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
Conversation
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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[half-heartedly] tyson's "most astounding fact" talking point is that we *are* the universe, that the matter in our bodies comes from the scattered enriched guts of supernova, there is no distinction between far away and near because we are it and it is us
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Replying to
hmm
i was actually hoping to QT a tweet i saw from him that was something like "the universe is cold and pitiless and it does not care about you" but i couldn't find it when i searched his tweets so maybe he deleted? that's more the kind of stuff i'm responding to