What would it take to convince you of magic / supernatural?

[PeroK]

Being open minded doesn't mean one has to accept any particular answer, it just means one has to accept that any answer is available for selection following the investigation.

Two obvious areas where such an approach could be costly are medicine and the law. If we accept at least reasonable doubt on any paranormal explanation for a crime (evil spirits etc.), then it won't be easy to gain a conviction. The law only works if we are relatively closed minded on paranormal alibis.

Medicine, likewise, would be strained if doctors had to allow the possiblilty of possession by evil spirits. If a patient dies, and the family can sue the hospital for not trying exorcism.

Finally, if you found youself under arrest and on trial for witchcraft, I don't believe you would be very happy that the authorities had decided to take those accusations seriously. Especially if the punishment was to be burned alive at the stake. Give me closed-minded skepticism over that nonsense any day.

PS This isn't my most coherent post and it's perhaps a little over the top, but I think taking the paranormal seriously is a Pandora's box. Human society has been there and the results were tragic.

 

[Tom.G]

"What would it take...?"

That the proponent demonstrate the phenomina to me in an un-inhabited desert area with no structures or human artifacts around, while naked.

That would get me to consider the possibility.

 

[russ_watters]

Two obvious areas where such an approach could be costly are medicine and the law. If we accept at least reasonable doubt on any paranormal explanation for a crime (evil spirits etc.), then it won't be easy to gain a conviction. The law only works if we are relatively closed minded on paranormal alibis.

How do you figure? That sounds more like far fetched doubt than reasonable doubt to me.

Medicine, likewise, would be strained if doctors had to allow the possiblilty of possession by evil spirits. If a patient dies, and the family can sue the hospital for not trying exorcism.

Same: how are you figuring this could happen based on my framing? You're not proceeding on the assumption that all available choices get equal weight, are you?

Finally, if you found youself under arrest and on trial for witchcraft, I don't believe you would be very happy that the authorities had decided to take those accusations seriously.

The "reasonable doubt" burden of proof is pretty high.

...setting aside why witchcraft would even be a crime. But I guess that's why we have to hide ourselves from muggles.

 

[russ_watters]

Well, not me.[break the natural laws] In case it really happens (and to settle with that 'really' would take quite lot of scrutiny) the most it would be able to break is my expectations.

Let's say Harry Potter submits himself to testing in a lab setting and shows repeatedly, on demand, that he can summon lightning from the tip of a stick by waving it and uttering a phrase. No changes are observed to occur to him or the stick before, during or after the emission. That would be pretty hard to reconcile with conservation of matter/energy -- it seems like a pretty obvious violation to me.

Now, that's a bit harsh. There are plenty of things what happened too far away, happened only once, was not recorded, was not recorded with the right equipment and so on - these will likely and rightfully remain unknown.

Do scientists really believe that a phenomena can happen only once and then never be seen again? It's a big universe.

 

[AlexCaledin]

Hmmm, to a tech guy like me, it's natural to think that the physical world is generated/simulated by the transcendent Computer; then, physics must be only the basic level controlled by the high level programs which are making quantum choices trying not to violate the Born rule too much. Now, one's mind is certainly participating somehow in the high level software, thus being able to be engaged in some "magic"; - but it's hardly very "scientific". Science is only looking at the basic level.
_____________________________________
Susskind's QM textbook:
That’s the content of Bell’s theorem: The classical computers have to be connected with an instantaneous cable to simulate entanglement.

 

[hmmm27]

Why the assumption that I don't believe in magic/supernature, in the first place ?

 

[Vanadium 50]

That would be pretty hard to reconcile with conservation of matter/energy -- it seems like a pretty obvious violation to me.

Not 100% sure I buy this. He could be getting the energy from "somewhere else".

Is this more or less magical than Asimov's Electron Pump?

 

[pinball1970]

"What would it take...?"

That the proponent demonstrate the phenomina to me in an un-inhabited desert area with no structures or human artifacts around, while naked.

That would get me to consider the possibility.

Well, not me. In case it really happens (and to settle with that 'really' would take quite lot of scrutiny) the most it would be able to break is my expectations.

The breaking egg is used an example of entropy/ arrow of time in pop Science.
So, I can reconstruct an egg after it rolls off the table onto the floor without touching it.
So a violation of motion energy gravity and entropy.
I can repeat it on request.

Assuming there are no illusions, all checked and verified. Observers are magicians (fake ones who know the tricks) and physicists who can list all the Scientific violations.

 

[BWV]

The breaking egg is used an example of entropy/ arrow of time in pop Science.
So, I can reconstruct an egg after it rolls off the table onto the floor without touching it.
So a violation of motion energy gravity and entropy.
I can repeat it on request.

Assuming there are no illusions, all checked and verified. Observers are magicians (fake ones who know the tricks) and physicists who can list all the Scientific violations.

But putting on a SF hat, a swarm of nanobots could accomplish feats like this, which would then look like magic

 

[BillTre]

But putting on a SF hat, a swarm of nanobots could accomplish feats like this, which would then look like magic

If they could do it without the energy input needed to run the nanobots, that would be magical.

 

[Jarvis323]

I still hold that everything is magic. Someone waving a wand and uttering a phrase before something unexplainable happens would be surprising, but no more magical than anything else happening in the universe. Technically nothing is explainable. Nobody can tell me how something really happens in the universe, except in terms of high level abstractions. Explaining that the lightning bolt was caused by a certain wand waving pattern and phrase would be no different, it would still just be explaining it in terms of high level abstractions. The main difference is that in this case the event wouldn't fit the commonly used scientific models, and would have a different break down into lower level abstractions than other more well known phenomena, and would perhaps be impossible to break down past a higher level than most other phenomena.

Maybe that is how to define it if you want to distinguish it, by how much the explanation can be broken down into lower level abstractions. But IMO it should be independent of human limitations, so you should assume the explanations exist indepenent of human knowlegde and only need to be understandable by some kind of oracle with limitless powers for understanding.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Repeatable experiments/observations that produces physical evidence. And with the added guideline "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (Carl Sagan, IIRC).

He has got that right, IMO. Science has to be highly conservative in order to stay apart from Magic and Charlatanism.

just like there is no such thing as alternative medicine

There is plenty of Alternative Medicine. When it works reliably then it is valid in that it should be 'allowed' to be used when it does no measurable harm. Or even if it appears to do more good than harm. Medicine is very pragmatic; few medics (if any) have rock solid knowledge about the treatments they use. They work on the basis that 'it works mostly and is worth the risk'. I can go along with that when I have confidence with a particular organisation or practitioner. A lot of (or even most of) Medicine is a fringe Science but none the worse for it.

We have to be scrupulous if we are to win over the Anti-vaxers but the Pro evidence is only statistical and many people just cannot deal with statistics.

Is it reproducible? In Harry Potter it is.

Harry Potter's world ( and other examples in this thread) is fictional and it works on (not very self consistent) axioms. It cannot validly be part of this thread. No Fiction can be Science, despite the number of pieces of SciFi that are used as 'evidence' within these walls.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur Clarke

As has already ben pointed out, that's just a personal definition.

Everyone can agree these acts break the “natural” laws.

I would say that they don't break natural laws because the 'experiment' is subjected to external influences.

 

[pinball1970]

But putting on a SF hat, a swarm of nanobots could accomplish feats like this, which would then look like magic

Damn it...
Edit, You can play the nanobot card on a lot of my suggestions.

 

[russ_watters]

Harry Potter's world ( and other examples in this thread) is fictional and it works on (not very self consistent axioms). It cannot validly be part of this thread.

I disagree, for two reasons:
1. Our rules prohibit discussion of "real" pseudoscience.
2. Example from fiction would be compelling if observed in real life. Far more compelling than any claimed magic we actually see. So they make for good examples to test the logic (and that's common in science). Remember, this isn't a thread about whether magic exists, it's about whether or how to evaluate it if it did.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Remember, this isn't a thread about whether magic exists, it's about whether or how to evaluate it if it did.

I have a problem with that. Taken to a very slight extreme then any unexplained phenomenon could be interpreted as Magic. Where would you draw your line between Magic and some Science we are still 'working on'?
This thread has suffered too much from a reliance on what Fiction is claimed to tell us. Too many 'If's being used in the non-mathematical sense.

 

[russ_watters]

I have a problem with that. Taken to a very slight extreme then any unexplained phenomenon could be interpreted as Magic. Where would you draw your line between Magic and some Science we are still 'working on'?

That is the discussion topic of the thread, yes.

[Edit] I haven't responded yet, but I really like @Jarvis323 's recent take.

This thread has suffered too much from a reliance on what Fiction is claimed to tell us. Too many 'If's being used in the non-mathematical sense.

Fictional thought experiments are used extensively in science to test logic. I'm not sure I see the problem. It's common for them to fail accidentally or be impossible in irrelevant ways. The main difference here is we're devising ones that fail on purpose.

 

[Rive]

The breaking egg is used an example of entropy/ arrow of time in pop Science.
So, I can reconstruct an egg after it rolls off the table onto the floor without touching it.
So a violation of motion energy gravity and entropy.

Maybe the problem is, that you think gravity and entropy (and energy conservation) are rules of nature.
But they are human constructs: they are part of a model we using to describe and predict 'nature'.
It is a very good model, indeed.
Still, nature rules. If any of the events discussed above really happens, then it's not 'nature' what's broken, but our model.
It would be a very ambiguous feeling to watch it happen, though. I definitely do not expect it to happen, and it would take lot of scrutiny to accept it.

To put our model at the rank of 'rules of nature' kind of reminds me of Lord Kelvin and his rule about flying.

 

[kith]

Interesting discussion. I want to add two points regard Clark's statement "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

1) Here is a longer quote from his essay "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination" where he introduced the concept:

Suppose you went to any scientist up to the late nineteenth century and told him: “Here are two pieces of a substance called uranium 235. If you hold them apart, nothing will happen. But if you bring them together suddenly, you will liberate as much energy as you could obtain from burning ten thousand tons of coal.” No matter how farsighted and imaginative he might be, your pre-twentieth century scientist would have said: “What utter nonsense! That’s magic, not science. Such things can’t happen in the real world.”

Around 1890, when the foundations of physics and thermodynamics had (it seemed) been securely laid, he could have told you exactly why it was nonsense. “Energy cannot be created out of nowhere,” he might have said. “It has to come from chemical reactions, electrical batteries, coiled springs, compressed gas, spinning flywheels, or some other clearly defined source. All such sources are ruled, out in this case — and even if they were not, the energy output you mention is absurd.

Like him, I don't see a way to distinguish a situation which can't be explained by current knowledge from a situation which can't be explained in principle.

2) I see a weaker version and a stronger interpretation of Clark's statement. The cautionary tale above is an example of the weaker version. It is tied to people not having all the relevant knowledge and it is also hypothetical (the nuclear bomb hasn't actually been around at the time where it would have been considered to be magic).

The strong version of the statement is a prediction, namely that technology will permanently outpace legibility. For machine learning algorithms with many parameters, we typically don't understand the logic behind how they arrive at their outputs already today. In this domain, the legibility of technology actually seems to be decreasing in a way which is hard to reverse even by future knowledge and technology. In this sense, the future could become increasingly more "magical".

 

[kith]

Harry Potter's world ( and other examples in this thread) is fictional and it works on (not very self consistent) axioms.

Pretty off-topic: I think my favorite inconsistency is the tension between https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/4/Harry-Potter-and-the-Methods-of-Rationality

 

[mfb]

It's inherently impossible to incorporate magic into the laws of the universe. That's the entire point of magic.

The universe trivially follows the laws of the universe, however complex they might be. If magic needs to be beyond that it can't exist in our universe or any equivalent structure. That would make the question very simple.
If we can determine the laws of the universe is a different question. If some technology is sufficiently advanced then we might be unable to understand it in our lifetime.

 

[AlexCaledin]

The universal law is total dependence on the quantum dice.

__________________________________________________________________
In 2011, Penn State Press began publishing a learned journal titled Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural. Edited by Kirsten Uszkalo and Richard Raiswell, the journal is dedicated to publishing articles, reviews and short editions of original texts that deal with conceptions and perceptions of the preternatural in any culture and in any historical period. The journal covers "magics, witchcraft, spiritualism, occultism, prophecy, monstrophy, demonology, and folklore."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preternatural

 

[pinball1970]

Maybe the problem is, that you think gravity and entropy (and energy conservation) are rules of nature.
But they are human constructs: they are part of a model we using to describe and predict 'nature'.
It is a very good model, indeed.
Still, nature rules. If any of the events discussed above really happens, then it's not 'nature' what's broken, but our model.
It would be a very ambiguous feeling to watch it happen, though. I definitely do not expect it to happen, and it would take lot of scrutiny to accept it.

To put our model at the rank of 'rules of nature' kind of reminds me of Lord Kelvin and his rule about flying.

I accept that science is the just method we use to describe nature.

I am trying to imagine a scenario where everyone would agree unambiguously, that something supernatural rather than just natural was happening.

It is harder than I thought.

I thought of the double split experiment and the interference pattern spelling out words at my command but I suppose nanobots could deflect the particles/photons as well.

What about this?
I fire a bunch of neutrinos from the LHC to an underground detector in Italy 731km away.
They reach the detector 60ns faster than if they were traveling at the speed of light.
I have no idea how they would do this but the guys in Italy confirm with the team in Switzerland that they are same neutrinos.

All the clocks, GPS and fibre optics are fine, when they repeat the experiment and when I do not cause the magic they arrive at the correct time.

Nanobots cannot help this time because the neutrinos will not interact with them, they are also traveling faster than light so they could not keep up with them if they did.

You are not allowed to make your nanobots super dense like the Italian detector as they would not longer be able to function/fly.

If you use your bots to squeeze the Earth slightly to move the detectors closer together to fake the result I will send my bots to destroy your bots or repeat the experiment in a giant vacuum – no bots allowed

So this is not like walking on water, this is tweaking an experiment that violates a previously verified model of the universe.

No matter how or where you do it is always 60ns seconds faster (or a figure of choosing) at my command.

 

[david2]

A psychosis can surely help to experience magical/supernatural things.

 

[pinball1970]

A psychosis can surely help to experience magical/supernatural things.

Yes but that was not the point of the thread.

 

[david2]

I have to admit that I only reacted to the title. When I was reading some of the posts I was contemplating to delete my comment.

Carry on people. nothing to see here.

 

[Rive]

What about this?

Missing the point. Trying to tinker with models and tech - these will do (within the pre-set frame of the topic/post) something, of course, but they do that something if/because they comply with ' natural' and not the other way. 'Natural' always has the imperative, so whatever actually happens is natural thing to happen.
If 'natural' breaks our models - well, poor little us.
If by any chance 'magic' really happens, then 'magic' is natural.

Of course on this line of thought, 'supernatural' to happen is not any better than the good old 'this sentence is a lie'.

 

[BWV]

Which is the problem looking at magic / supernatural as some sort impersonal force - the historic view for people who really believe, is that these powers are granted by some entity - gods, spirits, demons whatever. Once you start describing magic in Harry Potter or Dungeons & Dragons terms it’s just a force you can discover the rules of by employing similar methods to science. On the other hand it’s kind of hard to prove that my power to do whatever comes from Zeus and then it begs the question on how those powers work for Zeus

 

[DaveC426913]

On the other hand it’s kind of hard to prove that my power to do whatever comes from Zeus and then it begs the question on how those powers work for Zeus

Zigackly.

I had the same thought re: Thor's hammer in Thor. Odin put a spell on it that could only be broken by a worthy person. And then he threw the hammer away, with the spell still attached.

Which means - however powerful Odin is as a god - his source of magical power is more fundamental than he is. I guess gods have gods.

 

[AlexCaledin]

I once was running across a road (which seemed empty) - and suddenly fell and softly landed on the asphalt. The feeling was as if the spacetime geometry suddenly got perturbed locally. Immediately, in front of me, a car passed at a dreadful velocity.

 

[DaveC426913]

I once was running across a road (which seemed empty) - and suddenly fell and softly landed on the asphalt. The feeling was as if the spacetime geometry suddenly got perturbed locally. Immediately, in front of me, a car passed at a dreadful velocity.

A textbook example of survivor bias.

Those who did not trip before running in front of a passing car are not here to report it.