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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5028337" data-attributes="member: 54707">Janx, I'm either gonna have to run my Word count tool or toss some rune stones to be absolutely sure, to know for sure, but either way I'm betting you're right.All very excellent points. Especially as being analogous to modern science and technology, but I still don't think I'm quite getting my point across. So let me rephrase, and re-stress. In your example about a computer that situation might very well be true of a computer that uses radioactive material as an internal power source.But again this is an example predicated on the idea that magic must by nature be analogous to science in both functions and effects, and therefore naturally dangerous in the way we moderns think of dangerous (failures being explosive or discharging strong electrical shocks, and so forth and so on). In other words your example automatically reduces the functions and effects of magic into terms that are analogous to science and technology as if science and technology is the base measure of how to best perceive reality (and forms of power).And this is exactly what I am saying magic is not, and is not menat to be. It is not science and technology and it is not initially and necessarily predicated upon science and technology, it stands alone as a separate entity and manner of perceiving reality and operating within reality. (This is an entirely fictional association of course, because from our point of view magic does not really exist, but let's assume it does for sake of investigative analysis.)In other words you don't take magic and then transform it into scientific corollaries because it isn't scientific in the way we moderns think of science, but for some reason naturally (or so we think) needs to be. And that is what moderns can't seem to grasp because their first reaction is to narrow magic down to scientific and technological parameters. If your crystal ball fails badly it explodes. This is a modern conceit, not at all like ancient or even Medieval myths (or peoples or their way of looking at existence). The idea of things catastrophically failing in a physical and obvious way is the modern conceit. That's exactly what I mean. It's so reflexive that it is the first and natural modern impulse when seeking analogous metaphors for what failure might imply.Let's however look at a mythological and magical idea of "failure to exercise positive and fundamental control over the forces of magic."You look into your crystal ball intending to use it to spy upon your enemy (your desired form of control) and unknown to you the party on the other side begins to subtly influence your mind and perceptions, perhaps without you ever coming to understand this is what is/did happen. (This is exactly what happened with Saruman and others when gazing into the Palantir.) In time your mind becomes corrupted and the influence is entirely mental and then later psychological, but it nevertheless remains extremely dangerous. Because after becoming embedded within your psyche (your soul) it slowly then becomes apparent in the creeping corruption of your behavior. Nothing has blown up, nothing has obviously or physically failed (as would be apparent with modern technology, although there is a sort of internet-corruption analogy at work here as regards modern technology), the failure is in the mind and soul of the user. The user failed to exercise disciplined control over the magic (another way of putting this is he failed to remain in control of himself) and over time (an important distinction between magic and science, with modern science we usually think of catastrophic and spectacular failures which are immediate, no matter how long they really take to build, with magic and myth failure is usually a very slow process of almost undetectable incremental corruption and decay) either the secret user or corrupter or the magic itself exceeded that control or imposed an order of external control. Or you could look into a crystal ball and unknown to you you suddenly start perceiving reality very differently. Perhaps times runs differently, people are unrecognizable, languages are no longer understandable or understandable in a very different way. You see visions, suffer nightmares, the light tortures, or the darkness horrifies. There are many shades and types of real danger far beyond things exploding and catastrophically failing, and magic is full of them. But they are far more often than not psychologically based, dangers to the mind and soul, and most modern societies, most modern peoples, and most modern games don't really either understand or grasp that because they are looking to what they are naturally familiar and comfortable with, immediate effects, gratifications, and explosions. Obvious and common physical failures. States of mind, being, and soul, which have always been the providence of real magic, as well as miracles, are considered tertiary and ultimately unimportant effects precisely because they lay beyond the normative realms of science and technology. Therefore they are rarely even considered truly "dangerous and unpredictable." They rely upon perception of reliant rather than reality itself.But I'm saying that line of demarcation, that frontier of reality (or hyper-reality if you will) is a canard and a conceit of modern modes of thinking when considering things like magic and the functions of magic and the effects of magic. Gunpowder magic is not really magic, it is proto-science termed magic because no real or good scientific explanation has yet to be formulated. But real magic does not fail in the field, it fails in the heart, it coils like a viper in the soul, it corrupts the mind, and twists behavior and conduct. The real danger with magic, good and bad, is not predicated upon the spectacular explosion, but upon the slow and convoluted twist of human Fate and personal Wyrd. (You can see how modern man would naturally eschew this type of magic, because it takes patience to present power, not power to present potency. Men today want immediate and obvious and unmistakable effects. They often do not want to be bothered by what is obscure and invisible. That was for his ignorant ancestors, who did not know as much as he, and therefore lack his natural enlightenment about how things really are.) Science therefore is like a comfortable port of shelter from the savage seas. It implies control, and it is a haven from danger. Even if you don't like what is going to happen, you know what is going to happen. It's predictable. And its forms of danger are blatantly obvious. Magic though is more like a form of psychosis, and it is filled with dangerous visions and trances, exhausting experiences, disturbing prophecies, and the kind of unpredictability that either hardens the mind and tempers the soul, or breaks the mind and hammers and deforms the soul.The first impulse should not be to reduce everything regarding magic to an easily acceptable and understood technological or scientific analogy, though that is the common and reflexive way of thinking on these things for modern people (we are subconsciously conditioned to think and respond in this way by our culture and manners of interacting with the world I suspect). Rather the first impulse should be intentionally away form science and technology and into that realm in which true danger lies in the threats to soul, mind, and spirit, and by imperiling these aspects of human life, then magic bleeds outwards towards the dangerous, the wondrous, and the unpredictable in the world at large.But first and foremost, one must unlearn what one has learned. Otherwise magic and miracles remain forever nothing more than artificially contrived facades and disguises of their true nature. Mere science (and I have great respect for science, being a scientist myself) wrapped in a cloth of fools-gold.However in that sense and given that prelude I do agree with you, if magic is to be reduced to nothing more than an imaginary metaphor for physical science, then unpredictability and danger is highly undesirable. (If it is to be something more than just science by another name however then it is desirable that it be many things directly in opposition to modern science.) And I also thought you brought up some very valid and interesting and important points about proportional reliability.</blockquote>

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