The Magic System Paradox

it feels like it's been a while since I've really enjoyed a piece of high fantasy which makes me sad because I really used to like this stuff I do still like the sense of wonder it provides the ideas are still good the stories are still interesting the more I learn about magic and its history the less I see it in these stories in fact some of this stuff in a weird way makes me feel something kind of opposite magic as if the actual IDE a of this fictional magic the fantasy we're all engaging in is

something completely different and Magic is just this surrogate term we've adopted to describe it to be honest despite my history the whole idea of magic systems has always felt just a little dissonant to me it's almost as if in the pursuit to systematize our fantasies we sort of lost the concept of what magic even means [Music] [Applause] how do you define magic it's a surprisingly slippery question some people might say that seeing a rainbow or watching the solar eclipse feels magical others might think of magic tricks like pulling a rabbit out of a hat if

you practice Voodoo you might wear a gre gre amulet for protection or luck maybe when you think of magic you think of spirits or fairies or demons beings whose very existence would challenge our understanding of reality these are all very different things they're also all magical in practice it's sort of hard to describe magic as any one thing people just tend to use the word in a lot of different ways still although the definition may be a little diffuse I do think you can try to understand what people mean by it from what I've seen

there really appear to be three major applications for the term first there's magic as phenomenon otherwise known as the supernatural Spirits fairies demons some people believe in them many don't so far it's not really a scientific thing there's no empirical evidence you can't really study it in the way you would need to so if you assume that it does exist anyway that puts it into this interesting territory something that can ostensibly be observed but not demonstrated or explained materially this can even be applied to things that are by and large known to be real if

you didn't know how electricity worked in a very literal sense lightning might appear to have about the same veracity as a fairy or a demon observable but non-replicable and therefore non-empirical to anyone who isn't there for the event itself self magic as phenomena second there is of course magic as practice that is when humans attempt to interact with the supernatural think spells divination the use of Arcane tools like gre gre amulet whether or not you believe these things actually work people still do them they practice them this sort of magic can even be seen in

the foundations of Science in 1602 Alchemists wrote of the bolognia Stone a rock that they could make glow in the dark Lawrence prce a modern chemist followed the 17th century alchemical recipe to make the bolognia stone and he found that the recipe actually worked Prince with the context of modern science knew the stone is barite and that it glowed because a chemical reaction caused the copper ions in it to release energy to Wilhelm homberg The Alchemist who authored the original recipe The Rock's luminance was magical whether they believed it was due to magic or science

both Prince and Holberg got the same result from the same recipe to one it was science to the other it was magic in either case we have this perception of magic not just as a thing that might exist but as a thing that you do magic as practice third and perhaps most common of all people love to use magic as a metaphor even if we know barite can glow because of a chemical reaction it still looks magical doesn't it I mean glowing rocks aren't exactly something you see on the nature trail a inspiring occurrences still

feel like magic even though you may otherwise feel like you understand them you can pick up a book and learn all about electricity and a lightning storm can still fill you with a sense of wonder you might say that it feels magical to you even if you don't mean it literally I think sneakily this is how Arthur C Clark used the word in his famous quote any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic the intended sentiment is of course that anything which appears to be Supernatural or impossible will inevitably one day be understood but the

use of the term magic here paints a picture of those things which are by his Reckoning actually perfectly rational as impossible to distinguish from the supernatural he's saying that despite an implicit basis in ality they might yet appear to be impossible and wondrous that a thing doesn't actually have to be Supernatural to feel like it is Magic as [Music] metaphor there is a secret fourth application of the word the way the term magic is used in Fantasy is just generally very different from any of this it has almost nothing to do with the veracity of

the actual event or your belief in it it really has more to do with the text in lord of rings Frodo can use the one ring to turn invisible if someone put on a ring and turned invisible in real life I mean we'd have to ask some questions about that that could throw our entire understanding of physics into question or at least create some kind of rush to understand this weird Rings mechanisms in a fantasy book we just accept that this is something the ring can do It's Magic we're okay with that the term people

tend to use for this kind of thing is suspension of disbelief this idea that you can just ignore the logical implications you don't have to get how things like magical rings work in real life because this isn't real life it's fantasy you can enjoy the fantasy without having to question it but tolken himself had a very different perspective on this Middle Earth with all its locations and histories and characters and languages is what he liked to call a secondary world within the universe of Lord of the Rings magic rings do exist we don't contemplate them

as impossible because in the story that's just not the case tolken didn't consider this suspension of disbelief he considered it secondary belief you buy the fantasy within this setting you believe that a magical ring exists and that it can turn you invisible this idea like much of what tolken thought of has become shall we say endemic to the high fantasy genre there's this pervasive sense that every secondary World in modern fantasy has to be believable not just engaging as per suspension of disbelief but actually believable it has to make sense the audience shouldn't question its

rationale a fantasy world should be logical to the point that you can allow yourself to believe in it which ironically doesn't really leave much room for belief does it you might have heard of hard and soft magic systems these were popularized by Brandon Sanderson who probably doesn't need an introduction he's the most successful living fantasy author in addition to his actual books he's known for a sort of literary theory he invented I mean you're watching a video with the term magic system in the title right now there's just about zero chance you haven't run across

it at least some of his ideas before he's important to understanding the profile of modern fantasy magic according to Sanderson hard magic is defined by rules and structure the story explains to the reader how the magic Works in Patrick gras' King killer Chronicle for instance sympathetic magic is a practice that can be studied magicians can manipulate energy by psychically binding one object to another they have diagrams and measurements for it it has an intricate set of rules which it obeys soft Magic by contrast exists without explanation in Lord of the Rings we know Gandalf is

magical but we don't have any explanation for how his magic operates in sanderson's words soft magic leaves room for others who want to preserve a sense of wonder in their books there's also sanderson's famous three laws of magic which detail all the ways he believes magic can be used to enhance a story according to these even soft magic has a set of rules to follow he gently advises against allowing characters to interact with it for instance and if they do says that it should hinder them more than help them soft magic is in his words

for visuals and Oban not for plot sanderson's goal here he says is to help authors tell better stories these rules will according to him result in more interesting plots and more fleshed out worlds this is where you really start to see that fourth application of the term magic emerging not magic is phenomenon or practice or metaphor magic as a plot device I do like some of the ideas Sanderson articulates in his essays it sounds fun for instance to come up with all the different costs associated with using magic Sanderson himself enjoys using these laws as

to many other writers his books are popular for a reason it's also just not magic this conception of magic this usage of the term it's almost Direct opposite all our applications and understandings of magic in real life in the real world the uniting tether of all the different use cases for magic is the unknown it has to be believed in even if there's no proof that it even exists fantasy magic systems tend to do the opposite of that on a textual level they are a way of rationalizing the unknown there's always some authorial conceit some

guideline to follow even for the most mysterious and unexplained phenomenon in the pursuit to create that belief in a secondary World it seems a lot of writers are forgetting how belief Works in this one I need to say this very directly magic is not fiction around the world for thousands of years human beings have been practicing magic in real life and they still do today during China's Shen Dynasty people interpreted Omens by burning animal bones inscribed to symbols ancient Egyptians used protection amulets both for the living and the dead medieval European leech books describe ways

of curing disease through magic people everywhere still practice astrology follow superstitions and cast spells it's part of life I'm not saying that the Supernatural is real I'm also not saying that it isn't that's a personal matter for you to ponder what I am saying is that unlike science people don't practice Magic to explain the unknown what is or isn't magical is subjective there's no real way to tell if your horoscope actually offers real premonitions casting a dowsing spell may help you find your keys or maybe you'll just chance across them soon after pure coincidence the

Alchemists didn't know about the chemical reactions that caused the bolognia stone to grow science seeks answers through figuring out how things work once you can prove how the supernatural works it becomes natural it exits the domain of magic and enters the domain of science even with an understanding of science many people continue to use magic anyway they engage with it because they believe it can help enhance their lives maybe they find it spiritually fulfilling or practical or maybe magic is just fun for them science is perhaps our best way to form a unified understanding of

the world it helps clarify the mysteries of the universe it equips us with useful knowledge it's concerned with objectivity what we can prove to be true magic on the other hand is all about subjectivity it's not concerned with what is explicable objective true it concerns only what you believe you can observe the chemical reactions that cause barite to Glow you can even know how it works whether or not it's m magic depends on your own personal perspective in other words magic is real as long as you believe that it is of course we don't exactly

live in a world amicable to that kind of belief these days it's a pretty vulnerable thing to do it takes a leap of faith to put your trust into the unknown it is anathema in post Enlightenment Society to Simply accept something you don't understand without trying to understand it at all objectivity is reliable you don't need to leave when you have evidence of how the world Works instead you can safely cross a bridge from the unknown to the known you don't have to accept not knowing I think this is why magic systems don't feel magical

to me there are magic systems that I really like and many of them give me a sense of wonder and amazement with all the rules and structure in a literary Magic system we can have incredible worlds full of Fantastical things but they very rarely come close to Magic they rarely ask for that kind of belief in a fantasy story you can have a secondary belief like tolken said a sort of surrogate for real belief you can just create a whole other world where things that would be impossible in this one are accepted as truth in

this secondary world you never have to decide if the one ring is really magical there's no Leap of Faith No pressing unknown to put your belief in the real world just isn't like that the efficacy of science can trick you into thinking Humanity has some strong grasp on how things work but that simply isn't true reality is still mostly unknown and part of science is going forward knowing full well that your current understanding may prove to be entirely wrong later the more we learn the less we know the less we know the more Darkness there

is to superimpose our beliefs over the ultimate ironic conclusion of scientific Pursuit is that the universe is fundamentally magical to believe in magic is to accept this Cosmic tension to reach into the dark and interact with it before empiricism ever gets there magic systems break that tension we can escape into a world where we never have to worry about an unknown beyond the author's intent where the unknown Can Be Tamed and made rational where it operates by rules and authorial conceits where it never has a chance to make you feel vulnerable no uncertainty no need

to believe no matter what happens within the story we accept that it can happen we understand that magicians in the king killer Chronicles study sympathetic magic we understand that the one ring can turn verto bagin invisible these things are not questions they are known you are asked to believe in nothing except for the text the Paradox of magic systems is that they are the fantasy of a world without magic remember that Arthur C Clark quote about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from Magic it's a good metaphor it actually describes how I feel about a lot

of things in life computer programming is one of those things that I've been interested in for a long time but always seemed so complex it might as well be some kind of magical Arcana people who can grasp that stuff have always kind of seemed like Wizards to me but not so much lately our sponsor brilliant has really helped to demystify a lot of it for me I've actually been using brilliant for a little while now to learn about programming I used to just think of this stuff as impen Cascades of mathematical formula and cryptic progressions

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