@cjd I would lean towards machines being used by 'the beast' referenced in Revelation 13 as a way to work wonders and lead people away from God. >Revelation Revelation 13:15 NKJV >He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed.
@threalist@Paultron@Victor_Emmanuel Computers are just carefully arranged rocks if you think about it. This makes the schizoposters who talk about circuits being sigils slightly more convincing.
@cjd@Paultron@Victor_Emmanuel@threalist It is a bit wild. It's also a fallacious oversimplification to earnestly call computers "carefully arranged rocks", but it's fun to say and think about.
The term "carefully arranged rocks" cries out oversimplification, by it's own choice of words.
That said, I think there is usefulness to borrowing from metaphors around spells, magic, and enchantment when we attempt to explain computers and software. Sadly (as far as I'm aware) old metaphors are fairly anemic, and the idea of magic is limited to things like cursing people and summoning daemons which always ends up badly.
It seems that most of the complex literature about magic is more contemporary work that is sort of "back dated" to feel old and wise. As it happens, this makes for stunningly good fantasy literature.
I'm aware that this whole direction of thought is sensitive for Christians, whose have a sort of Sorcerer's Apprentice view of magic, as something that is inherently evil and must never be touched.
@cjd@Paultron@Victor_Emmanuel@threalist I do think it's interesting to consider the archeological perspective on a lot of olde world "magic" related beliefs a la alchemy and attempting to figure out how the world works and how to try and master it. "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" has always seemed like a sci-fi cope, but I think there's a chance that some of what we perceived as "primitive superstitious magic" was early civilization's attempts to understand the material world in a time and place where even having any resources available to do such a thing was a new thing for humanity.
@cjd@BowsacNoodle@MartianM00n@Paultron@Victor_Emmanuel@adequate@threalist To make sure I don't come off as a pedantic ass, most of physics doesn't work in 100% of cases. There are occasionally nice overlaps between subjects, but often the models just don't work. Models in physics gives you a prediction, but when you run the actual experiment you have lots of potential errors that cause deviations.
But even when they don't work in a certain case, we still use them for others because the math is easy to work with, or the accuracy we need isn't great enough to use more complex models.
Even the "shining jewels" of physics, Quantum mechanics, the Standard Model, and Relativity, are either incomplete, make incorrect predictions, or fail to predict certain phenomenon.
Now to be fair to them, afaik these three models have "passed" every test thrown at them, *but there are still lots of unexplained phenomenon and the general consensus is that we'll discover something strange someday that will upend one or all of these models. But we will still also use them because they worked so well up to a certain point.
Actually a lot of physics stuff we actually don't know. We know what it does, and we can generally reproduce the same behavior, but we don't really know what's going on behind it.
That is to say, our model of the universe requires a lot of assumptions, a lot of rough edges and has a lot of exceptions to the rules which we're supposed to just pretend don't exist (e.g. Dark matter). There are also still quite a number of phenomena which the model doesn't explain at all and which mainstream scientists either accept and ignore (EmDrive), or else actively deny despite multiple successful reproductions (Riche thermal anomaly, cold fusion).
@branman65 Catholics were the group that refused to cooperate in the infamous HRC email leaks regarding cultural engineering attempts. It's not the Catholics that are attempting to push sodomy, abortion, usury, transgenderism, war, feminism, etc... Your anti-Catholic bias is barely relevant to the topic at hand and is just you reaching for a chance to complain about Catholics. Very very disrespectful.
@NoDoxGregBrady@BowsacNoodle@adequate@MartianM00n@cjd@Paultron@Victor_Emmanuel@threalist He answered it that way because there is, as far as I know, at least four explanations for magnetism, but there are probably more. The first comes from classical electrodynamics. "Moving charges produce magnetic fields!" The second comes from relativity. "Moving charges see length contraction, which changes the density of electric charges relative to other electric charges, changing the balance of forces between them". And then there is the quantum answers. "Magnetic forces are caused by electron’s spin, and give rise to a magnetic dipole moments" and "magnetic forces are a manifestation from the exchange of virtual photons when particles are in motion relative to each other."
The problem is that this gets into bigger questions. What is spin? What are magnetic dipole moments? What is length contraction. What are virtual photons?
I think what he was upset by is that people who answer these questions tend to make analogies to give the feeling that you understand it, but really don't. Basically, I think he was mad because I think he thought they were wanting him to give some "pop science" answer like "magnetic forces are like rubber bands".
It's a simple question. He could just answer with the four (five?) known forces. That's all he has to do. He can make it 'fun' by stating that we still don't know how gravity works.
"We're asking simple questions like why do magnets repel each other, but another question is why, or better how, do objects with mass pull on each other from across the entirety of the Universe? Faster than the speed of light, which is supposed to be a hard-stop. Yet all mass is in constant permanent contact with all other mass, at all times. We don't know how or why."
Take the magnetism to the gravity question, and it strips out the religion/priesthood quality from the "Scientist" and begins nudging back towards:
@MisterLister@branman65 One thing I find really funny is that he's got me muted for basically no reason. But hey it's the Catholics that are always shit flinging, right?
@BowsacNoodle@branman65 Well you see Mister Noodle, according to Branman Catholics are going to be burning in hell because some of them told him to stop gooning to monstergirls
Gravity goes the speed of light. Countless experiments have shown this, including LIGO in 2015.
If you want to believe that God is behind this, that's fine, but don't sully His work by assuming he designed the systems so poorly that it actively needs his hand in basic phenomena.
@BowsacNoodle@adequate@MartianM00n@cjd@Paultron@threalist Uranium is a magic fantasy metal. It can be forged into a weapon that can destroy cities and curse the surrounding land to be barren of life. It works by creating a tiny star for an instant.
There is, by the way, a very compelling narrative which says that magic is 100% real, and the entire history of imperial power has been based on centralizing the practice of it within a small priesthood, and then making sure no one else gets it.
In history it was taught that magic is something to be avoided, and people who practiced it were murdered in gruesome ways. In modernity we are generally taught that it just doesn't exist, but the powers that be have a strange unexplained fixation on dosing everyone with fluoride, aluminum, and during the 20th century, lead.
Suppose the real reason for this was because these metals damage the brain enough to prevent higher states of consciousness necessary for the practice of magic.
This is a hard position to defend, because the accusation will be that the church doesn't want YOU to have magic, but the upper echelon is actively practicing it themselves - like everybody's favorite Catholic Judeophile and Tantra instructor.
@branman65@cjd Catholics and Orthodox don't "worship" Mary, unless you believe the "love" you have for your parents is the same as the love you have for your friend, the love you have for God, or the love you have for a spouse.
@BowsacNoodle@cjd As a partial preterist I disagree with tying it to Revelation, but I think many false teachers will use machines to decieve people (including tempting them into weird Mary worship stuff in the case of ChatGPT) like they have used other tools.