Humans eventually find aliens and find out they’re all wizards, how do we react?

[Jervis]

This is a weird post and more just a random idea I had that didn’t fit well on any other sub forum. This is about as scientific as asking “what if Cthulhu was real” and this is more a hypothetical than worldbuilding (though I might use this for a setting at some point), so i’m asking here. Basically for the sake of discussion assume humans get into space, travel to different planets, and run into aliens who never really advanced technology past something like medieval stasis or steam power but use actual magic. We then find out that this is the standard with multiple multi-planet empires using things like planetary teleportation, scrying, meteor summoning, etc to colonize worlds and fight off enemies while humans have just been nerds in the corner doing the equivalent of abusing the physics engine to launch peasant rail guns.

This is admittedly a pretty funny Fermi Paradox solution; we never see alien megastructures or pick up radio broadcasts because all the aliens are psychic space wizards who think that gravity is a function of light things floating on dense things and sinking in lighter things. It also raises the question of how exactly humans missed the magic “tech tree” and decided to start advancing math and science instead. I’m kinda interested to think how people might react. This assumes that neither side drastically outclasses the other with the various alien species having presumably comparable firepower and no concept of the laws of thermodynamics while humans probably have much better mass production and the ability to operate outside of a biosphere. So how do you all think humans would react as a whole to this?

[Telonius]

Strong suspicion that somebody would attach a Thaumaturgic jewel to a warp drive engine just to see what would happen. A couple of planets or solar systems would probably meet a very abrupt end before they make strict testing rules about that sort of thing.

[animorte]

First order of business is defining labels for those so called wizards as I’m sure some of them will no doubt have established a very precise system to determine exactly from whence each individual hails, thus providing an entirely different standard for varying levels of power and origin. Best not to be presumptive and offensive, lest we all meet our demise before said information presents itself properly.

[Aedilred]

... So how do you all think humans would react as a whole to this?

Many forum threads appear trying to establish how many "tiers" exist in the alien society and what tier humans are on, followed by years of complaining that aliens are OP. Self-proclaimed psychics suddenly find their businesses going gangbusters as people search for an alternative power-system to the alien magic and are convinced that psychic powers are both more authentic and better-balanced. Someone builds a magic train, which causes further divisions in society as some think it's cool while others think it has ruined both magic and trains. A self-proclaimed emperor sketches a model society incorporating the aliens in what they consider a realistic fashion taking into account their abilities: it is weird and unfamiliar and while people accept its reasoning, they don't really want to live in it.

And so on.

[Melayl]

Given human history? Poorly. Very, very poorly. And with much violence and prejudice. Sadly...

[sktarq]

I mean I assume they effectively would be

Arthur C Clarke "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.

[Anymage]

How does the rest of the universe work? And for that matter, how does magic work?

If physics as we know them apply and magic works like a 3.5 caster, we react by trying to figure out how they do it (just like smart people would try to figure out any form of technology) but we're screwed. Also everything we think we know about physics will need a massive rewrite, but everything we've observed about physics means that a big thing conjured or teleported into orbit would mess up anybody underneath them. It's one of those "what if 3.5 setting faced off against the real world" threads, except that the 3.5 folks also get to abuse physics hacks when things were already stacked in their favor.

If earth applies a physics field around it while the rest of the universe runs on fantasy physics, scholars will attempt to figure out how the physics field works compared to the universe's baseline mana field, plus you'll have wizards trying to figure out how to copy some of our cool toys. (To a lot of people, our phones might as well be magic.) How much who will want to hang out where will depend on how well each group's tricks works in the other's backyard, and how well magic could reasonably provide the same mass conveniences that tech does.

[Vahnavoi]

Human anthropologists have already reached the conclusion that "magic" and "technology" mostly differ in idiom (see Clarke's third law, cited above), so actual scientists dealing with this first contact scenario would consider this a meeting between two civilizations following different paradigms of science. There would be a massive effort among scientists to study the new paradigm and try to reconcile it with the old one, leading to entire new fields of physics, biology, chemistry, psychology etc. Depending on specifics of the new paradigm, we might also see renewed interest in theology and branches of philosophy that have been left in the shadow of "hard" sciences or otherwise obsoleted, as academics go through old material to see if there's something they missed.

On the laymen's side, absolutely every crank, conspiracy theorist and other "science was wrong all along" folks would proclaim this a victory for their side and throw a party, to zero or even negative effect on actual advancement of sciences.

In the short term, not much would change, on either side, because interstellar travel is hard. Like, there's no reason to jump to full space opera here, we can presume a bare minimum of first contact, possibly only one manned probe, with humanity learning of the existence of other civilizations beyond the first only indirectly. No-one is wiping anybody out, moving large amounts of people and material is impossible, much of the cultural impact is purely on philosophical and theoretical level.

In the long term, the impact depends on how easy it is to reconcile conflicting paradigms.

Worst case scenario: the paradigms are as incompatible as can be, the new paradigm is impossible to put to use on Earth's side (and vice versa), universality principle of Earthly sciences has to be abandoned as incorrect. Earth is an exception to rule in such a way that we cannot even explain why we are the exception. Earth is doomed to forever be sidelined in the grand scheme of things, with only a tiny minority of space travellers ever dealing with wider existence.

Moderate scenarios: we find that the two paradigms are reconcilable at least in part and figure out what we missed. The new fields of science bloom and start producing applications on Earth's side, with a complementary process going on beyond Earth. Potential for exponential growth for Earthlings as new technologies allow for spreading to new worlds more easily than older forms of space travel. Earth establishes itself as another presence in the wider community of living species.

Best case scenario: Earthly information technology allows us to process and adapt to the new paradigm faster than non-Earthlings can process and adapt to ours. Earthly civilizations gain a massive advantage over others, potentially becoming the new dominant cultural paradigm and expanding rapidly across the universe.

The other worst case scenario: name magic is true and information is inherently dangerous. The world ends when some skeptic tries to chant "Hastur" (etc.) three times on a Youtube video. For other dystopian after-effects of abusing things you do not understand, see Borvaria of the Praedor franchise, the Mars incident of the Doom franchise, or Digital Devil / (Shin) Megami Tensei franchise.

[Anonymouswizard]

First off, to reach other star systems humanity will have to be centuries to millennia more advanced than we are now. Which mostly doesn't matter, the aliens mostly scale to us, but it potentially has massive implications in terms of computation, biosphere creation, and energy production.

I'm also assuming technology that's relatively consistent with modern science. Which means we're looking at Dyson Swarms and 0.1c spacecraft, with STL warp drives being feasible but not worthwhile and FTL warp drives basically impossible. Warp is just too energy intensive, wormholes are even worse. Humanity is exploring the universe by collecting the energy of stars, using that to hurl rockets out of systems, and then using the drag of interstellar hydrogen to help slow them down. Communication between systems is at best high powered tightbeam laser transmissions, at worst you don't hear anything until they launch a ship at you. There's very little interstellar trads and practically no interstellar wars, it's just not worth sending ships all that way.

Which gives each side a couple of big advantages. Humanity has advanced computational machines to help them science and mass production, aliens can do things like teleportation and matter creation.

In the short term humanity decides it wants to control the shiny new things and throws a lot of resources into trying to conquer aliens in the system they just arrived in. If they spend enough time in the outer system preparing they can probably build enjoy high tech weaponry to subjugate the planet the aliens call home. Then they'll use their new subjects to help in setting up a comfortable colony while they set in motion important projects, such as a Dyson Swarms to provide energy. Alternatively they might kill the natives off or be subjugated or destroyed by the aliens instead, in which case the universe mostly continues as before.

If humanity does get some new subjects expect as much research on the aliens' abilities as possible. Teleportation especially would be greatly desired, now interstellar travel is potentially a lot easier. And remember that humanity potentially has a lot of energy to throw at tge problem.

I see few conclusions that doesn't end up with one side or the other potentially reproducting the other side's capabilities.

[Haruki-kun]

I imagine it would involve a lot of humans asking for magical solutions to our mundane problems. And from there it depends on whether the aliens agree to provide them. I have a feeling different sets of people would be rather upset about each scenario.

[Advent]

Some would form a religion around them others war...hmm typical human stuff XD

[Arcane_Secrets]

Charles Stross' <i>The Nightmare Stacks</i> is sort of about this. Without too many spoilers it doesn't end up going well for either those who developed magic first or humans, but the former gets the worst of it. That being said, the reason why magic doesn't win outright (or at least partially) is because people in the book already had fairly developed capabilities for it already, so there were counters even though they were better at a lot of things than people were.

[Fyraltari]

The ideal response would be to start analyzing this magic to get to its underlying principles. Cut out the chaff and see how we could reliably and safely reproduce its desired effects on a mass scale. The notion that science is opposed to "magic" is is erroneous. The whole idea behind the scientific method is that if something functions in ways the laws of nature "say" they shouldn't, then it was our understanding of nature that was flawed. "Magic" would just be another new phenomenon to account for in an ever-expanding list.

[Smoutwortel]

This is a weird post and more just a random idea I had that didn’t fit well on any other sub forum. This is about as scientific as asking “what if Cthulhu was real” and this is more a hypothetical than worldbuilding (though I might use this for a setting at some point), so i’m asking here. Basically for the sake of discussion assume humans get into space, travel to different planets, and run into aliens who never really advanced technology past something like medieval stasis or steam power but use actual magic. We then find out that this is the standard with multiple multi-planet empires using things like planetary teleportation, scrying, meteor summoning, etc to colonize worlds and fight off enemies while humans have just been nerds in the corner doing the equivalent of abusing the physics engine to launch peasant rail guns.

This is admittedly a pretty funny Fermi Paradox solution; we never see alien megastructures or pick up radio broadcasts because all the aliens are psychic space wizards who think that gravity is a function of light things floating on dense things and sinking in lighter things. It also raises the question of how exactly humans missed the magic “tech tree” and decided to start advancing math and science instead. I’m kinda interested to think how people might react. This assumes that neither side drastically outclasses the other with the various alien species having presumably comparable firepower and no concept of the laws of thermodynamics while humans probably have much better mass production and the ability to operate outside of a biosphere. So how do you all think humans would react as a whole to this?

Depends on their magic system, but in all cases I think there would be various humans opposed to them, because a lot of religions forbid magic practice.

[Mechalich]

The ideal response would be to start analyzing this magic to get to its underlying principles. Cut out the chaff and see how we could reliably and safely reproduce its desired effects on a mass scale. The notion that science is opposed to "magic" is is erroneous. The whole idea behind the scientific method is that if something functions in ways the laws of nature "say" they shouldn't, then it was our understanding of nature that was flawed. "Magic" would just be another new phenomenon to account for in an ever-expanding list.

Well, it depends, mostly on how the theory of 'magic' operates. Specifically, whether it is integrated into the physics engine of reality or if it operates as a series of engine hacks that violate the operating principles on an ad hoc manner. If reality is a simulation, which is quite likely if 'magic' exists, the latter is more likely to be true and there need not be any interaction between the principles of the physics engine and the ad hoc programming hacks used to compel it according to the desires of the admins.

There are even scenarios where this plays out. No Man's Sky has a set of physical laws capable of modeling a complete, albeit simplified, universe. It also has a series of hacks that break those laws in an ad hoc manner that are available to both PCs and certain NPCs (No Man's Sky is a fun but flawed game, but it has a lot of insight available from a world-building perspective).

Regardless, though, it should be possible to analyze magic either according to the scientific method - if it is integrated - or simply by copying the ad hoc methodology of others - if it isn't. There's no real reason, aside from some sort of arbitrary 'no magic on Earth' ruling by the admins, that Homo sapiens should not be able to learn to utilize magic in such a scenario.

[Fyraltari]

Well, it depends, mostly on how the theory of 'magic' operates. Specifically, whether it is integrated into the physics engine of reality or if it operates as a series of engine hacks that violate the operating principles on an ad hoc manner. If reality is a simulation, which is quite likely if 'magic' exists, the latter is more likely to be true and there need not be any interaction between the principles of the physics engine and the ad hoc programming hacks used to compel it according to the desires of the admins.

"Hacks" are just uses of the software that are unintended by the developers. Absent the knowledge of an intent behind reality, there is no difference between "hacks" and "proper" use of the Laws of Nature.

You may hack No Man Sky to do all sorts of crazy stuff, but you are still beholden to the rules that govern No Man Sky.

[Smoutwortel]

"Hacks" are just uses of the software that are unintended by the developers. Absent the knowledge of an intent behind reality, there is no difference between "hacks" and "proper" use of the Laws of Nature.

You may hack No Man Sky to do all sorts of crazy stuff, but you are still beholden to the rules that govern No Man Sky.

Until you start modifying the executable itself or gain root access in the computers of the producer, than you're only limited by the laws of the computer it's running on.

[Jay R]

Given the human race's history of dealing with strangers who are different from us, we probably react by rolling for initiative.

[Radar]

Regardless, though, it should be possible to analyze magic either according to the scientific method - if it is integrated - or simply by copying the ad hoc methodology of others - if it isn't. There's no real reason, aside from some sort of arbitrary 'no magic on Earth' ruling by the admins, that Homo sapiens should not be able to learn to utilize magic in such a scenario.

Indeed. The only hard requirement for the use of scientific method is the ability to consistently reproduce the effect. Even if those hacks are not fully integrated with regular physics, there will be ways to optimize their use and exploit them in novel ways. There will always be ways to integrate magic with technology regardless of what magic would be. If we continue with the game analogy, take a look at the speedrunners scene and what those people do with exploits.

After all, any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science.

Until you start modifying the executable itself or gain root access in the computers of the producer, than you're only limited by the laws of the computer it's running on.

Which are still laws you can probe, discover and exploit once you can reach that level. In optimistic scenario this would lead to Q continuum or any other ascended SF species. The pessimistic would be a universe-wide BSOD.

While the scenario was a bit different (humans as the only advanced species that did not discover antigravity), "The Road Not Taken" by Harry Turtledove might be an interesting read.