opnet [OpNet] Let's Get Magical

[Lemmy Chillmeister]

Okay, science does a piss poor job of explaining us. Smart guys have told me that. So, as far as I'm concerned I am a creature of magic and wonder. Once I accepted that I started feeling different, noticing different stuff. I see heat and shit now when I didn't before. I'm more in tune with all the world around me.

Anyone else gone through an Awakening like this? Not an eruption, but a kind of realization that helped you sort shit out?

And fuck each and everyone of you who wants to argue that test tubes and mircoscopes can figure us out. Take that shit somewhere else.

[Wakinyan]

From the moment my ears became what they are now I have heard my ancestors whisper in them. The scent of blood speaks to me.

Spirits of earth, air and water are what I have understood since I was reborn. I don't dismiss science, I understand there are many trails that go to the same point. It just isn't the path I choose to walk.

Some of us take affinity to different things. Salamander is of fire. You Lemmy are of Air and Water.

I am glad for as pissy as you are in general you still at least see the medicine we are made of.

[Menagerie]

I'm not sure if you're asking how/if our "Awakening" helped us sort our own purpose/life out or if you want to know who else takes the unconservative stance on the definition of Novas.

I am hesitant to call anything we do magic, just as I am hesitant to put on a costume of any kind. There is a fiction-linked premise to both concepts.

Then again, anyone non-Nova would invariably use the term "magical" in reference to our activities.

We're all individuals....free to define and limit ourselves however we want.

[Singularity]

Quote:

Originally posted by Lemmy Chillmeister:
Anyone else gone through an Awakening like this? Not an eruption, but a kind of realization that helped you sort shit out?

I would not say an Awakening, but I did experience a self-realization. While my own point of view is rather boring compared to yours or Totem's, I do agree that it did "open" a lot of doors for me and that everyone else can go through the process and open the same doors for themselves.

[Sakurako Hino]

Quote:

Originally posted by Lemmy Chillmeister:
Okay, science does a piss poor job of explaining us. Smart guys have told me that. So, as far as I'm concerned I am a creature of magic and wonder. Once I accepted that I started feeling different, noticing different stuff. I see heat and shit now when I didn't before. I'm more in tune with all the world around me.


Anyone else gone through an Awakening like this? Not an eruption, but a kind of realization that helped you sort shit out?


And fuck each and everyone of you who wants to argue that test tubes and mircoscopes can figure us out. Take that shit somewhere else.

I have to agree. If one is only locked into trying to figure things out with science... They need to get a clue. I'm discovering more and more there are just things science alone can't explain.

So, I have to agree with your sentiment, Lemmy.

As for us having some mystical connection to the universe... Well, don't we all?

As for magic, well, Magic is the influence of the will on the fabric of reality. So, you can interpolate our influence of quantum-reality to be such a thing.

Then again, I'm just rationalizing. Blame my overclocked brain.

[kestrel404]

In a way, I agree with you completely, and I have always been 'awakened' to the magic we use. Every step I take, I try to understand what I do. Not necessarily how I do it, I think that's beyond me even now, but I try to see exactly the changes I make on the world around me.

What I do is science, but how I do it is magic.

[Sakurako Hino]

Well said. Sometimes I can't help but afford myself a little "presto"! when I get two completely anti-compatible devices talking to eachother.

I use Anti-Compatible instead of Non-Compatible, because the items were a remote control and an old-school toaster.

(Oh, forgot to mention the toaster had no port to read the IR signal from a remote...)

[Machina]

What a bunch of fucking children. Do you believe in the fucking Easter Bunny, as well? Santa Clause? The Orgasm Fairy?

Yeah, smart guys, you got it all figured out. Thank god the remedial kindergarten of think tanks has offered us this quick and easy answer to the big fucking questions regarding the nature of what it is to be a nova. Shit, it's magic. Thank sweet juicy jesus it's that fucking simple! Here I've been studying the nature of quantum anomalies and the nature of the origin of our powers since well before I erupted, and all the time, the answer was staring me right in the face;

OUR POWERS COME FROM PIXIE DUST!!!!

What a bunch of mnemonic fucking slugs. A thousand years ago you children would be telling me that flies grow out of rotten meat and that the sun revolves around the earth.

There is no such thing as magic.

Allow me to repeat that, for emphasis, and I'll even write it out phonetically, so you can all understand it clearly;

thaar is no such theeng ahs maj ick

Anything the peasants call "magic", "miracles", "paranormal", "supernatural" is just another way of saying "shit we've haven't figured out yet". We don't possess the technological know-how to replicate most nova powers, either, and yet we can do it with some. Do we assume that the rest are forever out of our grasp because we haven't figured it out already? Fuck, I wish it was that easy for those of us actually involved in the field of science, because some of us continue to strive to innovate and develop despite hitting the occassional brick wall. I mean, fuck, if I'd known it was all for nothing, I would have quit a long time ago. Thanks for clearing that up for me, everybody.

"Hey, scientific community! It's over! You can go home! Smoke a spliff and get laid, for fuck's sake!! And all you students, working on your doctorates? Yeah, forget about it. Science is done. We've figured out all we're going to figure out, and the rest is magic. Yeah, you heard me. Magic. Yeah, I can't fucking believe it myself, but there it is."

Grow. The fuck. Up.

[Sakurako Hino]

Well, the next time you come across that unverifiable variable or unexplainable phenomenon, call me up so I can say "toldja so".

What you ask did I tell you?

This: Those that close their minds to the fantastic live mundane lives.

Trust me, my gear and iron friend, there are things that will go bump in your night. While you hug your teddy bear, I look to where it came from and welcome it's presence. This world needs stuff like that. It's chaos. It's the x variable no one can figure out. That's Magic. That's the spice of life. The Unknown.

If you're already seeing only where your sensors cover, you're further gone than I thought.

[Machina]

Quote:

Originally posted by Endeavor:
Well, the next time you come across that unverifiable variable or unexplainable phenomenon, call me up so I can say "toldja so".

What you ask did I tell you?

This: Those that close their minds to the fantastic live mundane lives.

For starters, I think rather than strain the giant intellectual cock that is my own brain, I'll just beat down your idiocy with the words of some real scientists that came before either one of us.

Arthur C. Clarke's First Law;
"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 most probably wrong."

Santayana;
"Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect. It is shameful to surrender it too soon, or to the first comer."

Richard Feynman;
"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong."

Francis Crick;
"Only scientific certainty -- with all its limitations -- can in the long run rid of us the superstitions of our ancestors...it seems to me what you lose in mystery you gain in awe."

Edward Abbey, Confessions of a Barbarian;
"The supernatural is a failure of the human imagination and an insult to the majesty of the real."

Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian;
Verifiable knowledge makes its way slowly, and only under cultivation. But fable has burrs and feet and claws and wings and an indestructible sheath like weed-seed, and can be carried almost anywhere and takes root without benefit of soil or water."

Quote:

Trust me, my gear and iron friend, there are things that will go bump in your night. While you hug your teddy bear, I look to where it came from and welcome it's presence. This world needs stuff like that. It's chaos. It's the x variable no one can figure out. That's Magic. That's the spice of life. The Unknown.

If you're already seeing only where your sensors cover, you're further gone than I thought.

Don't be so fucking pedantic, you fucking undergrad. You can't be so goddamn stupid that you didn't know what I meant.

The unexplained, the fantastical and the new, these are things to be embraced and studied, not shied away from. But the moment you throw up your hands and start calling things by childish names, you have thrown the virgin of scientific reason to the perverted and rapine jackals complete and utter horseshit.

Jesus tapdancing christ on a crutch. You can't be so fucking thick you can't understand that. I refuse to believe a respected scientist could be so fucking gullible.

[kestrel404]

If you're going to argue using other people's words, be sure they agree with you first.

The moment we turn the magic of the moment into a maxim, we have clouded the sky. - Santayana to Llewelyn Powys

The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. - Richard Feynman

Nothing could be more reckless than to base one's moral philosophy on the latest pronouncements of science. - Edward Abbey

We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope. - Wallace Stegner

And of course:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C Clarke's Third Law

I use the word magic in the sense of Clarke's third law. There is magic in this world because there is mystery. That's what Endeavor is trying to say, I think.

[Machina]

Quote:

Originally Vomited Up by Sailor Jailbait:
If one is only locked into trying to figure things out with science... They need to get a clue. I'm discovering more and more there are just things science alone can't explain.

I don't think it was, Glenn.

[H. 'Machine' Mann]

Quote:

Originally posted by Machina:
I refuse to believe a respected scientist could be so fucking gullible.

Respected scientist? Sakurako Hino?

Interesting. I seem to have drift off the primary continuum and into some weird parallel dimension. Could any of you direct me to the nearest convenient multispatial access point.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

She says it poorly (profanity is no substitution for reason), but Machina is right.

"Quantum" physics is new, and it will take time, but men didn't build spaceships by praying at them.

As for Lemmy, it is like playing basketball. The part of your brain that controls your powers isn't the part that thinks logically, those are both specialities.

Thus the irony; If you are thinking about doing something then the wrong section of the brain is running the show. So yeah, you do better if you don't think about it and just let it go.

[Wakinyan]

There are avenues open to use now to reach a zenith that once only had one path. Science is one way to get there. This is all a matter of perception.

Science is a naming magic. Once you understand, contain, and quantify something you can harness it. It is just another means to the same end.

[Lemmy Chillmeister]

Quote:

Originally posted by Machina:
What a bunch of fucking children. Do you believe in the fucking Easter Bunny, as well? Santa Clause? The Orgasm Fairy?

Yeah, smart guys, you got it all figured out. Thank god the remedial kindergarten of think tanks has offered us this quick and easy answer to the big fucking questions regarding the nature of what it is to be a nova. Shit, it's magic. Thank sweet juicy jesus it's that fucking simple! Here I've been studying the nature of quantum anomalies and the nature of the origin of our powers since well before I erupted, and all the time, the answer was staring me right in the face;
OUR POWERS COME FROM PIXIE DUST!!!!

Then what are they? You been studying for so long and you got such a big fucking noggin then you tell me, what are they? Pony up some answers that fit with your test tubes and shit or sit down and shut the fuck up you bitch-ass cynic.

[Neil Preston]

An argument in support of Lemmy (sort of):

An interesting phenomena I have encountered among novas is the the reduced, or completely superceded, need for food and drink. We (I also possess this ability) subsist on ambient quantum.

Neat, huh?

Okay, more of a "ho-hum", but I look at it from a slightly different angle. For instance, if you don't use a muscle, or an organ it atrophies right?

Not in novas. In fact, their GI and Urinary tracks are usually in tip-top shape.

Now, explore this phenomena further.

Why does the heart continue to beat in this circumstance, and to what purpose? It isn't like their cells are utilizing any of the normal compounds that make life essential.

No input => No waste output => No need for the cardio to do its job

What is going on here?

What I think is their this continuing subconcious and instinctual impulse in novas to utilize redundant functions and body processes. For instance, I can stop my heart if I think to do it. I don't need it, nor do I need to breath. The funny thing is I "miss" not doing it.

To me, this is it's own kind of magic.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Different parts of the brain control different things.

Your node runs your q-powers, but heart pumping and that sort of thing is very low, and very basic.

[Dreamer]

Not having an answer doesn't mean that answer isn't there.

[Machina]

Quote:

Originally posted by Lemmy Chillmeister:
Then what are they? You been studying for so long and you got such a big fucking noggin then you tell me, what are they? Pony up some answers that fit with your test tubes and shit or sit down and shut the fuck up you bitch-ass cynic.

What are what, Lemmy? Our powers? You want me to group together every trick and trapping novas as a species can muster and give it all one name, one explanation, one voice?

Fine. And I'll even use small words. Just for you.

The powers a nova has are a manifestation of the brain's capacity to manipulate, control and warp the four aspects of the Unifying Quantum Force, some of which are not yet fully understood or replicable through artificial, laboratory-controlled, scientific means.

There is nothing -- I repeat, nothing -- a nova can do that cannot be explained by the manipulation, control and warping of the four aspects of the Unifying Quantum Force.

Peddle your crazy elsewhere, you fucking hippie.

[Lemmy Chillmeister]

Nice dodge shit streak.

How do we do it? How do we use a little chunk of flesh to create fire from nothing, drop temeratures to absolute zero without that energy going anywhere, or shift weather patterns into doing something that they're not supposed to do? How does the node work?

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Lemmy Chillmeister:
How does the node work?

We don't really understand how the rest of the brain works. We have ideas, but that was true a long time ago as well.

[Juri 'Salamander' McClendon]

But yet, you can't explain it in terms of mathematical proof, scientific flowchart, or documentable and defined process. You can't state with any concrete evidence that X amount of electomagnetism at this wavelength combined with Y amount of weak nuclear energy at that particular potency creates affect Z.

Quantum is a catch-all term for that which science assumes it can define, one day . You can say that the Unifying theory covers all, but no scientist anywhere, including Machina, can give you a step by step explanation as to how the node controls quantum, much less how that quantum is shaped by the node's control.

[Sakurako Hino]

I was going to launch some counter attacks, but Juri just expressed an interesting point.

There are things that Science cannot explain, perhaps never explain. I know my stuff, but the thing is Knowledge means squat in a chaotic universe where there are dimensions we just cannot explore yet with theory and equation.

Perhaps it cannot at all be explained through science, but through the Parasciences of Magic.

It's these beliefs that keep me from being a "respected scientist". I am more than a maverick. I'm off the mainstream's radar.

I fly my freak flag high and now, I'm sorta proud of it.

[Ghostwriter]

Notice how when you name something, it becomes more familiar and less primal? Sometimes that's not necessarily a good thing.

Some people need to name everything and catagorise it all. I think they're wrong...

After all, there's a Chaos Theory for a reason.

We are who we are, we do what we do. That's the only explanation needed for me.

[Amped]

I don't care how I work. It's not really my thing. As long as I'm able to keep doing what I can do and if I can get more power then I have, I'm all good.

[Sakurako Hino]

But, let's take things one higher. For those of us who accept the fact that since will never explain EVERYTHING, then with our current states, how do we actually do what we do? There are just things in the middle that don't explain how we get from point A to point B. The almost willful change of energy from one state to another without some medium serving as an intermediate, the as of now unexplored effects of our powers on reality itself.

Perhaps we can understand ourselves better not with equations and formulae, but with incantations? After all, our powers are based on sheer will, so my assumption isn't that far off.

Perhaps what we do is indeed magic. Perhaps what we channel is some sort of Ki or Mana explained away as "quantum energy".

Lemmy, you're not crazy, you're on to something here.

[Machina]

Quote:

Originally scrawled on a bathroom wall by Juri 'Salamander' McClendon:
But yet, you can't explain it in terms of mathematical proof, scientific flowchart, or documentable and defined process. You can't state with any concrete evidence that X amount of electomagnetism at this wavelength combined with Y amount of weak nuclear energy at that particular potency creates affect Z.

Sure, that's true, but you know what? Thirty or forty years ago, we couldn't even quantify the existence of the full spectrum of quantum theory. Twenty years before that, computers were the size of rooms and did less than my palm pilot. A few decades before that, man swore that not only would be never see the moon, but that man wasn't meant to fly. Keep going back, and you'll always find knuckle-dragging fantasy-humpers clinging tenaciously to the tit of human limitations and weaknesses, and you will always, always find people willing to step up and say "No, you're a fucking retard, it can be figured out, and I will do it."

There's nothing untrue about what you said. But it's only a matter of time.

Quote:

Quantum is a catch-all term for that which science assumes it can define, one day . You can say that the Unifying theory covers all, but no scientist anywhere, including Machina, can give you a step by step explanation as to how the node controls quantum, much less how that quantum is shaped by the node's control.

This from Japan's answer to the Christina Aguilera of novas. Thank you, Juri, I'm sure that your scientific know-how and extensive knowledge of quantum physics has served to enlighten us all. Perhaps you could explain to us, what do we know, and what have the most recent developments in the field been pointing to?

Quote:

Originally written into an emo song by the Vapid Bitch Formerly Known as 'Slutty Librarian':
Notice how when you name something, it becomes more familiar and less primal? Sometimes that's not necessarily a good thing.

Some people need to name everything and catagorise it all. I think they're wrong...

Good thing I fucking asked.

A rejection of categorization, coming from someone who used to hold the moniker of 'Codex'. If I must bludgeon you over the skull with the irony of that little gem, then I suppose you're too far gone for me to bother.

Methinks the whiny tart doth protest too much.

Quote:

After all, there's a Chaos Theory for a reason.

We are who we are, we do what we do. That's the only explanation needed for me.

Who fucking asked you? Does anybody give a shit what's enough for you? Is anybody laboring over what gets Regan through the night? Fuck you!! Whether or not you're satisfied with "you're a wizard" or not is immaterial to the fact that some of us want to understand what the fuck is going on, and prefer not to live in the fucking dark about our condition because they see in the understanding a chance to fucking better it!!

And what about Chaos Theory?!? Do you even know what the fuck you're talking about!?

[Singularity]

Understanding yourself is the key to that, Amped, it opens the door to your potential. Lemmy and others do that through the label magic.

[Sakurako Hino]

Quote:

Originally posted by Amped:
I don't care how I work. It's not really my thing. As long as I'm able to keep doing what I can do and if I can get more power then I have, I'm all good.

Sorry about the double post first off.

Now, Amped, you know something, if you actually thought of how your abilities worked you might increase the ability you have?

After all, that's how things usually worked. After a while, you'll actually want to know how our gifts work.

The rest is your ballgame.

[Sakurako Hino]

Seesh, you guys post fast. >_< Gimmie a minute to think! Golly!

[Sakurako Hino]

Oh please, Machina. All you really care about is where your next lay is. Your thoughts are so material they reak of gears and oil.

You're so intrested in insulting everyone that you fail to notice that no one gives a damn what you say, and don't care what you have to say.

[Machina]

Next lay? Yeah, you know, 'cause as it stands, I get pussy so fucking often.

If I wanted to fuck, little girl, I would fuck, and I would get laid twenty times a day by twenty different women who would never ask my name.

My motivation is the advancement of mutants for second, and myself above all else. My tools are science and logic, and so-called "scientists" like you who open the door to quick answers that have no material worth throw the evolution of our ideas back to the fucking dark ages.

Keep it up, dipshit. Soon we'll all be throwing stones at our own shadow and cowering before the might of the sun-god.

[Sakurako Hino]

That's my point, you've fucked all of New York and you're bored.

As for the "Superstitions" I'm creating with our debate here, get over yourself. You definately are not the savior of the human race, nor are you some sort of protector, trying to save us from ourselves. I'm not talking about going backward, I'm talking about going foreward. In Mind, Body, and Spirit.

Then again, I'm afraid your ego will not allow you to grasp anything we're saying here because then you'd be wrong.

You're afraid, Machina. And now that I see it, I pity you. Clinging to your precious scales and rulers like they're some sort of life preserver as the truth surrounds you like a flash flood.

Thing is, your view of the world is more like a lead weight tied to your waist.

As Lemmy said, He's awakened to something that is just as valid as any equation or scientific fact.

Why is it that you're so desperate to cling to the paradigm of "One Truth"?

[Juri 'Salamander' McClendon]

Double delayed post....weird.

[Sakurako Hino]

?_?

Glitch in the system or an accidental double-post, Juri? Must be the traffic. >_<

Dammit, all this tech and we still got lag.

[Neil Preston]

If we end up using the term "magic" to define something we will never try to understand, we are doing our race a terrible disservice. I really believe were are meant to understand the 'how' and 'why' of what we do, but it will take a while. We are not there yet, but one day we will be.

I find that to be exciting. It doesn't rob the moment of all the magic within me, or any of us.

[Wakinyan]

Shaman, Wizard, Priest, Scientist. They are all going in the same direction Neil. Calling it magic doesn't make the pursuit not worth the effort.

[Sakurako Hino]

You know, that's sorta scary how true that is. Perhaps at some point when our powers advance enough and our understanding of what we do advances enough, we may have the convergence between Science, Spirituality, and Magic all come into one.

[Juri 'Salamander' McClendon]

Machina, explain this one to me:

Nova A has to eat. He has to eat quantities much much higher than a baseline.

Nova B does not eat. She doesn't require it.

Both have nodes of roughly the same size, as it's thought that larger nodes process and absorb more ambient quantum, this needs to be mentioned.

Yet, Nova B does not burn through her quantum supply quicker. She tires at roughly the same rate as Nova A with the same rate of use for her abilities as compared to his.

Both Nova A and Nova B have the same biological processes and organs for purposes of digestion. No metamorphosis has occurred in Nova B to make her physical biology change. Nova B is not absorbing solar energy, is not photosynthesizing, and isn't drawing any other source of power into her.

Now, we take into account this: The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that "in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state." This is also commonly referred to as entropy. A watchspring-driven watch will run until the potential energy in the spring is converted, and not again until energy is reapplied to the spring to rewind it. A car that has run out of gas will not run again until you walk 10 miles to a gas station and refuel the car. Once the potential energy locked in carbohydrates is converted into kinetic energy (energy in use or motion), the organism will get no more until energy is input again. In the process of energy transfer, some energy will dissipate as heat. Entropy is a measure of disorder: cells are NOT disordered and so have low entropy. The flow of energy maintains order and life. Entropy wins when organisms cease to take in energy and die.

Scientifically speaking, the above example is impossible. Nova B would have to consume more quantum than Nova A to compensate for the lack of physical food intake, yet, she isn't. Since she isn't drawing energy from an alternative source, and isn't consuming more quantum than Nova A who must consume food, Nova B is breaking the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Is your answer to this simply that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is currently flawed, and will one day have a corollary or addendum to account for the discrepancy? I ask because Thermodynamics is a pretty consistent law as far as science goes, and as far as I know nothing we've encountered seems to violate it, except of course novas.

You know, I just realized I wrote an entire post without resulting to profanity. Guess I'm slipping or something.