For a long time I've wanted to come up with an idea that could blend a traditional high fantasy world with a scifi one. How does this sound to you guys? The traditional definition of magic is anything that can't be properly explained by science. In this world, magic is fueled by ignorance and delusion, and science is fueled by knowledge and logic. Basically, the less you understand how the world around you works, the more you can tap into the magical source to do things that shouldn't be possible. Why? Because if you don't know that something isn't possible (or at the very least temporarily convince you don't know) then it becomes possible. If nobody tells me that people can't shoot fireballs out of their hands, what reason do I have to believe that I can't, and therefore that means I can. Does that make sense? Probably not, but it kind of isn't supposed to. Science, however, is the process of learning and understanding the world and how it works. The more you understand, the less ignorant you become, meaning the less magic you're able to perform. That might sound bad on the surface, but there is only one version "science" which makes things more...streamlined, I guess you could say. What cures this sickness? This medicine, science proves it. But ask ten magicians how to cure it and you'll get twelve different answers, all based on how they choose to see the world and none of which are guaranteed to work on you. Because of this disparity, magic becomes weaker around places with better technology, and technology tends to malfunction more easily around places with strong magic. This leads to a country that's half fantasy medieval forest, half science fiction metropolises, with strict boundaries between the two.
It's not a bad idea. The sort of thing I'd likely enjoy. Similar to a group of Jack Campbell novels with mages and mechanics. The mechanics can't do any magic because they don't have the proper mindset--they're scientific and understand mechanical devices, and that understanding is contrary to doing magic, which requires the belief/faith that the world is an illusion that can be manipulated. By contrast, mages can't understand mechanic's devices because they're too. disconnected from the mindset of how science works.
While I like the concept in theory (I also am toying with a similar concept in an idea I'm working on) I'm not really sure about how it'd play out. For one thing describing magic as being fueled by ignorance and delusion is a very negative way to word it, and indicates a bias against magic. Wouldn't it be better to just say that magic is fueled by belief. Admittedly since this is similar to the magic system that I'm developing for my idea, which is based on belief, that might be affecting how I view yours. Also, at least in our world, science is a method to determine what works. So if anyone who thinks they can shoot fireballs from their hands can, then that would become a scientific fact of the world. And if scientifically founded technology tends to fail around strong magic then it is just as unreliable as the magic and thus a fairly poor alternative. Honestly the way you describe it sounds like the world has two opposing forms of magic. One that is belief based and fantastical and one that is reason based and technological. Kind of like a world that has both an extremely soft magic system alongside an extremely hard one (not just for the reader but for the inhabitants of the world too). The more someone tries to understand how the fantastical magic works, the more it just fails to do anything for them. Meanwhile if one isn't intimately familiar with the rules of the tech-based one, then nothing they do will work. I don't know, this probably isn't exactly what you have in mind, it was just my takeaway from your post.
Is it? All the great magicians I'm aware of (e.g. Cornelius Agrippa, Marsilio Ficino, Gemisthus Pletho, Dong Zhongshu) saw magic as a science in itself. Some might say it had different rules from natural philosophy (more or less what we call science nowadays) but was nonetheless something born of careful study and experimentation. Far from being ignorant, they were extremely educated people, some of the most learned people in the world. I think you are working from a crude Enlightenment stereotype that has been debunked many times over by scholars of antiquity and the middle ages. In fact a lot of the seeds of the later "scientific revolution" were planted by the occultists, astrologers, and alchemists.
I would have a hard time accepting this as a reader. I can suspend my disbelief for the sake of the fantasy genre, but if this is being put next to a society that values facts and research then I would be upset if the scientists didn't investigate why magic works; if they're scifi levels of advanced and all they can come up with as a response to magic is "we don't know, they just are able to shoot fire from their hands".... idk, wouldn't sit well with me. Remember, astrology was a precursor to astronomy. Maybe the scientists do know how magic works, but they don't care for it because they like their science and have decided to abandon magic? If so, the science must be pretty cool because I think I would stick with whatever lets me have fireballs
I guess ignorance was a bad word to describe it. More like...the power of belief? Remember how in The Matrix people could punch through walls and dodge bullets, and all they had to do was believe that they could? Same thing here. But its harder than it sounds because you actually have to BELIEVE, not just say you do. You can hold out your hand and say "I can shoot fireballs!" but are you surprised when nothing happens? No, because you knew that you can't actually shoot fireballs from your hand. For magic in this world to work, you have to be able to change your beliefs in ths blink of an eye. People will train for their whole lives to be able to do that, and many don't succeed because they can't force their brains to believe (from the very bottom of their hearts, as if that's what they believed their entire lives) whatever is necessary at the spur of the moment. Unfortunately, that tends to have the side effect of driving people who do master magic insane. That's also why it's impossible for science to study. They understand the core concept of how it works, but science by definition is studying the patterns in nature to better understand what's going on around us. That's not possible in something that has no pattern. Magic is unique to each person who uses it, just like each person is unique, because it's controlled internally by thoughts and beliefs, while nature is controlled externally. That's also why machines are able to cancel magic out. They don't have real minds, thus no beliefs, opinions, or imaginations. Even the most powerful AIs in their world sees everything in terms of pure logic. "I can shoot fireballs!" *shoots fireball* "THAT. IS. ILLOGICAL. THUS. IMPOSSIBLE." *fireball disappears* Which is why magic users and technology are measured in levels here. A machine can cancel out basic magic, but a stronger mage could overpower the machine. This leads to the central conflict of the story I'm imagining, with an AI so powerful that only the Grand Mage can perform magic anywhere within ten miles of it.
Pretty much. Science is not about defining what reality is or isn't but rather explaining it. It cares about whether or not things are provable, not possible, because if the former is true then the latter has to be as well. If magic was conclusively proven to be real, scientists could and should still maintain a realistic amount of skepticism, but couldn't simply deny it. For that matter, there would be a lot of very excited scientists who just got access to a whole new field of research that could change the way we understand the universe. Real scientists like that kind of stuff. I was already going to bring it up, actually, but this is sorta how magic worked in the White Wolf RPG Mage: The Ascension. The basic idea was that magic is real, and science is not. That is to say, reality is actually very malleable and doesn't really have any hard rules, so human beings are in fact able to make stuff happen just by wanting it to happen. "Magicians" of the setting are people who had some kind of epiphany and suddenly realized this. The problem is that the rest of humanity thinks reality is stable and that natural laws are a thing, and this collective belief form the Consensus Reality. In other words, everyone is ironically using magic to keep magic from being real. If normal people see a magician do something magical, they subconsciously cancel it out because it's "impossible." The mage is then hit by a sort of damaging backlash called Paradox. It was actually way more efficient to disguise magical feats as something the muggles could rationalize as possible: Say, instead of throwing a fireball you made a gas pipe explode. Also, IIRC, science in technology was really just magic that a faction of mages had convinced everyone was rational and thus kept in line with the Consensus Reality. I always thought it was a pretty clever way of having magic in a contemporary setting while basically forcing magical people to hide their abilities. (It's a bit more robust than the vampires' "we decided to keep it a secret" or the werewolves' "people can't remember seeing us because we're too scary." ) Put like that, people who are already psychotic would be more likely to demonstrate magical abilities. You know, because they'd be more likely to believe things that aren't "real." (That reminds me of another roleplaying game, Kult, which had a sanity meter. Normal people had a sanity of 0, and if you increased that number you started seeing through the illusion hiding what reality as it actually was. Negative sanity points meant you were going insane, but that actually had the same effect as positive numbers. So, if you lost a lot of sanity it could actually be worthwhile to go even more insane.) On a similar note, would people under the influence of drugs be more likely to perform magic? Or perhaps magical powers could be enabled through self-hypnosis? Thing is, that's not how logic works. Denying the possibility of something that is demonstrably possible is itself illogical. As a being of pure logic, the AI would actually be less able to reason that way, because it doesn't possess beliefs, imagination or capacity for bias. It wouldn't be able to ignore data by rationalizing it or writing it off as a hallucination. So after making sure it's sensors worked properly, the AI would reason like this: Assumption: People can't throw fireballs. Objective Fact: I just witnessed a person throw a fireball. Conclusion: The initial assumption is false. At least some people can throw fireballs. New Objective: Figure out how that is possible. That's logic. It doesn't have to result in a conclusion that corresponds to what you believe is true, or even make sense to you. It's still logical.
Machines are programmed to find logic in the natural rules of the world. Things that can be accurately measured and studied. Magic, like I said, is a purely personal experience. Theres no real way to study it (at least not to a worthwhile degree) because once you get past the basic rule ("People can use their thoughts and beliefs to alter reality") there are absolutely no constants. While you can measure it after it happens, theres no way to predict it before it happens. No patterns, no repeating data, just the knowledge that magic exists and that people can use it. Q: Can people shoot fireballs from their hands? A: Yes. Q: How? A: With magic. Q: What is magic? A: No idea. Q: Who can use magic? A: The people who can use it. Q: Who can't use it? A: The people who can't use it. Q: What determines how powerful a mage is? A: How powerful their magic is. Q: But what makes one mage more powerful than another? A: No idea. But machines aren't able to understand that. Computers have no imagination, which is an integral part of using magic, thus they completely lack the ability to comprehend even the basic levels of magic. So in a way I guess you could say they deny the existence of magic. Refusing to believe in magic is, in its own way, imposing your will on reality. You're creating a reality where magic doesn't exist. Thus a mage that tries to use magic will find their powers weakened, or even taken away entirely. Look at it like this: when two mages fight, half the battle revolves around them both trying to weaken the other. If their willpower is stronger than their opponent's, they can take their powers away simply by believing that their powers are weakened. Machines do the same thing, except that their "beliefs" are hardwired into their brains, not allowing them to change their minds, form opinions, or imagine anything contrary to what is programmed into them. At the basic level this could be seen as a magic-proof shield, but if the machines become too widespread then the effect spreads as well, leaving nowhere for mages to perform magic. But just like one mage can overpower another, a strong enough mage can push through a machine's logic-shield and destroy it with magic. In turn, a more powerful machine could then cancel that same mage's power out, which would then have to be destroyed by an even more powerful mage. This continues up and up until you have a Grand Mage facing down a Falsemind, a true AI that has taken control of all the lesser machines. Falseminds are dangerous, both to the magic users and to the machines that serve it. By having a real actual mind, it could theoretically use magic despite being a machine. The machines that create it have to raise it from "childhood" in order to ensure it develops as a real intelligence while also teaching it to think the same way other machines do. IE, embrace what can be studied and measured, reject what can't be. This is a process that can take hundreds or even thousands of years, but the full awakening of a new Falsemind always means a new war against the machines is coming.
I like the general idea more after this... particularly the fact that there is no pattern to be found, but: If your AI is pure logic (not something closer to sentience), how do they have the power to alter people's reality? With your rules, could a scientist create an AI whose underlying logic believes that people can fly, thus people around it do fly?
It's...a little hard to explain. Every machine has at least a limited AI. Not sentience, but enough to run by themselves without human instruction (they ran the humans out of the kingdom thousands of years ago). Hpw smart the AI is allowed to become depends on what rank the machine is designed to be. But the end result is that every machine is at least a little bit "aware" of the world around them, which in turn allows them to contest a mage's willpower and cancel out their magic.
What machines were the ones built powerful enough to run the humans out of a kingdom? It's true that most AI machines are "aware" because they need perceptrons that take input of the world around them (if their implementation is intended interact with the real world), but that is true for rudimentary AI systems as well. Sorry if I'm being a pain in the butt. It's just that AI tech has, in the past, been a very cool scifi trope, but I feel as though it could be losing its luster- at least, writers might need to put more thought into it. We now have AI in the real world. Readers might have a more realistic view of AI that could dampen their view of the AI in your story. For example, Google Lens uses artificial intelligence and uses your phone's camera lens to be "aware" of the world. You could set this algorithm into a machine that is constantly classifying things it sees, without the need for human interaction. In your world, can something as simple as Google Lens alter a mage's reality because it has a limited AI? (at first I thought this was lame, but I started thinking of a plot in a modern setting in which the prevalence of technology is the reason that magic can't exist; my thoughts went all sorts of cool places. Now I don't know if it's lame or if it could work if well executed... thanks for making me think about this all sorts of ways)
We'd have to go way back in the worldbuilding for that. Originally there was just the fantasy kingdom, but a faction of discontents who weren't able to learn magic broke away and began to develop technology. Fast forward thousands of years, and they've progressed to scifi levels of tech. All this time they've been forced to live in a secluded corner of the country, but they decide that they have the power to take over the entire kingdom. But why do it themselves when they can build mechanical soldiers to do the fighting for them? So they create an army of robots that are just self-aware enough to battle the mages and declare war on the rest of the kingdom. But just like any corny scifi story, the machines revolt. They were programmed to wipe magic off the planet, and being the cold and calculating machines they are, they decide the most logical method of doing this is to erase humanity from existence. Including the ones who built them. The machines use their limited AI kn secret to build a program that's slightly less limited, then it builds one that's even less limited, until they eventually create the first Falsemind and the robot army unites under it and turns on their human masters. Long story short, the first Grand Mage had to be named, they defeated the Falsemind, which left the armies without a guiding consciousness, and sealed the city of technology away. It's been severely damaged by the loss of the Falsemind, but is still active. They leave it that way because even the Grand Mage can't overpower an entire city where even the buildings are machines. The technology users are given a land to build a new city on, with the condition that their machines never be made to self-govern themselves again. And also if they try to wage war on fantasyland again, they'll be magically nuked to hell and back.
Magic has patterns and rules though. Certainly any traditional system of magic. The assumption is that, to use Agrippa’s terms, phenomena can be manipulated by means of their “occult virtues”- but to do this we must first understand the “natural virtues”. The two are complementary. These patterns and rules are typically born out of observation and deduction from the natural world. Analogies play a huge part in natural magic. For example, the Confucian magician Dong Zhongshu observed that people tend to be sleepy during rain. He attributes this to yin energy in the heavens eliciting a sympathetic response from yin energy in our bodies. The corollary he draws from this is that humans can effect changes in the weather by their own actions. Accordingly he devised several elaborate rites for weather magic. His rain ritual involves, among other things, large statues of dragons (which are associated with clouds and rain) and a pool full of frogs. These ideas may sound preposterous to a modern scientific mind but what we call science itself emerged today from the same milieu of observation and experimentation that produced magic. So it seems to me that, in a world in which magic was obviously powerful and effective, it would exist on a continuum with science and not as an opponent of it, unless someone in the scientific camp had some very peculiar ideological (and not scientific) objection to magic.
