Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

define Magic

>Kinda like how we all know at some point in the future a technological singularity will occur where machines and humans will be so melded, blended, and interchangeable that they'll basically be considered the same thing

>Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
>This statement is bullshit. Discuss.

This statement is bullshit. Discuss.

More to the point, define 'sufficiently'.

Actually, you whole post is low effort bullshit and this thread should be deleted.

I do agree with that statement. Consider the invention of TV, when J.L. Baird, the inventor showed them an image for the first time, they thought it was magic. The same could apply for us, future humans might be able to teleport or some shit.

magic
ˈmadʒJk/
noun
noun: magic

1.
the power of apparently influencing events by using mysterious or supernatural forces.

supernatural
ˌsuːpəˈnatʃ(ə)r(ə)l/
adjective
adjective: supernatural

1.
(of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.

Literally comes from the definitions.

If some guy showed you something so advanced that you couldn't even begin to understand it and then told you that it works by sacrificing animals to their god, how would you prove him wrong?
>inb4 "magic isn't real so it has to be technology"

No one has to prove him wrong, he has to prove it right.

That's a complete non sequitur.

I dunno, I consider even optical storage to be pretty much magic, even if the principles are explained to me it feels like bullshit that shouldn't work.

That girl in the picture is cute!

FPBP

Actually, today it's the other way around. We have seen technology doing so crazy things that if we saw real, proper magic happening before our eyes we would assume it's just some super advanced technology we don't understand.

In that regard wouldn't it simply prove the premise that they are indistinguishable?

I mean, the premise isn't saying that if we saw a sufficiently advanced piece of tech do something that we would assume it was magic, simply that in a hypothetical scenario where there was a sufficiently advanced piece of technology doing something and then there was actual magic doing the same thing, and you asked a person to tell you which was which they wouldn't be able to do so beyond just guessing.

I took it as "advanced technology looks like magic" but I guess you can also interprete it your way.

This whole damn topic and all people are arguing is semantics. You said it right there "indistinguishable". You don't have to be a fruitcake who believes in one of the 5000 gods, or magic. The point is, you have no fucking clue how whatever it is could work, because you don't even know the basics behind the science.

Yes, 95% of the world's people who are indeed fruitcakes (dualists of one sort or another) would call it magic. Yes, you and I and many others here (materialists) would not. But we still couldn't explain how the fuck it works. Take quantum entanglement, what ever was before big bang, the science behind a singularity, see how people react to those. We know they exist, and some of us understand we simply lack the means - for now - to explain them. But most people either don't grasp those concepts at all, or just go all "oh that's God at work is what it is, man's not supposed to know those things", because they're fruitcakes.

The statement holds regardless of whether you're stupid enough to believe in the supernatural, or if you're an actually smart person.

The word "magic" can implicitly be defined as what isn't understood, or what can't naturally exist. If and only if it were possible to know something can't possibly exist -- that there are no such possible mechanisms -- and that knowledge were not a consequence of not understanding how that thing works (it necessarily would be), then that statement would be bullshit. It isn't. Sounds to me like you're just a butthurt atheist who doesn't like the thought that he rationally use "le ebin magical sky wizard XD" as an argument anymore. This is the only possible reason I can think of that you would call this statement bullshit.

>5000 gods
There's 5,000 gods? News flash, idiot: metaphysical probability has nothing to do with knowledge nor your obvious ignorance.

can't* use

Nobody gives a fuck about your "metaphysical probability" because there is no such thing.

Belief in the supernatural clearly correlates with ignorance for the same reason a high IQ and / or education has been repeatedly shown to correlate strongly with atheism. The point being that the smarter you are and the more mature your personality is, the less likely you are to believe in fantastical bullshit with literally zero evidence to support it or any real need to even exist. Faith and dualism of any kind are, at their core, about little more than a childish, ignorant need to explain things you don't understand with fantastical childish dreams of fantasy. There's no logical or scientific need for them.

No, that doesn't mean every believer is idiot, just like not everyone who's good at maths is good at something like, say, geology. People can be conflicted, irrational creatures in that way. But the act of believing in the supernatural is fundamentally an act of stupidity, regardless of your other talents or abilities, precisely because it's not based on reason.

>Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

If you watch the SciFi series Childhood's End or if you read the book by Arthur C. Clarke you will see why this statement isn't completely false.

Thanks man i've been looking for this wallpaper.

Can i save it?

>Nobody gives a fuck about your "metaphysical probability" because there is no such thing.
>WAAAAA I'm stupid therefore it doesn't exist ;_;
All that means, idiot, is that what exists and the probability of the existence of anything isn't contingent on your knowledge or how many different conceptions of a thing you have, else you could come up with an infinite number of conceptions of "god" (or anything) and conclude that the chances of a "god's" (or anything's) existence is therefore 1/infinity, or 0. The epistemic probability of God's existence is 50/50 -- is or not. Your and others' spastic notions of Him are irrelevant. Suggesting otherwise is called an illicit substitution of non-identicals.

Fuck I can't stand stupid people.

Bring an I phone back in time to the Spanish inquisition... You get points for each time you show off an app. How long will you last based on your points?

You can also play 1690's Salem.

Not OP, but that statement kinda implies that technology will one day give us magical powers, when the reality is that we are limited by the laws of physics. It is true that if you showed today's technology to someone from 800 years ago, they would think it's magic, but it's also true that they would be very surprised when you tell them that you can't move objects at a distance without touching them, or that you can't turn lead into gold, and you will never be able to do so in a practical way.

>Asking for permission
Just steal it.

>magic mirror that tells you where to go
>also can capture souls
to the pyre.

magic is anything that amuses you and you can't understand the workings

it's like touching a woman for me

>it's like touching a woman for me
>Magic is something that has never happened in reality.
True enough.

I disagree that it is bullshit. The entire point is that the workings of advanced technology is beyond a person's understanding to the point that most people today do not understand the process that allows their car to move.

It is practically magic, to me, since the steps between 1.) Car turns on and 2.) Car moves in a direction are unknown to the user, making it, effectively, magic.

Keep in mind magic in this case applies to magic tricks. When a magician is able to accurately reveal the three cards you thought of out of 100, you know there is a trick (since magic isn't real) but you don't know how. Same mechanics.

I agree. It's not like future scientific advancements change all of the previous discoveries. In a way, the more advanced we are, the more limited we recognize ourselves to be. Before Einstein, we could go as fast as we wanted to. Now we are limited, and as science goes on we will discover even more limits to our technology, not ways to surpass those, but how to compensate for their existence.

So, no matter how advanced the technology, so long as it obeys the limits we know, it's not magic.

Illusion!

It is distinguishable but only relatively. That relativity being your capabillity to understand the so called magic in logical terms.

The claim isn't that it IS magic, just that it is INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM magic. Yes you can assume there some unknown physical process by which the aliums are creating matter in defiance of natural law, but if they were demons instead using magic and no superscience, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

If you can distinguish, it is not "sufficiently advanced".

>More to the point, define 'sufficiently'.
"There exists some level of X s.t. Y is true."

So no.

>(of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.

So is this my understanding, or universal understanding? There's a bunch of sciency shit TODAY I don't understand, is that magic?

>how would you prove him wrong?
I don't have to prove him wrong. I just need to assert that it is possible for his shit to be explained by some kind of law. Then I start picking away at how it's done (what animals work, do ants? what about cells? do they have to be alive? how alive? if a starfish splits in two can I use both or just one? etc etc)

Agreed that's why I chose her.

Precisely.

I can't explain how quantum computers work, doesn't make it magic. Makes it something I haven't figured out yet.

Yea sure you sound like a cool dude.

I could take an iphone to a remote village and get people to conclude that it's magic. Doesn't prove shit.

Vaginas are too advanced.

>It is practically magic
What does this even mean

Exactly. We learned about quantum stuff and decided "hey, the world isn't deterministic maybe" and we still didn't call it magic.

But I would not conclude that it's magic. If someone shows up and revives Michael Jackson and shoots lasers into the moon, I don't conclude "Magic!", I try to figure out how he pulled it off.

Statement is not true if there exists no level of technology for which it becomes indistinguishable from magic.

Look up kuvshinov_ilya, makes art like that that's just cute weeb girls

>7.7 million page views
>hundreds of illustrations
>every fucking one is sameface

>But I would not conclude that it's magic.

So? The point is you would have no better answer THAN magic. Obviously it isn't ""actually"" magic since the whole point is sufficiently advanced TECHNOLOGY, but you have some fixation on "magic" when the key word is "indistinguishable"

Idc they're cute

is there something clever to this image or have I wasted my time staring at it

If you don't understand something it might as well be magic. If you can't even distinguish the technology and technical discussion regarding it and that of complete made-up bullshit or fabrications. Then to you, it is magic. I doubt anyone ITT understands how their phones work, I don't beyond surface understanding of the topics involved.

They look bland and they're basically the same thing ad infinitum. The same thing is boring.
I wonder if this guy even knows how to do art beyond this one thing he has reiterated over and over, probably for many years. Not that I really care but his art is dogshit.

I think its bullshit because it ignores semiotics

Most technology is readily apparent, if an ayy lmao comes and uses a shiny mechanical-looking object to do weird shit Im going to assume technology before magic

It's like you didn't even try looking for his other works, he's got a lot of them

Well, how many people know how smartphones work?
People just see the results and call it a day.

try and think what if you go to the past (medieval period) with a smartphone and you show it to the people? they'd call you either a Wizard or a prophet

>Your phone is basically magic

Ok strong argument there

Yup, before science. No shit they'd think it was magic. We have science now.

I just don't understand what you think magic is, every form of magic I've seen has always had some kind of system attached to it, that magic is for the studious and requires years of studying. You're getting caught up in the buzzword "magic".

The point isnt that the technology IS magic but that it cannot be differentiated from magic.

For example i have a matter compiler that uses advanced chemical and physical proccesses to put together an object atom by atom. On the other i have a magic box that summons said object from the fucking ether. If you were to see these two boxes then you would not be able to tell which one was made by physical principals and which uses magic. That is the point, not that technology is magic or that it cannot be known by human minds or some bullshit. It's like you guys have never read a science fiction book.

tecnology implies follows the laws of physics implies reproducible effects under the same circumstances even if we cannot understand it, this must be the case

magic has no such requirement.

Savage af

It ALREADY gives us magical powers. We are far more powerful than any Greek god ever imagined.

To a layperson, sure. But not to society at large.

How can you apply epistemic probability to pure fantasy that has zero observable evidence to support it? How can you even begin to estimate the degrees of belief, when belief and blind faith is ALL you have? You're just spewing random philosophical bullshit, completely out of context, comparable to the scientific value of something like feminism.

>idiot
>Fuck I can't stand stupid people.

Oh right, well that just explains it. Yet another autist, getting into a pointless debate, and using academic bullshit and a stream of virgin insecure insults as your weapons, because you don't really have anything else. Nice, real nice.

This. Fucking obviously.

The irony is, everyone here already understands that. But as is the norm these days, your egos are so goddamn snowflake special and fragile you just can't see the fucking obvious through your glaring narcissistic, insecure autism. You just have to fucking go "nono I'm smart see, I don't believe in magic, hahaha you can't fool me because I'm SMART, YOU SEE??!"

Kinda like those click bait articles going "Can you solve this: 1+2x3? 99% WILL GET THIS WRONG!11one" and holy fucking shit if everyone doesn't just go in clicking at it like an idiot, jumping at the first chance to feel all smart and accomplished like a retard on speed. Or like those fucking nitpicking women at workplace that hear one wrong word and just can't resist the opportunity to completely miss the fucking point, just so they can point out they know 2:nd grade English.

Seriously, you people should be ashamed of yourselves.

>Yes, back when people commonly believed magic to be a thing. Now we don't.
...So you admit that Magic is simply unknown science?

Look at the low level mechanics of the universe and the means available to unravel them further. Eventually you just hit the end, and strictly mechanistic approaches lose their meaning. It all just "is" because it "does".

Alternatively, and more primarily, anything that significantly differs from the established lens of how things are and can be, might as well be magic. The underlying concepts aren't there to the observer's mind to process what it's seeing.

Also, most people, today especially, don't know shit about how anything works. To a significant chunk of the population, at any given time, technology might as well be magic. Even people who "know", or can create, might also be said to be throwing magic together.

Etc. Just loosen your thinking, and dissolve false delineations you've built up, and it's all pretty obvious. Obvious what we really are. Obvious what you are.

No Magic used to be the filler for "unknown thing".

Now we know better and just say its "yet unknown science" rather than magic.

Yes, obvious that it's not magic, but "stuff we don't know yet."

And the quote in OP isn't about magic-magic.

But technolgy which is so advanced that we just don't get it anymore. For pretty much most people we have reached that point already - which also explains the growing anti-science stance.

Yeah, if you presume magic doesn't exist.

/thread

It's right in spirit, but it's wrong now because we no longer believe in "magic."

Even if a literal angel with a flaming sword flew down and appeared in front of us, we'd just ask him what planet he's from and what technology allows him to fly.

>ITT brainlets too dumb to understand what "indistinguishable" means
When someone is describing the effects of an illusion, they're not saying that's literally happening

That statement is true. Look at in in the context of what magic is - a force that makes impossible possible. To a person from the medieval period, if they got hold of our tech, even things like smartphones, they'd deem them magical.
None of us can accomplish what phones do by ourselves, I mean, calls across the world. This is the meaning of "magic" in the context.
To us, if extraterrestrial visitors are indeed visiting the planet, then their tech is "magical" to us - we don't know how would they be able to cover such massive distances in a biologically-relevant time, not to mention the apparent capabilities of UFOs observed by members of the many air forces and civilian pilots.

It's just a textual substitution.

>we don't know how would they be able to cover such massive distances in a biologically-relevant time
1. anabiosis
2. immortality, even we have example of immortality, it's difficult to believe and advanced civilization wouldn't figure out its mechanism.

Doubtful. I'm more inclined to believe they obtained some propulsion making interstellar travel easy (like alcubierre drive). With apparent superluminal travel they'd have access to any star in the galaxy.
Immortality would still make the travels mind-boggingly slow, any data obtained would be rendered obsolete by the time it reached the home planet.
There would be literally no point to send out small ships for observation (as it appears).

>We are far more powerful than any Greek god ever imagined

Are you able to turn into a swan to seduce and fornicate with mortal women?
Thought so.

Talk for yourself nerd.

How to turn yourself into a swan.
Electro-Wizard style.

There are many methods to achieve this. I will re-iterate one such possible device.

Cerebral cortex attatchments that wirelessly transmit to a host body while you gently float in an illuminati cloning chamber pod/ matrix ghost shell. The host body in question being a swan that you have modified earlier for abillity to reproduce. I will state that the mechanisms for how one makes the swan fertile are known only to Olimpean Gods.

t. Mercury.

I have never seen someone so abstractly blown the fuck out before.
I rarely kekkle.
11/10

Precisely.

I don't know how exactly chemo works. Doesn't make it magic.

unfalsifiable

>le meme argument

you fucking what

You don't know how it works so it might as well be magic to you. Even if you don't call it that because you're a smart ass.

>mind-boggingly slow
Not a problem for NEETs.
>any data obtained would be rendered obsolete by the time it reached the home planet.
Not necessarily. Depends on what data they collect and for what purpose. Reporting to home planet is not even a requirement.

>technology
>magic

both of these things are vague words that mean nothing.