//------------------------------// // Chapter 12: Determined to Disprove // Story: Harry Potter and the Prancing of Ponies // by The Guy Who Writes //------------------------------// So, a good chunk of the literature on Pegasus magic is complete manure, Silver thought to himself as he sat in his room. He'd initially been hesitant to come to that conclusion, given how it went the last time. He'd assumed something similar about WIZARD magic and WIZARD literature, only to be proven wrong by the very first experiment. After he'd wasted a bunch of time plotting out a series of experiments that were made irrelevant by the very first one. At the moment, his inner-Hermione was reminding him very loudly and insistently that Cloudsdale High's library books were written by ponies who knew way more about pegasus magic than he did. But... All scholars are unicorns, he thought in response to that voice. The literature they have on THEMSELVES is probably VERY accurate. I won't argue with that. But the literature they have on the OTHER races... The term 'passable' would say it best. Or maybe 'hit and miss'. The unicorns did their research up to the point that it needed to be done. A few had gone further than that, observing and theorising just enough to satisfy their own curiosity, but that's it. Four hundred years ago, they invented a spell to examine a pony's magic – probably for themselves at first, thought Silver, not that there's anything wrong with that, it's what I would do – and that spell showed that pegasi have magic in their hooves, fur, eyes, and wings. Some scholar, probably a physics professor, decided that wings dealt with lift and thrust, fur dealt with drag and weight, and hooves dealt with weather, all without doing a single experiment to test those hypotheses. The conclusions weren't refuted by anypony, weren't double-checked, and weren't peer reviewed. They merely sounded right, and the other unicorns didn't care enough about pegasi to question the seemingly-accurate 'research'. That's how it used to be done in human science, too. Eminent professors simply declared explanations for observations. Everybody else accepted it (unless it sounded blatantly unreasonable), and that was that. Phlogiston. Elan vital. Even in the modern age, it was a big problem in certain fields, especially softer fields like psychology. Although, to be fair to the psychologists, experiments on thought patterns aren't nearly as straightforward as experiments on, say, gravity. To be further fair to psychologists, plenty of physicists engage in unproven speculation too, even to this day. So does just about every scientist ever, because thought experiments are fun. The problem arises when speculation becomes touted as fact. The problem is made much worse and widespread by a single contributing factor: grains of truth. Take the thing about eye magic helping with vision. It probably wasn't wrong at all. Silver couldn't think of any other plausible reason for magic to be concentrated in a pegasus's eyes, and he had already literally seen the better vision for himself. That part of the unicorn theory on pegasus magic was accurate enough to stand up to basic scrutiny. Wing magic helping with lift and thrust also made sense, and it could be the case that fur magic helps with drag. There's enough plausibility there that most unicorns would just go along with it. But in true science, the kind that adheres to the experimental method, that process of theorising in the aether is a cardinal sin. Across the board, no tests had ever been run, as far as Silver could find, to prove the theories. It's like that cautionary tale he'd told Mr. Book about a science teacher leaving a metal plate sitting by a fire for a while. She turned it around a minute before her class started (and before any students were in the room to see what she did), asked her students to feel the plate (they all felt that the part closer to the fire was colder), and told them to write down their explanations for why it was hot on the other side. Every single student wrote something like "because of heat conduction" or "because that's how the air moves". None had written down "this just seems impossible". The students had said words like "heat conduction" and believed they were doing science. Similarly, whatever unicorn initially wrote the wings/fur/hooves hypotheses had used words like "drag" and "lift" and "thrust", and that unicorn actually believed they were using science to explain Pegasus magic. And on the surface, the hypotheses seemed to match up with observations, unlike the hot plate scenario. That's the danger. That's the trap. That's what it's like to encounter the hot plate scenario in real life. It isn't blatantly obvious that something is wrong with the theories. That's why you have to run experiments. Without proof, you can't accept it. You have to be skeptical. You have to think the problem all the way through. Otherwise, you get situations like this one. When you go just a little deeper than surface level, the theories start to unravel. A pegasus's entire body, not just its hooves, will interact with a cloud. His entire body, not just the parts covered in fur, generates drag. And with any luck, his entire body, not just his wings, can generate thrust. Observation: A mindset of freedom lets me pass through clouds, and after further testing, through the AIR more easily. Problem: I'm trying to do the opposite of that. To generate thrust, I need to PUSH the air, not pass through it. Silver thought about this new obstacle. A possible answer had come to him right away. The only other emotions that had seemed to have an effect on the cloud were determination and fear. In both cases, the cloud firmed up beneath his fur and hooves. When he had bucked the cloud for Flight Formation, he had been determined to do it. When he watched Rainbow Dash clear the sky above Ponyville, he observed that, in those few moments of action, she seemed rather determined. Problem: To generate thrust, I need to PUSH the air, not pass through it. Possible Solution: Be determined. Determination to be free? If that doesn't work, maybe it's determination to push myself through the air. Try simple mindsets first. If Silver was honest with himself, he hadn't been determined to do much of anything in his flying lessons other than 'get by'. He just couldn't bring himself to care all that much. Silver had never cared about sports. (Mr. Book had found a way to get him to care about something that was sort-of a sport... but not really. The only sport he could think of where you won by eliminating your opponents was dodgeball. They truly were, in every sense of the word, mock battles, fought by mock armies.) Flight class just didn't excite him. It felt like a necessary chore. He was determined not to fail, but he wasn't determined to succeed. Maybe that had been his problem all along. Maybe that was also why flight class at school seemed to resemble boot camp – for all age groups, not just his tutoring sessions. Silver Wing had had plenty of time to observe the other groups when he was panting on the clouds, and all the other teachers were just as, if not more demanding than Flight Formation. And their demands, in retrospect, seemed tailored to inspire determination in their students, not resentment towards the instructor. Even if pegasi didn't understand the underlying theory, the "boot camp" setup could have been discovered after many long centuries of trial and error as the best way to teach flight. It had been that way with Flight Formation from the beginning, he realised. But for whatever reason – probably Twilight, now that he thought about it – Flight Formation wasn't as... overbearing as the other teachers. It was a strange and ironic thought, to admit how that gentleness might have been hindering his progress. Then again, Silver couldn't exactly see himself getting motivated by a shouting authority figure like all the other pegasus ponies – well, the male pegasus ponies. The females were encouraged in different ways. But anyway, Silver simply didn't respect authority enough to respect anything other than competent, reasoned instruction. And shouting was rarely reasonable. If Flight had acted like the other instructors, Silver might have just decided that he would do better practicing on his own. He certainly wouldn't have. And if Flight could foresee all that, even instinctively, and was coaching accordingly, Flight was a better tutor than Silver had given the stallion credit for. Even if he was just doing laps with small variations. But that mind-numbing tedium won't be an issue anymore. Well, hopefully. Silver hadn't actually put his newest theory to the test yet. He was about to fix that. Silver Wing looked at the empty air behind him. Author's note: Ignore this author's note. Xavier Renegade Angel Supercut: "T'weren't Tsugura who blew me off. T'was my new nemesis: the wind. Wind, you have fume-miliated me for the last time. Always putting on airs. Blow me. Win-d? More like lose-duh! I declarate war on thine!" He stood alone, far away from prying eyes. He also stood beneath his cloak of invisibility, just to ensure privacy. When he wore it, it was almost as if the cloak wasn't there, just like it was almost as if he wasn't there, at least to outside observers. It hadn't interfered with his broomstick flight, so it shouldn't interfere with this. Silver's eyes narrowed in determination. In actual determination. He knew all too well how impossible it was to trick your brain into thinking something, into believing apples are the colour purple by an act of will. So rather than trying to trick his brain into being determined... All those unicorns, he thought. All that guesswork. All those assumptions and falsehoods and self-flattering theories. He was, in fact, genuinely determined about this. I will NOT be like them. He put himself into the starting position for a buck, aimed slightly down. Today, I test this theory for all the pegasi and earth ponies and thestrals of the world. I make this buck not for myself, but for the pursuit of true knowledge. I will NOT be like the 'scientists' who refuse to test their theories against reality, or refuse to accept reality's answers if they do. He glanced behind himself one last time. Air. I don't know if you will yield to the magic of a determined pegasus. If nothing happens, if you are not affected, then that's the way you are and I will accept it. But if you DO yield to pegasus magic, I will be the one to MAKE you yield! Take THIS! A sound like a thundercrack filled the air. A gust like one might encounter in a thunderstorm filled half of the clearing. A pegasus launched himself high into the sky. Mistakes can come in many forms, in the pursuit of science. An extremely common mistake is overconfidence in one's own theories. Reality rejecting your brain's ideas isn't a pleasant experience, especially when it refutes the ones that feel true. If it happens too much, it often leads to different negative mindsets, depending on the experimenter. Depressing disappointment. Stifling defeatism. Arrogant ignorance (where a scientist ignores their test results). Some combination of the three. On the other end of the spectrum, an extremely uncommon mistake is underconfidence in a theory. Silver, despite all his theorising, hadn't actually expected determination to have that much of an impact. He had expected to feel, at most, as much return force from his buck as he'd felt when he bucked that first cloud under Flight Formation's instructions. He hadn't expected determination to do anything more than that. Surely, if determination mattered that much, somepony would have noticed by now. It was only as he sailed through the air at near-supersonic speeds that he realised maybe all pegasi had noticed. Maybe it was so blatantly obvious to them that they'd never thought to write it down or explain it to an eleven-year-old colt who should have known since the moment he was born. Or maybe, Silver thought after he'd slowed himself down with the broomstick enchantments and slowed his racing heart. Maybe they simply think that determination makes a pegasus train harder, and that a better-trained pony would naturally be a better flier. They might think determination is tangentially related to performance, just like it's tangentially related to literally ANY skill. Hard work leads to practice leads to improvement leads to ability leads to success. That could be how a typical pegasus thinks about determination as it relates to flying. But when magic is involved, especially magical creatures, especially sapient magical creatures, especially sapient magical creatures whose states of mind affect their magic, you can't ever rule out the possibility that emotions directly produce magical outcomes. "Somepony sure is happy," Twilight said when she saw Silver enter the library. "Did you have a good lesson with Mr. Book?" "The lesson with Professor Book was fine," said the grinning colt. "It's what came after that." "Did he reward your performance?" "No, it didn't have anything to do with Professor Book. I figured it out myself." "Figured what out?" Silver grinned. "Magic." And he raced up the stairs to his room. It took Twilight two whole seconds to realize that Silver hadn't answered her question at all. Two seconds later, Silver's head peeked out from the top of the stairs. "Erm... sorry for not noticing sooner, but... why is your horn all... floppy?" "Non-unicorns can brew potions?" Silver asked after a long, grueling day of resisting the urge to interrupt a potential friendship lesson with a scathing anecdote about discrimination based on appearances and rumors. Twilight, though weary, responded to his question with a look of genuine consideration. "I suppose they can," she said after a pause. "Can I brew potions?" he asked pleadingly. This would be the perfect excuse to practice magic openly, in front of Twilight, without any secrecy or tricks. If he could convince her to let him. "I don't know, Silver." She sounded apprehensive. That wasn't good. "Most unicorns levitate the ingredients into the cauldron, and they levitate the knife that chops the ingredients, and they levitate the pestle that crushes them, and-" "But Zecora didn't need to levitate anything," Silver pointed out. "I... guess she didn't..." said Twilight, no less apprehensively than before. "But still, potions can be very dangerous." "I don't mind if we stick to easy, safe potions," Silver said instantly. It's not like he'd be able to do the more difficult ones anyway, what with his ambidexterity training. "Please, Twilight? If I can do it, that means pegasi and earth ponies everywhere can learn. This could open up a whole branch of magic to the entire country. It's for the sake of-" children's learning wouldn't work here "-youth education, the best of all possible causes. PLEASE?" That last line had worked even with the extremely strict Professor McGonagall. With any luck... "Alright, Silver," Twilight reluctantly relented. "But only if you promise you'll never brew a potion alone. I have to be there to make sure you're safe. Okay?" "I promise," Silver solemnly sweared, "never to brew potions unless a competent potioneer is watching." Then, realising he needed to not bind himself to the end of time, "Until you decide I've developed enough skill and caution to brew on my own."