[wruza]

I had the same idea about magic. Back in the day people could do things that we can’t because nobody looked into details and the universe had enough “possibility space” to allow it. Once you turn your gaze into atomic or galactic workings, this space shrinks tremendously and further research becomes much harder because you glued the puzzle from its sides in a particular way and there’s not much left to hope for, except for solving it to the center in a bizarrely complex way. We may have painted ourselves into a horrible corner.

[peatmoss]

This is an excellent sci-fi premise. Also an interesting thought experiment to think of what an optimal research approach would be if you knew a priori that you were living in a universe in which the implementation details don’t exist until observed. Come to think of it, quantum physics is actually like this in some respects.