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Localized time dilation of course!
Because I recently rediscovered this, sharing here:
All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.
--Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
I actually would prefer people see them as ideals rather than unchanging facts of the universe, because unchanging facts don't require you to fight to keep them like ideals do, and I'm tired of hearing diatribes about the world being just instead of people actually making it just.
The universe might not care, but we do. And that is the entire point indeed.
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NDT's not even going to mention that Santa probably solved or approximately solved the traveling salesman problem for a complete graph of several hundred million vertices embedded in a spherical topology?
I suppose if he's magic he doesn't need to solve anything.
Ffs that guy is annoying. Did not even do the math, which should have told him that hypersonic does not even scratch the surface unless he has an extremely wide drop-off region.
I thought he could have been the next Carl Sagan, but instead, he's that guy you never invite to parties.
I dunno about you, but I'm not sure if I'd have invited Carl Sagan either...it'd take him ~13.8 billion years just to get dessert ready.
I can't believe you're really taking his comment seriously?! He made a post about Santa's reindeer and sleigh vaporizing due to the speed of travel. It's supposed to be absurd, not a science lesson.
It's a little ironic that you say NDT is annoying for his joke while complaining that his math (from a joke) does'nt make sense.
See? Eheran GOT YOU. He knew that Tyson was joking, so he played it straight and made you look like a dupe!
Oh wait, you're doing the straight man switcheroo, I've been bamboozled again.
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Santa is not magic hes just really locked in and his reindeer are built different.
No because santa is a quantum being, he is in a superposition of being in every single house in the world and if someone sees him than only 1 house gets presents. Or something like that, I don't know quantum physics.
We can test this by putting two chimneys close together and seeing if we get a diffraction pattern of presents and coal.
Santa is a shared delusion running on people’s minds in a distributed fashion, known in magic occult spheres as an egregore. All of those minds then manifest Santa by their own deeds and the spread of Santa memes. Santa‘s sled is everywhere at once as the sequence of delivered packages doesn’t matter. One Santa manifested everywhere through human thought and action.
Isn’t this how gods worked in Terry Pratchett’s books?
No, but it is basically how Santa worked, as seen in Hogfather.
Gods are a species that become more powerful the more worshippers they have and essentially powerless when they have no followers, as seen in Small Gods.
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You're thinking of American Gods by Gaiman.
My god is YouTube. TV is dead.
On one of our Christmas themed university events this year there was a physics teacher who calculated how many reindeers would Santa need if we assume the friction vaporizes each one at a certain rate. Like if Santa had a line of 42000 reindeers in front of his sleigh he could go around the earth once before the last one turned medium rare.
Ablative reindeer.
This is one of those things that would require experimental verification, you can't calculate the rate the charred outer layers are lost. Has there been any research on hypersonic meat?
I think reindeer would ablate in a similar way to pineapples given their similar water/carbon content. I think he'd get around just fine with toasted Rudolf.
Lazy ass parents not bothering to update the believability of Santa Claus. Just say there are multiple Santa's all around the globe that work together. That's why Santa sometimes looks different when you see him at different places. That's why there can be a Black Santa, or Asian Santa.
I know I’m “not cool” and a “booger man” because of what I’m about to say, but NDT just likes to post fun stuff. He’s not being serious and he’s not being a know-it-all. Does anyone here read his books or listen to his podcast? He has a damn comedian on for every episode.
But did you know that in the mirror, you can only kiss yourself on the lips?
I'm only half joking when I say, thank you for your bravery.
I find it very interesting that the Internet turned on Neil around when he was posting pro-vaccine messages in a pandemic
I also find it interesting that Redditors didn't notice he is their personality type and turned on him on cue
Soft magic systems aren't any fun. Change my mind.
Christianity, stranger things and paranormal activity are equally as uninteresting to me because it's "because I said so". Boooooooo, come up with some rules for your world.
Can we make a new category of fiction called "supernatural" SEPARATE from sci-fi and fantasy? Thanks, that would be nice.
"Magic system" is a bit of an oxymoron imo. The problem with having hard rules for magic is that that's not magic, that's science. You just end up with a world with slightly different physical laws.
Technology can be interesting on its own but a deep understanding of the underlying mechanics kills the magic. A rock that lets you talk with someone over great distance is magic but if you explain it as manipulating imperceptible vibrations in the air you just have a radio.
"Magic system" is a bit of an oxymoron
This is just the currently accepted terminology in world building: https://rebeccashedd.com/2024/10/25/the-worldbuilders-toolkit-building-a-magic-system/
I'm just extending this to sci-fi also, as have many others, because they're basically the same thing, only that the sci-fi magic systems are vaugely based on real-life science (but vary wildly how closely).
Think Stargate with their loosey-goosey ancients and accession, vs the much more grounded The Expanse.
I'm just not a fan of magic systems without any rules at all.
Hence why I find supernatural stories less interesting, which streaming services, book shops, and movie theatres, frustratingly categorise under fantasy. They are very different from sci-fi and fantasy, in my opinion.
If your magic is purely "mysterious", that's boring, and lazy story-telling (In my opinion).
Bro do you criticize The Epic of Gilgamesh for being a pre-Tolkien world building standard too? You have to judge these fantasies in context
Just joking around, but yeah, I personally enjoy what I call "supernatural" stories less than sci-fi and fantasy with proper world-building
Santa clones himself
"Have you ever seen the film 'The Prestige'?"
(Side note: this is my single favorite comedy sketch of all time.)
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Hims-elf.
Y'all don't get it. Santa is a hive mind parasite that embeds itself in people and takes over at the later months of the year. It tends to hibernate the rest of the year although much like pollen, it seems to be waking earlier and earlier.
Climate change is causing Christmas creep? It’s worse than we thought!!
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Santa likes rich kids more than poor ones.
Hey, so does God.
Magic is copium for people who can't accept or understand reality.
that's religion
i mean if the sleigh is designed properly it would be fine, it just the reindeer that need the magic and they have to have it in the first place to pull the sled.
Christmas is a federal holiday now too
So, it's for everyone now. Not just Christians
Way more presents than in Tyson's original calculation
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clown-to-clown conversation
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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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