[Opinion] Pseudo-Scientific Explanations in Magic

[Robert Ramsay]

So today I had the beginnings of an argument with a male witch I follow on Twitter. He is writing a book about magic, but he keeps pooting forth stuff about "the uncertainty principle" in exactly the scientism way we were talking about. I called him out on it ( I tried to be gentle) and his reply was "What makes you think I'm looking for someone else's arguments?". And then he blocked me
So yeah, "brute forcing one's confirmation bias" indeed!

 

[Xenophon]

So today I had the beginnings of an argument with a male witch I follow on Twitter. He is writing a book about magic, but he keeps pooting forth stuff about "the uncertainty principle" in exactly the scientism way we were talking about. I called him out on it ( I tried to be gentle) and his reply was "What makes you think I'm looking for someone else's arguments?". And then he blocked me
So yeah, "brute forcing one's confirmation bias" indeed!

"Solipsism means never having to say you're sorry."

Post automatically merged: Aug 12, 2024

I ran across an interesting take on quantum-slinging. You know, how anytime a writer on magick wants support from the science he so often deplores, he starts squawking about quantum-this and quantum-that. Sort of a get-out-of-causation-free card. Nasim Nicholas Taleb (in Fooled By Randomness) notes that if you want an example of daunting uncertainty you don't need quantum particles. The behavior of any given selection of stocks from the Dow Jones seems to stump expertise as often as it confirms it. But that just doesn't have the same cachet, does it? "The Will of the Dipshitissimus is unbounded by law and convention! As unbound and as free as this line graph of Startup Inc's fluctuations since the IPO six months ago!" Rhetorically the expected "...unbound as a quantum particle blasting through abysses galactic" just pops more magick wood into a flaccid ritual, no?

Still the quantum-evoking author does well to remember that he is there writing a sort of poetry with scientific verbiage, not actually doing science. No, not even relying on it in any very defensible way.