
Where Has the Magic Gone? - shorts_theory
https://arnavdhamija.com/2019/06/19/where-has-the-magic-gone/
======
mdorazio
This seems to be the engineer's version of a type of sentiment that has been
expressed for hundreds, if not thousands of years: once you really understand
a thing, it's not magical anymore. A great example of this is Mark Twain's
writing on his experience with the Mississippi river before and after being a
riverboat captain ("Two Ways of Seeing a River")[1].

[1]
[https://wordenenglishiv.weebly.com/uploads/2/3/6/5/23650430/...](https://wordenenglishiv.weebly.com/uploads/2/3/6/5/23650430/two_ways_of_seeing_a_river.pdf)

~~~
tempguy9999
Indeed. Eliza was created to kill the magic. The author, Joseph Weizenbaum
said it precisely.

'It is said that to explain is to explain away. This maxim is nowhere so well
fulfilled as in the area of computer programming, especially in what is called
heuristic programming and artificial intelligence. For in those realms
machines are made to behave in wondrous ways, often sufficient to dazzle even
the most experience observer. But once a particular program is unmasked, once
its inner workings are explained in language sufficiently plain to induce
understanding, its magic crumbles away; it stands revealed as a mere
collection of procedures, each quite comprehensible. The observer says to
himself, "I could have written that." With that thought he moves the program
in question from the shelf marked "intelligent" to that reserved for curios,
fit to be discussed only with people less enlightened than he.'

The phrase "to explain is to explain away" is Shakespearean in its precision.

But such regret at a loss of magic (or put another way, loss of ignorance) is
IMO not a good sign, that a person wants to be somehow deceived, and I don't
think that's healthy. Bit harsh perhaps but just my view.

~~~
didibus
I also like the AI Effect:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect)

It's the idea that "AI is anything that has not been done yet". Or as I like
to say: "AI is any algorithm you haven't understood yet."

So you can go:

    
    
      * "That's not AI, that's just a regex over a string!"
      * "That's not AI, that's just a lookup over a dictionary!"
      * "That's not AI, that's just a series of if statements!"
      * "That's not AI, that's just a search for keywords in text!"
      * "That's not AI, that's just an optimized brute force over a large search space!"
      * "That's not AI, that's just a linear regression!"
      * "That's not AI, that's just a neural network!"
      * "That's not AI, that's just Bayesian Statistics!"

~~~
z3phyr
AI effect also stems from naming your research "AI" which is pretty broad and
it's meaning can change with context.

Say for example, I go on a quest to create "AI" from scratch and start with
inventing string interning to keep track of symbols. It would be pretty big
deal for me, but it would absolutely not be AI which was an ill defined goal
from the start.

String interning though will be useful for a lot of disciplines, and a good
marketing department will start calling it AI to get more moolah out of it.

This is exactly what happened in the 80s and its practically what is happening
today. "AI" is a great motivator to call any of your project a success,
because it encompasses everything. Programming Languages, GUI, Networking and
whatnot have come out of "AI" research.

In my books, AI just mean one thing. A general purpose machine that can do
anything that a human can or more. Not chess, not starcraft, not spying, but
everything. People have started calling this hypothesis strong AI, but I think
AI will do. This should be the final goal. Anything before that, Programming
Languages, Deep Learning, Networking, Hardware Design should be called by
their own names and merit.

~~~
Cybiote
I consider this argument flawed because it equates intelligence with human
intelligence. The field is Artificial Intelligence, not Human Artificial
Intelligence.

A dog is intelligent, as is a pigeon. Even bees and some mollusks, like the
cuttlefish, are intelligent. They can't think in all the ways a human can but
at what they do, they are competent, even clever.

I feel the same is true for machine intelligences. It takes intelligence to
learn Go or Chess but it also takes intelligence to play, or at least this is
what we say for humans. When the human is thinking about Starcraft, we
consider only how good their thought patterns are for that game. We do not
look at their vision, walking, social skills or whatever. The same should be
applied for the Chess or Go AI while it is playing Chess or Go. While one can
complain that all they know how to do is play Chess, anything else is unfair.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> It takes intelligence to learn Go or Chess but it also takes intelligence
to play, or at least this is what we say for humans.

Perhaps another way to see this is that humans use their intelligence to play
Go and chess, but playing Go and chess does not _require_ intelligence: a
machine can do it, even though it's not intelligent; and it can do it better
than any human. And perhaps it can do it better than any human _because_ it's
not intelligent.

Maybe then intelligence is not really useful for playing Go or chess, but for
other tasks, that we haven't quite pinned down yet because we don't really
understand what intelligence is in the first place. And maybe all the
successes of AI that fall victim to the AI effect are all steps towards
understanding what intelligence is, by pointing to what intelligence is not.

We think of intelligence as an absolute advantage, without downsides. But if
humans, who are intelligent, are worse at tasks like chess and Go, than
machines who are not intelligent, then perhaps we have to start thinking of
intelligence as having both strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps we'll find that,
while there are tasks that cnnot be accomplished without intelligence, there
are also tasks for which being intelligent is an impediment rather than an
asset.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Many humans can't do _any_ of the things CS textbook AIs are supposed to do.

For example: play Go or chess at all, never mind to a high level. Write good
music. Pass a Turing test. Drive at least as safely as average.

Maybe a third of the population is going to struggle with ticking off even one
of those requirements. [1]

Someone who can do all of the above is comfortably in the top 5% of the human
ability range.

Curiously, the usual list of goals looks suspiciously like the interest
profile of a tenured CS academic.

Things humans do but AIs don't include:

Parsing complex social and personal interactions and maintaining maps of
social and political relationships. Improvising solutions to problems using
available resources. Converting word-of-thumb learning into memorable
narratives - either as informal instruction, or as a formal symbol system.
Communicating with nuance, parable, irony, humour, metaphor, and subtext.

Some humans can also parse complex domains and extract an explicit rule set
from them - but that's a much less common skill.

Except for that last one - maybe - these all seem like they're much closer to
the human version of intelligence than any goal based on a specific output.

[1] Even the driving, because many people can't drive at all, so it's not a
50% break at the average. And even the Turing test, because there are still a
lot of humans with no Internet or computer experience, and they'd find the
glass terminal experience very strange and unsettling.

~~~
mannykannot
Another thing that humans do but AIs don't: They recognize that they are doing
everything on your list and wonder how they do it. This self-aware
consciousness is something that goes beyond any particular skill.

~~~
ben_w
I’m curious: has anyone actually tested how many humans “wonder how they do [a
thing]”? What would such a test of the general population even look like?

~~~
mannykannot
I am not aware of any such study - not that that means anything. If one
assumes, as seems reasonable to me, that a person's theory of mind is based on
at least a tacit assumption that other people function somewhat like oneself,
then one might make the working assumption that experiments on a person's
theory of mind [1] also reveal something about how they tacitly perceive
themselves. If you want to know something about their explicit thoughts about
their mental capabilities, one could start by asking them.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind#Empirical_inves...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind#Empirical_investigation)

------
mrandish
The "magic" goes out of most things as you become expert in the domain but
perhaps the greatest loss is the field of magic itself. As a kid I fell in
love with watching magicians. That moment of amazement and delight was always
intoxicating. It made me feel for just a moment as if anything was possible
(despite knowing there's a trick behind it).

As a teenager I studied every magic book in the library, practiced for hours,
started performing and eventually made a living in college as a magician, even
touring on occasion. As I became more skilled and knowledgeable I eventually
got into studying magic theory, learning from some very experienced pros. The
'real' fun in magic for me was coming up with new effects and methods.

However, the tough part is once you get to a certain level, you find there are
no magic tricks that give that 'zap' of delight you got when you didn't
immediately know how they worked. I suspect this effect may be most severe in
magic because the visceral impact relies on not knowing the method. You can be
an expert musician, able to deconstruct chord progressions and rhythms yet
still lose yourself in dancing to music you love. However, not so for advanced
magicians.

I can still enjoy watching a really good magician on other dimensions like
technical execution, creativity or even entertaining presentation but that
momentary zap is gone forever.

~~~
nsomaru
I also began as an amateur magician but mostly remained there. Never did more
than a few impromptu shows for friends and family.

Often, I compare magic to programming. It’s all about the “effect” and wowing
people with something they did not believe possible. But software, as with a
trick, loses its effect once you see it the second time. And, once you get
into the details of how the sausage is made, it’s technical, time-consuming
and probably not worth it for most people who just enjoy the effect.

There’s a book “The Royal Road to Card Magic” and there’s a line there which
says (paraphrasing) “there is much joy in being the deceiver as there is in
being deceived” - perhaps that’s where the joy is to be found, as at the other
side of that transaction rather than “enjoying being deceived”?

------
hyperpallium

      The Joys of the Craft
    

Why is programming fun? What delights may its practitioner expect as his
reward?

First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in his mud pie,
so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of his own design. I
think this delight must be an image of God's delight in making things, a
delight shown in the distinctness and newness of each leaf and each snowflake.

Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other people. Deep
within, we want others to use our work and to find it helpful. In this respect
the programming system is not essentially different from the child's first
clay pencil holder "for Daddy's office."

Third is the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of
interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out
the consequences of principles built in from the beginning. The programmed
computer has all the fascination of the pinball machine or the jukebox
mechanism, carried to the ultimate.

Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepearing
nature of the task. In one way or another the problem is ever new, and its
solver learns something: sometimes practical, sometimes theoretical, and
sometimes both.

Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The
programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-
stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the
imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and
rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. (As we
shall see later, this very tractability has its own problems.)

Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that
it moves and works, producing visible outputs separate from the construct
itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The
magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct
incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things
that never were nor could be.

Programming then is fun because it gratifies creative longings built deep
within us and delights sensibilities we have in common with all men.

~~~
juliangamble
Fred Brooks - The Mythical Man Month
[http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~param/quotes/man-
month.html](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~param/quotes/man-month.html)

------
qznc
It is still magic even if you know how it's done. -Terry Pratchett

I consider programming the most magical thing we have: We put mysterious
incantations into mysterious contraptions and mysterious things happen. Harry
Potters wand is not really impressive compared to a smartphone. I find
software wonderful even after doing for over twenty years.

------
marcus_holmes
You wait, kid, soon you'll be dealing with a terrible project manager on a
doomed project in a company that does awful things to the world.

You'll find yourself drunk one Saturday night fiddling with yet another side
project, tears rolling down your face, wishing you could just work on code
that you don't actively hate.

~~~
zerogvt
There are deeper circles of hell yet. Imagine being dragged in a
bureaucratic/operations/meetings soup of tasks. Then you could find yourself
begging for coding tasks even if they'd be in the stack/project you now hate.
The sad reality is that __a lot __of what we are paid to do as engineers is
stuff that nobody would do for free. Boring, ethically dubious, bummer,
repetitive, unnecessary complex balls of mud, with people we don 't like
working with, etc. Balancing between the too-much-shite and good-enough is a
whole new art that you get to know as you mature...

------
beautifulfreak
Call it demystification. It happens in every field. For me, it was when exotic
vocabulary lost its luster, and my writing improved. (Ah, youth.) It happens
in relationships too. Demystification is generally forward progress.

------
anyfoo
Hofuku said, "Right here is the peak of the mystic mountain." Chokei looked
and said, "So it is, what a pity." \-- Zen mondo

That being said, a seemingly simple (and long finished) hobby
hardware+software project somehow led me down to the path of engulfing myself
in the theory of Digital Signal Processing. It is mostly math, far more than I
used to be confronted with in my career as a software engineer, even with a
solid analog+digital hardware hobby, and I'm diving deep into the very
fundamentals: Discrete Fourier transforms, Z-Transforms, Quadrature Amplitude
Modulation... not just learning how to apply it, but how it's actually
derived.

For some reason, this time the magic sticks. For one, there is the immensely
satisfactory feeling when I actually understood, really got a grasp, on a
complex subject within that field. You would expect that, as usual, this is
where the magic stops. But then actually _applying_ that daunting theory to
real world problems, and watching it actually perform what you intended to, is
still just very... magical.

------
hprotagonist
To counteract this, I recommend a career in the biomedical sciences; we
fundamentally don't understand _so much_ that "i know how it works now and so
it's not special" hardly ever obtains!

------
pretendscholar
Funny, I get a great sense of pleasure from understanding things well enough
to apply them, especially in unconventional ways. Whenever I read articles
like this I get the feeling that they might actually be depressed but
misattribute it. Its very difficult to debug your own happiness.

~~~
baroffoos
I feel similarly. Its satisfying to feel that you know what you are doing
rather than just randomly trying things and copying stack overflow. Every few
months I get the realization that the things that I considered too hard are
now simple.

Its also really cool having so many opportunities available for personal
projects.

~~~
_blu
the article is not really about "randomly copying stack overflow". It's about
the joy of exploration and learning, and once you have attained mastery - the
details of applying it over and over again is not interesting (which is
usually the case in real jobs)

~~~
tlear
The thing with mastery in software is that it is a fleeting thing. There is
always more and more and more..

Number of “masters” I have met in my career who were really barely
intermediate in a narrow area. I been doing it since my early teens and I am
in my 40s now, I am really really good. But master no.

------
pontifier
I totally get this. I started a Makerspace, and was enchanted by the
possibilities present in the dense technology I had gathered.

Many of the projects I had always wanted to do were suddenly within reach, and
I learned a lot, and made lots of cool things.

Now though, when I talk to people there, and they ask me what I'm working on,
I have no good answer. All the low hanging fruit that I had been reaching for
has already been picked. The interesting problems to me are still out of
reach, and now require even more specialized equipment or technology.

If anyone has a spare MRI machine or electron microscope they want to get rid
of, I'll take it!

~~~
bordercases
I've heard of electron microscopes being built in the garage. MRIs though I
imagine would be more hefty. Could one build a portable MRI with less
resolution?

~~~
pontifier
I don't really want to build them to look at stuff. I need an ultra fine
electron beam and extremely uniform magnetic field for my fusion reactor
prototype.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Farnsworth Fusor?

~~~
pontifier
It's a device of my own design. There is a bit more info about it at my
website www.DDproFusion.com

------
wildengineer
I felt the "magic" of software as a teenager with my first programs. I've even
faced long stretches of boredom over the years, but after 2 decades the awe of
the magic has been replaced with the awe of my own mastery. I'm in awe when a
elegant solution comes to mind, seemingly out of thin air. I find that
magical.

------
swtrs
I've been experiencing this for the last six months and unfortunately its
soured my current gig (that I started six months ago now) such that I dread my
work life. Almost the entirety of tech is no longer magical once I actually
read the tfs cards.

~~~
Ocerge
I feel this way too. The only way I can describe it is like pressing the
sprint button in the video game is the only way to get any work done anymore,
because my natural curiosity is largely gone. Wait until I have enough mental
energy to deal with a task, press the sprint button, and wait until I can do
it again. I wish I still enjoyed programming/software like I used to, but it's
purely work to me now.

~~~
vonseel
I’m in the same spot. Things that are well-understood seem bland, and
complicated or unknown problems seem tedious. Productivity comes in 16-hour
spurts separated by several days of boredom, guilt, and unsuccessful attempts
to get something done. I’ve felt like this since maybe year 4 of programming.

I’m really not sure where people go from here. I don’t know whether to stay in
the industry or plan to switch careers; I’d probably be just as bored with
something else. Age seems to be accompanied by disenchantment and I can’t
imagine ever being a bright-eyed and full of ambition to excel in a field like
I once was. Maybe I’m just jaded.

Reading the topic article, I’m a little glad I didn’t study CS. At least I got
to feel the “magic” he mentions in the first few years of my career. This poor
guy’s already spent and it doesn’t even sound like he’s in his first real job.

------
2rsf
For electronics engineers the bleeding edge of wireless research feels like
magic, try connecting a 802.11 antenna to a spectrum analyzer and you are
guaranteed to have some serious WTF how does it even work moments.

------
boomlinde
What are some good magic retention strategies for people that feel this way?
Personally I rotate through an ever growing bunch of topics of interest and
find that some insight on one topic can open up the potential for magic in
some other topic. I think the fascination some people have with things they
don't understand is a natural incentive for seeking more knowledge.

------
l0b0
> Once I had a robust mental model of the problem and its solution, writing
> code for it just felt like a perfunctory task.

Based on every piece of software ever it sounds like OP just doesn't
appreciate just how deep the rabbit hole goes. I mean, even something as
simple as `cat` is 700+ lines of code[1], and it would probably take a novice
years to understand every single nuance of that program to the point where
they could build something comparable on their own. And programming is still
in its infancy. If you want more rabbit holes than you can shake a stick at,
just look at algorithms, data structures, new languages, networking,
compression, high-performance computing, massively parallel systems, zero-
knowledge proofs, formal verification, you name it.

[1]
[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob_p...](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=blob_plain;f=src/cat.c;hb=HEAD)

------
swolchok
I think of this attitude as being a stereotype of mathematicians. "I've
already proved that a solution must exist; finding it is just drudgery."
Perhaps the author would enjoy branching into one of the more theoretical
branches of the discipline, like theory of computation, cryptography, or
mathematics proper?

------
fit2rule
The magic is where its always been - in the hands of the user.

If you find yourself in a technological field and yet very uninspired, its
more than likely you've lost contact with the users of that technology.

To revitalise yourself, engage with the users of your technology - go find
them, see how they use it, see how your technology changes their lives. That
is the purpose of technology, and its where all the magic lies.

Users are key. Don't have users? Thats your problem. Got no clue how your
users use your stuff? Again, that's the problem. Don't see them improving
their lives in some way with your technology - then don't expect there to be
that magic feeling..

Disclaimer: Have lost and found the magic over 30 years of experience as a
software developer. This always works for me: put down the tools and go spend
time with your users.

~~~
magpi3
I entirely agree, and what you write connects with Karl Marx's theory of
alienation: that as workers become more specialized they become more alienated
from the people and communities that benefit from their work.

I think this is a huge problem in the tech world especially and businesses
would be wise to find solutions to it. Sending workers on outings to interact
with users sounds like a great idea.

~~~
fit2rule
I've been brought into projects as a senior developer to try to revitalise the
project and get it back on track after a catastrophe or a failure to produce,
and I _always_ recommend, straight off the bat, put down your tools and go be
a user for a day/week/month, until you understand what you're doing and have a
stable point around which to orient the rest of the chaos in the project.

It has always worked. Software projects (hardware too of course) get off the
rails when too much time is spent in the woods and not enough time enjoying
the trees. Get out there and use what you've made - you'll see what you need
to do after assuming the perspective of a user for a while ..

------
esmi
I often have the opposite experience these days. A very (very) long time ago I
knew almost everything about my computer system. I knew the physics of the
transistor, the power systems, the schematic of the boards, I had practically
all the source code that the machine ran and understood most of it. These days
the machines are so complex that I have a very good understanding of my little
corner of the machine but the rest might as well be magic for all I know about
it. In a way it’s a huge victory for the engineers in our field that these
things can be considered mundane.

------
Sophistifunk
I find the complete opposite, the less magic I have to deal with the happier I
am, because it means maybe I can fix things when it doesn't do what I want it
to do.

~~~
thrower123
Yes, magic is a dirty word in my book. Give me bog-standard, boring,
predictable systems all day long. There's still a kind of joy in being able to
do the job well and efficiently, and it's easier to do the job well when you
aren't spending your time scattering chickenblood and eye of newt around,
muttering cryptic incantations.

------
notacoward
At 54, I still find some wonder in the coordination of complex systems. Making
a single process(or) step through a linear sequence of steps is BORING, but
making a hundred or a thousand work together in some complex dance without
skipping a beat can still feel pretty amazing. Maybe it's more like juggling
than magic: the more balls are in the air at once, and the faster they're
moving, the better. You can even get that feeling without true concurrency,
when many pieces of a complex system each step in to do their brief essential
part before stepping out again. Of course, when such systems fail the results
can be spectacularly _bad_ , but I guess that's the price you pay to
experience the wonder when it's working.

For fun, look up "Strandbeest" or "Wintergatan marble machine" on YouTube to
see some mechanical equivalents that (at least for me) trigger the same
satisfaction at seeing the parts of a complex system come together.

------
astatine
I kind of understand the sentiment, having seen many enjoyable tasks become
chores.

However, I think the magic is now in seeing the excitement, seeing that spark
getting lit in others. Whether it is people just getting into the profession
or those studying, the magic has moved to an external locus. Not the same kind
of magic as the OP describes, but still satisfying.

------
cmsefton
I'm reminded of Feynman's discussion about The Beauty of the Flower
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbFM3rn4ldo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbFM3rn4ldo)

Replace the word beauty with magic, and you get a similar point with regards
to the "loss" of magic. It's not a loss at all, it's really just familiarity;
"knowing" how it works doesn't make it any less magical (or beautiful). My
suggestion to recapture that magic, is to delve further into the things you
don't understand or know, and to ask further questions to unravel deeper
layers, rather than continually having to use the knowledge you already have.
It's worth recognizing that you can still appreciate that "magic", despite
having looked behind the curtain to see how it works.

------
reacweb
I feel I am not a very good developer because of a similar feeling. I do not
enjoy producing lines of code, but I enjoy solving difficulties. That is one
of the reasons I love making prototypes. One of my favourite professional
activities is to provide support. Some other team call me to help on issues.
Often I know far less than them and they do not always tell all what they have
done. It is like an Agatha Christy novel where I have to find the culprit (the
cause of the issue). Someone else provides a clean fix. I love problems where
the solution is surprising (for example
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41061400/perl-join-
strin...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41061400/perl-join-strings-
incorrectly/41062206#41062206)).

------
keiferski
Max Weber's concept of Disenchantment is essentially this applied at the
societal level.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenchantment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenchantment)

------
rdiddly
Same is true of music too. Once you learn the ins & outs of playing a certain
song, you almost forget why you liked it. Or worse, you master the playing
style of your favorite player and suddenly you've killed your god!

------
Retra
One would think one potential solution is to start working on problems we
don't actually understand. General AI, algebraic frameworks, high efficiency
cross-cutting models, etc. Pie in the sky stuff.

~~~
tachyonbeam
I work in AI and I find it pretty discouraging at times. The biggest
conference in the field had about 9000 attendees last time. There are
thousands of publications coming out every year. It's basically impossible to
keep up, and your chances of getting scooped (someone publishing your idea
before you) are pretty high. Many of the more obvious research directions have
already been tried. Many ideas don't work so well. It's tough. I personally
have moments where I struggle to believe I can have any impact in this field.

------
Jeff_Brown
I feel that a lot -- but not when I'm learning new ideas in Haskell. After
years of study, that particular engineering landscape remains powerful and
beautiful in ways I still don't understand.

------
xkcd-sucks
Fuck that shit. Increased understanding of the world reveals deeper magic.

------
segmondy
The Magic is gone when you stop challenging yourself and you start looking
more outwards than inwards. You have to think crazy ideas and work on them.
Most of my side projects are still magically, folks tell me I'm crazy or it's
impossible, and the first thing they almost always ask is "How will it work"
Of course, the magic is gone once I explain it. Understanding takes away the
magic, might be a good thing for you, it might mean you're grown and can now
understand more and many things.

------
rgoulter
_It has led me to think that the exciting part was never the actual
implementation (or coding in this case), but figuring out the solution
instead._

I think this is the key part. (See also:
[http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2014/11/25/west-side-
project-s...](http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2014/11/25/west-side-project-
story/)

An opposite of this is moving between different technologies so quickly that
you feel like you're forever a newbie.

------
tjr
[http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-
story.html](http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html)

------
buboard
I m more interested where did that magic come from? How come this though-
secreting organ in our heads feels good vis-a-vis something it does not
understand, and why is this more prevalent in early age.

------
bubblewrap
To me the magic is gone because I feel that even if I create something good, I
still need the permission from Google to make it popular.

~~~
ralphstodomingo
At least you know to whom you should bend a knee. I do wonder if there was a
time you didn't need to.

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g00s3_caLL_x2
How much new do you use, before you use it all up?

If the spark is fading, start teaching. Either on the side, or as a mentor.
You'll get asked questions you may not know the answer off the top of your
head and it will make you dig, and remember.

It feels good to spread that spark and fan your own flames in the process.

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Otnix
Wireless electricity is quite literally the transmission of electrical energy
without wires. People often compare the wireless transmission of electrical
energy as being similar to the wireless transmission of information, for
example, radio, cell phones, or wi-fi internet.

