Science as ¨magic¨.

[Dugi]

I like your point about aliens. In the past, people attributed unknown phenomenons to magic. Now some people attribute them to aliens whose technology is far more advanced than ours. In the past, people saw plots of witches and devil worshippers everywhere, now some people see plots of governments conspiring with aliens. In the past, many people saw god(s) behind everything, now some people see aliens behind everything (including the origin of humans, still ignoring the problem that aliens would need to evolve somehow too). We replaced magic with aliens and these aliens, just like magic, can do anything and need to do anything that suits the storyteller.

I wonder what will the UFO stories do now when drones are becoming very common and any flying object can be a drone.

[Yomar]

Yes Dugi that was exactly my point, thx for clarifying it.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Dugi - I'm sorry you missed out on One Piece - although it's not always that intellectually stimulating (I suppose the same could be said of Alice in Wonderland) it may be worth watching if you can temporarilly deactivate the "that's silly crap, I don't need to know that" gene which seems to dominate a lot of adult (particularly male) humans these days

My point was made in response to the overall theme I picked up in the discussion - that of humans using an understanding of the universe and it's applied uses to become (like) gods. I suggest that in doing such, you limit the godliness you emulate or "achieve", I suppose to the sort of god who is bound by, exists in accordance with and subject to natural laws as opposed to the real ass god who made them. I was inspired to add the One Piece reference becasue you described all those interesing new things people were coming up with. In the series (appologies to hardcore otakus for my crude paraphrasal) the crew of the Going Merry are blasted up into the land of Skypea which is a cloud ocean (yeah, it's fantasy anime for kids, not supposed to make sense) they meet winged beings who seem to have amazing powers at first and from their prespective appear 'godlike' - In actual fact what they have is a very strange kind of sea shell which they use cleverly - in my analogy this is their 'technology'. The people with devil fruit powers (='supernatural') have an advantage in that the powers they use come from their natures and not from things they need to use and once they learn of the tricks used by the Skypeans, they are able to dominate them.

Also
As a student of ancient cultures, I get really annoyed when people look at things such as the Pyramids, etc and say "oh, they couldn't have possibly made those with their primitive technology", then atribute things they don't understand to extra-terrestrials. For me, the 'magic' is not in them making it with the help of little green men with flying saucers, but in them making it with their own hands, some rocks, sand, water and a few copper tools.
Perhaps there are things being achieved in this age which people will things similarly 'magic' at some point, but I have my doubts. For one thing, when ancients built something they said "(with the will of the gods) I have established this for all time" - these days people say "lower production costs and use cheaper materials, the number returned before warentees expire will be covered by the number of suckers who find they need a new one the day after they do."
Personally I think that future archeologists will remember this as another 'dark age' - all that we will leave future generations to remember us by will be pollution.

[Yomar]

I almost never exclude anything as impossible, but yes its incredible of how many documentary were made that bring up that maybe the pyramids were actually build by extra-terrestials or using their knowledge, for most ppl that have some deeper knowledge of Egyptian history, those are junk theories, yes there are still "obscure" and unknown things about that culture, but saying that every time there is a big rock it was placed there with the help of aliens cuz "supposedly too big to be lift by simple humans", well I find it a bit silly.

The important thing is being open minded, and don't believing immediately everything they tell you, science to is far from being infallible, for example the pyramids were not build by slaves but by paid workers, and this is only one of the many historical mistakes that were made and you can find more in many branches (you can pick btw a lot of disciplines and find also a lot of errors that later were confuted) of science research.

[Dugi]

Dugi - I'm sorry you missed out on One Piece - although it's not always that intellectually stimulating (I suppose the same could be said of Alice in Wonderland) it may be worth watching if you can temporarilly deactivate the "that's silly crap, I don't need to know that" gene which seems to dominate a lot of adult (particularly male) humans these days

I have no problem with fantasy, wesnoth is fantasy after all. I don't dislike fantasy, all I hate is pseudo sci-fi that resorts to technobabble (putting a lot of scientific words together and pretending that it makes sense, like 'This acyclic collider alters the polarity of leptoquark flux using the double-photon absorption during temporally correlated scintillation process in neutronium xenide in einsteinium crystals, creating beams of Higgs bosons that annihilate anything in existence.'). And I have a certain grudge against anime and manga because it tends to create newer and newer big bads coming from backround who are just stronger and stronger and it goes on forever and the result is a samurai-themed soap opera.

I get really annoyed when people look at things such as the Pyramids, etc and say "oh, they couldn't have possibly made those with their primitive technology", then atribute things they don't understand to extra-terrestrials.

Because that's how pseudoscience works. Make a conclusion first. In this case, the conclusion is that aliens visited us in the past. Now, when you know what are the results, find out why should it be like that (the proof that it's really like that is absolutely unnecessary). Resort to any flaws in official theories (like unknown methods of building pyramids), and because a wrong theory means that the opponent's theory is right, we any flaws in explanation of the pyramids' construction proves that aliens helped them. It's used practically in any kind of pseudoscience. God created us without evolution (because we're americans and we are religious fundamentalists) -> evolution theory has some minor parts that are unclear (if there isn't enough of them, we can fabricate some) -> therefore evolution did not happen and it was exactly the Christian god that created us 10000 years ago in 6 days. We do have souls (because non-existence of souls rules out our esoteric crap) -> neuroscience does not have an algorithm exactly describing how do we think -> that is the influence of souls. Jews seem to be so lucky (I envy them their developed country) -> I don't know any Jew that the Nazi killed -> therefore there was no Holocaust. Astrology works (because it earns money) -> there might be wormholes connecting us with the future -> therefore by knowing the position of stars at one's birth, we can foretell his destiny. Homeopathy works (it earns money) -> vaccines have side effects (or they can be fabricated à la Andrew Wakefield) -> therefore homeopathy is a better alternative for any medicine. Yes, these guys deserve a punch in their ugly faces.

Personally I think that future archeologists will remember this as another 'dark age' - all that we will leave future generations to remember us by will be pollution.

I'd call this era rather Era of Pollution, Age of Filth or Toxic Days.

[Midnight_Carnival]

My gods! somebody check for snowfall in Taihiti or something! I find myself agreeing almost 100% with everything Dugi said in one of his posts!

I don't think we need to go far into the future to see people who view modern science as 'magic', there are may alive who do so today. I'm not going into the actual princples of science (repeatability, objectivity, etc...) but it is an unofficial 'principle' that it is something most people should be able to get at least a vague understanding of if they apply themselves. I could never do the math nescesarry for working out whether a star could support life or not, but I could understand the principles behind those scary equations.
The problem comes in with people who have the view "Oh you couldn't possibly understand this" - I'm not talking about arrogant scientists either, I'm talking about people who view certain branches of science as 'mystic'. Said people often have a very limited understanding of the fields of study, but that's ok since everybody in the whole world is far more stupid than them anyway and if they can't understand it, obviously nobody else will be able to. They are fond of posting BS arguments online using many supposed technical terms and a link to an obscure website which is supposed to "explain everything" - said non-accademic websites are treated as absolute and irrefutable evidence.
Things like faster than light particles (tachyons?) being able to impart their mystic energy which can be captured in a crystal and used to "alter the charge of electrons, so a negatively charged electron can become postively charged" WTF, that's anti-matter! You do not want that in your house!
I think that science could one day explain a lot of what we think of as 'magic' today, I hope it can do so in a way which does not make it any less special, but that's just my view.

If you want to do magic, go back to old-school stuff, blood, dolls with pins stuck in them, leave science out.