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What I find particularly curious is why exactly did people start to believe drawing something or saying something can actually have any magical effect. Is logic

What I find particularly curious is why exactly did people start to believe drawing something or saying something can actually have any magical effect. Is logical absurdity (doing an action which consumes energy of an effort but has no obvious effect) exactly the force meant to do the work here perhaps? No fun making, actually trying to dissect the logic on which does the magic stand :-)

jsnodlin 5y ago
hnfong 5y ago
Do words really not have any "magical" effect? You'd be surprised how much disaster a friggn tweet could lead to. If anything "word magic" has amplified with the Internet and communications technology. It's only "magic" if you don't understand the mechanisms of how things work. And with hindsight, we can say this crap is "magic" because it doesn't work, but they weren't knowledgable enough to tell the difference.
- mnw21cam 5y ago
  A friggn tweet causes an effect through its influence on people who read it and act based on it. I think what the parent is talking about is words that have an effect on something that isn't mediated by the responses of people who heard them. It's very easy to understand why a friggn tweet has an effect, because there's a clear mechanism behind how it causes that effect. Likewise the power of a witch-doctor is entirely based on how people respond to what they say and do. In contrast, it is extremely hard to rationalise any effect that is caused by "magical" words spoken to a mountain or a tree, because there isn't any part of that mountain or tree that understands the words, or has an ability to act on them.
  - hnfong 5y ago
    I don't know whether this is the "correct" explanation, but I think it's plausible - In a medieval setting, commoners visiting a court might believe courtiers dressed in fancy clothes and speaking in Latin were doing magic and performing spells. They might have no idea how things like law and government works. If those kinds of magic worked, why wouldn't magic on mountains or trees work? Especially if you were taught by wise people from the church that invisible spirits definitely existed.
tragomaskhalos 5y ago
I wondered the same - it must be a combination of coincidence plus confirmation bias creating a positive feedback loop for the efficacy of the particular spell/ritual I imagine.
krapp 5y ago
You're thinking in modern terms of energy, force and physics, but the past, as they say, was a foreign country. People back then didn't recognize any distinction between what we would consider natural and supernatural order. They took for granted that they lived in a world deeply influenced by spirits, angels, devils and deities, with hidden hands behind everything. If you believed that God literally spoke the universe into being, then it was simply self-evident that words and symbols could have magical effects. Add cognitive bias and placebo effects to that worldview, and as far as the medieval mind was concerned, it makes more sense to believe in magic then to doubt it, because sometimes it seemed to work. Magical thinking persists to this day for the same reason - it provides a false but shockingly self-sustaining model of reality. If you're curious about this from a scholarly point of view, here[0] is a talk by Dr. Irving Finkel about ghost stories recorded in ancient Assyrian cuneiform, which touches on some of the magical practices involved, and I'd also recommend the Esoterica[1] channel which discusses the various kinds of magical philosophy by studying ancient magical texts. You can get a good idea of the way such people thought and how they saw the world from studying their writing. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNNaZ110ee4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNNaZ110ee4 [1]https://www.youtube.com/c/ESOTERICAchannel/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/ESOTERICAchannel/videos
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
masswerk 5y ago
I'm actually not that surprised, anyone crossing their fingers for their favorite team serves as a testament to that kind of expectation (as does the economic viability of mass sport events). Now just broaden this kind of relation to the world to matters of basic survival.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nescioquid 5y ago
> why exactly did people start to believe drawing something or saying something can actually have any magical effect The Golden Bough (a book written by a turn-of-the-century anthropologist) considers questions like this[1]. The third chapter of the first volume discusses the principles of "sympathetic" magic being based in the concepts of similarity and contagion. One thinks immediately of voodoo dolls and garlic. It is perhaps surprising that there is a kind of logic at work here! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough
FastMonkey 5y ago
There's a lot of power in stories. Even today, on social media someone can make or break your reputation with a single post. A difference today is that you can fact check things much more easily. Historically, it's not hard to believe that professional story tellers had tremendous power. They could make or break the validity of a ruler's claim to his rule, they could "explain" natural phenomena, and essentially create an world beyond they knowledge of the audience where they had done fantastical things.
quinnjh 5y ago
What I find particularly curious is why exactly did people start to believe posting something or saying something on hackernews can actually have any real effect. Is logical absurdity (doing an action which consumes energy of an effort but has no obvious effect) exactly the force meant to do the work here perhaps? No fun making, actually trying to dissect the logic on which does the magic stand :-P Sorry i made fun. Really though what is this comment but a spell(ing)? I cast my spelling and expect an effect wether my reasoning is valid or not. Methods that seem to have a compelling causal loop at play get distilled into divinity practices such as "tarot" or "tweeting" each themselves requiring a larger semantic web to make sense of. Way back in the day, a religious leader was described as a man of the cloth, which sounds eerily similar to todays CTOs leading their monasteries of illuminaries to build out "service fabric". Solomons temple had two columns, both draped with networking. Just as with hn comments, one can dismiss it all, or one can approach it with suspension of disbelief. What is the logical causal chain that compels professional sports players to do their "lucky wiggle" before a serve?
renox 5y ago
Replace 'saying something' by prayer in your post and you'll see that a majority of people still believe in 'magic'
tsol 5y ago
People still have 'lucky' rituals they perform before the game-- even people who aren't actually participating engage sometimes. This kind of nonrational performative behavior is common with all humans, even today. It's because we live in a hyper-rational age and we actively resist superstitions that some find it strange. It's just a human psychology thing, though, so everyone is subject to it. In 500 years they may look back and find some of the things you do are just ridiculous ignorant superstitions to them.

jsnodlin 5y ago

hnfong 5y ago

Do words really not have any "magical" effect? You'd be surprised how much disaster a friggn tweet could lead to. If anything "word magic" has amplified with the Internet and communications technology. It's only "magic" if you don't understand the mechanisms of how things work. And with hindsight, we can say this crap is "magic" because it doesn't work, but they weren't knowledgable enough to tell the difference.

mnw21cam 5y ago
A friggn tweet causes an effect through its influence on people who read it and act based on it. I think what the parent is talking about is words that have an effect on something that isn't mediated by the responses of people who heard them. It's very easy to understand why a friggn tweet has an effect, because there's a clear mechanism behind how it causes that effect. Likewise the power of a witch-doctor is entirely based on how people respond to what they say and do. In contrast, it is extremely hard to rationalise any effect that is caused by "magical" words spoken to a mountain or a tree, because there isn't any part of that mountain or tree that understands the words, or has an ability to act on them.
- hnfong 5y ago
  I don't know whether this is the "correct" explanation, but I think it's plausible - In a medieval setting, commoners visiting a court might believe courtiers dressed in fancy clothes and speaking in Latin were doing magic and performing spells. They might have no idea how things like law and government works. If those kinds of magic worked, why wouldn't magic on mountains or trees work? Especially if you were taught by wise people from the church that invisible spirits definitely existed.

tragomaskhalos 5y ago

I wondered the same - it must be a combination of coincidence plus confirmation bias creating a positive feedback loop for the efficacy of the particular spell/ritual I imagine.

krapp 5y ago

You're thinking in modern terms of energy, force and physics, but the past, as they say, was a foreign country. People back then didn't recognize any distinction between what we would consider natural and supernatural order. They took for granted that they lived in a world deeply influenced by spirits, angels, devils and deities, with hidden hands behind everything. If you believed that God literally spoke the universe into being, then it was simply self-evident that words and symbols could have magical effects. Add cognitive bias and placebo effects to that worldview, and as far as the medieval mind was concerned, it makes more sense to believe in magic then to doubt it, because sometimes it seemed to work. Magical thinking persists to this day for the same reason - it provides a false but shockingly self-sustaining model of reality. If you're curious about this from a scholarly point of view, here[0] is a talk by Dr. Irving Finkel about ghost stories recorded in ancient Assyrian cuneiform, which touches on some of the magical practices involved, and I'd also recommend the Esoterica[1] channel which discusses the various kinds of magical philosophy by studying ancient magical texts. You can get a good idea of the way such people thought and how they saw the world from studying their writing. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNNaZ110ee4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNNaZ110ee4 [1]https://www.youtube.com/c/ESOTERICAchannel/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/ESOTERICAchannel/videos

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

masswerk 5y ago

I'm actually not that surprised, anyone crossing their fingers for their favorite team serves as a testament to that kind of expectation (as does the economic viability of mass sport events). Now just broaden this kind of relation to the world to matters of basic survival.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nescioquid 5y ago

> why exactly did people start to believe drawing something or saying something can actually have any magical effect The Golden Bough (a book written by a turn-of-the-century anthropologist) considers questions like this[1]. The third chapter of the first volume discusses the principles of "sympathetic" magic being based in the concepts of similarity and contagion. One thinks immediately of voodoo dolls and garlic. It is perhaps surprising that there is a kind of logic at work here! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough

FastMonkey 5y ago

There's a lot of power in stories. Even today, on social media someone can make or break your reputation with a single post. A difference today is that you can fact check things much more easily. Historically, it's not hard to believe that professional story tellers had tremendous power. They could make or break the validity of a ruler's claim to his rule, they could "explain" natural phenomena, and essentially create an world beyond they knowledge of the audience where they had done fantastical things.

quinnjh 5y ago

What I find particularly curious is why exactly did people start to believe posting something or saying something on hackernews can actually have any real effect. Is logical absurdity (doing an action which consumes energy of an effort but has no obvious effect) exactly the force meant to do the work here perhaps? No fun making, actually trying to dissect the logic on which does the magic stand :-P Sorry i made fun. Really though what is this comment but a spell(ing)? I cast my spelling and expect an effect wether my reasoning is valid or not. Methods that seem to have a compelling causal loop at play get distilled into divinity practices such as "tarot" or "tweeting" each themselves requiring a larger semantic web to make sense of. Way back in the day, a religious leader was described as a man of the cloth, which sounds eerily similar to todays CTOs leading their monasteries of illuminaries to build out "service fabric". Solomons temple had two columns, both draped with networking. Just as with hn comments, one can dismiss it all, or one can approach it with suspension of disbelief. What is the logical causal chain that compels professional sports players to do their "lucky wiggle" before a serve?

renox 5y ago

Replace 'saying something' by prayer in your post and you'll see that a majority of people still believe in 'magic'

tsol 5y ago

People still have 'lucky' rituals they perform before the game-- even people who aren't actually participating engage sometimes. This kind of nonrational performative behavior is common with all humans, even today. It's because we live in a hyper-rational age and we actively resist superstitions that some find it strange. It's just a human psychology thing, though, so everyone is subject to it. In 500 years they may look back and find some of the things you do are just ridiculous ignorant superstitions to them.