Magic is provably real.

[Mouthwash]

Here are a couple of thought experiments which show that magic is possible under the right circumstances:

1. Assume that Adam and Eve are the only people in the world and that they know that if they have children they will be driven out of Eden and will have billions of descendants. Adam is tired of getting up every morning to go hunting. Together with Eve, he devises the following scheme: they form the firm intention that unless a wounded deer- an easy target- limps by their cave, they will have children. Adam can then put his feet up and rationally expect with near certainty that a wounded dear will soon limp by, as the odds of this taking place are still greater than the odds of being the first two people out of billions.

2. Adam shuffles a deck of cards. Later that morning, Eve, having had no contact with the cards, decides to use her willpower to retroactively choose what card lies on top. She decides that it shall have been the queen of spades. In order to ordain this outcome, Eve and Adam form the firm intention to have a child unless the queen of spades is top. They can then be virtually certain that when they look at the first card they will indeed find the queen of spades.

In #1 it seems that Adam is actually causing the deer to walk by. In #2, the couple is performing both psychokinesis and backward causation. Both are identical in effect to sorcery, if not outright meeting the definition.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yes, your provable magic only prerequisites that a god exists and cares about two figures in jewish mythology. This is like claiming you can stand your ground against an avalanche, cause the hand of god will protect you and its appearance will prove magic as well, just using a slightly more convoluted thinking for this.
Generally one tries to prove something by basing the proof on more evidently true things than the hypothesis to prove. You did the opposite.

 

[Gigaz]

Uh, I did that once, too.

I needed 100 Euros and was totally broke and then I had an idea. What if I define a 100 Euro note that has simultaneously the property to exist in my hand right now? And there it was.

 

[Kyriakos]

Uh, I did that once, too.

I needed 100 Euros and was totally broke and then I had an idea. What if I define a 100 Euro note that has simultaneously the property to exist in my hand right now? And there it was.

Which is the secret importance of math.
If you turn yourself into a metaphor, metaphor becomes a reality (but you no longer are)

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Is this a joke? Using formal logic, you can prove anything and everything exists if your assumptions are ridiculous enough:

[1][If god exists, magic is real]
[2][God exists]

[3]Therefore magic is real

..It's nothing.

I really don't see the point in this.

 

[Mouthwash]

The thought experiments do not require the existence of any biblical figure, including Adam and Eve. That's why it is called a thought experiment. I am using them to describe a hypothetical scenario, one which applies to any observer which occupies an atypical position within their reference class (I used the human species, but it could be anything).

Don't see a reason for people to be making this mistake, besides them not actually reading what I wrote.

 

[Kyriakos]

^The highly atypical position there would sort of cause magic to be 'proven' to exist. It is as if claiming you have a proof of the infinite pairs of twin prime hypothesis being true, if one assumes the highly atypical position that your proof cannot be allowed to be false. And your proof there was: 'let there be an infinite number of different twin prime pairs. QED, pls clap'.

 

[Mouthwash]

^The highly atypical position there would sort of cause magic to be 'proven' to exist. It is as if claiming you have a proof of the infinite pairs of twin prime hypothesis being true, if one assumes the highly atypical position that your proof cannot be allowed to be false. And your proof there was: 'let there be an infinite number of different twin prime pairs. QED, pls clap'.

I don't follow anything you're saying here.

 

[Kyriakos]

I don't follow anything you're saying here.

^I will explain more, unless that is proven to be a highly atypical position

 

[El_Machinae]

I've passed through this probability thought experiment before .... isn't its reasoning along the lines of "an existential event is nigh"?

You've skipped a few steps in describing your reasoning, which is why people don't follow. Now, to be honest, having seen the thought experiment I've also not really found it as profound as the people who're describing it do.

I'm currently blanking on its name ... one of the H+ academics described it to me though. The economist, Robin Hanson?

 

[Leoreth]

Independence_(probability_theory)

 

[Mouthwash]

I've passed through this probability thought experiment before .... isn't its reasoning along the lines of "an existential event is nigh"?

Yeah, that's anthropics.

You've skipped a few steps in describing your reasoning, which is why people don't follow. Now, to be honest, having seen the thought experiment I've also not really found it as profound as the people who're describing it do.

I'm currently blanking on its name ... one of the H+ academics described it to me though. The economist, Robin Hanson?

They're taken from a paper by Nick Bostrom (shhh, don't tell).

What have I skipped? I can't imagine in what universe anything I've said here could be interpreted as assuming Adam and Eve are real historical figures.

Independence_(probability_theory)

That's a bad link. And I've forgotten all math beyond pre-algebra; you'll need to describe the concept in words.

 

[Lord of Elves]

I really find this experiment to be so incredibly lacking in context. Like, okay, if I'm assuming from go that Adam and Eve exist and must be able to do just about anything because they survived and propagated the species, that's already asking a lot. We don't need to go down this kind of road to say that the scientific method epistemology is only so useful (even though it's incredibly, incredibly useful). It's especially dubious trying to prove the viability of a non-scientific epistemology using scientific methodology. Like, that seems inherently counterproductive to me. But I suck at math and math-related thinking so I could just be out of my depth.

 

[Mouthwash]

I really find this experiment to be so incredibly lacking in context. Like, okay, if I'm assuming from go that Adam and Eve exist and must be able to do just about anything because they survived and propagated the species, that's already asking a lot.

But this applies to other things (like the current human species as a whole, which strikes me as pretty useful). Adam and Eve are just a very good example of observers with highly unusual observations.

We don't need to go down this kind of road to say that the scientific method epistemology is only so useful (even though it's incredibly, incredibly useful). It's especially dubious trying to prove the viability of a non-scientific epistemology using scientific methodology. Like, that seems inherently counterproductive to me. But I suck at math and math-related thinking so I could just be out of my depth.

This isn't a scientific methodology at all. It's really philosophy.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Most important thing in trying to articulate (or find, create and so on) something important is to sense there is something important. For, likely, all we dig through and may bring to the surface are infinitesimal debris from our own core of wonder in the first place.
That said, Mouthwash, despite your threads clearly showing you sense that important (and potentially special and productive) wonder, it seems you aren't articulating much of something which can cause other people dealing with philo or math or logic issues to take part in the thread. Which may be a shame, if you mean something interesting to others (and you might). So why not make an attempt to articulate it more clearly/thoroughly?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

1. Assume that Adam and Eve are the only people in the world and that they know that if they have children they will be driven out of Eden and will have billions of descendants.

How could they know this? Nobody in the real world could ever know that so we already have to assume these people are somehow able to tell the future, or that we're dealing with the biblical Adam and Eve and that God and magic already exist anyway. And if we're not assuming the latter, then what is this "driven out of Eden" part even there for?

Adam is tired of getting up every morning to go hunting. Together with Eve, he devises the following scheme: they form the firm intention that unless a wounded deer- an easy target- limps by their cave, they will have children. Adam can then put his feet up and rationally expect with near certainty that a wounded dear will soon stroll by, as the odds of this taking place are still greater than the odds of being the first two people out of billions.

This... makes no sense at all. The two events aren't causally related at all. You can't force one event to happen just by not allowing the other one to happen. There's no reason for either of them to happen. Plus, you're presenting it as an absolute certainty that they will be the progenitors of billions if people if they just choose to do it, so in what way are the odds of that happening really low? Your reasoning depends on it being simultaneously something with a very low probability and also something Adam can choose to do on a whim knowing it has a 100% chance of working. That's completely contradictory. And even if it WAS something with a very low probability, the reasoning still doesn't make any sense anyway as you can't just choose two completely unrelated things with low probabilities and that somehow magically means that the most probable of the two things is therefore guaranteed to happen. This is a childish level of reasoning.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

How could they know this? Nobody in the real world could ever know that so we already have to assume these people are somehow able to tell the future, or that we're dealing with the biblical Adam and Eve and that God and magic already exist anyway. And if we're not assuming the latter, then what is this "driven out of Eden" part even there for?

You at least have to give him the benefit of the doubt for that one. After all a any thought experiment needs some kind of assumption, you cannot work without it.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

You at least have to give him the benefit of the doubt for that one. After all a any thought experiment needs some kind of assumption, you cannot work without it.

No because it completely undermines the premise of the thought experiment. First Mouthwash says the question doesn't rely on these being the biblical Adam and Eve or that there's anything special about them at all, but the very fact that they can know that they can create billions of people is totally at odds with that. Secondly, it invalidates the assertion that this event has a low priority of happening if they already know with 100% certainty that they can do it on a whim. Thirdly, he seems to be talking about how this thought experiment can be used to prove the existence of magic within the real world, not the world in which the question is posed, so therefore them being in possession of some degree of ability to accurately predict the future makes the whole experiment worthless. And that's before you even get into the meat of the experiment which doesn't make any sense anyway.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Thirdly, he seems to be talking about how this thought experiment can be used to prove the existence of magic within the real world, not the world in which the question is posed, so therefore them being in possession of some degree of ability to accurately predict the future makes the whole experiment worthless. And that's before you even get into the meat of the experiment which doesn't make any sense anyway.

That is exactly the gripe I have with it, too! We are presented with a hypothetical world, but somehow its conclusions are supposed to work for the real world, too.

 

[Leoreth]

That's a bad link. And I've forgotten all math beyond pre-algebra; you'll need to describe the concept in words.

Whoops you're right, it just was a wiki link anyway.

Well first of all of course, a thought experiment is not a proof, but I guess you just wanted to goad people into pointing out the flaw of your argument so congrats on that

Now for the probabilistic argument. At the center of your argument is your event X ("Adam and Eve are the first of an eventual population of billions of humans"). You have assigned a very low probability P(X) > 0 to this event, which is also part of your premise, since that is far from obvious or uncontroversial, but let's assume that's right.

Furthermore, the cause for there being an eventual population of billions of humans is that Adam and Eve have children, who will be thrown out of paradise and procreate etc. The thing is, Adam and Eve having children is a different event Y.

According to your setting, P(X | Y) = 1. In words, the probability for X given Y is 100%. If Adam and Eve have children, they will be the first of an eventual population of billions of humans. While the probability of X on its own ("all things being equal") is very low, X is not independent of Y. If Y is true, the probability of X is different (in this case, certainty).

I hope the flaw of the argument becomes obvious from here on out but let's walk through the first scenario.

"No wounded deer limps by Adam and Eve's cave" is a third event Z. Now given the context of the story we would expect P(not Z) to also be very low (though not as low as P(X)), otherwise it wouldn't be magical that they can make it happen by force of will.

According to the story, P(Y) = P(Z): Adam and Eve will have children if no wounded deer limps by their cave. As we have seen before, if Y is true, so is X, since P(X | Y) = 1. Mathematically: P(X) = P(X | Y) * P(Y) = 1 * P(Y) = P(Z).

Not coming across a conveniently wounded deer in front of their cave is very probable, and now that Adam and Eve have made the firm decision to have children in this case, so is the event that they will be the first among an eventual population of billions of humans. This isn't really surprising once you follow the chain of causality the story describes.

The argument makes the mistake of assuming that the probability of X is independent of all other events described in the story while it clearly isn't. Likewise, the argument that "P(X) is low so P(Z) must be too, ergo magic deer summoning!" ignores the causal relationship between X and Z. Given that relationship, "P(Z) is very low, so P(not Z) must be very high, so P(X) must also be very high - looks like we're humanity's genetic ancestors" is the only logical conclusion, as we have seen above. The whole argument is a textbook example of poor understanding of how probabilities work.

In conclusion, don't use probability in an argument if you stopped paying attention to maths after pre-algebra.