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Traditional depictions of magic would seem to require ontologically fundamental entities: some magician or sorceress says the right words and performs some ritual, and some part of the universe obeys their will. In our own naturalistic, reductionist universe, it doesn't work this way: minds are made out of simple, mathematically-describable parts. Any complicated thing that happens, happens because there is some physical mechanism behind it, even if you don't know the mechanism yourself (which is most of the time).

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