Martin wants to be uniquely powerful and higher-status, but this request can only be granted to a few people, barring delusive holodecks, so it’s not a good project for utilitarians;
Tarleton suggests that a reality with fundamental magic is more wonderful, but this is probably impossible even in principle, because magic is too complex to be atomic;
But rfriel’s, Harris’s, and Pearson’s versions of magic’s appeal—“I want to be individually empowered by producing neato effects myself, without large capital investments and many specialists helping” and “I want the neato things I do to have a more natural user interface” are in principle doable—you can get this with, say, the right kind of nanotechnology, or (ahem) other sufficiently advanced tech, and bring it to a large user base, as long as they have the basic psychological ability to take joy in anything that is merely real.
Martin wants to be uniquely powerful and higher-status, but this request can only be granted to a few people, barring delusive holodecks, so it’s not a good project for utilitarians;
Tarleton suggests that a reality with fundamental magic is more wonderful, but this is probably impossible even in principle, because magic is too complex to be atomic;
But rfriel’s, Harris’s, and Pearson’s versions of magic’s appeal—“I want to be individually empowered by producing neato effects myself, without large capital investments and many specialists helping” and “I want the neato things I do to have a more natural user interface” are in principle doable—you can get this with, say, the right kind of nanotechnology, or (ahem) other sufficiently advanced tech, and bring it to a large user base, as long as they have the basic psychological ability to take joy in anything that is merely real.