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Comment by epgui | Hacker News Reader

If it was real, it would not be called “supernatural”, by literal definition.

Quantum effects, like those used by the LEDs on your computer, used to be "supernatural" until someone figured out the physics behind them and invented devices capable of exploiting these effects. If you could bring an LED back in time to the year 1500 and show it to people then (with a power source and current driver of course), they would surely call it "supernatural".

Breaking Special Relativity is not some 15th century "oh, there's some lovely dirt down here" impressionable pleb. We have machines that can confirm SR to within ridiculous level.

They were never supernatural. They were just not known or not understood. Physics is by some definition the study of the natural world. There is a lot we don't know about the natural world, but what we know and don't know aren't what make something "supernatural".

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

LEDs were absolutely supernatural. As I said, go back in time with one and show it to Medieval serfs and see what they say. Supernatural is anything that you can't explain given your understanding of the universe.

Supernatural (adj): (of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.

Something CAN be real and beyond current scientific understanding.

> Something CAN be real and beyond current scientific understanding

I think you're reading that wrong. "Beyond scientific understanding" doesn't mean "beyond current scientific understanding", it actually means, "beyond any possible scientific understanding". So a supernatural phenomenon would defeat any possible attempt at characterizing it scientifically.

Have you considered that you're interpreting it wrong? Go back in time with self-replicating, able to construct themselves to predefined structures, nanobots and you'll have supernatural powers that "violate" scientific understanding of the time. Doesn't mean it can't be explained.

It is true hubris and actually kind of sad to think we know all laws of nature and nothing new could stump us and our cherished laws of nature.

Also, read my other comments. Science is about explaining the previously unexplainable. So nothing, no phenomena you sense with your senses, is beyond science.

The definition of "supernatural" has nothing to do with scientific understanding at any particular time, it's about whether a scientific understanding is possible even in principle. Deities and souls are not amenable to scientific understanding even in principle, that's why they're considered supernatural. Observed phenomena that defy current understanding don't qualify.

Let's look at the root word. "Natural" does not mean "familiar" or "understood". It just means that it's a part of the physical world we inhabit. Conversely, the "supernatural" is what exists beyond the physical world we inhabit: it's not real by definition.

This is all a semantic disagreement and not a question of hubris or overconfidence or of how advanced our knowledge really is.

Quote from hpmor.com chapter 1.

> The Professor turned and looked down at him, dismissive as usual. "Oh, come now, Harry. Really, magic? I thought you'd know better than to take this seriously, son, even if you're only ten. Magic is just about the most unscientific thing there is!"

...

> "Mum," Harry said. "If you want to win this argument with Dad, look in chapter two of the first book of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. There's a quote there about how philosophers say a great deal about what science absolutely requires, and it is all wrong, because the only rule in science is that the final arbiter is observation - that you just have to look at the world and report what you see. Um... off the top of my head I can't think of where to find something about how it's an ideal of science to settle things by experiment instead of arguments -"

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