That sort of mentality that everything can be studied scientifically is exactly what I don't like about "magic as physical laws." Because science isn't always the right approach to everything. To give an example: poker. It's possible to calculate odds and play a mathematically optimal game of poker, but if someone else realizes that's what you're doing, and also knows how to calculate odds, they'll have a very good read on you. Many top poker players rely more on intuition and gut feelings.
A scientific approach requires a certain set of assumptions, and one of them is that the thing you're studying isn't looking over your shoulder at your notes and actively trying to lead you to the wrong conclusions. That's why it doesn't really work with poker. If you do a study and provide evidence that a certain strategy is more effective, then it will change the meta and more people will use that strategy and be watching for that strategy, so it won't necessarily hold up. Protons don't do that.
So for one example of how magic might not be something people can study in a lab, we can imagine that magic comes from supernatural, intelligent beings, let's say demons. If you try to capture a demon, it can break free of any restraint and teleport away. It doesn't want you to understand how its powers work, so if you try to study it, it will either try to manipulate you and lead you to incorrect conclusions, or it'll just leave. The closest thing you can do to science would be to collect stories from people who have had encounters with demons, but at that point it's basically just "lore."
Or, perhaps a person has magical abilities that are only accessible when they truly believe their lives are in danger, perhaps activated by a mental state. This isn't necessarily impossible to study in a lab, but it's pretty unethical, and getting someone's magic to activate at the same time that you've convinced them you're a threat to their lives might be pretty dangerous.
I'm not going to go into every example of where science can't be applied, but generally I feel like magic should exist in that domain of thing, and to put it in the category where science does apply seems to suggest that science can be applied to everything, which I disagree with.
is psychology not science? you can study patterns of other poker players or even watch tape of them to look for tells etc, there's an analytical method to the thing you're reducing to vibes.
science can be applied to everything, which I disagree
you can study patterns of other poker players or even watch tape of them to look for tells
I wouldn't call that "science," any more than a lion sizing up a herd of antelopes to identify which one it's most likely to catch is practicing science. Say you identify an individual person's tell, are you then going to publish a paper about it, send it out for peer review? If the player in question reads that paper, don't you think they'll try to fix it? And even if not, then when they die, all your work becomes useless, you leave nothing for future scientists to build on, because you were only studying the tells of that individual.
I don't think it's really a controversial claim to say that some questions fall outside the domain of science, I believe the majority of scientists would agree with that.
That sort of mentality that everything can be studied scientifically is exactly what I don't like about "magic as physical laws." Because science isn't always the right approach to everything. To give an example: poker. It's possible to calculate odds and play a mathematically optimal game of poker, but if someone else realizes that's what you're doing, and also knows how to calculate odds, they'll have a very good read on you. Many top poker players rely more on intuition and gut feelings.
A scientific approach requires a certain set of assumptions, and one of them is that the thing you're studying isn't looking over your shoulder at your notes and actively trying to lead you to the wrong conclusions. That's why it doesn't really work with poker. If you do a study and provide evidence that a certain strategy is more effective, then it will change the meta and more people will use that strategy and be watching for that strategy, so it won't necessarily hold up. Protons don't do that.
So for one example of how magic might not be something people can study in a lab, we can imagine that magic comes from supernatural, intelligent beings, let's say demons. If you try to capture a demon, it can break free of any restraint and teleport away. It doesn't want you to understand how its powers work, so if you try to study it, it will either try to manipulate you and lead you to incorrect conclusions, or it'll just leave. The closest thing you can do to science would be to collect stories from people who have had encounters with demons, but at that point it's basically just "lore."
Or, perhaps a person has magical abilities that are only accessible when they truly believe their lives are in danger, perhaps activated by a mental state. This isn't necessarily impossible to study in a lab, but it's pretty unethical, and getting someone's magic to activate at the same time that you've convinced them you're a threat to their lives might be pretty dangerous.
I'm not going to go into every example of where science can't be applied, but generally I feel like magic should exist in that domain of thing, and to put it in the category where science does apply seems to suggest that science can be applied to everything, which I disagree with.
is psychology not science? you can study patterns of other poker players or even watch tape of them to look for tells etc, there's an analytical method to the thing you're reducing to vibes.
:mao-wtf:
I wouldn't call that "science," any more than a lion sizing up a herd of antelopes to identify which one it's most likely to catch is practicing science. Say you identify an individual person's tell, are you then going to publish a paper about it, send it out for peer review? If the player in question reads that paper, don't you think they'll try to fix it? And even if not, then when they die, all your work becomes useless, you leave nothing for future scientists to build on, because you were only studying the tells of that individual.
I don't think it's really a controversial claim to say that some questions fall outside the domain of science, I believe the majority of scientists would agree with that.