The first two are:

1.When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2.The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke, the famed sci-fi author who penned these laws, is probably best known for co-authoring the screenplay to 2001: A Space Odyssee

  • Deconceptualist@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    Hm, I don’t care for that. Magic is flashy and fun because it’s entertainment. But science doesn’t look like they depict in movies and shows.

    As a process, science looks more like that nerd with the clipboard taking notes on mushrooms or nuclei whatever for 20 years. Then they edit papers from other mushroom / nuclei nerds and go to a conference to give seminars and debate the others and ultimately publish more papers and eventually some books, and if we’re lucky a documentary. They’re exploring hidden worlds in a way that is very opposite of the showmanship and illusions we popularly call magic.

    • Saleh@feddit.org
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      1 day ago

      Do you think Magicians reading through hundreds of old books is more exciting? Trying a thousand combinations of herbs to see if any one has any effects at all?

      You are just being shown the end result for magic in the movies too. Real magic is nothing like it.

      • Deconceptualist@lemm.ee
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        20 hours ago

        You’re going to have to define “real magic” here, otherwise this makes no sense IMO

        Testing herbs for effects sounds like folk medicine or alchemy at best, but those have been replaced by more rigorous fields like chemistry and pharmacology.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      23 hours ago

      I don’t really think of magic as entertainment.

      That’s like saying that technology is entertainment, because smartphones are routinely used for entertainment. Yet technology is not all about entertainment.