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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5027597" data-attributes="member: 54707">I don't know PP, can ya harp-play by accident? I mean I've seen Harpo make it look easy and all, but then again he's a professional accident. Most people have to practice at that kinda thing.Speaking of that, ya reckon the devil bargains by happenstance, or programmed algorithm? I tried to get him to buy my fiddle once and he was a pretty shrewd negotiator. Had to really work to get him to meet my price. But then he went bankrupt through profligate living and over-leveraged debt and I still can't get a dime out of him, so who's laughing now? I guess it's true what they say, you can't trust hell to pay unless you're willing to give em hell to pay.But I'm all for Three Mile Island nuclear-physics-magic. Of course nowadays I think they call that Chernobyl Sorcery.Price of progress I reckon. Still, count me in on that because when the math works out, that's when the magic really happens.I also like your point by the way about danger. About magic being dangerous. If it wasn't then you wouldn't need all the carbon rods of absorbly mite and the wands of entropic quarkiness. (You think I'm joking, but I'm being serious here, just with a bit of legerdemain as a side-order. STUPEFY! I just re-read the Half-Blood Prince, so don't blame me for that, blame pop-culture. It's made a real mess of magic-science if you ask me.)You've got a point too about being able to reliably perform the miraculous. But if you can reliably perform the miraculous then where's the danger in that? I guess you're right back to Chernobyl sorcery in that case. Reliable is as your half-life zone of contamination propagates. Or at least as far as your state-controlled media can obscure the video coverage. And who wants to live with that in your neighborhood?By the way PP, don't take anything I've just said seriously or suspiciously. Must be all the eggnog and candy canes. And John Keats. I read way too much Keats when waxing noetic.Thats' the trouble with trying to make a science out of the mind. Just when you think you're starting to sound logical someone else is of a mind ob-verse.I wouldn't argue that. Anymore than I'd argue that secrets are what you keep away from undesirables.  But do ya think it's possible for a science to make observations about a thing without really understanding exactly how it operates? For instance do you reckon that someone had noticed gravity before Newton or electrical current before Franklin, they just never conceptualized it formally?And is a thing a science as soon as it's publicly observed and commented upon, or only after it's been properly formulated, and/or controlled?I'd be interested if folks might define and differentiate exactly what is magic, miracle, proto-science, and formal science?That way people can know precisely why magic is magic, and not rocket-science.I'm not sure exactly just how that's gonna work out, but it should be a trick and a treat to watch.</blockquote>

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