Thread by @acidshill

let’s postulate a universe in which magic exists, and has few limitations other than that if you want to do something, you have to know how to do it. so it’s not too hard to cast spells that already exist, but if you want to do something new, you have to design a spell for it

designing spells is tricky, because the universe is complicated and magic doesn’t allow you to just say ‘i want this result’ without filling in the details

if you design a spell quickly and cast your first draft, it might not work at all, or it might not do what you want, or it might have unforeseen side effects

designing spells, in addition to requiring a certain amount of creativity and technical knowledge, is time-consuming

wizards have to carefully check their design for potential issues, and then also spend time testing and refining it. it takes a while to work out all the bugs, and even then you might not be able to detect all the issues

for spells that are easy to test, you can get a solid bug-free design eventually, but for some types of spells it’s very tricky to prevent bugs from seeping in

mind-affecting spells in particular are difficult, because the mind is complex and it’s hard to detect issues

nonetheless, some wizards work on these spells anyways, because it would be really useful to think faster or have better memory or directly exchange thoughts with others

some people really take their time, spending decades to refine their design and check for errors and research the underlying math so ideally they can *prove* it works as intended before they actually test it

but others are more willing to take risks, and test once they have a design they’re pretty sure will work

sometimes they just fail, sometimes the spell drives them crazy, and sometimes it works

and sometimes it looks like it works but subtly alters their values or sanity

and if you can cast a spell that makes you smarter, you can design spells faster

so there could be a sort of molochian race to the bottom to be more careless with your mind-improvement research so you don’t get completely left behind

so it seems likely that the way this scenario ends is with a bunch of wizards (maybe only one if they get sufficient advantage) improving their minds as rapidly as they can, throwing sanity to the wind, and probably the world is dominated by a bunch of insane superintelligences