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@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ The way more or less every magic system, including "hard" ones, leaves its opera
1. Spellcasters *do* have to specify almost everything (well, down to moderately complex physics), possibly making magic a way to internalize what would otherwise take lots of machinery. This is roughly the approach in [Ra](https://qntm.org/ra) and [The Machineries of Empire](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26118426-ninefox-gambit). Characters are legally required to offhandedly mention arbitrarily complex mathematics.
2. The less you specify the more power is required, presumably to derive the remainder some other way. I haven't seen anything but [Break Them All](https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/break-them-all-original-precross.12960/) (an obscure unfinished prequel (?) to a fanfiction to a webserial) do this. This provides a fairly natural way to make magic users more powerful from study, and to make advance preparation useful.
3. Magic works as either individual magic users expect (or want) it to or as everyone (in aggregate) expects it to. This is quite common, though my favourite implementation is the [Discworld](https://www.goodreads.com/series/40650-discworld) gods.
4. At some level lots of specification is necessary but, [as in software](/assets/images/magic-system.png), this is abstracted in common use. The implications of this are quite close to 2, with the addition that things aren't possible at all until someone works out and shares the low-level techniques, making it more valuable, and the possibility that the underlying systems are lost knowledge.
4. At some level lots of specification is necessary but, [as in software](/assets/images/magic-system.png), this is abstracted in common use. The implications of this are quite close to 2, with the addition that things aren't possible at all until someone works out and shares the low-level techniques, making those more valuable, and the possibility that the underlying systems are lost knowledge.
5. A controlling intelligence resolves the details as required. This implies that someone built it, and possibly that it can be negotiated with or tricked.
6. There are many, many effects which are possible, assigned through something random like a hash function, and people only know of/care about/use a small fraction of them. This does still preclude complex effects like healing unless there is also something biasing them toward being useful. [HPMoR](https://www.facebook.com/509414227/posts/10157671264984228/) does something like this and this is (kind of) the [Unsong](https://unsongbook.com/) magic system.
7. Simulationism - the universe is simulated using high-level approximations, and there's some unintended behaviour in edge cases because it was poorly programmed. Admittedly, this is kind of boring as a solution to anything.