RichardKennaway comments on Rationality Quotes: April 2011 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: benelliott 04 April 2011 09:55AM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 04 April 2011 10:45:00AM 24 points [-]

I recently posted these in another thread, but I think they're worth putting here to stand on their own:

"Magic is just a way of saying 'I don't know.'"

Terry Pratchett, "Nation"

The essence of magic is to do away with underlying mechanisms. ... What makes the elephant disappear is the movement of the wand and the intent of the magician, directly. If there were any intervening processes, it would not be magic but just engineering. As soon as you know how the magician made the elephant disappear, the magic disappears and -- if you started by believing in magic -- the disappointment sets in.

William T. Powers (CSGNET mailing list, April 2005)

Comment author: soreff 04 April 2011 10:10:52PM 18 points [-]

Does that mean one can answer "Do you believe in magic?" with "No, but I believe in the existence of opaque proprietary APIs"?

Comment author: RichardKennaway 04 April 2011 11:08:19PM 1 point [-]

API's made by the superintelligent creators of this universe? Personally, no.

Comment author: soreff 05 April 2011 12:41:34AM *  4 points [-]

Actually, what I had in mind was Microsoft - though their products don't pass the "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" test. Opacity and incomprehensibility (the spell checker did what?) is within their grasp...

Comment author: David_Gerard 05 April 2011 09:43:05AM 6 points [-]

Worse: APIs grown by evolution. Evolution makes the worst BASIC spaghetti coder you ever heard of look like Don Knuth by comparison.

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