Swagnercreative's Shortform
May 14, 20251
Swagnercreative
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A combination of ideas from books I have been reading recently ("The Science of Can and Can't", "What We Owe the Future") have me wondering about potential recipes for sustainable moral exploration and potentially approaching cultural lock-in type effects (moral/ethical staticity/stagnation).
If I imagine the option of locking in the culture of almost any population from any time period in my species' history, It looks to me like that option would lead to unnecessary suffering and great moral harm. The same could be said, at least in principle, if the option to prevent cultural lock-in from ever occurring were to be chosen, as the process by which cultures change does not guarantee those... (read more)
General Purpose/Universal(?) definition of Magic.
Magic (for an observer O at time t) is any event or capability that appears to O to involve purposive causal power for which O lacks a coherent, lawful, and sufficiently detailed explanation.
Magic_O(t) = { e ∈ Events | Power(e) ∧ ¬GoodExplanation_O,t(e) ∧ Directed(e) }