, no athlete actually does anything other than train because during events their bodies mostly respond to unconscious triggers induced by training. To whit, no one actually invents anything because the imagination is also induced by unconscious triggers, and thus there are no authors, no creators, and we are all just meat puppets that serve no function beyond existing for the whims of some theorized higher power, if that even exists... otherwise we are just inanimate dolls in an inanimate universe acting out movements induced by electrochemical reaction.
I reject your moronic premise.
>thus there are no authors, no creators, and we are all just meat puppets that serve no function beyond existing for the whims of some theorized higher power, if that even exists
A correct deduction, and my answer to
> I reject your moronic premise
Then you must recognise me as the author of your post and, to whit, acknowledge that said post is written in bad faith by one who is merely arguing for argument’s sake (with himself)
>Then you must recognise me as the author of your post
Again you're failing at logic. You are the impetus and inspiration for my post, I am the author. One hand acts, the other motivates action. You misconstrue cause for effect.
You are arguing both for and against Theseus’ ship. I am the entire fricking Heinz factory. Respect me.
This (me) was meant for
(also me)
That post (
me) was not yours (you). Go frick yourself [you (also you)].
I accept my concession.
So is obsidian and meteoric iron in-play then?
Obsidian still needs knapping, I'd say meteoric iron is alright if you can find a non-rock surface to work it on.
obsidian is not metal though, it's more like special type of glass
>obsidian
yes.
>meteoric iron
no.
>be human leader
>be in charge of mission to pandora
>flip coin to choose a hemisphere
>liberally apply thermobaric munitions to entire hemisphere
>land in most mineral rich region of the pandoran hemisphere which you have just swept clean of all life by fire
>send patrols to equatorial edge of wasteland to keep natives out
>stripmine entire hemisphere
>by the time any uproar from earth stops your operation
>you've already gotten all of the minerals from the dead hemisphere
>you're already slant-mining into the rock under the live hemisphere to take those minerals without bothering anyone on the surface
>fully half of the na'avi "peoples" and the entire pandoran ecology survives unharmed
>retire wealthy
>spend more money on the explosives/transport of said explosives to glass a hemisphere than you will get from the mining expedition
>have organs repurposed by your creditors
Anon, unobtanium is literally required to save humanity from extinction. You can charge whatever you damn well want for it.
>Anon, unobtanium is literally required to save humanity from extinction.
This is fanon based on three-steps-removed reading of material from a book via a wiki. Unobtainium is used in the maglev system on Earth but they have photobioreactors and use spirulina as a primary foodstuff, there's no reason they need maglevs to get food to people's mouths. The RDA is just a megacorp using an artificial monopoly to jack up the price of an already-valuable good to the point that you can sort of handwave the tens of trillions of dollars worth of antimatter they burn every time they go from Sol to Alpha Centauri.
unobtanium also isn't a motivation in avatar 2, by that point the elite has decided Earth is fricked and humanity (read: the RDA board of directors and their friends) needs to evacuate and colonize pandora, where they can destroy a new world while hopped up on whale immortality serum
You don't even need to do that.
There's no reason to preserve the biosphere except for academic purposes. It's naturally toxic to human biology.
The Na'vi are perma-stoneage mongaloids, they cannot detect dangerous extra-terrestrial activities let alone stop them.
If humanity were serious about wiping the Na'vi out, and sensible enough to act from orbit rather than putting boots on ground, then it wouldn't even be a contest. Humanity would be fighting on a whole different dimension to their opponent, able to launch hostile actions against the Na'vi with total impunity.
For example.
>Humans choose several sufficiently large asteroids floating around nearby and nudge it onto a collision course with Pandora.
What are the Na'vi or their world spirit going to do about that except mald and cry uncontrollably?
When the planet has been converted to a barren, atmosphere-free rock, begin mining operations.
Read Off to Be the Wizard by Meyer Scott
Yes.
In the distant future, the human species upload themselves into virtual realities completely indistinguishable from reality.
Humans no longer exist in real-space. No longer suffer the crudity of flesh.
Some of these virtual realities have manipulated physics-systems, which in some instantiations is know as magic
The systems of magic differ across the infinite simulated realities, some with harder rules, some with more arbitrary results
All these realities are controlled and maintained by the god-like AI that controls the system
The inhabitants of these realities will go on for ever, until the death of the sun, when all local processing power is extinguished
...
How do we escape the infinite prison we created for ourselves?
Brapditional James?
wow op really triggered you shits
Unsounded's magic system is pretty cool, you give commands to the "system console" of the universe and can reassign meta aspects, but the interesting part is that there's normal physics underneath so if you assign stone to be liquid then it will normalize to being "lava" since that's what liquid stone is supposed to be.
Also if you get the syntax wrong the universe will delete you starting with the skin
Magic-k in the real world is facilitated by deals with subroutines of the failed caretaker AI of our colony Earth.
damn
given how the top dogs all seem to believe in occultism and how fricked up the world is, this is a scary thought
>magic is just sufficiently advanced technology
>implying sufficiently advanced technology isn’t magic
The future looks more magical than whatever shit past people could come up with.
Imagine showing a medieval person a mathematical diagram today, demonstrated through mirrors or some shit. Try explaining the quantum world to them.
I guarantee you alien tech would look downright surreal to us, even today.
When I watched the movie Annihilation I thought “this is what magic looks like”, minus the sinister alien agenda.
What’s funny is that morons think their endlessly contrived spell lists can be anything BUT some sort of beep boop machine behind the scenes.
It would be funny, but it’s sombered by the realisation that imbeciles like yourself are too creatively hamstrung to imagine the inverse.
Contrived spell lists can be game mechanical abstractions that don't perfectly match in-setting realities, or the best tools and procedures humans have come up with to harness and interact with a force that in itself is not so neat and convenient.
the A in AI stands for artificial, so no, but eywa is clearly a naturally occurring intellect
Something like Pandora wouldn’t happen naturally without some sort of guiding intelligence. It’s like a fantastical carbon copy of Earth! Almost as though… a human wrote it…
This goes double for whatever “Eywa” is. Perhaps it’s even that guiding intelligence.
>Pandora couldn’t have happened naturally
>a magician must have written it into existence
Discworld logic dumfuk
>This goes double for whatever “Eywa” is.
E.Y.W.A
Man, OPs mind will be absolutely blown when he realizes that the Cloud are actually just physical server banks with a telephone number you can call.
morons in this thread really thinking humans could evolve with the ability to shoot fire from their hands and still look 100 percent human
It’s almost like it’s routine to shit on OP even when OP is right.
>Is magic just hidden AI?
No.
>picture
Wrong board
Wrong board
Wrong board
No, magic is specific to black people.
>abloobloobloo
>Appealing to peers
Learn to think for yourself, regardless of how right or wrong you are.
This is the reason dad has no respect for you guys come on
Its another
>OP refuses to actually state terms and definitions and so is free to argue circularly and move those terms and definitions around in order to claim victory no matter how many times he's blown the frick out
episode
I just want to na'vipost bros
Oh god
Cameron
PLS
OP really butt blasted you lot
>noooo, magic isn’t constructed
>oh wait it literally is constructed
Magic is just misinterpretation or exaggeration of high tech, knowledge and stuff that were barely understood (or not at all) or described with inappropriate terminology that warped with time
A surprising amount of tropes have origins in archaic contact with high technology or knowledge that people couldn't understand or described in ways that couldn't be understood by people of posterity either because of lack of references and/or necessary level of tech knowledge to decipher what the description is actually describing
Only today we are beginning to understand some of the "magical" stuff that were witnessed in the past
Many concepts we have about of magic and fantasy is the result of cargo cult-like phenomenons and with a more modern understanding of technology many of those things can actually be identified and solved
In some cases people take some description of mythological things too literally
Flying chariots weren't literal bronze age chariots flying
The "biblically accurate angels" are taken too literally and some engineers have tried to draw something based on those description resulting in ufo-like vehicles (which are very present in a lot, *a lot*, of ancient texts if put under scrutiny)
We have relatively recent examples of descriptors that aren't just literal, but descriptions of function or a comparison with most similar thing they knew: amerindians and the "iron horse" referring to trains, and all the names they had to come up to refer to the horse (mysterious dog, the big dog of the white man, the deer dog, ecc.)
Fun fact:
Even the magic wand imagery is not original fantasy; even today in some ufological cases people report that they were paralyzed by beings pointing a wand-like object to them
Anyway, how the modern depiction of "magic" came to be is irrelevant, even though fascinating
Magic is commonly a different thing in literature from classic technology
>even today in some ufological cases people report that they were paralyzed by beings pointing a wand-like object to them
I always found this very funny in UFO talk.
"Holy freaking crap, it's like that time I ran into an alien with a wand"
I don’t care how weird the magic is, it’s still coming from SOMEWHERE, just like everything else.
I really hate midwits that associate anything that ever was with the CURRENTTHING.
>samegayging pajeet calling me an esl
lol
lmao
He’s a lost cause, just look at how many times he’s been dunked on with shit he can’t answer, and yet he’s STILL seething about how gigabrained he is. Terminal pseud.
Oh, I see, you're an anti-biology, anti-science leftist type lunatic, just like in the other thread.
Keep telling yourself that, troon
Actually, I'm a white Canadian who hates Muslims.
>islamophobe to boot
>white canadian
just type ubercuck next time, it’s shorter
No.
Magic is science in a different coat of paint.
>waah
Science is the new sorcery, or heresy, lmfao
What a truly awful world we are in
>abloobloobloo
What did he mean by this
>abloobloobloo
I would say yes, to the degree that every typical magic system has a degree of omnipresent, low level sentience to it. That's not to say that magic should be technological, but that there's something in these settings that interprets the will of these mortals who are drawing from and using magic power.
OP is right and y’all are gays
Everything in existence is science in some way, however big or small, cope.
It’s all magic.
If your magic consists of floating and rotating runes that circle your hands as you cast spells, etc, it is clearly artificial and artistically made to be that way. Who the hell built such a system? Are mages poking at an invisible mechanism? Seems to be the case. Like a gun that’s already been shaped. Nature doesn’t give a flying frick about human notions of art. Runes and other artsy arcane hocus pocus symbols wouldn’t so conveniently turn up so consistently in nature for this to be the case. Coincidence can only go so far.
Aliens, AI, “the gods”, all work. Even just the human imagination is convenient enough for something to be called “magic”. It’s how religions start.
>OP Bumps his own thread after 6 hours of inactivity just to get the last word in
kek
;^)
Bumping so everyone can see OP get raked across the coals
On the contrary, AI and technology is hidden magic.
When ignorance becomes the norm, which it will, yes.
Aha! Now I know how to restore the mysticism of magic in my games: by creating a custom magic system and hiding all the rules of it from my players!
Sure, but I’m talking of real life, when the dumbasses of the world start forming cults around AI and occult infrastructure.
Probably.