Timeline for What's the smallest change to physics required to allow magic?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
68 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 2 at 21:25 | answer | added | Gray Sheep | timeline score: -1 | |
| Oct 17, 2023 at 6:18 | review | Close votes | |||
| Oct 20, 2023 at 3:58 | |||||
| Sep 13, 2023 at 17:53 | answer | added | Vogon Poet | timeline score: -1 | |
| Oct 27, 2021 at 0:26 | comment | added | Erdel von Mises | @AkshatMahajan There is no confirmation of it no working in General Relativity. | |
| Apr 16, 2021 at 16:29 | comment | added | Ekadh Singh | Well, thinking requires effort, and thinking “that stone will turn into a car” and having it happen would require effort, so I don’t think it’s possible as long as thought requires effort (pretty sure “thought requires effort” isn’t a law of physics, though by changing a few laws of physics it might be possible to make thought no longer require effort.) | |
| S Nov 11, 2020 at 21:46 | history | suggested | yeah22 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
grammar + readability
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| Nov 11, 2020 at 21:21 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Nov 11, 2020 at 21:46 | |||||
| S Nov 24, 2018 at 22:27 | history | bounty ended | CommunityBot | ||
| S Nov 24, 2018 at 22:27 | history | notice removed | user57597 | ||
| Nov 23, 2018 at 9:06 | comment | added | NofP | Most of the answer almost touch the point that it is not a change to physics, but rather a change to biology: halt human cognitive development, and just anything in the world becomes magic. | |
| Nov 22, 2018 at 22:52 | answer | added | chasly - supports Monica | timeline score: 2 | |
| S Nov 22, 2018 at 20:35 | history | bounty started | CommunityBot | ||
| S Nov 22, 2018 at 20:35 | history | notice added | user57597 | Reward existing answer | |
| Oct 22, 2018 at 21:15 | comment | added | Harthag | Kids really are the best sources for motivational creativity ... or creative motivation ... or ... they inspire creativity more betterest | |
| Oct 4, 2018 at 14:50 | comment | added | MichaelK | @MartinBonner Polio then... | |
| Oct 4, 2018 at 14:44 | comment | added | Martin Bonner supports Monica | @MichaelK Actually, the OP's daughter is vulnerable to smallpox. Smallpox was eradicated by 1979. You need to be in your 40's to have been vaccinated against smallpox. | |
| Sep 26, 2017 at 17:38 | answer | added | mviereck | timeline score: 3 | |
| Sep 26, 2017 at 14:29 | comment | added | MichaelK | Of course we can do magic for real. For example: 100 million people died from smallpox. She — your daughter — cannot die from smallpox, because she has a magical ward in her body... a tiny invisible army inside her body that will attack and kill any smallpox that tries to kill her. For those 100 million people that died from smallpox, this would have been magic. | |
| Sep 26, 2017 at 14:17 | answer | added | Andrey | timeline score: 0 | |
| Nov 28, 2016 at 19:31 | answer | added | Catalyst | timeline score: 0 | |
| S May 9, 2016 at 13:38 | history | edited | T3 H40 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Improve wording slightly
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| S May 9, 2016 at 13:38 | history | suggested | psmears | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Improve wording slightly
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| May 9, 2016 at 13:22 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S May 9, 2016 at 13:38 | |||||
| May 8, 2016 at 3:01 | review | Close votes | |||
| May 8, 2016 at 3:47 | |||||
| May 6, 2016 at 14:49 | comment | added | Nomenator | Magic CAN be done for real. The trouble is no one knows how. For example, you might desire wingless flight controlled by your thoughts. Thereby you need a device that interfaces with your thoughts and can navigate space and counteract gravity to a controllable extent. Thoughts are material, they require energy and matter. The real question is how to interpret and amplify that energy appropriate to the task at hand. By interfacing with a car engine and steering column through your limbs? | |
| May 5, 2016 at 19:33 | comment | added | jpaugh | Physics is magic! @RBarryYoung Add to that list, use a volume knob, or a computer. Using a small amount of energy to control a large amount of energy is the basis of amplifiers, and of transistors. | |
| May 5, 2016 at 9:42 | comment | added | Pavin Joseph | I think the Cosmos (2014) would look like magic to her for real. | |
| May 4, 2016 at 18:51 | comment | added | RobertF | Can we include mind-altering drugs or altered states of consciousness (such as hypnosis) under the definition of "magic"? | |
| May 3, 2016 at 20:31 | comment | added | TessellatingHeckler | lesswrong.com/lw/ou/if_you_demand_magic_magic_wont_help and lesswrong.com/lw/ve/mundane_magic are related - "if you could go down to the zoo, or even to a distant mountain, and meet a fire-breathing dragon—while nobody had ever actually seen a zebra, then our fantasy stories would contain zebras aplenty, while dragons would be unexciting." and "If they actually had magic, it would lose the charm of unattainability. They might be excited at first, but the excitement would soon wear off. Probably as soon as they had to actually study spells." | |
| May 3, 2016 at 17:38 | comment | added | Jeremy Friesner | It might be worth pointing out that even in the fictional worlds where magic does exist (Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings, Narnia, etc), most of the population of those world can't do magic either. For those that can do magic, it takes many hours of experimentation and practice to figure out how it is done, and even then the powers that are learned are often limited in non-obvious ways. So perhaps the answer is, it is possible to do some magic; you just have to first understand and exploit the laws that govern the behavior of the universe you are located in. | |
| May 3, 2016 at 15:43 | answer | added | CoffeDeveloper | timeline score: 4 | |
| May 3, 2016 at 13:18 | comment | added | komodosp | Just don't tell her about electricity! | |
| May 3, 2016 at 1:30 | comment | added | JDługosz | A single footnote in the physics textbook: "does not apply to superman". | |
| May 2, 2016 at 17:23 | comment | added | RBarryYoung | We already can do magic: Things you can do without any effort (or no more than casting a simple spell), that used to require effort: 1) Talk to people hundreds, even thousands of miles away, 2) go up hundreds of stories in a building, 3) Create fire, 4) move horizontally very fast, 80 MPH or more, and for long distances (miles), 5) see things all over the Earth, 6) Learn the answers to most questions of fact (those that have answers), 7) Lift huge rocks and other weights (tons) above our heads, Etc., Etc. ... | |
| S May 2, 2016 at 14:26 | history | suggested | TylerH | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Grammar revision; they're quotes but they're also translated from Italian so I fixed the translation
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| May 2, 2016 at 13:41 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S May 2, 2016 at 14:26 | |||||
| May 2, 2016 at 12:12 | comment | added | Luaan | You cook an egg with very little effort - compare "putting the egg in a cooker" with "gathering and chopping wood, assembling it into a fire, lighting said fire" and outright "using own effort to cook an egg". There's packaged lunches that self-prepare. There's a lot more effort in cleaning a carpet when you don't have a vacuum cleaner. We're transforming stones into cars all the time - that's how cars are made in the first place (for very loose definitions of "stone" :P). The real magic is technology - giving you more and more for less and less effort. The energy is taken from somewhere else. | |
| May 2, 2016 at 2:31 | comment | added | yters | @sumelic, you may be right and I may be wrong, but this shows it is coherent to talk about free will breaking the laws of physics because we are disagreeing over whether it does in this specific case. So, a minimum requirement for magic to exist is if free will can break the laws of physics. | |
| May 2, 2016 at 1:06 | comment | added | Asher | As a counterpoint, magic in the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher conforms (within literary reason) to thermodynamics: if he wants to generate an effect of some sort, the requisite energy must come from somewhere and he has to do work to reverse the local entropy. No free lunch for Harry Dresden, or for magicians/wizards in many other imagined universes. In that sense, magic isn't impossible, we just call it technology instead. Two hundred years ago we'd all be burned for witchcraft, sending these letters instantly to each other through our unnaturally lit typewriters. | |
| May 1, 2016 at 21:29 | comment | added | zeta | @yters: That's not what it means to break a law of physics. Increase of entropy is a overall trend; it applies to a physical system as a whole, not to each individual part of a system. Your body and brain must be functioning in order for you to type this message. They are sustained by your metabolism. And your metabolism turns chemical energy into heat, thereby increasing entropy. It's possible to reduce entropy in a particular area, but only by increasing entropy overall. | |
| May 1, 2016 at 21:17 | comment | added | yters | @sumelic, agreed, and since we have free will we can violate the conservation laws. For example, we regularly reverse the flow of entropy. Just in typing this message I am doing so. I am creating an extremely improbable configuration of letters with high frequency. Entropy says systems tend towards highly probable configurations, and writing this message is a highly improbable configuration. So I just broke a law of physics right here. | |
| Apr 30, 2016 at 17:28 | vote | accept | Giacomo Tesio | ||
| S Apr 30, 2016 at 1:42 | answer | added | Cody Underwood | timeline score: 0 | |
| S Apr 30, 2016 at 1:42 | history | protected | CommunityBot | ||
| Apr 30, 2016 at 0:25 | answer | added | cybernard | timeline score: 2 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 23:25 | review | Close votes | |||
| Apr 30, 2016 at 1:44 | |||||
| Apr 29, 2016 at 20:10 | comment | added | Akshat Mahajan | It should be noted that energy conservation does not hold in general relativity, and we don't see magic there, so it's not like it's an absolutely vital component. | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 20:00 | comment | added | vsz | Conservation of energy is not that important for having magic. The spell might draw the required energy from somewhere else, not necessarily create it from nothing. | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 19:49 | answer | added | Modanung | timeline score: 0 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 18:41 | answer | added | Cort Ammon | timeline score: 467 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 18:12 | answer | added | PMar | timeline score: 0 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 18:09 | answer | added | DVK | timeline score: 4 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 18:07 | answer | added | WhatRoughBeast | timeline score: 14 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 15:29 | answer | added | shaunc | timeline score: 4 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 15:16 | comment | added | cst1992 | Your edit invalidates my answer somewhat, and also invalidates some famous depictions of magic. Magic is not effortless. | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 15:14 | answer | added | cst1992 | timeline score: 3 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 14:55 | history | edited | Giacomo Tesio | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 649 characters in body
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| Apr 29, 2016 at 14:26 | answer | added | Thucydides | timeline score: 5 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 14:26 | answer | added | frank | timeline score: 3 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 13:36 | answer | added | Devsman | timeline score: 11 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 13:32 | answer | added | Steve Jessop | timeline score: 142 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 12:27 | answer | added | subrunner | timeline score: 25 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 12:12 | answer | added | Angelo Fuchs | timeline score: 12 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 10:51 | answer | added | Lostinfrance | timeline score: 7 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 10:39 | answer | added | user20258 | timeline score: 5 | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 10:32 | comment | added | JordiVilaplana | Remember what Arthur C. Clarke taught us: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Amaze you daughter with the wonders of the science and technology (I suggest the use of magnets) and you will grow up a curious person. =D | |
| Apr 29, 2016 at 10:19 | review | First posts | |||
| Apr 29, 2016 at 10:24 | |||||
| Apr 29, 2016 at 10:18 | history | asked | Giacomo Tesio | CC BY-SA 3.0 |