Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: Mages stand in opposition to the non-mages, the blind, the mundane, the Norma. But what are Norma? Why are Norma? The behaviour of non-magic inclined humans towards magic suggests something deeper and more sinister to lurk underneath. Over time mages developed many theories on their existence, seeing the vast majority of humankind as a deviation from them, rather than the other way around.
From both empirical observation and theoretical study, every mage knows that Norma will reject any form of esoteric knowledge pertaining to the true nature of the universe. In essence, the vast majority of human beings will automatically explain away any so-called “supernatural” phenomena.
Here, however, we observe the Woo Paradox, the ability of human beings to accept entirely fictitious forms of magic. The point of the discussion is not how many humans do this or how often, merely that this happens at all. It puts into question the nature of the human mind and its relation to the broader metaphysical context of reality.
Tenuous investigations show that people who believe in so-called woo, are no more accepting of actual magic as any other person. We can see this in the work of Ganesh Joshi (who studied the acceptance of magic among the profoundly religious) and Ingegerd Dahl (who focused on neopaganism and New Age beliefs and how they interact with magic). The overall conclusions are that there is no correlation between the acceptance of false metaphysical ideas and the acceptance of the observed metaphysical principles discovered by us magi.
The question is then, what is happening here, and how can the Norma subconsciously distinguish between the two? Why do Norma not post-rationalize false magic?
Today three principles that would explain this phenomenon continue to be discussed in mage academia.
1) Subconscious disbelief hypothesis
The first, newest, hypothesis postulates that humans also reject false magic. However, they do so subconsciously. This behaviour is not different from how Norma explain away observed or overheard instances of real magic being displayed or discussed. Thus consciously, the human will profess to believe in false magic, yet subconsciously they do not hold the same belief.
This conclusion comes primarily from observation of religious groups and the dissonance between the teaching and application of doctrines. Though a massive amount of data supporting this mechanism exists, some cases wildly break outside the proposed model’s bounds.
The discrepancies should not be taken as disproving the hypothesis, though, merely pain it as incomplete. In fact, considering the possible underlying mechanisms, Eliina Rinne concludes that this hypothesis has the potential to be the most powerful tool towards understanding Norma we have. Thus attempts to either complete the thesis or find a strong counter-argument to the model continue.
It is important to note that the mechanisms are not meant to supersede previously accepted theory but instead expand upon them.
2) Grid deference theory
Unlike the previous hypothesis, this is one of the two widely accepted theories explaining the phenomenon. Unfortunately, as any model dealing with human psychology and especially the psychology of the human Einheit, it has its issues. Moreover, that is where the theory places the root cause of the effect. Similarly to how Masks form from the Ideals, the Einheit learns from the Grid, so does the Einheit recognize Ideals of magic.
Thus a mechanism exists for the human mind to subconsciously filter out concepts due to the broader knowledge of the human species. Commonly, concerning this, the counterpoint of the Thousand Monkey Wizards experiment is brought up. That is to say, if humankind had an inherent ability to distinguish between false and real magic, it would be possible to filter random concepts by feeding them to a group of Norma and seeing which are rejected by the group. Thus, it should be possible to extract information about the viability of specific ideas as a basis for further research. The exact mechanics of the Thousand Monkey Wizards is a complicated topic, but any attempt to instigate the experiment, two of which date to the 2000-2010 era, ended with negative results.
This result heavily suggests that the Grid might take part in the process of post-rationalization – it would then be impossible to extract information from it that is not already prominently present there.
3) Design theory
Such stands firmly in opposition to the foundational theory, or at least its oldest forms. This idea states that the limitation Norma experience is not natural, but indeed some instilled limitation. The perspective relates to many myths and legends of a primal sin or fall man underwent at the dawn of history.
The theory attempts to explain not the mechanics but the origin of post-rationalization — a pressing concern considering that of all known species with a fully developed Einheit, only humankind experiences this kind of mental block.
However, the Kabbalistic underpinnings of this theory focus too sharply on the limitations being pre-ordained and static. This is a mechanism we do not observe when studying the Norma. In fact, it appears to be a self-correcting and adapting system.
When taken together these three ideas, the design theory explains the origin of the effect, the grid deference theory explains the mechanics when pertaining to the unconscious reality, and the new hypothesis of disbelief gives us a model of how this translates to conscious existence.
Esoteric Musings... 