Magic

The Jolly Contrarian’s Dictionary The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™ →Go uptown Just to manage your expectations, you aren’t going to like this a lot. Index — Click ᐅ to expand: Dictionary Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

Magic (n.)

An art of converting superstition into coin. There are other arts serving the same high purpose, but the discreet lexicographer does not name them.

—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

—Arthur C. Clarke’s third law

“Any sufficiently primitive middle manager will be unable to distinguish a basic chatbot from magic.”

—JC’s sixth law of worker entropy

Not artificial intelligence, machine learning or natural language processing, however much they might seem like it to primitive or unimaginative minds. Another kind of NLP — neuro-linguistic programming — may be, at least in the hands of Derren Brown, though I suspect a bit of amateur dramatics and camera trickery going on there too.

See also

• Technological unemployment
• Reg tech
• Chat GPT-3