Strange7 comments on Open Thread: April 2010 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Unnamed 01 April 2010 03:21PM

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Comment author: Strange7 09 April 2010 03:51:48PM 0 points [-]

“The first codified definition of a ‘wizard’ as opposed to other less formal and implicitly inferior magic-users was someone who did ‘name-workings’. Nowadays, the formal definition of ‘wizard’ is somebody who uses spells, whether they invoke true names or not, as opposed to sorcerers, who throw around raw techniques…

http://www.talesofmu.com/story/book0x/378

I couldn’t help but think how close this approach was to the old “scientific” method of formalizing spells that had been left behind in the dark ages, the way that resulted in spells that only worked at all under highly select circumstances and could rarely be duplicated by more than a handful of people.

http://www.talesofmu.com/story/book0x/235