On Magic

"Correlation is not causation."

I don't believe in magic, I should state that right up front. I waver between the outright "Nah, that doesn't work" and a more Han Soloish "Haven't seen anything to convince me" point (though I'll admit, I haven't seen that many strange things in my time, the problem of being a boring American geek, rather than an interstellar smuggler). This despite my abiding love for Mage, and that magic could in many ways make the world cooler. I'm relatively sure this statement didn't surprise any of you.

But on the other hand, I think that spells and such can work, after a sort. Not so much on them influencing the universe, but influencing you. You being the hypothetical magic-user. You're not going to be able to summon up a million dollars, or wish for a dozen models, or anything like that, at least not and have it work. Not gonna be summoning up demons to smite your enemies, none of that. But that's not how most non-fantasy (fantasy fantasy or fundamentalist wingnut fantasy) "spells" are presented, anyway. Small effects and coincidence is more their domain. And that sorta works.

You whip up a ritual to get a better job, you're going to be paying more attention to opportunities, and (probably) going to be more attentive at work, which combine to make you more likely to find and take opportunities that show up. Love potions, as the witch in one of Neil Gaiman's Endless stories in Endless Nights, just give somebody the courage to make the first move when they otherwise wouldn't have. And so on. The repetition and ritual focus your attention on the thing you want, so you pay more attention to it, and opportunities, and more ready to take risks. It's the same kind of thing as self-help books that suggest you write down your goal X times a day, it keeps the thing you're looking for in the front of your mind, occupying a little bit of your attention, and waiting to grab all of your attention when it matters.

Of course, if you don't look, or try, and just figure it's taken care of, the "spell" won't work. It's like the old fable, the gods help those who help themselves. Also, people tend to put a lot more weight on unusual occurances than everyday ones, so if the spell "works", you're going to remember that more than the dozens of times you tried something and nothing happened.

I suspect, in my heathen ways, that similar reasoning applies for the people who pray regularly asking God for stuff. Did I mention the plethora of "Christian Inspiration" books back by the music section at work, and how many are by Falwell, Dobson, the Left Behind guys, and similar? Plus all the "Pray yourself thin" and similar self help books. The New Age section isn't far away, with it's own goofy self-help and "inspirational" stuff. And then there's just the regular self-help and "inspirational" sections too. How neurotic ARE we Americans, anyway?

Technorati Tags: Mindscribbles, Religion, Me, SCIENCE!, Life, The Universe, and Everything

Life Without the Internet, Day 2, Take 3

My computer is crippled. I have no internet access. Yesterday, the family computer, the one all the internet traffic goes through, died. I think the power supply gave up the ghost, since it shut off, then wouldn't turn back on. Windows, ever vigilant, has ensured that the user experience hasn't changed at all, by crashing Editpad twice while I was typing this, and crashing totally a third time. Because of where the phone lines are and everything, I would need a 50' cable or so to hook mine up directly. Lacking that, I have to wait until we can replace the power supply and anything else that burned out. This is another reason we need to get DSL, so things go through the router. That and it's muchly better.

But until then, my computer is crippled. I can't surf the web, get email, chat, or look at fora. Which is most of what I use the net for (and one of the reasons I don't need to upgrade my computer, my needs are relatively simple). I can't rip music off my CDs, well, I can, but they'd have no track information, and entering all the information is far too tedious for me to do it. My antivirus programs can't update, but without net access, they're a lot less relevant. And I can't post to or read LJ, but I'm still writing this, to post backdated when I get access back. As I intend to do with a few other things.

But the genius of important things that fundamentally change stuff is how invisible they become. Like the internet. Or running water. Or electricity, refrigeration, and so on. They utterly change how we live, but they do it invisibly, and fade into the background. That's how real changes work, they become parts of your life, not drawing attention to themselves. And you don't notice them until they're gone. Like the internet. I've become so used to having things like CDDB (well, FreeDB, CDDB turned evil), google, wikipedia, imdb, etc at my fingertips, that not having them feels strange. Like my computer's crippled.

But then again, I've spent a good portion of my life on the internet. We got net access first like seven years ago, which is almost a third of my life. A lot of the pivotal moments of my life involve the net (which is probably sad in some ways, but). I've grown up with the net available, and taken it for granted. It's integrated into my life, and probably only going to get moreso as time goes on, with things getting more mobile, and wireless. Where's my cortical cybermodem and mirrorshades with my own AI assistant built in? Because I so want that.

Technorati Tags: Me, Journal, The Internets, Computers