A question for the magic-positive people around here.
-
A question for the magic-positive people around here.
It’s consensus that magical language has an intrinsic power, either from length of use or formal ritual or human involvement. So let’s say I asked ChatGPT or an LLM to write me a spell for a purpose: first, would I expect it to work, and second, from where would its power come from?
-
Elizabeth M, book bothererreplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by
@liamvhogan how long is a piece of string, Liam?
-
🐦⬛Darkly, Glass Darkly 🐦⬛replied to Liam :fnord: last edited by
@liamvhogan "it depends"
if your idea of how magic(k) "works" is predominantly psychological (sense as in here: https://sacred-texts.com/bos/bos065.htm rather than here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_theories_of_magic) then the first question is "do you believe that a spell generated in such a manner would work (akin to a human doing improv poetry, say)?
the second question comes from the belief that it will.
if you think only spells cribbed from bastardized latin translations of poor greek abstractions of dodgy fragments of herbrew or arabic translations of lost greek philosophy count, then probably no?
-
@liamvhogan I wouldn't expect it to work. That said, just because you didn't write it doesn't mean that it wouldn't work - every rite that was passed down was written by someone else.
-
@liamvhogan D&D rules, Liam. Spells require verbal, somatic, and material components to work.
-
@darklyglassdarkly yeah this is the key thing I think. If a spell works because I will it to, then it shouldn’t matter how the words came to be in the order that they are. Alternatively if the word-order needs to actually functionally reflect some occult reality (in the as-above-so-below sense) the it’s critically important and an algorithm could only make a working spell by accident
-
@liamvhogan If you take the view that the form of human involvement is simply 'belief', then as soon as someone posts it to HN...
-
Actual Dr Buttocksreplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by
@liamvhogan I feel like there's room for exploration of this idea and what could go wrong with it in a Laundry Files book