I like Arthur Clake's quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
__________________ Romans 1:16 "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth:..."
Romans 3:3-4 "For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar;"
I like Arthur Clake's quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Mr. Clarke was 100% correct and inspired several variations.
"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." -- Barry Gehm, biochemist, 1973
"What we can say is that magic anticipated modern science and technology." -- Georg Luck, historian, 1985
"If technology is distinguishable from magic, it is insufficiently advanced." -- Gregory Benford, author, 1997
__________________ "Would that I had unknown utterances, sayings that are unfamiliar, even new speech that has not occurred (before), free from repetitions, not the utterance of what has [long?] passed, which the ancestors spake." -- Khekheperre-Sonbu, priest, 19th century B.C.
"Man will believe anything, as long as it's not in the Bible." -- Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor, 19th century
"We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet." -- Harold C. Urey, chemist, 1962
I got the complete set of Farscape series (DVD) for Christmas. This set is made by chemical processes and obey the laws of physics. Yet these laws by themself doesn't explain the actual data which produces images and sound on my HDTV.
Yes, they do, actually, because if they didn't, there would be any images or sound on your HDTV.
__________________ Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it. - Philip K. Dick
You cannot reason a person out of position that they did not reason themselves into.
"Maybe you can't reason someone out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into, but apparently you can get them to run away and stick their head back in the sand." - Robbie-James-Francis
Christian Fundamentalists and Muslim Fundamentalists seem to share the same basic goal - to overthrow the Constitutional Republic of the United States, and replace it with a fundamentalist theocracy.
Mr. Clarke was 100% correct and inspired several variations.
"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." -- Barry Gehm, biochemist, 1973
"What we can say is that magic anticipated modern science and technology." -- Georg Luck, historian, 1985
Except both of these (and the guy repeating the first) misunderstood Clarke's statement. What Clarke meant was that sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic to people who do not have any concept about how such technology works or could possibly work.
The example usually given is the hypothetical of bringing a television backwards in time to, say, AD 1200. For practical reasons, suppose you ALSO bring a DVD player and a battery to power things. Show them the movie on the disc, and it'll look like magic to them. That's because they have no idea what electricity is, what plasma technology is, how you can put moving images and sound onto a piece of plastic (and what is plastic???)...
But none of that is magic to us. We understand plastics and electromagnetism very well. We understand how you can encode digital information onto a piece of plastic and have that decoded by laser technology and the decoded information translated into sound and light displayed through the television. It's not magic. It's science being applied.
__________________ Reality is that which refuses to go away when I stop believing in it. - Philip K. Dick
You cannot reason a person out of position that they did not reason themselves into.
"Maybe you can't reason someone out of a position they haven't reasoned themselves into, but apparently you can get them to run away and stick their head back in the sand." - Robbie-James-Francis
Christian Fundamentalists and Muslim Fundamentalists seem to share the same basic goal - to overthrow the Constitutional Republic of the United States, and replace it with a fundamentalist theocracy.
Cool, but is sounds like it's just sliding "downhill" where the hill is the dispersion of the acid level.
I'd imagine that if you had a graph of the PH level you could also see the maze path.
That was my reaction, probably with the acidity affecting surface tension and pushing the droplet along. Looks odd though. If you look at the droplet's route through the maze, it seems to head down one path and then double back, it tracks along one set of path three times. Should have followed the keep left rule.
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Hope this doesnt send this thread off-topic, but the question comes to mind..what actually IS intelligence? They seem to recognise different types of intelligence nowadays. I can't remember the categories exactly, but something like numerical intelligence, manual intelligence etc etc. Which is why, so Iunderstand, IQ tests only measure a certain type.
Do you think intelligence is 'pre-programmed', static, can be developed, or what?
Is intelligence when it comes down to it, instinct? What is already there? (As in birds building nests). Is the difference between birds and us, that they appear to instinctively know how to build nests, but we can observe that, and then copy them?
Except both of these (and the guy repeating the first) misunderstood Clarke's statement. What Clarke meant was that sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic to people who do not have any concept about how such technology works or could possibly work.
The example usually given is the hypothetical of bringing a television backwards in time to, say, AD 1200. For practical reasons, suppose you ALSO bring a DVD player and a battery to power things. Show them the movie on the disc, and it'll look like magic to them. That's because they have no idea what electricity is, what plasma technology is, how you can put moving images and sound onto a piece of plastic (and what is plastic???)...
But none of that is magic to us. We understand plastics and electromagnetism very well. We understand how you can encode digital information onto a piece of plastic and have that decoded by laser technology and the decoded information translated into sound and light displayed through the television. It's not magic. It's science being applied.
As anyone who ever seen Harry Potter knows that even magic runs on laws/rules. Some parts of quantum physics is stranger than any magic.
Thus science is just the magic that we become familiar with. If Harry Potter world was real there is no doubt man would come up with some kind of explanation why the world is the way it is then slap on the word "science" on it.
__________________ Romans 1:16 "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth:..."
Romans 3:3-4 "For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar;"
Last edited by Smidlee; 10th February 2010 at 05:12 PM.
Yes, they do, actually, because if they didn't, there would be any images or sound on your HDTV.
The data (which has no mass) rides on some forum of physical mass (DVD) in which they become one. Copyright laws are designed to protect data/information/ideas that has no mass.
__________________ Romans 1:16 "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth:..."
Romans 3:3-4 "For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar;"
As anyone who ever seen Harry Potter knows that even magic runs on laws/rules. Some parts of quantum physics is stranger than any magic.
Thus science is just the magic that we become familiar with. If Harry Potter world was real there is no doubt man would come up with some kind of explanation why the world is the way it is then slap on the word "science" on it.
__________________
Investigating how the world works and explaining it? That sounds like science to me! Why the quotation marks?
__________________ Little Miss 1665 her soul remains unclaimed.
Guess she must have really sinned now
- The Offspring, Jennifer Lost the War.
I like Arthur Clake's quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
To those who don't understand how it works.
Originally Posted by RealityCheck
Except both of these (and the guy repeating the first) misunderstood Clarke's statement. What Clarke meant was that sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic to people who do not have any concept about how such technology works or could possibly work.
The example usually given is the hypothetical of bringing a television backwards in time to, say, AD 1200. For practical reasons, suppose you ALSO bring a DVD player and a battery to power things. Show them the movie on the disc, and it'll look like magic to them. That's because they have no idea what electricity is, what plasma technology is, how you can put moving images and sound onto a piece of plastic (and what is plastic???)...
But none of that is magic to us. We understand plastics and electromagnetism very well. We understand how you can encode digital information onto a piece of plastic and have that decoded by laser technology and the decoded information translated into sound and light displayed through the television. It's not magic. It's science being applied.
That.
Originally Posted by Smidlee
As anyone who ever seen Harry Potter knows that even magic runs on laws/rules.
It doesn't have to.
People who invent magic systems for fantasy stories invent rules for them because a magic system without rules wouldn't make for a good story. "Anything is possible 'cause it's magic, except when I don't want it to" is a ham-handed way of plugging plot holes, and easily seems contrived.
What rules govern God's magic? ("Magic" here including all manner of supernatural acts/abilities - PLEASE don't get hung up on the word like some people do...)
__________________ "There is much we do not understand about the history of life, and the same will be true of our grandchildren. But, then, if we knew all there was to know, scientific interest would cease. Textbooks may portray science as a codification of facts, but it is really a disciplined way of asking about the unknown." - A.H. Knoll, Life on a Young Planet
"[G]ood and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are." Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
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