This is very low tech, but actual full immersion virtual reality is more and more becoming a reality.
It’s really interesting how easily these guys were made to identify with their virtual female bodies.
I truly believe that right now, we can’t exist without our physical bodies because the information in our brains (biological computers) can’t be copied. Not yet. But that’s really all we are, information. Memories, emotions, patterns of behaviour. Once we can access that information, interface with our computers, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to back up that information. Perhaps ‘run the program’ in one of billions of possible digital environments, we can literally create new world to explore. Extend the existence of our ‘selves’ past where our physical body can take us. Not through magic, but using technology. Not through some unknowable greatness, but through our own ingenuity.
Even through all the war and genocide rampaging across our planet, I can’t help but be humbled by the people who plunge on, continuing to discover new things, adding to the growing base of human knowledge. And once people can stop wasting their times at jobs manufactured to sustain a dying system, they’ll be able to collaborate on ideas and to create and study without the disgusting restrictions put on researchers by patents, and on artists by copyrights. The speed at which we would flourish could be astounding.
How do you define magic?
In this particular instance, I was using it like the Harry Potter ‘wave a wand and say a spell” type of magic. My point was that if we want telepathy, if we want to live longer, have virtual worlds, or the ability to create things simply by thinking them into existence (this may be possible with nano assemblers), we’re going to have to invent the technology. We can’t just say the right incantation and BAM.
According to the famous (or infamous depending on your POV) magician Aleister Crowley, magic is “the science and art of causing CHANGE to occur in conformity with the Will.”
What magic is according to the scientific rationalist community is a voluntary misunderstanding (i.e. straw man).
Just F.Y.I.
I fully admit to a scientific rationalistic ignorance concerning anything labeled magic. I don’t have an opinion on Aleister Crowley because my knowledge of him doesn’t go any further than that Ozzy song. I was just using the word the same way most people commonly use it today, wasn’t a willfully placed strawman attack on Mr. Crowley’s brand of magic.
That definition of magic you posted, though, has left me a little confused. It’s a wonderful sentence but it’s exact meaning is hard to grasp. It says ‘the science and art of causing change…’ what kinds of change can occur? How is it caused (ie. what is causing it)?
I also don’t understand what is meant by the Will. Who’s will? My will? The magicians?
The “kind” of change is that of the Will of the magician.
Ex: Tesla had a vision and he Willed it to be so… ¡voila!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magick
“Magick is not capable of producing “miracles” or violating the physical laws of the universe (e.g., it cannot cause a solar eclipse), although Crowley claimed that “it is theoretically possible to cause in any object any change of which that object is capable by nature”.”
Ok, I’m with you so far. But what CAN it do?
“What is a Magical Operation? It may be defined as any event in nature which is brought to pass by Will. We must not exclude potato-growing or banking from our definition. Let us take a very simple example of a Magical Act: that of a man blowing his nose.”
This is very interesting because I understand (I, of course, may be wrong) our brain to function like a computer. A very complex computer capable of pattern recognition and the ability to change it’s own programming, but a computer nonetheless. IE, I don’t believe we have a ‘will’. I don’t think we ‘will’ ourselves to do anything (including ‘changing the programming of our brain’), I think our cumulative experiences and thought patterns CAUSE our behaviour, and our mind creates the illusion that we’ve ‘made a decision’, when really, it’s just our mind crunching information and spitting it back out.
let me clarify. we do have a ‘will’, but it’s more of a construct of our circuitry than anything else. same goes for consciousness. we don’t blow our nose because we will ourselves to, we do it because we saw other people do it, and it helps clear the gunk out of there.
And on the article as a whole, it makes mostly claims that mean nothing (Let’s take ‘consecrating’, for example, a place for a certain purpose. What is ACTUALLY different about the space? It’s now for this purpose.. ok? Nothing changed, you just said, “this place is used for this”. If that and blowing your nose is magick, then of course magic exists.).
…or can’t be confirmed (astral travel. let me ask you this. could two astral travelers meet each other on some other plane and talk? because then we could set up a controlled experiment whereas one traveler could tell a word to the second traveler on the astral plane, but giving them no way of knowing the word beforehand…or something, idk, maybe I’m not understanding astral travel either, but big claims require big proof.)
…or are just basic human insights that have nothing to do with magic: “identity is attained by paying special attention to the desired part of yourself”
…or are jsut good ideas: “…divination within magick is not the same as fortune telling… [it] tends to be more about discovering information about the nature and condition of things that can help the magician gain insight and to make better decisions.”
That’s actually a wonderful explanation of what science is, really. ‘discovering information about the nature and condition of things that can help the (scientist) gain insight and to make better decisions.’
Interesting read. Thanks.
Disclaimer: I’m not expecting you to answer for everything in the wikipedia article. I was just giving you a few tidbits of what went through my mind as I read it.
…”question is: how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?”
;}
even if our rabbit holes take us down different paths, i think we’ll all end up at the same place.
“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” – Arthur C. Clarke
GODspeed