Understood - what I’m saying though is that it’s a bad quote. It doesn’t convey that it’s indistinguishable only to people who don’t know any better, it just says that it’s indistinguishable, which again is objectively not correct. The cell phone in ancient Rome would absolutely be considered magic… in error, by people who don’t understand what they’re seeing; and limitations on magic doesn’t make it suddenly not magic - just cuz some fiction establishes that you need a newt eye, 2 raccoon penises, and a 1/2 cup of sugar to summon a magma demon doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be creating a ton of energy and matter.
I could say a spruce and a pine are indistinguishable just because my dumb ass doesn’t know the difference - but I’d be wrong.
Indistinguishable doesn’t mean identical. It just means that the observer cannot tell the difference.
The observer being the one who doesn’t know it is technology is implied by the quote.
Sometimes brevity is much better than a lot of explanation. To add in a fairly obvious point about this being for the uneducated observer would make it twice as long.
Edit: To reinforce that it’s the observer, imagine how silly the quote would have been were it to reference all parties. Like, the person who understands that it is tech is going “oooooh, magic!”
Understood - what I’m saying though is that it’s a bad quote. It doesn’t convey that it’s indistinguishable only to people who don’t know any better, it just says that it’s indistinguishable, which again is objectively not correct. The cell phone in ancient Rome would absolutely be considered magic… in error, by people who don’t understand what they’re seeing; and limitations on magic doesn’t make it suddenly not magic - just cuz some fiction establishes that you need a newt eye, 2 raccoon penises, and a 1/2 cup of sugar to summon a magma demon doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be creating a ton of energy and matter.
I could say a spruce and a pine are indistinguishable just because my dumb ass doesn’t know the difference - but I’d be wrong.
Indistinguishable doesn’t mean identical. It just means that the observer cannot tell the difference.
The observer being the one who doesn’t know it is technology is implied by the quote.
Sometimes brevity is much better than a lot of explanation. To add in a fairly obvious point about this being for the uneducated observer would make it twice as long.
Edit: To reinforce that it’s the observer, imagine how silly the quote would have been were it to reference all parties. Like, the person who understands that it is tech is going “oooooh, magic!”