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What if paradoxes and singularities are nature's way of saying magic is real?

Quintproquo 4 Dec 17
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Then, in your definition, any unexplained event is magic?

Not any, just paradoxes and singularities. Besides, I don’t really think magic is real.

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This was intended as a playful musing.

All I’m trying to say is we should always be curious about the things we don’t know; we should be eager to conquer them with science and reason.

The idea of magic is something neat, but I preserve it, wholly, for the world of fantasy and let science guide me through the mysteries and odddities of reality.

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Give me a paradox or a singularity and I'll consider it.

Go on - do it!

Man... now you’re assigning me homework. Hahahaha. Let me think about it and if I can come up with a particularly magical paradox then I will throw it at you.

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I love to watch a good magician. but I don't change my world view just because I can't figure out how he did it. And Paradoxes are natures way of telling you that something is wrong with your premise.

Singularities and paradoxes in science are exactly as you describe. What I’m talking about, though, are the languages of nature we have yet to (maybe even never) understand.

There’s a litany of philosophers that talk about language in this context (namely I’m thinking of Wittgenstein and Chomsky). So what I’m about to say is hardly an original thought, but you can spend all day teaching the physics of how a frisbee flies to a dog. However, at the end of the day, the dog doesn’t care and just wants you to throw the damn thing so it can chase after it. The dog doesn’t have the mental or linguistic toolset to tackle problems like the aerodynamics of a frisbee. Likewise, humans may be missing very crucial components in understanding our universe and may never have all the necessary answers to explain away singularities or paradoxes. At that point, it’s just a game of semantics if you want to talk about natures peculiarities.

@Quintproquo -- An example of a paradox; If God can do anything, can he make a rock so big that he can't move it? The premise is; "God can do anything" Which is obviously wrong because any answer to the question shows something that God Can NOT do. I love this paradox because it was the catalyst for me to dump the last of my superstitions.

I don't think I know much about singularities or even what you mean by the word, especially when you lump it together with paradox.

@TommyMeador @TommyMeador That’s a great example of a paradox. A singularity is usually incomplete data or an inability in theory to completely describe the behavior or function of a system. If you google the definition it says something like “a point when a (math) function takes on an infinite value”. Black holes, the moment in time just before expansion of the Big Bang, and dividing by zero are all examples of singularities.

As far as changing ones world view as a result of a magician, the universe is a pretty convincing magician. A lot of times science does change in the face of paradoxes and singularities.

More importantly, I don’t really think magic is real.

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Whaaat???

To what part?

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I personally believe that magic is science that hasn't been discovered yet.

If there were a logical or scientific explanation to be found, it was never magic -- simply an unexplained event.

@wordywalt maybe now, but in the future it probably will be explained. What is considered normal now was at one time considered magic.

Have you ever seen anything that is considered magic today. i haven't except those parlor tricks which can be explained as trick and misdirection. The northern lights were considered magic, an eclipse was considered magic, natural herbs that has healing or deadly properties are still considered magic in some parts of the world. In Haiti there is a powder that if it comes in contact with your skin or inhaled can make it appear that a person is dead and then comes back to life a few days later; they call it the zombie maker and it is considered magic. It is nothing but chemistry, a combination of certain plants and the poisonous puffer fish and a poisonous frog in the right amount. Science not magic.

Very Arthur C. Clarke of you! (:

As for magic and science, I believe every thing in our universe can be described and explained with science given enough time, a properly evolved mind, and the proper toolset. Does that mean every answer will be unveiled; no way!

But that’s the magic of science, the pursuit of those answers.

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