fireballs and stuff are a tremendous distraction, and in that sense D&D may be the worst thing that's ever happened to magic
your inability to throw fireballs is how you convince yourself that magic is not real and you can't have it
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magic has nothing to do with violating the laws of physics. it has much to do with violating *expectations*, and we can reflect on what in our society causes us to conflate the two
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how are you so confident you know the laws of physics anyway it's not like you replicated all those experiments yourself or anything (apologies to the one guy reading this who actually did do that, you're a king and this tweet isn't for you)
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"the laws of physics" *should* refer to your experience of pushing and pulling and bending and breaking and grasping and stretching but it *actually* refers to a specific kind of propaganda that was shoved down your throat in grade school
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in this way "violating the laws of physics" becomes a dream symbol of violating the prejudices with which your culture indoctrinated you. your dreams don't obey the laws of physics and why should they
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in the opposite direction one can attempt to egoically *identify* with the laws of physics; "i am on the side of True Knowledge about the Universe, which was revealed to me by a textbook i was told to read in high school, the True Source of All Knowledge"
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this is the central feature of neil degrasse tyson's tweets that makes him so insufferable. i have been stewing on how best to express how much i hate this about his writing for ages
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but let us not dwell on small and petty things
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no wait one sec it turns out i too am small and petty
neil degrasse tyson wants Truth to be about space because he does not want to look at the earth; he wants Truth to be about the vast emptiness of the universe because he does not want to look at fullness
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he wants Truth to be inaccessible to the naked eye because he does not want to look at his perceptions, he wants Truth to be about things that are far away because he does not want to look at what is near, i could go on and on and on like this really
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if Truth is about physics then learning the Truth does not improve your ability to help yourself or the people around you with their ordinary everyday problems in the slightest, unless possibly it leads to some kind of career where a physics degree is a useful thing to have
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that is to say, if Truth is about physics, then unless you're literally a nuclear engineer or something, learning the Truth means you get to sit smugly in your armchair and feel good about how much Truth is in your head, safe where it cannot influence your actions
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your head may want Truth to be about physics but meanwhile your heart watches anime with magical girls in it who shine beams of light and love at their enemies; that is the Truth of your heart and i seriously literally mean that
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in conclusion, anime has more to teach you than neil degrasse tyson does. thank you for coming to my TED talk. please remember that every time i tweet i am talking to myself
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Replying to
Naturalism is not just for engineering but for lie detection. That's why Epicurus taught atomism before you could build anything with it. Requiring a physical mechanism for cause-and-effect rules out many claims. Epicirus recognized supernatural claims are mostly for manipulation