I largely agree, but I do think fantasy-story magic differs from our world's physics in one significant way: the laws of magic tend to resemble human psychology much, much more than our physics does. The opening quote of this post is itself an example: to practice their craft, Pratchett's witches have to negotiate with gods, which--real and mundane as they may be--presumably have beliefs and desires that bear at least some similarity to human ones. And while it's occasionally a nice shorthand to refer to physical entities as having beliefs and desires (look, the charge wants to go that way/this amplifier knows where ground is), the mappings are very rudimentary, and they aren't even a very accurate way to look at the picture.

Even when magic doesn't involve actual gods or godlike beings, it usually interfaces much more "nicely" with human psychology than real technology does; the process of casting a spell often depends in some way on the caster's emotional state, and spell effects can be structured around intuitive concepts with apparent ease (say, a curse that affects subsequent generations of a family--a group of entities that is very difficult to specify in physical terms). Granted, our real-world technology could conceivably advance to the point where it works something like this, but it's still an important fact that it doesn't, and can't, work that way now. Until we make some giant technological leaps, being an engineer or physicist is not going to be much like the typical wizard's experience, where psychology really matters and one's emotions have intricate effects on one's results.

I participated a role playing game for the second time recently, set up by my colleague Bryan Caplan. We played investigative journalists trying to uncover a grand conspiracy. Afterward, Bryan asked me what I thought, and I said it would be more exciting to pretend to be doing very important things if I didn't already think I was doing very important things in my ordinary life. :)

A little backstory. I have always had some issues, during my early teen years I was obsessed with fantasies- certain specific fantasies. This came to the point that my family started investigating mentall illness as a way to understand some of the things I was doing/saying/thinking. Ive never actually been commited, or recieved proffesional psychiatric treatment, but that doesnt mean i shouldnt have.

I would just like to point out that the cause for these issues was the intense and unshakable desire to exsist in a world "above ours", that this ordinary, "merely real" world was a sad and pathetic place to live.

In my adult life i have resolved some of my issues, but that deep burning desire to live in a more spectacular reality would occasionally nag. However these words-

"If I'm going to be happy anywhere, Or achieve greatness anywhere, Or learn true secrets anywhere, Or save the world anywhere, Or feel strongly anywhere, Or help people anywhere, I may as well do it in reality."

Have seriously altered the way I think about the world over the past 24 hours of pondering. Its sort of like having these pressing, burning desires which were aimed at a situation of near infinite impossibility has suddenly been aimed at the real world.

Like things i do could actually matter at some point in my life, instead of just being drown out by the despair of normallity.

There are a number of fantasy stories where the protagonist is very good at something, largely because they work hard at it, and then they enter a magical world and discover that their skills and work have a lot more impact. Often they have to work hard after they get there to apply their skills. Often the protagonist is a computer hacker and their skills, which in our world only work inside of computers, in a magical context can alter physical / consensual reality. (Examples: Broken Crescent, Web Mage. There are many others. Arguably this pattern goes back at least to The Incomplete Enchanter though success came way too easily for Harold Shea.)

So I think the appeal of this type of fantasy is partly that big effects in our world usually require big causes -- capital investment, megatons of steel, etc. -- even after you know the right "magic spell". In these fantasy worlds -- and in some cases in computer networks -- big, widely distributed effects can be produced just by uttering the magic spell in the right place, or by building a local, inexpensive magical workshop using the right blueprint -- e.g. YouTube.

Wendy: That means accepting the reality that people like the things they like, not wishing for a fantasy world where people magically like the things you think they ought to.

Okay, now that is exactly what I do not mean by saying, "Bind your heart into reality, rather than somewhere else."

What you've just described is an opportunity to help people think differently. Down the line, it's a moral choice about whether human beings should modify themselves in certain ways.

It does not require magic, an unlawful universe, to speak of a future in which people are not always yearning for unlawfulness, or, perhaps, yearning less forcefully.

Caledonian: . When you can sing things into existence, you're deeply connected to the nature of existence.

When you can PLAN things into existence, you're deeply connected to the nature of existence.

There is no possible spell as wonderful as the ability to think. There is one ultimate superpower and it is what we are.

Feeding material into a universal replicator and getting whatever you want manufactured may require astoundingly complex science and engineering, but no one's going to be particularly impressed once the novelty has worn off.

The rationalist argument for the fun-theoretical superiority of a magic (non-fundamentally magic) world is that, if the laws of magic are such that people individually study the math necessary to cast their spells, they can accomplish things through their own efforts, rather than by pressing a button that makes use of someone else's strength. If you personally did the astoundingly complex science and engineering to build the replicator, drinking that Earl Grey tea would be a lot more satisfying.

Tarleton: Or more simply: magic is appealing for the same reason a Super Happy Agent is appealing - it means the universe cares about us.

We care about each other. This suffices. It is not necessary that the universe be like a human, because humans are like humans.

Martin wants to be uniquely powerful and higher-status, but this request can only be granted to a few people, barring delusive holodecks, so it's not a good project for utilitarians;

Tarleton suggests that a reality with fundamental magic is more wonderful, but this is probably impossible even in principle, because magic is too complex to be atomic;

But rfriel's, Harris's, and Pearson's versions of magic's appeal - "I want to be individually empowered by producing neato effects myself, without large capital investments and many specialists helping" and "I want the neato things I do to have a more natural user interface" are in principle doable - you can get this with, say, the right kind of nanotechnology, or (ahem) other sufficiently advanced tech, and bring it to a large user base, as long as they have the basic psychological ability to take joy in anything that is merely real.

I wish this kind of stuff was taught to more children. Too few people fall in love with reality.

Martin, like most people who apologize for having English as a second language, your posts are clearer than those of many people who have English as a first language.

This is all very true, but maybe some realities actually are more conducive to wonder than others, and maybe a reality with (natural and ontologically basic, not human-created) magic would be more wonderful than ours is, just as ours with relativity and QM might be more wonderful than one with purely classical physics. Still, I don't see why we couldn't eventually tweak ourselves to see the real world as as wondrous as we want.

"One of the fundamental differences between technology and magic is that two engineers do twice as much work as one would do"

This is demonstrably untrue; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month.

"Engineers can, so the things you create with technology aren't comparable to the products of big companies,"

If this were true, startups wouldn't exist.

"I wonder if anyone can come up with a good argument as to why it is actually better to live in a non-personal, non-caring universe than in a caring one."

I think Eli's argument is that a caring universe isn't necessary for happiness. If he thought that the universe should stay uncaring, he wouldn't be trying to develop FAI.

I disagree with your premise that if dragons did exit that they wouldn't interest people. I haven't read through the comments, so I don't know if anyone's addressed this yet, but there are real world analogies that disprove your point. Sharks for instance. Sharks are very real, and you can take a trip out into open water to spend time with the more dangerous varieties if you wish. The Great White that was at the SF aquarium generated a great deal of attention. People still like zebras but aren't usually as fascinated by them. The reason is that sharks are dangerous. Dragons, one would imagine, would be even more dangerous. They would probably attract even more attention.

Eliezer sayeth: "I want to be individually empowered by producing neato effects myself, without large capital investments and many specialists helping" ... [is] in principle doable - you can get this with, say, the right kind of nanotechnology, or (ahem) other sufficiently advanced tech, and bring it to a large user base..."

Agreed. But as you hint, Eliezer, this case is indistinguishable from magic. So arguably the class of fantasies I mention are equivalent to living in some interesting future. In any case they don't seem to match the schema you present in the post.

Eliezer continues: "...as long as they have the basic psychological ability to take joy in anything that is merely real." I think that even in a wonderful future, most people will take joy from unusually large bangs, crazy risks, etc. as they do today; fancy technology will make these easier to produce and survive. Most people still won't get much joy or wonder from the underlying phenomena unless we re-engineer human nature. Ian Banks' Culture novels and short stories have some pretty good ironic accounts of amazing Culture technology being used for thrills by idiots.

I don't disagree with the importance of "joy in things that are merely real." But there are multiple sources of joy, some higher quality than others.

And speaking of wishing for magical power, I wish I could copy a quote from this blog and paste it into the comment box with the text styles preserved. Shows how hard it is to come by magic.

I read fantasy, though less so now, mainly because it is groups of people banding together to achieve a goal they knew was just or worthwhile (generally saving the world, defeating the evil forces). The actual magic was just a spice that leant an air of mystery, and unpredictability (so I am more a fan of George Martin, David Gemmell and Guy Gavriel Kay rather than Raymond E. Feist and David Eddings. Robert Jordan lost me when the good guys split up into bickering factions).

I'm just disappointed that AI is at the herding cats stage (myself included), when trying achieve consensus on how to actually proceed. No party of merry adventurers are we.

With regards to the allure of magic compared to science, magic tends to need a lot less in terms of support mechanisms. The inability to get precisely machined parts would hamper your attempts to build a transportation device, where magic, depending upon the sub-genre, can do just about anything with anything, so is much more empowering and self-sufficient.

"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." - Larry Niven

I know this is an old post, but I think you're missing something. If a person from this world were sucked into a world with dragons, xe would have spent xyr whole life thinking "dragons are awesome" and would therefore think they were really, really cool the first time xe saw one, and possibly for quite a while after. Possibly long enough to last until the Generic Evil Dark Lord Guy is defeated.

And second, often, these people don't just live a mundane existence with magic. They're often the Chosen Hero Of Whatever, which makes them much more important in that world than in this one. That alone is better, just like it might be better to turn out to be the secret heir of a country in the real world. (Well, that might have its own problems, but so would needing to fight a Generic Evil Dark Lord Guy.)

Further, if magic is real, not everyone necessarily knows how to do it (or has the right innate talent), but if the protagonist ends up learning to use it in such a situation, that makes them special even to people who have lived in that world their entire lives.

Another thing about the wish fulfillment is that they become heroes and gain a lot of friends, rather than being normal and possibly not well-liked at home. The broader social circle and greater respect is nothing to shake a stick at either. Also, the world might be set up to facilitate one particular dream they happen to have that's impractical in the real world, allowing them to find easier fulfillment.

These things, plus the chance to start all over and make the best first impressions you can, are what make the wish fulfillment fulfilling of wishes, not just the magic. The magic just makes it kind of cooler.

I think a lot of fantasy tropes have a great deal of merit from a fun-theory standpoint. You are right that being magically transported to a world of magic and dragons would lose its novelty after six months for most people, but the novelty is not the only improvement. Dragons provide a greater challenge to kill than lions (not that fights to the death with lions are currently all that available) so if someone's idea of fun is hunting lions with a spear, dragons ensure they have something to do after they get too skillful. Floating rocks and twisting crystal spires can be harder to climb than any earthly mountain, so someone who has gotten too good at climbing will continue to have challenges. Fantasy ideas are a great place to find things to do after earthly challenges lose interest.

Magic is typically portrayed as something like science, but with rules that are more complex and less difficult to grasp. The rules of magic also tend to follow more anthropic patterns than the rules of science. A scientist, no matter how guileful, will never trick an electron: electrons have no brains to trick. Nothing stops the rules of magic from allowing a wizard to pull a fast one on a thaum. Humans like solving patterns and learning about the world: a more complex set of rules gives more patterns to solve, less difficult rules give more immediate gratification. Rules that behave somewhat like humans instead of like simple mathematical constructs are rewarding because we enjoy using the parts of our brain designed to reason about other humans. And the end result - a spell where you wave your hands around and say some funny words and get light, is far more immediately gratifying than the effort it would take to build a light bulb circuit from scratch (presuming the effort to figure out how to do it for the first time is equal for both science and magic). The whole concept of magic reads like a fairly well-conceived expression of how science would work if it was designed to provide maximum enjoyment to humans.

My baseline virtual-reality utopia is everyone living in small tribes in a fantasy world, where you have to hunt for your food but it's not that hard unless you want something really tasty, where everyone occasionally has to band together to fend off lions or dragons, scientists test the laws of the universe by building supercoliders using magic, and where dying is painful but temporary. I would hope we can come up with better, but it's better than a volcano fortress full of cat girls.

The idea that you're not significant is invalid in the internet age. You can write an operating system in your mom's basement and distribute it around the world.

Savage - Same here... Weird indeed!

Eliezer - Just a thought... You wrote: "They might be excited at first, but (like the lottery winners who, six months later, aren't nearly as happy as they expected to be), the excitement would soon wear off."

I've just begun delving into the science of happiness and there found among many things, exactly what you hint at here. That most people have an inborn level of happiness, which they eventually revert to no matter what happens to them in their lives. In my research I stumbled upon a survey that stated that however frightening the prospect of being paralyzed may seem, before being paralyzed, a surprising (I don't know how they really determined the surprising-level here though) number of people actually ended up being as overall happy as they were befor being paralyzed. So no matter if youre winning milions or being paralyzed, you will usually revert to your inborn level of happiness.

I have no idea if this is true, but I find it interessting, and what you wrote struck a cord in me. Among other things because Iv'e been a fantasyfan and roleplayer for more than 15 years now.

What I really wanted to comment on is that the same people that Im reading about happiness also states that human happiness is relative. What that means is that if everybody is totting wands shooting fireballs, summoning demons and generally being fantasywizards, then it will be no thrill at all. Which I guess is part of your point, but what I think you're missing in the equation is that in most fantasystories whether they are played out in a novel or in roleplayinggames, the heroes are unique or in some way stands out from the crowd.

If I would want magical powers I would only want them under the same premise that I usually find them in fantasynovels and roleplayinggames; me being the only one or at least one of a select few having magical powers. All my wet fantasy fantasies evolve around the idea that my character is unique and wield powers vastly greater than everyone else. Maybe my powers are latent, but they are there and they are better then everyone else's. To sum it up, I would only want magical powers if it would set me out from the crowd, only if it would make me relativly better than everyone else that I would come in contact with. In this understanding I would be able to become more happy, just by being able to do magic, because it would make me better than someone else.

Seen from my perspective I don't think that my inability to be contend with my current life would keep me from being contend with a fantasy or future life with magic or psionics, where some or all of my dreams with regards to power would be within my grasp. The incentive to work harder to hone my powers and achieve godhood (or whatever) would be so much bigger in a world where people really DID walk on water, parts the sea and blows up New York with a mere thought. In our own world all I can really dream of of achieving is being better at math or seducing women etc.

So although I do think you have a very valid point that we should be able to appreciate the NOW here, before we can appreciate the NOW anywhere, I do think that when talking and thinking about fantasyuniverses where everything imaginable is within reach, or at least could be possible (all up to the author), the point is a bit moot.

Does that make sense to you guys?

And sorry if my english is not that good, it's my second language... Thanx for a great and inspiring blog everybody! It's my first comment here and I really feel dwarfed by your appearant intellects, so it is with great humility and expectation that I so openly utter my difference of opinion with a guy (Eliezer) that I for more than a year now has admired for his great insights... Enuff wit da flattery, bring it on ;)

Tell that to my level 82 orc wizard with tier 11 gear!

We care about each other. This suffices. It is not necessary that the universe be like a human, because humans are like humans.

Suffices for you. Your aesthetics are not most people's aesthetics, although they probably are better in this respect.

Or more simply: magic is appealing for the same reason a Super Happy Agent is appealing - it means the universe cares about us.

"When you can sing things into existence, you're deeply connected to the nature of existence."

I think you're reading too much into it. A medieval peasant would gawk at an electric light.

To clarify my earlier comment: The major disconnect is between things we've already studied and things we haven't, not between reality and unreality. If, tomorrow, we discovered a new combination of EM fields that could remotely levitate random objects, it would qualify as amazing new magic- even though it's based off of well-understood theories and nobody's written a book about it. Telling people that reality is just as amazing as magic won't work in the long-term, even if they are identical on some calibrated amazingness metric, because people quickly get bored with things they have too much experience with. The trick is to find things within reality that we haven't heard about before, and there are certainly plenty of those.

Technology is never as interesting as magic, because technology doesn't imply that human beings are fundamentally a part of the most basic aspects of the world and are thus important. When you can sing things into existence, you're deeply connected to the nature of existence. Feeding material into a universal replicator and getting whatever you want manufactured may require astoundingly complex science and engineering, but no one's going to be particularly impressed once the novelty has worn off.

There's a reason the fictional folk on Star Trek don't stand about gawking at the transporter, and it's the same reason you people aren't constantly amazed by light bulbs and hot running water.

You think people would be wowed by futuretech? Why aren't they wowed by present technology, then?

Eliezer, isn't reading a good fantasy story like being transported into another world?

Jed Harris: I agree... Our world seems to have the rule: "you are not significant". You can't design and build an airplane in your backyard, no one can. Even if you've got enough money, you haven't got enough time for that. In magical worlds (including Star Trek, Asimov, etc) that is what seems to be normal. (And I've never read about a committee which coordinates the work of hundreds of sorcerers, who create new spells 8 hours a day...)

rfriel: Yes, we could build the technology to do the things magic can do, but even with our current technology we also can do things which magic can't. And these limitations are which make magic so "nice", not only the features.

Martin: to be the best, you only have to make your world small. (I was one of the best in math in our secondary school, and it didn't bother me that I wasn't the best in the whole country, or that I was quite bad in history...) But it would have been soo good to be the one who makes the best operating systems in the whole school...

I like quoting this passage from Joyce Carol Oates' profile of H.P. Lovecraft (King of the Weird):

Readers of genre fiction, unlike readers of what we presume to call "literary fiction," assume a tacit contract between themselves and the writer: they understand that they will be manipulated, but the question is how? and when? and with what skill? and to what purpose? However plot-ridden, fantastical, or absurd, populated by whatever pseudo-characters, genre fiction is always resolved, while "literary fiction" makes no such promises; there is no contract between reader and writer for, in theory at least, each work of literary fiction is original, and, in essence, "about" its own language; anything can happen, or, upon occasion, nothing. Genre fiction is addictive, literary fiction, unfortunately, is not.

By the way, that was a wonderful post. It's nice that Overcoming Bias is trying to bring abatement to the temperamentally challenged. It could be argued, though, that falling in love with reality is preciously hard when the economic grindstone tries its best to make the life of a lot of, if not most, people depressing. Maybe for them the allure of having not to think about a "crushing mortgage" would be quite enough to easily befriend a World of Magic.

I was pondering the philosophy of fantasy stories, and it occurred to me that if there were actually dragons in our world - if you could go down to the zoo, or even to a distant mountain, and meet a fire-breathing dragon - while nobody had ever actually seen a zebra, then our fantasy stories would contain zebras aplenty, while dragons would be unexciting.

You don't seriously think that, do you???

Dragons: fly, breathe fire, ginormous | Zebras: gallop, have stripes

Dragons >> zebras. In no world would zebras feature more prominently in fiction than dragons, regardless of which was real. I get the general point, that nonexistence breeds excitement, but this was a horrible example.

For some reason, this song feels relevant to the discussion.

Audio available from: http://www.pcplanets.com/mp3s-1353833-Rich-Fantasy-Lives.shtml Lyrics at: http://www.tomsmithonline.com/lyrics/rich_fantasy_lives.htm

In my flawed self-analysis, I've noticed myself have 2 kinds of wonder, and I think this might be a common theme to other people.

1. Wonder of novelty -- when something hasn't been experienced before and it is there is a great freshness from seeing it for the first time if it's interesting, colourful etc. This is where things like the travel bug comes from, and better fulfilled by Westerners through going to Rajasthan than Salisbury

2. Wonder of understanding -- this is the wonder of knowing something for an extended period of time and still being amazed by it. For instance, I have a great wonder for Special Relativity despite knowing the details for many years.

I would say that your post laments that in most people 1 >> 2. And while I think this might be true, there are still a great deal of instances of 2 in most people: from getting lost in a conversation with an old friend or partner to taking walks through nature (which never ceases to amaze people even though they may have been on the same beach at sunset hundreds of times).

I realize the oldest comment on this thread is from 3 years ago, but I still have something to say. The reason people like the idea of magic I think is that it makes us feel like it a part of us in a way that a lightbulb doesn't. Even if you invented the light bulb, it doesn't feel like it is a part of you in the same way as if you could make light with magic or had a natural ability to emit light. Being able to generate explosions as a part of you feels better than making a bomb and pressing a switch.

It is the same reason why people prefer swords and other melee weapons over guns in fantasy and why cyborg are so well liked. These are all very physical and direct and we feel closer to those acts then the act of pressing a button. Actually making discoveries is more engaging then using the final product but it still doesn't feel like that power is a part of you so it doesn't fulfill the fantasy we want.