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Reported on http://novysan.com/magic and confirmed here: http://www.media.mit.edu/about/academics/class-schedule
'When Aleister Crowley defined magic as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will,” he might as easily have been describing technology. In fact, “magic” is still the word we use to encompass the wonders of a new technology before it becomes ubiquitous. '
Course Description
"With a focus on the creation of functional prototypes and practicing real magical crafts, this class combines theatrical illusion, game design, sleight of hand, machine learning, camouflage, and neuroscience to explore how ideas from ancient magic and modern stage illusion can inform cutting edge technology. Students will learn techniques to improve the presentation, display, and interface of their projects as well as gaining a deeper understanding of the cultural traditions that shape user expectations of technology. Topics will include: Stage Illusion as Information Display, The Neuroscience of Misdirection, Magical Warfare: Camouflage and Deception, Magic Items and the Internet of Things, Computational Demonology, Ritual Magick as User Experience Design. Guest lecturers and representatives of Member companies will contribute to select project critiques. Requires regular reading, discussion, practicing magic tricks, design exercises, a midterm project and final project."
Uncle Al would have been so proud.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday February 06 2015, @04:24PM
1. Faith healing can work, thanks to the placebo effect. Sure, it's nowhere near as good as modern medicine, but if you're out of other options why not give it a whirl? If you're dying of ebola, you really have nothing to lose by trying it out.
2. Herbology definitely can work, because some of the herbs in question have chemicals with desired and consistent effects. For a simple and well-known example, camomile will almost definitely make you drowsy which will help insomniacs, while black tea will do the opposite which helps narcleptics.
3. Mysticism has been shown in several studies to have definite effects on brain development. For example, they've done studies on Buddhist monks and determined that their brains are significantly different, especially while they're meditating, compared with the average person (whether or not they attempt to meditate).
I get that you want to take the purely scientific viewpoint here, but the fact is that the purely scientific viewpoint has more evidence for the ideas you're dismissing out of hand than most pro-science folks would care to admit.
There's also a significant difference between the practitioners of all this stuff that believe it actually works, and the frauds and quacks who fake it (e.g. Peter Popoff). One of the biggest differences is that the frauds are usually looking for significant amounts of money in exchange and claim all kinds of secret wisdom that they can't tell you about, while the real guys often are willing to work at cost or close to it and are happy to explain what they know to anyone who asks.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.