[rdevilla]

Speaking of myths, pixies, and spirits:

> I. DEFINITION:

> MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.

> (Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take “magical weapons,” pen, ink, and paper; I write “incantations”—these sentences—in the “magical language” i.e. that which is understood by people I wish to instruct.

> I call forth “spirits” such as printers, publishers, booksellers, and so forth, and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution is thus an act of MAGICK by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will.)

- Aleister Crowley, "Magick Without Tears," Chapter I, 1954. https://hermetic.com/crowley/magick-without-tears/mwt_01

[AlotOfReading]

A common definition anthropologists use for magic is occult technology: a system of laws that can be manipulated to create desired changes. There's a lot of value in thinking of programming as a form of magic.

[WJW]

Can you expand on this? It has always seemed to me that while programming does indeed like to couch itself in magical terms ("he's a database wizard", "this compiler stuff is black magic", etc), it is fundamentally understandable and replicable. All layers of programming build on their lower layers and this stuff is understood well enough that you can go to university to learn about it in detail.

Programming is technology but not "occult" technology, and I don't really see the added value of treating it as occult. Quite the opposite actually, most good programmers I know acquired their skill because they have a decent grasp about the entire system rather than treating most of it as a black box.

[AlotOfReading]

You can go study religious spells in a school as well. There are catholic universities teaching exorcism, and buddhist schools teaching tantric magics that give you superpowers. The critical difference is that I don't believe in either of these things, so I've labeled them "occult". I believe in programming and I'm not calling it occult, but there's little to objectively distinguish it from those other practices.

This is simply a reflection of my beliefs though, not an objective reality of the world. I trust that the TRM for my chip accurately reflect the details I can't observe for myself. Many devs don't even go that far down and trust that their OS, or programming language to behave as they expect. We're all dealing with black boxes on some level.

To quote a reasonable definition from an actual scholar on this subject, Jesper Sorensen:

    Thus, magic is generally conceived of as referring to a

ritual practice aimed to produce a particular pragmatic and locally defined result by means of more or less opaque methods.

This pretty much perfectly describes how programming is perceived by normal people. I could also quote Malinowski, who argued that magic must have a kind of "strangeness" to differentiate it from non-ritual speech. And programmers regularly describe difficult bits of code as magical (e.g. magic constants, or fast inverse square root) even though these are easily explained in most cases.

[WJW]

> but there's little to objectively distinguish it from those other practices.

Isn't there? I would say that the key difference is that programming actually works, and works reliably. Even if it is opaque to normal people, at least the programmer themselves has a reasonable ability to understand why their program will work and critically can "call their shot": they can reliably predict the effect a certain program will have. Magic is not like that: even if the practitioner claims to understand how it works, their success rate is typically abysmal. AFAIK there are zero faith healers or other magic types whose claims consistently hold up when inspected, but programmers and other engineering types do it all the time. That's the objective difference right there, even if normal people struggle to discern the two.

[throwanem]

Well, there's magic and then there's magic, you know? If you want to perform an incantation that really works, the only formula or ritual you will ever need is: "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

It is a ritual, though. That means it only works as long as you do it every day.

[pocksuppet]

Of course it's replicable to us high wizards who have studied it for most of our lives and now understand it in depth. So is the actual magic in many fictitious universes.

All technology is like this to some extent, but a lot of technology is grounded enough for the average person to see the rough operation of it. You look inside a washing machine, there's a part that spins around. Attached to it by a rubber belt is a smaller part that spins around, and has electric wires on the other end. Your explainer points to that and says "that's an electric motor - it converts electric power into spinning motion" and you say "ok".

How do you do that with code?

[WJW]

AFAIK learning to program these days is a fairly normalized process where people start with basic commands (ie hello world stuff), then move on to control flow (if/while/for) and eventually on to object oriented programming, higher order functions and all the rest. Some people even go on to do things like "craft your own interpreter" and "NAND to Tetris" to really round out their knowledge, but most do not and that's fine. I think that some of the simplest programs are just as "explainable" as your washing machine example. Conversely, there are plenty of machines complex enough that an average person has no idea how they work. A MRI machine for instance is just a collection of metals and hoses and most people would seriously struggle to point out which parts do what and why. It's still not magic though.

I guess the difference between magic and science to me is that "not everyone can learn magic", but the core bit that makes science work is that in principle everyone can learn it. In practice of course we cannot know everything and so have to rely on the expertise of others, but that is a limitation in the humans and not in the knowledge. Meanwhile for "magic" you have to be chosen by the gods/genetically gifted/cursed/whatever.

In a universe where magic is just another skill that anyone can learn, that reasoning goes right out the window of course.

[AlotOfReading]

A lot of other magic systems are in principle open for anyone to learn. I mentioned this a bit more in the other comment, but buddhist spells are open to everyone in principle. The chosen/gifted one is a feature of western magic systems because of our own cultural expectations.

[grehbies]

  Oil is the medium of time manipulation magic. Created through ancient sacrificial rituals, it is is a substance that can be used to create aging/rot-retarding barriers, or refined into derivatives that increase the rate of plant growth and mechanical work. To be handled with care, as extended contact can lead to corruption of the body, as well as increased susceptibility to fire elemental spells.

  Simple rituals can render an inferior product from most living things; the time-manipulation abilities of such substances will be weaker, but the substance will be safer to handle, and can even be imbibed (this is a double-aged sword, reducing one's vital life force while increasing one's bodily proportions to that of a toddler).

-Me, "Early Morning Bed Thoughts", a few months ago.

[throwanem]

There's actually a useful and quite generic metaphor to be excavated here. I would just tell you what it is, but I think you'll more enjoy finding it for yourself.

[rdevilla]

You either see it or you don't.

[throwanem]

Crowley is full of shit.

By this definition a hammer is a magical or "magickal" implement - the K was Crowley's invention, so that he could trademark it - which of course can be true if someone decides as much, but the only reason to couch such trivia in the pettifogging obscurity Crowley favored is because doing so will help you nail bored young socialites, an activity which Crowley also famously favored. (Gotta watch out for that neurosyphilis! What a shame he never did.)

Try thinking for yourself, instead.

[notpachet]

> pettifogging

Off-topic but just wanted to thank you for teaching me a new word. I try to always reply to HN comments that expand my vocabulary.

[sunrunner]

Is pettifogging some kind of etymological parent of bikeshedding then?

[throwanem]

They're etymologically unrelated, "bikeshedding" having been coined in our field and our lifetime, but semantically not too far apart. The main difference I see is that pettifogging connotes an ulterior motive which the described activity serves to conceal, while bikeshedding explicitly denotes the service of no purpose save the burnishment of the bikeshedder's ego.

(The term "bikeshedding" is insufficiently defined, in that it implicitly excludes the social reasons always underlying human behavior, which is why I these days prefer the word I used. Honestly, having been away from it now something over a year, even the simple jargon of the field begins to take on a queasy pseudocolor in my mind, the stinking sinus-stinging yellow-green of a revolted gut revolting. Thinking back over the rattle of acronyms and half-words that used to shape my days comes to be like thinking back over times I have been feverishly ill. Perhaps for once in my life I am on the leading edge of something.)

[Slow_Hand]

Nice word.

I rue the day the IG reels crowd pick up on it and it becomes the "word du jour" that gets overused to the point of being intolerable. Right up there with "narcissist" and "gaslighting".

[Terr_]

The problem isn't so much overuse as misuse, as "gaslighting" gets thrown around for almost any kind of falsehood.

Another example would be "Ponzi scheme", which I've seen abused for any situation the speakers seems unsustainable, even when there isn't any records fraud.

[WJW]

For sure. Despite all the talking about "self-deification" and all that shit, they sure seem to care a lot about what society (and their imaginary demons) think about them.

[WJW]

A definition by which every human alive ever qualifies as a magician, and which is therefore not very useful as a distinction.

[rdevilla]

> A definition by which every human alive ever qualifies as a magician

Exactly correct.

Chapter 2: "No, every act of your life is a magical act; whenever from ignorance, carelessness, clumsiness or what not, you come short of perfect artistic success, you inevitably register failure, discomfort, frustration. [...] Why should you study and practice Magick? Because you can't help doing it, and you had better do it well than badly."

[throwanem]

If you called him on it he would say that was on purpose, then talk your ears off about how. He was a ferociously effective charlatan, which is why people still remember the name he made up for himself. (And even invented a rhyming couplet to prate as a pronunciation guide!)

[dugidugout]

These don't sound like convincing indicators of being an "effective charlatan". Am I to see the Notorious B.I.G. in the same frame?

[throwanem]

Yes.

[dugidugout]

Mhm.

[throwanem]

Will you still think I'm fucking with you if I call your comparison a lot more insightful than I think you realize?

White nerdy kids have just been relatively less desperate up to now, socioeconomically speaking. You used to have to be a real hardcore loser, as a not otherwise messed up white boy, to embrace Crowley or hermeticism or any of that other shit that's only interesting to the poor kids and the crime kids and the kids from fucked-up families, who hang around smoking cigarettes together just off school property. (Hello.)

But now, as we exit the second "gilded age" for the second "great depression," the prospect of success in "straight" life, the white folks standard college/job/marry/kids/Epstein-client script, proves a mirage, and the same immiseration of opportunity comes for American whites that American blacks have always known. Thus proliferate get-rich-quick schemes among those certain they are deserving - i.e., con games among suckers, Crowley's native element. Given how much his speed habit led him to write, it's no surprise he comes roaring back. (He did have a sense of character and of history, hence making sure he left behind an appealing - as appalling! - set of lies.)

I have a lot more respect for B.I.G., who at least in my recollection never pretended he was other than one in a million. But when somebody like any of these guys starts saying he sees himself in you or vice versa, you had better keep your knees tightly together and a hand over your drink.