Setting: Kelovea (Here Be Dragons)

[DanielH]

It would be easier to just convince yourself you were all-powerful than to bother convincing somebody else, I expect. And if you were Glass and could see how magic worked, it would be even easier.

In real life one of the most common delusions is that of being Jesus. Would people with similar delusions become extraordinarily powerful in this magic system?

[Kaylin]

Can bystanders' expectations trump one's own expectations? Like, if someone really sucked at magic, and so was expecting their ritual to fail, but was doing a really great job of passing themself off as great at magic, such that a whole crowd watching totally expected the ritual to succeed, could the ritual succeed?

For reasons which will become clear, I think they would probably succeed because the expectation of the crowd trumps the person's own expectations.

Actually, is magic even known to involve mental states, or are people under the impression that anyone who correctly completes a purely mechanical ritual will succeed at performing wizarding magic? (Like, does someone trying to do a wizarding ritual incant something and burn herbs and focus really hard on the desired result, and people figure if your concentration is broken or you don't concentrate hard enough the ritual fails -- or does someone doing a wizarding ritual just chant the words and burn the herbs, and as long as they pronounce everything correctly and use the right herbs, people would expect them to succeed?)

You have to be thinking about what you want to achieve - and you can't get a ritual to work if you are wrong about what its effects are supposed to be. If you are very firmly convinced that a ritual for one thing will in fact do another thing, and you concentrate and WANT sufficiently, you might be able to get the result you were expecting, but it's a lot harder than using the ritual for its intended purpose, and may even be impossible if the ritual is a sufficiently well-used one.

Along the lines of Pedro's question -- might there be, for instance, an established phenomenon of schizophrenic people actually causing disembodied voices which other people can hear too (because there have over time been a lot of schizophrenic people believing really hard in voices to set the precedent that they can actually cause those voices, and at this point "surrounded by mysterious disembodied voices" is a recognized symptom of schizophrenia)?

Possible, but mildly implausible for reasons that I will explain at the end of this reply.

I'd vaguely expect the magical mechanism here to mean that lots of little superstitions are in fact at least mildly effective -- breaking a mirror really does bring bad luck, knocking on wood really does avert it, burying a statue upside-down really does help you sell your house -- in a way that doesn't necessarily associate with any particular magical tradition, because people will come up with this stuff spontaneously and convince themselves of it and spread it and then it will perpetuate itself because it really does work.

Yes, absolutely. It wouldn't start being really effective until a lot of people were doing it, though.

Does mind-affecting magic exist?

This one took a lot of thought because the answer wasn't immediately derivable from what was already built. The answer I think I've come up with is that basically no. Hypnotism exists, hypnotism works great, and so do things like communicative telepathy and maybe mindreading. But outright mind control or alteration is one of those "the house always wins" cases. If it's possible at all it's only with consent, which means it's unlikely to have been discovered in the first place.

Could you use that to hack the system, once you're aware of how it works, by doing mind-affecting magic on a consenting assistant to get them into a state of strongly-expecting-things-to-work?

If it worked, this would not be as helpful as you think it would be.

And this is the part where I explain why it looks like I'm shutting down all your fun ideas.

I have been massively understating the extent to which precedent is absolutely vital to this magic system. Unless you are an extremely strong-willed person with unusually high self-confidence, with particular reason to believe that you can do things no-one else can, you will not be able to do anything with magic that breaks the apparent "rules". This is because, as well as taking into account your own beliefs about what is about to happen, the universe also takes into account what everyone else in the world would expect to happen if they were watching you. This is why ritual magic and the like help make magic easier, because they reduce the burden of proof from "a guy standing in a field and glaring can do a thing" to "a guy who draws a chalk circle and recites a memorized incantation can do a thing".

The latter is much, much easier, because: (a) people only do that ritual if they are trying to do the same thing you are doing, and if it's a new ritual then no-one's ever done it and gotten a different result; (b) fewer people have done the ritual than have stood in a field glaring, so there's less weight of precedent against you from that direction - it puts you in a narrower category that is less heavily weighted to contain counterexamples - (c) people are much more likely to believe that you can do the thing, because it makes sense that magic would require effort; (d) magic does in fact require a time investment.

Which...I think I forgot to mention when I originally explained it. Whoops. Anyway, yes, another axis along which the difficulty of doing a magic thing scales is how much time you've put into it. For a dragon, this means that for something to count as part of their hoard - and therefore be summonable - they have to have put nonzero time and effort into acquiring, making, or altering it. For a wizard, this means that the longer their ritual, the bigger and more implausible the effects they can achieve.

[DanielH]

So believing yourself to be Jesus might let you curse a fig tree but would not let you raise the dead and certainly wouldn’t let you share a couple fish and loaves of bread with a crowd not expecting it to work?

[Kappa]

...it would be adorable if the schizophrenic thing worked

[Unbitwise]

if it's a new ritual then no-one's ever done it and gotten a different result … there's less weight of precedent against you from that direction - it puts you in a narrower category that is less heavily weighted to contain counterexamples … For a wizard, this means that the longer their ritual, the bigger and more implausible the effects they can achieve.

So how do wizards invent new rituals, and how have people not come to understand the secret simply from trying to optimize the practice of wizardry?


Regarding the schizophrenia thing, it may not fit your system but it would be interesting to have a system where people-with-strongly-held-delusions can do whatever, and the reason this isn't exploitable is that they quickly positive-feedback off in some poorly-controlled self-editing and power-enhancing direction such that they end up fitting more into the categories of 'dangerous natural phenomena' or 'Fair Folk' than people you can interact with productively or who even share their previous selves' goals.

[Moriwen]

the universe also takes into account what everyone else in the world would expect to happen if they were watching you

Is this true in the literal sense of "watching", or is what the universe actually takes into account "what everyone else in the world would expect to happen if they knew what you were doing"?

(Like, if a ritual calls for the step "pour wine over a stone," and you instead pour water dyed red over a stone, will that get effects or not?)

I think I didn't quite ask my question about mental states correctly -- do people believe that there are mental states that are necessary for performing magic (like "be calm" or "focus" or "intensely want someone dead for malicious reasons"), or do they believe (correctly) that you just have to be thinking about what to achieve, or do they believe (incorrectly) that your mental state is irrelevant to (at least some) magic and it's as mechanical as following a recipe?

[Kaylin]

So believing yourself to be Jesus might let you curse a fig tree but would not let you raise the dead and certainly wouldn’t let you share a couple fish and loaves of bread with a crowd not expecting it to work?

Pretty much.

So how do wizards invent new rituals, and how have people not come to understand the secret simply from trying to optimize the practice of wizardry

By extrapolating from past ones and combining them in different ways, or by being really really good at magic. Every wizarding tradition has built up a corpus of "magical theory" from which new rituals can be derived based on the patterns observed in past rituals. Inventing a new tradition requires extraordinary willpower as well as a serious time commitment - typically a wizard inventing a new type of ritual from scratch will have at least two or three failures before they find one that works, to make up the time/effort requirement without making the ritual itself super long.

the universe also takes into account what everyone else in the world would expect to happen if they were watching you

Is this true in the literal sense of "watching", or is what the universe actually takes into account "what everyone else in the world would expect to happen if they knew what you were doing"?

(Like, if a ritual calls for the step "pour wine over a stone," and you instead pour water dyed red over a stone, will that get effects or not?)

If they knew what you were doing. If you know yourself to be "cheating" at the steps of a ritual, not only will you expect yourself to fail, but anyone else who was aware of all the facts would also expect you to fail.

I think I didn't quite ask my question about mental states correctly -- do people believe that there are mental states that are necessary for performing magic (like "be calm" or "focus" or "intensely want someone dead for malicious reasons"), or do they believe (correctly) that you just have to be thinking about what to achieve, or do they believe (incorrectly) that your mental state is irrelevant to (at least some) magic and it's as mechanical as following a recipe?

It probably varies from one wizarding tradition to another, but is likely to be fairly consistent between schools that are aware of each other. These are more likely to believe that mental state is important, because they are aware that performing different mechanical actions can get you the same results. It is well known that species magic requires particular mental states, such as the dragons' summoning power requiring you to focus on your right to control the location of the thing you're trying to summon because it's yours.

[Kappa]

...huh. So re: cheating, if the person doing the ritual doesn't know the ingredients are substituted, will it still fail?

[Kaylin]

...huh. So re: cheating, if the person doing the ritual doesn't know the ingredients are substituted, will it still fail?

Yup. (a) It is still true that if everyone else in the world knew what was happening, they would expect it to fail;
(b) the universe puts them in the category "people who pour water on rocks" rather than "people who pour wine on rocks" and precedent says the latter category are the ones who can do magic with it.

[Moriwen]

What if someone believes they're pouring dyed water on a rock where the ritual calls for wine, but actually a Very Confused Thief broke into their house overnight and swapped out wine for their dyed water, so they are in fact pouring wine on the rock? Does the ritual fail (because they expect it to) or succeed (because if they knew all the facts, they would expect it to)?