Board 8 > Important question about ghosts.

(+) Yeah! (+)

My sister says ghosts aren't inherently magical, as in, ghosts can exist in a universe in which magic isn't real and don't qualify as magical creatures in the same way that wizards and vampires do. I say that ghosts are inherently magical by nature.

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I mean, you are obviously right here, at least according to our current understanding.

That said, it is possible for ghosts to exist in the world without also having wizards and vampires, but at the present they are all on the same level of magical.

Ask your sister how ghosts can be explained using currently accepted scientific principles.

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Well you see, when one parallel universe partially collides into another, but only a tiny bit and in certain ways due to quantum nonsense, ghosts start appearing. Only certain people can sense these 'ghosts' thanks to a random mutation.

There you go, no magic required, you just have to accept potentially unprovable scientific theory.

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I wouldn't consider a setting that's "reality but there's ghosts" to be inherently magical. As in, if ghosts were the only sign of weirdness, I wouldn't automatically assume that there must also be harnessable magic.

Yeah, they're 'magical' in the sense that they violate real-world physics, and if there's ghosts in a setting then there's probably going to be spells and arcane relics and dark gods and whatnot, but you can definitely have a setting where ghosts exist, but 'magic' doesn't.
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SovietOmega posted...

Well you see, when one parallel universe partially collides into another, but only a tiny bit and in certain ways due to quantum nonsense, ghosts start appearing. Only certain people can sense these 'ghosts' thanks to a random mutation.

There you go, no magic required, you just have to accept potentially unprovable scientific theory.

"quantum" = "magic"

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Oooooo i'm a ghost!

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But if ghosts are just a natural stage in the cycle of life can they be magic?

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BetrayedTangy posted...

But if ghosts are just a natural stage in the cycle of life can they be magic?

Are they a natural stage in the cycle of life?

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I think you're making the mistake of defining magic as a technique when magic is really more of a genre

Vampires don't have to be magical

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yeah it depends on how you define "magic"

if ghosts are just the spirits of dead people and they just happen "naturally" then they aren't necessarily magical

like in FFX when dead people become fiends that's not magic, that's just the cycle of life and death in that world

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It really depends on your definition of magic. But as a catch all, no ghosts are not magical.

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NFUN posted...

"quantum" = "magic"

In the parlance of shysters perhaps, but if one is meticulous and rigorous enough to plausibly describe particle interactions such that a hitherto unknown effect can be discovered and the consequences explored in a scientific manner, that'd be the backbone of a solid hard sci-fi novel.

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Clarke's Third Law eh

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SovietOmega posted...

In the parlance of shysters perhaps, but if one is meticulous and rigorous enough to plausibly describe particle interactions such that a hitherto unknown effect can be discovered and the consequences explored in a scientific manner, that'd be the backbone of a solid hard sci-fi novel.

You say this like particle physics isn't also magic

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Magic is just science we don't understand yet.

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