Magnetism only feels like magic, because we don't have biological sensors for it
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.
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. Pretty advanced stuff.
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.
My daughter and her friends are all into ICP and all I can think of is the fact that they’re too stupid to understand magnetism and think that no one else understands it either.
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.
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.
I actually heard about an experiment with magnets. They implanted them under people’s finger tips or something like that. Think they left it in for a year. They were able to even detect electricity through walls as well. After it was removed they could still do it!
Biohackers put magnets in their fingertips frequently. It’s in the same vein as putting an NFC chip in your hand.
A real doctor won’t do it, since it’s body modification… it doesn’t even classify as cosmetic surgery, so you have to go to like a tattoo/piercing place (or something sketchier) to get one outside of a scientific study. I think it falls under “do no harm” more or less, which is also why doctors won’t do things like piercings despite being very qualified to do it safely and preventing infection in the process.
The hardest part is finding something to implant, since the body will readily reject a hunk of neodymium or iron in the body; so you need something that’s either “biocompatible” or coated in a biocompatible substance, then sterilized. Finding a mostly sterile field and tools, then a quick incision and a few stitches later, and you have it installed.
Usually it’s a neodymium magnet (to provide the highest magnetic field per gram), coated in a biocompatible film… there’s a couple different biocompatible substances that can be used, the key is to get something that is durable, since your fingers get a lot of use, and something that will last a good long time so you don’t have to get it removed and a new one sourced and implanted every few years.
No, I don’t have one myself, but I’ve been interested in the neighboring implant, which is the NFC/RFID chip, and the idea is largely the same.
Do your research on it if you’re considering it, it’s incredibly easy to get the wrong magnet implanted, or something with a poor biocompatiblity layer on it (maybe it’s too thin? Or poorly applied or something), so spend a bit more for a good product, and find a good place to get it implanted otherwise the infection may be quite the bitch to get over, and may require removing the implant before the infection clears up entirely.
Buyer beware on this one. 0/10 medical professionals recommend doing this.
Actually putting a magnet in your fingertip so you can “feel” magnetic objects is a bodymod I’ve heard some people do
But yeah, like @Pons_Aelius said, MRIs probably aren’t an option ever again unless you have it removed. I guess removing one from your finger would be easier than everywhere on your body.
Edit: I should have read the comment section before typing this, people are already talking about it lol
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.
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
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.
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 😄
I mean, it’d be no different than what it does for all the other sensors. Just those kick on and start training at birth whereas any augment is going to be in adulthood. But the brain is really really good at figuring that stuff out so it’d be interesting, kinda want to do it now lolol
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