Magic?, because I'm irrational sometimes.

Yo, you believe in magic, supernatural stuff, things that can't be explained adequately at all? I just realized in some ways I do and others I think I'm wrong for believing it, damn cognitive dissonance. So I'll cut and paste my random off topic rant from another thread on the magic I believe exists sometimes and other times believe is coincidence. Please share your own theories of magic, so I can compare and contrast, and come to a rational conclusion. No "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence," justifications, please. The whole point of the thread is stuff that's like that, of course, but the argument does nothing for some explanations being more likely than others..

The only magic I've seen practiced could be described as “spooky action-at-a-distance” as applied to humans and luck rather than quantum particles. Manipulating one's own luck seems to be a combination of a mindset that respects the fates of the universe (so as to avoid wasting energy for what can't be) looking for luck to take advantage of (see the seat's hot for the game, take it). My father is the luckiest man I know, and has been known to win dice games stupidly often, and get free prizes while explaining how luck works to me.

Magic doesn't exist. Anything apparently supernatural can be explained by rational means. Your fathers luck, not Luck, is probably due to confirmation bias. He has a reputation for being lucky, so when he isn't people write off those times as flukes. Then when he wins that just proves he's lucky.

I know that. Synchronicity is silly and un-provable/disprovable. I just wanted to vent my silly beliefs that are silly and see other similar beliefs so I could fit them into a pattern on a human, anecdotal level, because knowing it's wrong rationally doesn't make me feel Dad is any less lucky.

You're full of it. Heck there's a lot of well excepted scientific fact that basically boils down to, "we don't know why it does this, but it always does. Somehow."

I've seen a ghost myself, less than ten feet away in a place where no other person could have possibly been. Sometimes the most rational explination for something IS "magic".

Somepeople say magic is just another science that we don't understand, but if you want to look at thing another how about this one? Sometimes things mess up. Computers glitch, cars won't start, the door get stuck, and there's no real reason you can see for it happening. It just happens. At some point or another, everything messes up and there's not always a reason why. I don't think anybody could realy argue that. Why couldn't the same thing happen on a much larger scale? A "glitch" in reality itself, so to speak.

And, of course, the obvious conclusion is to assume that it is caused by "magic".

I suggest you look into a man known as William of Ockham.

I'd argue against this. Someone I've played tabletop RPGs with has absurd luck with the dice. I can't remember the last time I saw her roll below a 10 on a d20 or 3d6. A number of times, I've gotten frustrated with my luck and had her roll stats for me. Consistently high. No confirmation bias. So either there's something to this "Luck" thing, or she's the most dexterous cheater with dice that I've ever met.

No. My point is there isn't always a explanation for everything.

Occam's Razor, correct?
"All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."
I don't see how that works as an argument against what I was saying.

Anyone that assumes there is a perfectly logical explanation for everything is merely deluding themselves.

Even firm scientific fact is only true until we prove it otherwise.

Well, that depends on what you define "magic" as. Magic is, to me, at least, undefinable events. There could be natural rules that these undefined phenomena follow, but since these natural laws are currently unknown to us, magic is a good catch-all term because of its very undefinable nature.

But hey. Elementary physics is, to me, voodoo of the basest sort. What do I know?

"Magic" has poor connotations in language. "Supernatural" somewhat less so. I think we're really discussing one as the other, here. "Magic" is ritualized or controlled, whereas Supernatural can simply be events beyond the realm of science.

The point of science is to keep breaking things down into more manageable pieces until we understand them, naturally we don't understand everything about them, we've got to keep breaking them down, consistently and systematically to come up with more useful things.

Psychiatry right now seems to ignore that process for intuition, but neuroscience and behaviorism are picking up the slack. They just can't prescribe drugs like psychiatrists can.

Breaking things down into smaller pieces seems to ignore the interrelationships between big things. So knowing about ever smaller parts of quarks doesn't help too much with "spooky action at a distance" yet, likewise I can't see luck getting explained or deconstructed very well. So does magic mean things unexplained and unexplored, or things caused by omniscient spirit hands effecting things without our consent? I don't know why that happens is more scientific than saying 'no, it doesn't happen' or 'I feel something had to make it happen.'

Yes there is. Or do you dispute the very idea of causality?

Because it helps us decide between "the universe works by natural laws" and "the universe works by natural laws and magic". Since the magic term offers no explanation not found in the statement that doesn't include it, it is superfluous. In fact, parsimony and logic aside, it is also less likely no matter what thanks to how probability works.

This is also the way we choose between "the universe works by natural laws" and "the universe works by natural laws and also the whims of FZ's butt".

Because... you say so?

And how is this better than the at-best broken clock accuracy of non-scientific explanations?

"Supernatural" has the disadvantage of being a nonsense word. What is "supernatural"? Being above or beyond what is natural. What is "natural"? Pertaining to the universe or being real. The word either makes no sense or is a synonym for "not real".

Sometimes people survive things, or recover from diseases, that medical science and doctors say should have killed them or been untreatable. They're forced to chalk it up to "Miracles" as they have no explanation for it.

There you go, magic.

Sometimes people make decks of cards and many of those decks have a Queen of Clubs. There you go, magic.

Wait, we're not just making up new definitions for the word "magic"? I thought that's what people were doing by defining it as "stuff I durn can't explain right now".

Does the transition from "can't explain, therefore MAGIC" to "science" apply retroactively? Does it still apply if someone else knows the explanation but not you?

Dunno, wasn't paying much attention. I was using the definition that was being bandied about by other people.

There is the age old quote "Any sufficiently advanced science that we are incapable of explaining is indistinguishable from magic". I butchered the hell out of it, but you get the gist. If we work off of that, then by that assumption, anything is science once we're sufficiently able to explain it.

We just have to be able to sufficiently explain it.

Well, that's saying it's indistinguishable from magic. But that doesn't mean we must bother entertaining the idea that it is magic, much in the same way that the fact that the universe is indistinguishable from a simulacrum doesn't mean we must entertain the idea that it's all a demon's illusion.

I stand completely by what I said.

So, by your definition of the word, what does magic actually include?

At this point, you've crossed the line from trying to figure out what things are, to over defining them and missing the point entirely.

It reminds me of something Einstein said. You can define Beethoven symphony in terms variation of air pressure but doing so you lose all meaning and end up making even less sense.

Something to that effect anyway. Those weren't the exact words.

Pretty sure that wouldn't stop your average Philosophy major.

Or crazy nutjob.

But I digress. Even if we assume there is a scientific explanation for everything, we don't have all those explanations yet. What happens though if we scientifically prove something bizarre and astonishing that we, uh, couldn't explain. That sounds like gibberish, but gimme a sec.

What happens if tomorrow, there is an amazing discovery. Deep in a lab somewhere, they captured Bob the Ghost. They've talked with him and tested him and conclusively proved that he is a real ghost. However, what if they can't explain how Bob ticks? Is he a soul? Residual memory? A lost spirit on its way to Heaven or Hell? And Bob doesn't know either, because the last thing he remembers is forgetting to look both ways before crossing the street.

Would he be mystical, or unexplained scientific phenomenon? And is there a difference between the two in this instance?

So I suppose you hold some grievances with the scientific method, too, since it relies on causality? I guess all the progress we've made with it was accidental.

I'm not the one trying to claim it exists. The burden's not on me to decide this.

Fine then, what does "supernatural" mean?

The latter, easily. Maybe we'd need to revise some theories due to this new evidence, but that only goes to support that it's something "scientific".

Much the same way as if we found Heaven. If we can notice it, we can interact with it, even if it's just observing reflected radio waves or something. And if we can interact, we can test and measure. Or if we found, like, goblins who can float or something. How are they doing it? Let's find out.

Now what if we never figure it out? We poke and we prod, and nothing comes up, and Bob is as stumped as we are. We assume, "Clearly the tools of today aren't sufficient. We need more advanced tools, and more cases to study."

And yet it doesn't happen. A hundred years pass. We never find Steve the Ghost or Lisa the Ghost. Bob is the only one in the world that can be conclusively found and studied (Oh, sure, people still say they see ghosts, now more then ever since everyone has it in their minds that ghosts are real, but never one as tangible or provable as Bob, most of them being considered hoaxes or seeing things), and even with current tools, we can't figure it out.

One thousand years pass. We've expanded into space and other systems, our technology is light years beyond what we have today. Bob is still chilling, because hey, what else is he going to do? He hasn't faded away, and has no hint of a greater purpose, and even far future Super Science can't figure out exactly what he is. Across all the stars and all of space, no other ghosts have been found that can be tested or studied in such detail, Bob appears to be a unique specimen, possibly even a fluke.

Is Bob still a matter of science? Does he ever go beyond the abilities of science to explain, to become some sort of anomaly, or possibly even something of impossible and mystical origin?

Bob does become something "outside of" science, yes, because he is defined to be untestable by himself and there are no other examples that can be found (so he can't be experimented on in the astronomical sense). You would have to be able to make some empirical observations about him simply due to the fact that we can interact with him, but nothing terribly important (since you defined that as the case ).

This doesn't mean that he's not something that COULD be explained through science; we're just unfortunately incapable of setting the right conditions.

To give a similar example, the event horizon around a black hole or at the edge of the observable universe impose similar conditions. Because of what the event horizon is, stuff happening inside the black hole is incapable of affecting the universe outside and is thus unobservable and untestable. Are black holes magic?