As far as most people are concerned, it may as well be magic. It certainly doesn’t lend itself to understanding in the general sense. We must explore wholeheartedly and with integrity to even begin at comprehending the possibilities of connecting with it.
Even rocks and dead sticks have it. Some of us know how it works. I don’t claim to know, but I know more about it now than I did, let us say, some years ago. So it is like learning most any other complex thing, it is done over time. It can’t be replicated because it cannot be contained, and it is too expansive to be emulated or cloned with any sufficiency to have any substantial meaning.
I know some people that also view much of the technology around us as "magic", but for them, that's less a statement of appreciation and wonder, and more of a statement of opaque complexity and a complete unknowability.
I can appreciate how Lightroom works, or an electric car, or the electrical grid, etc. I don't have to know every last detail, but I should have some awareness of the fundamental principles on which these things are built.
Deferring this to "magic" in the sense that I say "I don't know how that works, no one can know, it's MAGIC" can be a lazy way to think. I think it's a slippery slope that gets us closer to psuedoscience, new-age gimmicks, and other forms of poor thinking and manipulation. We should all seek to understand how things really work (even at a coarse level) in this Demon Haunted World of ours.
(Even if this isn't how you interpret this word, I'm suggesting there is a risk that others do).
The entire point was that we do not understand it? That much of how the brain work is "magic" atm.
It's our field that are the alchemist mystics, rambling about AGI/Philosopher's Stone in ever increasingly unhinged ways, while stirring our ML-pots that we have never even tried to prove have a chance to be anymore successful than the alchemists.
The point of the quote is that you wouldn’t be able to grasp the basic principles it operates on, and as such it would be functionally equivalent to something as unexplainable as magic. It doesn’t matter what the nature of the object actually is or what you consider it to be; what matters is that you would not have any basis to elaborate a judgement.
If you can't see the magic in existence itself, in many natural phenomena, then I guess that's your problem.
There is magic even in things we understand. Gravity, magnetic forces, the ability to feel emotions it goes on forever basically.
What I've actually come to realize is the phrase, "nothing is magic" is actually nonsensical because it's a paradox. Things can be understood and still magic.
I'm confused. Is it magical because you don't understand it, or do you not understand it because it's magical? It seems like you're saying the first one.
Thank you for explaining. I never really looked into this to understand it and because of that it felt like magic, which is always in indicator that you just don’t understand something. I was going to add “in tech”, but it is an indicator of that with anything in life.
Replace the word beauty with magic, and you get a similar point with regards to the "loss" of magic. It's not a loss at all, it's really just familiarity; "knowing" how it works doesn't make it any less magical (or beautiful). My suggestion to recapture that magic, is to delve further into the things you don't understand or know, and to ask further questions to unravel deeper layers, rather than continually having to use the knowledge you already have. It's worth recognizing that you can still appreciate that "magic", despite having looked behind the curtain to see how it works.
> To most people, knowing "how it works" is no more than being familiar enough with the magic spells that you can use them with confidence.
It's necessary to see beyond chosen words. I might ask how a computer program works and it could mean "how do you use it," or "how does it function." The other party has to infer my meaning.
I don't think you can take a phrase that is common in your life and apply it to everyone else. Words / phrase have different meanings in different contexts for different people.
You are conflating different meanings of magic. Precise language is necessary for this conversation to have any value.
> the magic in existence itself
this refers to the mystery of why anything exists at all, and why it exists in the way it does. Not the same as some special property that only exists in certain phenomena.
> There is magic even in things we understand
This again refers to the "why it exists in the way that it does" again, as fundamental forces just "are" rather than having a causal explanation. Again, not the same thing.
> Things can be understood and still magic
That's the opposite of what you were saying before, which is that there is some special element within us that can't be replicated in a machine. That would require us not understanding something, or at the very least recognizing and understanding some property that we have identified that can't be replicated in machines, which we haven't.
Even rocks and dead sticks have it. Some of us know how it works. I don’t claim to know, but I know more about it now than I did, let us say, some years ago. So it is like learning most any other complex thing, it is done over time. It can’t be replicated because it cannot be contained, and it is too expansive to be emulated or cloned with any sufficiency to have any substantial meaning.
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