Timeline for Wondering what would happen if magic was constrained by Conservation of Energy
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
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| Dec 13, 2014 at 18:56 | history | edited | Ville Niemi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Added lots more explanation, boring, but hopefully possible to understand
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| Dec 13, 2014 at 15:43 | comment | added | Ville Niemi | @bowlturner So, no, I don't think that because magic is involved, nothing matters. But if we assume magic (or practical time travel or FTL or..) exists, the rest of our reasoning must be consistent with a world where that is possible. Not with our real world where it is safe to assume such things do not exist. | |
| Dec 13, 2014 at 15:33 | comment | added | Ville Niemi | @bowlturner No. I am saying that reasoning relying on otherwise reasonable assumption, we specifically assume not to hold is invalid. We can't first assume that magic or something else requiring a significant extension of known physics exists, and then follow with reasoning that has the implicit assumption of no significant extension of known physics. I am sorry that I am so bad at explaining things that pointing out basic rules of logic looks like "hand waving", but I still do not think assuming extended physics both exists and can be ignored in the same statement makes sense. | |
| Dec 13, 2014 at 15:04 | comment | added | bowlturner | So your really saying that because magic is involved, nothing matters, it's just more hand waving when things don't seem to make sense? Sorry but in my opinion you completely missed the point of the question. | |
| Dec 13, 2014 at 14:30 | comment | added | Ville Niemi | @bowlturner And my answer was "nothing". Obeying conservation laws puts no extra constraint on hypotheticals like magic or practical time travel that already require extensions to physics to exist. You can ALWAYS safely assume that the seeming violation is balanced within the extended area of new physics. Which is invisible by default. Conservation laws are only an issue if you actually give a detailed explanation of how they work (the extended physics) and things still do not balance. | |
| Dec 13, 2014 at 13:08 | comment | added | bowlturner | Stories with magic have 'rules' the magic follows to put constraints on what can be done with it. This question was asking what might be expected if this rule was applied. | |
| Dec 13, 2014 at 6:15 | history | edited | Ville Niemi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 453 characters in body
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| Dec 13, 2014 at 5:54 | history | answered | Ville Niemi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |