I largely agree, but I do think fantasy-story magic differs from our world’s physics in one significant way: the laws of magic tend to resemble human psychology much, much more than our physics does. The opening quote of this post is itself an example: to practice their craft, Pratchett’s witches have to negotiate with gods, which—real and mundane as they may be—presumably have beliefs and desires that bear at least some similarity to human ones. And while it’s occasionally a nice shorthand to refer to physical entities as having beliefs and desires (look, the charge wants to go that way/this amplifier knows where ground is), the mappings are very rudimentary, and they aren’t even a very accurate way to look at the picture.
Even when magic doesn’t involve actual gods or godlike beings, it usually interfaces much more “nicely” with human psychology than real technology does; the process of casting a spell often depends in some way on the caster’s emotional state, and spell effects can be structured around intuitive concepts with apparent ease (say, a curse that affects subsequent generations of a family—a group of entities that is very difficult to specify in physical terms). Granted, our real-world technology could conceivably advance to the point where it works something like this, but it’s still an important fact that it doesn’t, and can’t, work that way now. Until we make some giant technological leaps, being an engineer or physicist is not going to be much like the typical wizard’s experience, where psychology really matters and one’s emotions have intricate effects on one’s results.
The Lovecraftian branch of fantasy’s evolutionary tree seems to be an exception to this rule—it actually makes much of how unintuitive its magical rules are to human minds, often to the point of creating madness or other nastiness in most sorcerers. Of course, a corollary of this is that it’s much less effective as wish-fulfillment, even if some partial exceptions exist—the appeal lies in the worldbuilding and sense of awe and horror.
(Charles Stross’s Lovecraftian technomage Bob Howard does some cool things in a magical system that’s essentially an extension of higher math, for example—but they’d probably be much less cool to readers without a well-developed compatibility mode.)
This is a good point. I was discussing this with article with my brother, and he argued that the reason magic is more appealing than science is that magic is more like an art than a science. Since more people are good at art than good at science, it’s easier to identify with a supermage than with a superscientist.
So, magic is easy. Then, everyone else is doing it, too. (And you’re spending a good portion of your learning curve struggling with the magical equivalent of flipping a light switch). It’s even more mundane than difficult magic.
By comparison, how many times today have you thought, “Wow! I’m really glad I have eyesight!” Well, now you have. But it’s not something you go around thinking all the time. Why do you expect that you’d think “Wow! I’m really glad I have easy magic!” any more frequently?
True, but eyesight is awesome whether or not I explicitly think about it. I’m happy because I have eyesight. It’s just that there’s a somewhat longer chain of causality than if I’m happy that I have eyesight. I have eyesight, therefore I can use a monitor, therefore I can use the internet, therefore I can do fun stuff on the internet, therefore I am happy.
I’m not sure that’s true. They’l just have to support their happiness in other ways. And how many blind people would really be unhappy to gain the ability to see? I don’t know that there’s a ‘blind culture’ in the same way there is a ‘deaf culture’ which advocates deafness.
Coming in late, but… This is a matter of debate among the blind people I’ve encountered.
There are generally three groups: those who had sight but lost it, who would be eager to get their sight back, and come across as less happy in some ways, though there are some who adjust well enough that it isn’t soul-crushing outside of certain situations.
There are people blind from near birth who think gaining sight would solve lots of problems, like finding employment or being taken seriously by others. These people seem to be imagining magic, and not how sight restoration and adapting to a new sense work in the real world.
And there are people who are blind from near birth, and are relatively happy like they are, and wouldn’t want to deal with inserting a completely new sense into their brain when they function well enough already.
It isn’t clear how these map to happiness, but it generally seems that people blind from near birth are on average happier than people who lost their sight after developing substantial visual memory. (I haven’t actually sought after statistics; this is just based on my observations).
I don’t assert that there are many blind people who would be unhappy if they gained the ability to see. Possibly there are none at all.
If blind people and sighted people are equally happy (albeit for different reasons), I suppose DanielLC’s comment can still be true, so fair enough: you’re right. My conclusion doesn’t strictly follow, I was making inferences about their model. (I suspect they were true inferences, but I was still overconfident.)
I largely agree, but I do think fantasy-story magic differs from our world’s physics in one significant way: the laws of magic tend to resemble human psychology much, much more than our physics does. The opening quote of this post is itself an example: to practice their craft, Pratchett’s witches have to negotiate with gods, which—real and mundane as they may be—presumably have beliefs and desires that bear at least some similarity to human ones. And while it’s occasionally a nice shorthand to refer to physical entities as having beliefs and desires (look, the charge wants to go that way/this amplifier knows where ground is), the mappings are very rudimentary, and they aren’t even a very accurate way to look at the picture.
Even when magic doesn’t involve actual gods or godlike beings, it usually interfaces much more “nicely” with human psychology than real technology does; the process of casting a spell often depends in some way on the caster’s emotional state, and spell effects can be structured around intuitive concepts with apparent ease (say, a curse that affects subsequent generations of a family—a group of entities that is very difficult to specify in physical terms). Granted, our real-world technology could conceivably advance to the point where it works something like this, but it’s still an important fact that it doesn’t, and can’t, work that way now. Until we make some giant technological leaps, being an engineer or physicist is not going to be much like the typical wizard’s experience, where psychology really matters and one’s emotions have intricate effects on one’s results.
The Lovecraftian branch of fantasy’s evolutionary tree seems to be an exception to this rule—it actually makes much of how unintuitive its magical rules are to human minds, often to the point of creating madness or other nastiness in most sorcerers. Of course, a corollary of this is that it’s much less effective as wish-fulfillment, even if some partial exceptions exist—the appeal lies in the worldbuilding and sense of awe and horror.
(Charles Stross’s Lovecraftian technomage Bob Howard does some cool things in a magical system that’s essentially an extension of higher math, for example—but they’d probably be much less cool to readers without a well-developed compatibility mode.)
This is a good point. I was discussing this with article with my brother, and he argued that the reason magic is more appealing than science is that magic is more like an art than a science. Since more people are good at art than good at science, it’s easier to identify with a supermage than with a superscientist.
So, magic is easy. Then, everyone else is doing it, too. (And you’re spending a good portion of your learning curve struggling with the magical equivalent of flipping a light switch). It’s even more mundane than difficult magic.
By comparison, how many times today have you thought, “Wow! I’m really glad I have eyesight!” Well, now you have. But it’s not something you go around thinking all the time. Why do you expect that you’d think “Wow! I’m really glad I have easy magic!” any more frequently?
True, but eyesight is awesome whether or not I explicitly think about it. I’m happy because I have eyesight. It’s just that there’s a somewhat longer chain of causality than if I’m happy that I have eyesight. I have eyesight, therefore I can use a monitor, therefore I can use the internet, therefore I can do fun stuff on the internet, therefore I am happy.
It follows that blind people are, as a class, less happy than sighted people.
How confident are you of that?
I’m not sure that’s true. They’l just have to support their happiness in other ways. And how many blind people would really be unhappy to gain the ability to see? I don’t know that there’s a ‘blind culture’ in the same way there is a ‘deaf culture’ which advocates deafness.
Coming in late, but… This is a matter of debate among the blind people I’ve encountered.
There are generally three groups: those who had sight but lost it, who would be eager to get their sight back, and come across as less happy in some ways, though there are some who adjust well enough that it isn’t soul-crushing outside of certain situations.
There are people blind from near birth who think gaining sight would solve lots of problems, like finding employment or being taken seriously by others. These people seem to be imagining magic, and not how sight restoration and adapting to a new sense work in the real world.
And there are people who are blind from near birth, and are relatively happy like they are, and wouldn’t want to deal with inserting a completely new sense into their brain when they function well enough already.
It isn’t clear how these map to happiness, but it generally seems that people blind from near birth are on average happier than people who lost their sight after developing substantial visual memory. (I haven’t actually sought after statistics; this is just based on my observations).
I don’t assert that there are many blind people who would be unhappy if they gained the ability to see. Possibly there are none at all.
If blind people and sighted people are equally happy (albeit for different reasons), I suppose DanielLC’s comment can still be true, so fair enough: you’re right. My conclusion doesn’t strictly follow, I was making inferences about their model. (I suspect they were true inferences, but I was still overconfident.)