Science is indistinguishable from magic, if you don’t care to learn how science works.
But… if there’s a consistent system along which magic works which can be studied/researched/formulated, then isn’t it just… science?
The keyword is consistent. Some settings have magic as inherently chaotic and difficult to control.
A good rule of thumb is that if a fantasy setting has a school for magic, it’s probably a science. If it’s knowledge passed from master to magically gifted student, it’s probably not very consistent.
I absolutely feel like in a thousand years, we’ll talk to a machine and not even know how it works.
Hell, I look at the computer in front of me and only feel like I know a fraction of what’s going on.
That’s what neural networks are now. We do not know how it works under the hood. We just feed it training data.
We do, though.
Just to make sure my understanding was accurate, I asked Gemini to critique my explanation:
.
Unless it’s lying to me about itself, I was able to explain the basics of it in two relatively simple sentences. Of course that doesn’t cover everything, but Gemini thinks that’s a pretty good overview. After expanding on each point in its reply, it said this:
I think a lot of the confusion over these models stems from hype and marketing that makes them out to be more than what they are.
I just love how the conspiracies reinforce each-other in the most convenient ways.
“Anyone who doesn’t get vaxed is going to be put in a FIMA concentration camp!”
“What? That’s crazy, where’s the evidence of that?!”
“You can’t find it because they’re censoring everything on the Internet.”
So now, not finding evidence of conspiracy 1 is evidence for conspiracy 2!
“You can find the truth at www.truthfindarz.net, but I don’t go there because it’s full of conspiracies.”
facepalm
I don’t believe a lot of conspiracy theories, but I do have some conspiracy hypotheses
Also: when conspiracy theories are convenient ways to avoid havig to understand how things work.
And this a very common mindset, because most societies (some more than others) take children’s* innate curiosity and pound it flat for the sake of efficiency by way of standardisation. It really is a shame, since we waste a lot of potential as a species this way.
e: a word
That’s what they want you to believe!
