"Any technology sufficiently advanced would be indistinguishable from Magic"

[MontagK505]

Q wasn't using any technology...

Just because you couldn't see it, doesn't mean it wasn't there.

 

[Aepervius]

That's all based on a cock-sure attitude that today's technology is the crown of creation, of course. I certainly hope we don't stop advancing in science and remain stagnant at the current level.

No that is the cock sure attitude that we have tools now to tackle even the unknown, and would not simply quake in fear or worship any unknown comming at us, we would rather experiment on it, and unknown would still use some BASIC principle. Like CoE for example.

Waaaaay different than saying we know everything.

 

[MontagK505]

Which is happenning all over the place in schools.
It took us a century to research all tech to come to that point. It does not take a century to teach it to young human.

If that 19th century person (heck or even 16th century person) is open minded and has the willingness to learn, we could teach her how cell phone work relatively quickly , starting from some mathtematical fundation, down to the principle of current , light. And to boot we could even show her a few experiment.

There is no reason whatsoever to think alien tech COULD not be explained to us, or could not even be experimented upon to discover how it works. Anybody assuming that we could not find out the inner working of some tech, is assuming "magic" rather than tech.

The engineering involved in making a complex integrated circuit might be take a while to explain to a 19th century engineer.

 

[I Ratant]

Most of us have advanced beyond the point of attributing magic to things that aren't easily explainable.
The perpetually confused will never be able to comprehend anything that is too easily sloughed off as "magic"... and there's way too many of these poor souls among us.

 

[Seismosaurus]

Well, I think the question is can there be such a sufficiently advanced technology that it would be indistinguishable to us (at least initially--I think this is key) from magic.

Given how much of our current technology would have been incomprehensible and deemed impossible just a hundred years ago, I'd say it would be presumptious for us in this age to believe that no advanced technology is way beyond our (initial) understanding.

This is essentially the Q character from Star Trek. They are a species so advanced that they can essentially do anything - probably not the sort of logical impossibilities people bring up about god, but a Q can literally snap his fingers and do more or less anything short of that.

For but one example, we once saw a Q who cleaned up all the pollution on an entire planet in about ten seconds. Nor was anything we would recognize as technology involved - she merely had to think about it and it happened.

Now if such a person was on Earth right now, I would think that a lot of people would accept them as a magician or even a god if they chose to claim to be one. And if they chose to imitate an existing god concept I've no doubt they could attract literally billions of followers.

And I can't think of anything our science could possibly do to even begin disproving the claim.

 

[Akhenaten]

Most of us have advanced beyond the point of attributing magic to things that aren't easily explainable.

I agree. Surely it's reasonable to distinguish between inexplicably advanced technology and magic on the basis of the former actully existing and the latter not.

The perpetually confused will never be able to comprehend anything that is too easily sloughed off as "magic"... and there's way too many of these poor souls among us.

Too true.

 

[TheClaw]

Surely it's reasonable to distinguish between inexplicably advanced technology and magic on the basis of the former actully existing and the latter not.

Right. I guess *if* I conceded that magic *could* exist, then I'd vote #1 -- I might confuse technology with magic.

 

[SOdhner]

Surely it's reasonable to distinguish between inexplicably advanced technology and magic on the basis of the former actully existing and the latter not.

BOB: Hey, look, a magic rock!

JIM: No, it's not.

BOB: Dude. It's floating, and glowing, and every time you touch it a candy bar appears under it. That's magic.

JIM: It must be alien technology or something.

BOB: It's magic.

JIM: Magic doesn't exist.

BOB: What? Of course it does! It's RIGHT HERE. Magic is right here, glowing and pooping out candy while it levitates. That's magic.


So... how do you distinguish between the two at this point? I'm not saying magic exists, but I am saying that in the scenario above I would be hard pressed to come up with a way to distinguish between the two without defining magic as "something that doesn't exist" which feels like cheating.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

BOB: Hey, look, a magic rock!

JIM: No, it's not.

BOB: Dude. It's floating, and glowing, and every time you touch it a candy bar appears under it. That's magic.

JIM: It must be alien technology or something.

BOB: It's magic.

JIM: Magic doesn't exist.

BOB: What? Of course it does! It's RIGHT HERE. Magic is right here, glowing and pooping out candy while it levitates. That's magic.


So... how do you distinguish between the two at this point? I'm not saying magic exists, but I am saying that in the scenario above I would be hard pressed to come up with a way to distinguish between the two without defining magic as "something that doesn't exist" which feels like cheating.

YOU can't distinguish between technology and magic in the original statement. That doesn't mean they are interchangeable, just that you don't have the tools to understand the technology.

 

[Limbero]

In my mind, the answer is pretty self-explanatory: "Any technology sufficiently advanced would be indistinguishable from Magic" (my emphasis). To me, this means "Any technology that is sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic is indistinguishable from magic".

And that's why I answered yes.

People who answered no, are you saying that you believe it to be impossible to create technology that goes beyond human understanding? And no, I'm not talking about any kind of woo here, I'm just saying that I don't believe we know everything there is to know about the Universe.

Let's take faster-than-light travel as an example. We are pretty damn certain that it's impossible to achieve, correct? So, let's ponder these two scenarios:

Scenario 1: You are abducted by green space aliens who take you from Earth to Proxima Centauri in just under a minute in their spaceship, which they tell you works with a technology so advanced that it is unexplainable with the current laws of physics as known to humans.

Scenario 2: You are abducted by green space aliens who take you from Earth to Proxima Centauri in just under a minute in their spaceship, which they tell you works with magic.

Now, apart from what they tell you, scenarios one and two are identical. At that point in time, before we learn how the spaceship in Scenario 1 works, the two ships are indistinguishable, and the ship in Scenario 1 could just as well have been powered by magic.

Now, this may be an unrealistic example, but it should give insight into how I imagine the quote's application.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

People who answered no, are you saying that you believe it to be impossible to create technology that goes beyond human understanding? And no, I'm not talking about any kind of woo here, I'm just saying that I don't believe we know everything there is to know about the Universe.

I said "no" because technology is not magic. So no matter how advanced it is, it's still measurable and quantifiable to the beings that created it.

 

[AdMan]

I said "no" because technology is not magic. So no matter how advanced it is, it's still measurable and quantifiable to the beings that created it.

But Clarke never said that it would appear as magic to the beings who created it...

ETA: I think the poll optioins are worded incorrectly, actually.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

But Clarke never said that it would appear as magic to the beings who created it...

ETA: I think the poll optioins are worded incorrectly, actually.

I agree, and nothing he said supports the idea that magic is real. Just that the guys in the Amazon who shoot at airplanes with bows are not able to distinguish between something that runs on aerodynamic principles and a Nimbus 2000.

 

[Akhenaten]

BOB: Hey, look, a magic rock!

JIM: No, it's not.

BOB: Dude. It's floating, and glowing, and every time you touch it a candy bar appears under it. That's magic.

JIM: It must be alien technology or something.

BOB: It's magic.

JIM: Magic doesn't exist.

BOB: What? Of course it does! It's RIGHT HERE. Magic is right here, glowing and pooping out candy while it levitates. That's magic.


So... how do you distinguish between the two at this point? I'm not saying magic exists, but I am saying that in the scenario above I would be hard pressed to come up with a way to distinguish between the two without defining magic as "something that doesn't exist" which feels like cheating.

I think my Jim, when faced with not being able to immediately distinguish what's making the rock do its thing, would adopt the default position that it's some kind of (not-necessarily-alien) technology that he's absolutely clueless about, and remain quite adamant until the proof of its being magic became overwhelming.

My Jim is probably far too much of a cynic to ever be a good sceptic.

I take your point that writing magic off as impossible is cheating a bit, but it's a cheat that allows Jim to deal with a real Universe that he barely understands by regarding certain things as axiomatic.


My Jim would also have one more line to speak in the scenario you've offered:

JIM: Meh. I wonder where they keep the beer rock.​

 

[Bikewer]

I'd think it would depend to some degree on the technological sophistication of the viewer, or the culture.
To primitive folks, say, Amazonian Indians living in the rain forest, an iPhone or something similar would likely be taken for a magical device.
To us, even advanced communications devices would likely be seen as technology, even if they were using something like Greg Bear's "noach" technology which relies on quantum entanglement.
We might have a hard time comprehending vastly advanced technology; things like remodeling solar systems and moving planets... But our science-fiction writers can conceive of such things now....

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'd think it would depend to some degree on the technological sophistication of the viewer, or the culture.
To primitive folks, say, Amazonian Indians living in the rain forest, an iPhone or something similar would likely be taken for a magical device.
To us, even advanced communications devices would likely be seen as technology, even if they were using something like Greg Bear's "noach" technology which relies on quantum entanglement.
We might have a hard time comprehending vastly advanced technology; things like remodeling solar systems and moving planets... But our science-fiction writers can conceive of such things now....

That's where the word "sufficiently" comes in.

 

[H'ethetheth]

I'd think it would depend to some degree on the technological sophistication of the viewer, or the culture.
To primitive folks, say, Amazonian Indians living in the rain forest, an iPhone or something similar would likely be taken for a magical device.
To us, even advanced communications devices would likely be seen as technology, even if they were using something like Greg Bear's "noach" technology which relies on quantum entanglement.
We might have a hard time comprehending vastly advanced technology; things like remodeling solar systems and moving planets... But our science-fiction writers can conceive of such things now....

I assume Clarke is speaking of things that depend on physics we don't have, and may therefore flatly contradict our current understanding of nature.

If I explain to a 19th century scientist some apparatus that depends on quantum mechanics to work, there will be logical steps in that explanation that directly contradict what he knows about electricity or light or atoms.

 

[therival58]

But Clarke never said that it would appear as magic to the beings who created it...

ETA: I think the poll options are worded incorrectly, actually.

I guess to clarify, given our CURRENT technological standards, if we were to encounter super advanced ET technology would we be able to measure it? (Even in some small way?)

Or, could it appear so far advanced that even by our standards, it would be like magic and we would know of no way to measure it?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I guess to clarify, given our CURRENT technological standards, if we were to encounter super advanced ET technology would we be able to measure it? (Even in some small way?)

Or, could it appear so far advanced that even by our standards, it would be like magic and we would know of no way to measure it?

The point isn't whether WE can measure it, it's whether it's truly magic or simply beyond our ability to distinguish the technology from magic. "It might as well BE magic to us, even if it's just the technology they use every day."

One more time, he was not saying magic might exist.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

If we did not know even the principle on which an alien technology operated then, although we may confidently assert it was not magic, since magic doesn't exist, we would have no way of explaining it and therefore have no means of demonstrating to people who did believe in magic that it was not in fact magical.

Another way of looking at it is that, for me, magic is conjuring tricks. An advanced technology might appear fundamentally to contradict the way I understand nature to operate so that I might refuse to believe that the aliens were really doing what they appeared to be doing, and it must be a conjuring trick.