Magic and Information Theory

one wonders just how much information transfer is involved in quantum entanglement. does the information of a collision forever remain upon the particles that collided? what about when one of the particles from the first collision impact another particle? is the memory of the first collision transferred to the third particle? if so, how long does the information state remain? is there degradation of the memory over time? or does the information persist indefinitely? can that information be reliably extracted from the third particle? from the 42 particle? is there a relative strength to the information and/or informational layers? conversely, does there exist a delicate enough sensitivity to detect and decode said information? is there a direction of transfer of information? does an impacted particle give an equal/complete/incomplete amount of information to the impacting particle?

just some related thoughts.

did you want a history on how sacrifice came to be included as a concept in magical theory?

or an analysis of how components seems to use not much more than the law of attraction and the law of similarity as opposed to any intrinsic value. value seems to be placed on certain spells, perhaps more of an attempt to limit the usage of certain spells than any real associative laws or framework of concepts in d&d's magical system?

here's a comment i made in another thread that you might find interesting:

i will keep my 'history' simple as i include among my sources things that others discard and disregard. first off, this will be from a creationist point of view, for a number of reasons i won't get into now. it started with adam and eve. they were the first (on this earth, anyway) to perform the practice of offering sacrifices, for certain reasons. this practice passed into magical tradition from religious tradition as a means of propitiating whatever power(s) and/or being(s) the practitioner was seeking to engage. i will not get into the mechanics of how such traditions survived the flood, but it is obvious that they both did. today, the roots of such traditions have been mostly forgotten, and/or rewritten, especially in light of the mutual attitudes of the more reactionary of the judeao-christian spectrum of believers with regards to most of the magical traditions and practitioners.

regarding d&d components, if you analyze what is involved, you will find that the laws of similarity and attraction are only spottily applied.

let us take fireball: bat guano and sulphur. bat guano is a potential source of saltpeter and taken with sulphur are two of the three components of gunpowder. why not the third? why not a lit candle, or the ash of a bonfire? in any case we have an application of both laws aforementioned, but only part way done.

looking at stoneskin: granite and 250gp worth of diamond dust. not even close to being covered by the cost of a component pouch. and not eligible for eschew materials. granite makes sense associatively, though diamond does not. sure, diamond is hard, but it is also frangible and can potentially be broken merely by dropping it on to a slab of concrete or with a sharp blow. (after all, they break diamonds into smaller pieces by using a metal blade and a bottle or tool to tap it. it will also react chemically with certain substances and dissolve or convert.) but stoneskin is an otherwise easy spell to subtract large amounts of damage from every blow. adamantine armor costs a lot, so "obviously" so should a spell which approaches its effects. and there is your real "law of association" in operation for that spell. ^^ they further limit it by how much damage it can take before discharging. to be honest, the armor is much cheaper in the long run.

look at mage armor: arguably superior to stoneskin in that it also affects incorporeal creatures, most of which would bypass stoneskin anyway due to the nature of their damage types. but it only requires a piece of cured leather. how is a piece of sun-dried skin in any way associated with a wall of force that is body shaped, jointed, and completely unimpeding? by comparison, wall of force needs a pinch of powder from a clear gem - but not even diamond, nor of any particular cost. what do either of these have to do with a force effect, which in essence is an area of exclusion or separation. if anything considering similarity, something that divides or separates should be used, as well as something clear, and something that is resistant to magic. a cold iron knife or plate with a clear gem set into it or at least included along with might be more appropriate material components for a force effect.

in conclusion, little thought has been given to the laws of attraction, repulsion, sacrifice, and similarity despite the Vancian origin of the d&d system of magic. and even then it is sporadic and inconsistent.

i think that in practice that most dms ignore material components or just handwave it. a few at least require you to subtract the gp value listed in the spell from your ongoing total of cash on hand. which, ironically, would be an application of the law of sacrifice. ^^

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edit: almost forgot - my sig is a transliteration of "Does the walker choose the path, or the path choose the walker?"

that's just the thing, it wasn't magic. we call it religion, but for them it was likely more science. after all, they spoke directly with the race/entities that indicated that there were good reasons for doing things that way. they entered into a covenant with those entities in the form of an exchange. they, and their descendants, do certain things, and in exchange receive certain things. it was those of adam and eve's descendants who decided not to buy into that system that invented magic as a replacement, and a renegade of the race/entities themselves who encouraged the break-away descendants in that path and incidentally provided somewhat of a basis for magical theory to diverge from the science originally presented.

well, classes are pretty simply arranged in groups accounts to which individual accounts are assigned. each group has a series of access levels open to it, and groups themselves range from guest all the way up to root. as your access permissions progress, you are given more access based on the group policies that your group is restricted to. perhaps you eventually could be assigned to more than one access group.

for example, start off as a wizard - user access. achieve epic power - gain admin access. gain "divine" power - gain root access. but then even admin and root access may be restricted further by global policies as represented by epic seeds and divine portfolios.

as you may have guessed, i've already given this form of magic considerable thought, as it is, in fact, the precise system i use for one of my campaign / story settings. =D