[shostack]

Bit of a tangent, but reading this was really interesting in the context of the book I'm reading now, "Ra."[1]

It takes place in a modern day world where "magic" was discovered decades ago and is now a formal science with graduate programs right up there with engineering and physics. It has rules, and in fact one character just created a magical quine (which was apparently thought to be impossible).

If every sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, I wonder what the turning point was when people stopped thinking of electricity as magic and instead thought of it as science.

When you get into talk about electrons, how they flow, how they transfer between atoms, and how we end up harnessing them, it is very easy for the D&D nerd in me to mentally replace "electrons" with "mana".

Absolutely fascinating world we live in.

[1] http://qntm.org/ra

[nerd_stuff]

> I wonder what the turning point was when people stopped thinking of electricity as magic and instead thought of it as science

Once they could make predictions and those predictions were verified by reality. "When I flip this switch the light will turn on.....When I move this magnet past this wire I can shock my lab assistant...."

I don't know much about D&D but I would venture the guess that electrons are far stranger than mana. I mean, not only do they have a wavelength[0], you can do the Double Slit experiment with them[1], but they also have an intrinsic angular momentum and there are rules of which electron can be where based on this "spin"[2]. That's just for starters.

Calling them "mana" (whatever that is) might not be any more wrong than calling them particles.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_wave 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_%28physics%29

[SunSparc]

So true. If the Egyptians could see what we play with every day, they would be amazed. I imagine there is quite a bit of shock for people in deep jungle/desert tribes that still live in huts when they are introduced to "modern" technology. Magic is probably the best way for them to explain it initially. Of course, "magic", usually just means, "something I do not understand".

[ajross]

Yeah, but that's driven by familiarity not understanding. A median western marketing executive has no better understanding of electrodynamics than your amazonian tribeswoman, yet isn't surprised by the radio in his phone.

[sebkomianos]

Maybe it's also worth clarifying that familiarity doesn't mean or lead to understanding. Sometimes quite the opposite (hint hint: newer generation using smartphones, social networks, etc without understanding them at all and then some from older generations remarking how they can be dangerous and upsetting).

[SunSparc]

Good clarification.