I have used this analogy for cryptocurrency, which in almost every respect is such a close fit for alchemy that word swapping the terms leaves papers discussing

I have used this analogy for cryptocurrency, which in almost every respect is such a close fit for alchemy that word swapping the terms leaves papers discussing these phenomena almost entirely unchanged. both trying to create scarce money out of not-scarce not-money. both slavishly grinding away at technical attacks as solutions to the irreconcilable structural flaws in their basic assumptions, rather than reexamining the validity of those assumptions. Both utterly infested with corrupting motives, con men (and women) and charlatans who pretend to ideology but are merely opportunistic scroungers who mastered just enough technical hype-speak (or as it was expressed in Faust, "warmed up stuff") to bamboozle other, less sophisticated pretend ideologues into propping up their scam. both ending up incidentally furthering technology which will go on to do interesting things unrelated to philosopher's stones/blockchains. They even have strikingly similar origin stories in a fictionalized, pseudononymous creator-ideologue (hermes trismegistus/Satoshi nakamoto) who proposed the outline of their respective magnum opus processes on a color-coded sacred text (emerald tablet/white paper)