Think about it. Isn’t light+eyes and ears+sound just the same in terms of their “influence at a distance”? We don’t feel that as abnormal or magic - simply because we’ve sensors for them and are used to it. But physically speaking light and magnetism are based on electromagnetic forces.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Get ready to make friends with every TSA agent you see for the rest of your life, and pray you never need an MRI.

    • swnt@feddit.deOP
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      Fair point, but then, most people don't have this.

      And even if you do it, you need to get some experience for your brain to develop a model of what to expect in certain situations. For instance, your brain will need some time to get used to the fact, that putting our hand on a fridge will give the brain new sensory stimuli because of the magnets on the fridge.

      This intuitive understanding of light and sound is just that - brain neurons being used to what to expect. And even with an implant you would need to train that.

      Though I'm definitely curious to experience once how that would feel like 😄

  • Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    I think it also feels like magic because we haven’t developed much intuition about the way magnets work. If you had thousands or millions of magnetic items in your life, you would develop that intuition, which would shatter the magic. Obviously, not being able to see or feel magnetic fields plays a big role too.

    For example, ropes, strings and cables are very familiar. You have a good intuitive understanding on how they work, because you’ve used them so much. There’s nothing magical about them. Imagine what it would be like if today is the first day when you learn to tie a knot. You could do completely magical things like attach two ropes together. You could even keep a box closed by tiring a rope around it.

    • phx@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We kinda do though, we just don't often see them as having magnets but most electric motors work on principles of magnetism.

      • Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        We can also see a knot and understand that is how the rope is doing what we want. We cant see magnetic fields, nor can we even detect them directly with our senses aside from metal fillings around a magnet. If we could detect magnetic fields like some fish, we would probably find magnets much more intuitive.

    • swnt@feddit.deOP
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      1 year ago

      Fair point, I didn't know about that. But even then, most of us don't feel like we can feel it - and in the modern city living spaces it gets even less important to train such a sense.

      • oo1@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        source of sorts

        Earth's field is very large and very weak compared to small strong household magnets.

        Whatever senses we've evolved for navigation could be dealing in a completely different scales so as to be useless.

        It might be like trying to use a 5ml teaspoon to measure the volume liquid in a of a bathtub.
        or using an alcohol thermometer to measure the temperature of molten iron

  • AzureKevin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    We don't have sensors to directly sense a single magnetic field, but if you've played with magnets a lot, you can definitely "feel" how their forces work and develop kind of an intuitive physical sense.

    Perhaps a good example/analogy of something we can feel and understand somewhat intuitively but actually do not scientifically understand is gravity. You can definitely feel its effects / force, even though you don't have a specific gravitational field sensor in your body per say.

    We have very good theories and formulas for calculating gravitational effects, but we still fundamentally do not understand what causes it.

    • cbarrick@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      [Y]ou don't have a specific gravitational field sensor in your body per say.

      I'd argue that the vestibular system in your inner ear qualifies as a gravitational field sensor.

    • swnt@feddit.deOP
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      1 year ago

      The example with gravity is interesting indeed. We have only acceleration sensors behind our ears, but our body notices the pressure of the body tissue pressing down towards the gravity. And obviously, we also feel gravity when moving.

      However, the difference to magnetism is, that we frankly don't have any contact with magnets during our evolution - except for the earth's magnetic field.

      Even if we are able to sense it, it's definitely far from being able to reliably feel it like we do for gravity.

    • swnt@feddit.deOP
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      I have to disagree there regardless of how one interprets "know".

      If you mean "know intuitively", then we don't, precisely because we have no sensors for it and hence no experience with it. We intuitively know light, because we sense it and know what to expect in a closed room with no light source.

      If you mean it scientifically, then light and magnets are extensively studied and far from "know nothing about it". Our knowledge of light, magnetism and sound is very good on all levels.