scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/3l18xz.md

[BST][HF]Effective Magic and Magocracy

• Author: u/Shadawn *

• URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3l18xz/bsthfeffective_magic_and_magocracy/

• Score: 16

• Created: 2015-09-15T12:24:01

Post:

Let's assume an Effective Magic exists in a technologically medieval or below setting. The exact efficiency of magic may differ, but follows these laws:

1. Magic can be worked to do wide range of desired effects. Not everything is possible, but a lot of things are, and with training you can get exactly those results you wanted. Also, unlike special powers, magic can (and need to) be trained.

2. Magic can be worked with minor gestures/words/thoughts on the spot. Long expensive rituals with thousands casters chanting helps to achieve something grand, but is by no means necessary for everyday, relatively minor stuff.

3. Magic is very combat-efficient, especially in the hands of trained mage. Experienced mage can beat at least tens of soldiers.

4. There are no significant drawbacks to magic, and no "artificial" limiting mechanics (like constant total power for Nasuverse or other stuff forcing Masquerade).

5. Magic is rare talent showing randomly and isn't inheritable (otherwise normal humans would be outcompeted in reproduction very fast, I think).

With these conditions, is there any way for society to NOT be ruled by magi? In my opinion, even if magic gets discovered in established society, things will go down like that:

1. Magic users start to stir up society. They show feats on the battlefields and in common life. Fireballs flying around, and they're reproducible. In 10 years max rulers are bound to notice that and start to be doing something much.

2. Wise leaders will invite magi in their power structure. Magic Guilds will rise and quickly (several decades) gain power. Societies not recognizing or persecuting magi will be at significant disadvantage in any military or even business (if magic is applicable) conflict.

3. Second-generation magi, less loyal to King and more to the Guild of peers take charge. Conflicts of interests are bound to arise. I think magi will have significant advantage with all their extra abilities and relative unity (less amount of agents means easier to cooperate)

4. Soon some mage will stage a rebellion, or assassination, or coup d'etat. Even if it fails, next attempt will come soon, and is bound to succeed with all extra abilities in possession of magi. Voila, magocracy! In my opinion, it won't even take 100 years for magi to overtake most of the world.

TL;DR: I think Efficient Magi will overtake most of the world in less than 100 years. Do you (dis)agree and why?

Comments:

u/PeridexisErrant [+10] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (41 minutes later)

(blatant edit to focus on one aspect)

I think magi will have significant advantage with relative unity (less amount of agents means easier to cooperate) ... Voila, magocracy!

I'm not sure how much of this is me thinking with tropes, but a unified magocracy seems pretty unlikely to me. Assuming you don't have any particularly Orwellian mage-detection or mage-compulsion systems, which must be out of scope for the question to make sense, mages who don't want power or attention can hide fairly effectively at this tech level.

Among those who are prominent or powerful... why would they be unified? If a mage betrays her ruler and seizes the throne, what's to stop the lieutenant doing the same? Maybe this is just a squabbling mages trope, but I would expect if they had no reason to hide you would find mages at or near the top of many power structures, not dominating a single superpower.

On the other hand... while I can't find it now, ^^deliberate ^^challenge there was a great lesswrong post about coordination between highly motivated people as a superpower. In real life, if there was a one in ten thousand genetic trait for selfless cooperation among carriers and lust for (collective) power, those people would absolutely rule the world.

u/Shadawn [+3] (2 hours later)

I didn't mean total unity, just relative compared to general population. If there's 5 million people in a kingdom, and 1 out of 1000 can be a mage, there are only 5000 potential mages. These guys theoretically can hold a meeting, and each of them can be acquaintances with like 10% of other magi. There is no need for all of them to be focused on getting power. Several hundred may be interested in power, half of the others may want something out of potential Magocracy, and the rest could very well be left to their own devices. On the contrary, magi don't really get anything out of opposing other magi.

u/alexanderwales [+5] Time flies like an arrow (4 hours later)

On the other hand, let's consider some actual medieval demography for a moment. Spain and Portugal in 1350 had a population of about 5 million people, with roughly the same borders as they have today. Those 5,000 mages are probably going to be distributed in accordance with a map of population density.

Our 5,000 mages will probably be intelligible to each other, but they're going to speak different languages, or different dialects of the same language. If we're looking at the Iberian peninsula in the 1300s, that's Galician, Portuguese, Asturo-Leonese, Castilian, Aragonese, Catalan, and Basque (also Arabic, but that's because of the Muslims, who I'm not counting). They're probably going to eat similar foods, but there are going to be variations within the region. There are going to be differences in fashion and culture within even a single kingdom, owing to the difficulties involved in travel.

Mages have unity only in that they can all do magic. In most other respects, those 5,000 mages are going to be strangers to each other. They will almost certainly not be related by blood. There are two things that unify mages; their trade and their king. In my opinion, that doesn't start out as being enough to make them into a unified force, especially one that's out to kick out one of those supporting legs. They might evolve as an institution over time, but every new mage that gets added into magedom is a stranger with no previous connections to the guild, except in a few rare circumstances.

Edit: Also, half of them will be female. Depending on the social assumptions, that would be an important factor.

u/xThoth19x [+4] (8 hours later)

Thank you for bringing up the edit. I hadn't thought about that as I was reading this thread. That probably completely changes the history/legal traditions because nothing leads to social and political gender equality than women who can shove fireballs up your ass.

u/-main [+1] (8 days later)

http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-5/page-90/

Relevant comic page - magic (or superpowers), distributed roughly in accordance with demographics.... would be "the most democratizing force the world has ever felt."

u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (3 hours later)

It depends on the specifics of the magic; many magic systems have gamebreakers that just completely warp the world around them to the point where it almost doesn't matter who's using the magic or how. Assuming that this is not the case, and trained mages are roughly equivalent to heavily armed special forces or artillery weapons ...

My first thought is that we already have non-heritable power structures in the real world. A historical analog might be the Catholic Church, which was composed entirely of men and women who were not born into it.

Here's the basic problem that's going to face any Guild of Mages: where does unity come from? There is certainly the threat of violence from brother mages, but that's negative reinforcement, which is enough to sustain an organization but generally doesn't tend to be enough to make an organization flourish, especially not to the point where it might attempt some large coordinated effort like a coup.

One of the big variables is how efficient mage detection is. If mages can be swept from their homes as infants, indoctrination into the Guild can be done effectively, but if it doesn't present until the late teens, there's time for bonds with family, country, established power structures, etc. which weaken the bond to the Guild.

Because magic is not heritable, you also run into the problem of mages working against their legacy. Mages are going to have children and those children are not going to be mages. If a mage participates in a coup which favors mages, he's making a strictly temporary play for power which does nothing for his legacy. In other words, he has to care more about the legacy of mages than the legacy of his own bloodline. From a basic medieval start, that seems unlikely (or like something that a clever mage would have to craft a narrative around so other mages would care about magedom).

If I were king, I would likely head off rebellion by intermarriage with the mages. Assuming that I have any spare heirs, I can marry them off to mages in order to tighten ties to the Mage's Guild and make thoughts of a coup more complicated. I also keep the Mage's Guild physically close to me and involved in decision-making, similar to the way a medieval king might have a bishop as an adviser.

u/Shadawn [+3] (3 hours later)

Let's suppose that magic is mostly detectable in early teens, about 12-14 years old. About the unity - medieval people united heavily around their crafts, and Effective Magic certainly qualifies for that. Granted, there were a LOT of competing guilds, but I suppose there are much less Magi than artisans. Still, several competing Guilds sounds like a possibility, but wouldn't they have a strong incentive to form a syndicate of sorts?

Your measures are sound, but I'd like to hear your opinion on end result. How confident are you that your descendants after 2-3 generations will hold any real power in the kingdom? Percentile probability estimate could be very helpful, however inaccurate that is.

u/alexanderwales [+7] Time flies like an arrow (7 hours later)

Just a quick note about guilds:

Guilds existed for a lot of the same reason that unions and cartels do.

• If you and I are both glassworkers, it makes sense for us to engage in some price-fixing so that we can drive prices up.
• If we hold a bunch of instructional capital, it makes sense for us to agree to extort hopeful apprentices into taking a raw deal.
• It makes sense for us to make it prohibitively expensive for glassworker number three to set up shop; we can accomplish this by talking to the people we buy raw materials from and threatening a loss of business if they don't go along with freezing out the newcomer.
• Alternately, we can just extort glassworker number three by coughing and mumbling something about guild dues (otherwise we do the above freeze-out). This makes our guild grow by one, which gives us more weight.
• Together we can go to the mayor and say, "Hey, you should pass a law that lets only the two of us do glasswork in the city, look at all this value we provide by working in harmony with each other and keeping up standards, etc."

This all makes us allies, but not friends. Once our guild has grown, it exists partially so that we can keep each other in line. A glassworker breaks ranks? We bash his fucking face in! ... or at least impose severe sanctions to the point where he's going to have to leave town or find a new trade, which we can do because either our guild has kingly authority, or we have economic muscle, or both.

Now, this is a rather pessimistic view of guilds/cartels/unions. They also do other things, like allowing for cumulative funds for larger projects that benefit everyone (guildhalls) and allow the guild members to lean on each other in various ways (pension/widow funds). But I would still argue that one of the primary functions of the guild, even at its most positive, is to provide stability and stasis, which is more or less the opposite of what a coup attempt is.

(There are some differences between artisans and mages that are probably relevant. Mages don't require raw materials, large spaces, or special tools, which reduces some of the benefit that the guild might provide. Mages are born into the trade, which means that control of the instructional capital is more difficult. If a mage without guild training can still make more money with magic than doing anything else, she's going to do magic without the guild's involvement, which weakens the guild or requires an expenditure of their resources. Quite a bit of the outcome depends on the specifics of the guild and its laws.)

u/alexanderwales [+4] Time flies like an arrow (4 hours later)

90% confident that my descendants maintain real power in the face of mages. Of course, there are other internal and external threats to the monarchy which significantly lower the chance that they'll be ruling monarchs.

The thing is, I can keep my finger on the pulse of the mages. Most of the time they're going to come to me or my children with requests or demands instead of just jumping straight to a coup. And if I'm marrying mages into the royal line from time to time (especially the really ambitious ones) then I'm already granting them a certain level of power. Most of my uncertainty comes from the risk of my descendants doing something stupid, which has historically been the cause of bloodlines ending.

To add to that, if the mages do successfully stage a coup, I'm not at all confident that they'll be around in another two or three generations, because I think a non-hereditary power structure (especially a medieval one) is going to be more fragile than a hereditary one.

Edit: Just to back this up, here's a list of coups in the medieval era and a list of revolutions and rebellions. They weren't very common; I suspect that the existence of mages would raise the odds, but not by that much, since many of the same pressures would apply.

u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (a day later)

About the unity - medieval people united heavily around their crafts, and Effective Magic certainly qualifies for that.

That unity would probably exist. But did it really outweigh allegiance to religion, family and monarch all that often.

several competing Guilds sounds like a possibility, but wouldn't they have a strong incentive to form a syndicate of sorts?

An incentive yes. But nowhere is it guaranteed that said incentive outweighs the very reasons there are separate mage guilds in the first place. Things like ideology, familial ties, loyalty to bloodlines and/or real estate and what have you.

Also keep in mind that being a mage doesn't necessarily make you any more educated or rational. If there isn't an Owl's Wisdom or Fox's Cunning spell then they won't be much more coherent than knights from different regions in the same kingdom were.

Regarding the comparison to craftsmen I want to ask: Is magic this unified whole that you train as one or would a master combat pyromancer require a wholly different training than a city stoneshaper, an agricultural weathermage or a court diviner? Because in that case mage guilds and disciplines may not even feel like they have that much in common. Not to mention that the rarity and typical guild secrecy would probably lead to various areas having very different types of mages at first.

u/-main [+1] (8 days later)

where does unity come from?

I've got two quick answers:

1. Training, libraries and schools, guilds that hold skill share workshops on a regular basis.

Not everything is possible, but a lot of things are, and with training you can get exactly those results you wanted. Also, unlike special powers, magic can (and need to) be trained.

It really depends on how essential training is, what form it takes, and how much you can get done without it. If mage vs. mage combat is common, no one wants to be the guy who didn't go to mage school.

2. Then there's this:

Long expensive rituals with thousands casters chanting helps to achieve something grand

If any of these grand projects would be both beneficial to all users and not something that could be achieved with less people, then that's an incentive to group up.

---

I have no idea if these would be enough incentive, or what kinds of institutions would form, but those could be your positive incentives for mages to unite.

And once united, you get ingroup/outgroup dynamics. And someone will come up with the idea that having magic is better for a person than not, therefore mages are literally better than everyone else, therefore we ought to be running things, not the muggles.

u/RandomDamage [+5] (43 minutes later)

I have my doubts about the "non-inheritability", though it could be a combination of gene mutations which would make it look that way to a low tech society for many generations.

That would also mean that it would take thousands of years for the survival benefits to significantly increase the rate of mages, which gives us your scenario for long enough to be interesting.

u/Rhamni [+7] Aspiring author (an hour later)

It could just simply be something like everyone has the potential, and then some external force (which can't be easily manipulated/is not yet understood at all) activates magic in people, seemingly at random.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+6] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 hours later)

Like Worm shards?

u/Rhamni [+2] Aspiring author (2 hours later)

Yep, that works.

u/Shadawn [+5] (3 hours later)

Yes, survival benefits is my main issue with heritable magic. Ability to bend reality sound like very big evolutionary advantage. Even with recessive gene, magi population will increase really fast, considering that they can also support more children on average.

u/RandomDamage [+2] (5 hours later)

It's a reasonable concern, and if it were dependent on merely a single recessive gene even the most dense people would figure it out in a hurry.

On the other hand, if it were to depend on a particular complex of genes all being in one of a few specific configurations for it to work, it would be essentially random unless you had the right theories and some heavy math to tease the pattern out.

That still allows for a slight degree of heritability, but no guarantees even if both parents are mages, and also opens up interesting possibilities for "near mages" that have incomplete or ["broken mages" that have] incompatible magic complexes.

u/Bowbreaker [+3] Solitary Locust (23 hours later)

The chance for 2 mages to have a mage child would still be higher. And over time they would just become more and more as the ones with the right genes to have mage children have more of their children survive to o the same. That's how evolution works, no?

u/RandomDamage [+2] (a day later)

Only if they had compatible magic complexes.

If their complexes were incompatible it could go horribly wrong.

That would keep mages out of each other's pants pretty effectively, too.

u/Bowbreaker [+4] Solitary Locust (a day later)

That would either be overcome or make mages go extinct pretty quickly, no? I mean incompatibility would also plague two copulating quasi-mages of the wrong kind, thus making the chance of the magic gene propagating at all that much smaller.

Maybe you would get something like area-bound magic "races". but I'm pretty sure that two different magic complexes wouldn't ever dominate the same area except after mass migrations. Oh and racism would probably be high as fuck.

Hmm, maybe if you make a gene that gives you a (small) chance of having magical offspring but make the actual mages themselves sterile due to effects of magic on puberty or something.

u/RandomDamage [+2] (a day later)

That's probably a better idea.

u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (a day later)

And I think it would maybe even be evolutionary viable because siblings of mages are bound to have a better survival/reproduction rate on average. Just maybe not that extremely in a world with societies of varying magical customs and tolerances.

u/xThoth19x [+2] (8 hours later)

Perhaps, like Worm magic users will be the targets of assassinations and early deaths? Personally I agree, one of the first jobs of a reasonable magic user is to secure their own life and limb,through shields, teleports, necromancy, whathaveyou etc. But it is possible depending on the system that magical assassinations become easier than hiding/protecting oneself. It's not like a middling mage can hire mages, nor can human body guards always suffice, and you have to sleep.

u/Nepene [+6] (16 minutes later)

Can mages create magical items which can reliably do a particular effect?

Can mages of the king mind control other mages?

How common are mages compared to humans? If there are hundreds of humans to each mage, and each mage can fight tens of humans the king can afford to have enough guards to defeat mages.

u/Shadawn [+3] (2 hours later)

If magic items can be created, they are based on rare resource and not easily available. There are orders of magnitude more magic performed by mages than by magic items.

Mind Control is optional. I think if it exists, Kings would be first victims because they lack magic protection. I'd say mental magic is difficult and while mages can read emotions and affect moods and may be use "suggestion", strong mind control isn't available.

I usually operate on assumption of 1 mage out of 1000 population. Let's say average mage power is in tens of soldiers, so hundred regiment led by proper commander can zerg-rush mage, break his defence and take him down with low casualties. Will Magocracy come to fruition in this conditions? Will it change if total magi firepower would be greater than non-magical one (1 mage can defeat 1000 humans)?

u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 hours later)

Don't forget logistics. How many subjects does the king need to support each mage-equivalent of soldiers?

u/Shadawn [+3] (3 hours later)

I totally agree here. Magi can move around really easy, which makes them much deadlier in case of drawn-out war. They can also double as siege engines, medics and other useful personnel. On the negative side, most magi don't really want to fight, and their morale may crumble in difficult times.

u/Gurkenglas [+3] (5 hours later)

Magic breaks rules, that's why that "tens of soldiers" rule falls apart. Choose the proper tactic and the number of enemy soldiers doesn't matter. No bows? Fly spell. Open plane? Invisibility. Maybe just turn into a cloud of smoke, or teleport away, or make a shell of stone around yourself (or hard crystal for some line-of-sight magic).

u/Nepene [+2] (5 hours later)

And royalty and the rich will gather those rare magical items for themselves to give themselves a tactical advantage.

I imagine mages would be able to give kings magical protection, and loyal mages would be hired to do so.

If mages can be zerg rushed than that means that any town they terrorize can be disabled, any wizard monarch can be slain if a culture doesn't want a mage lord. If they can defeat 1000 population then they can, with hit and run attacks, disable any military force. If any mages want to win, and some will, there's nothing mundanes can do to stop them.

So it depends on the balance of power. Is the mightiest nation the one with the most mages? The one with the most troops? If more mages= more power always then mages are going to have the dominant voice in society. What they want goes.

Until, say, something like what happened in MoL happens, and guns are invented which can cheaply slay mages.

u/xThoth19x [+2] (8 hours later)

If we are talking medieval population levels, local lords won't have that kind of fire power. It's going to take a middling lord to even rule over 1000 people. Depending on what exact time period and where on the European continent, towns/cities are going to have almost all of the magi. And they are going to belong to the fledging middle class. So they are going to be merchants, and also they are not going to be under lordly control. That's why cities were so novel. They had their own walls, and weren't owned by lords. In some cases they paid lump sums to the king to get out of future taxes.

u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (23 hours later)

I think if it exists, Kings would be first victims because they lack magic protection.

That would require there to be no loyalist mages. If magi occurring is relatively new (a few generations) there is no reason for that to be the case. Other than that humans tend to be wired to have their children be off as well as possible. So even a mage king would want his non-mage children to be in a position of power and would support the old structure of blood over skill by creating a loyal order of knight-magi or something.

u/eaglejarl [+5] (an hour later)

It depends on the durability of enchantments. If magi can set up invincibility charms and have them on 24/7/365 then you have a different world as opposed to one where magic needs to be sustained.

In a world that needs things to be sustained, people will assassinate magi who get too uppity. "No matter how powerful the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will really cramp his style."

On the other hand, I suspect that magi have the same distribution of interests as humans, meaning that the vast majority won't be interested in ruling. When one of them starts a revolution, other magi can be hired to put it down.

So, if you want a world not ruled by magi, here are some ways it could happen:

1. Mage conquerors get shot in the head with a crossbow while sitting on the loo.
2. Mage conquerors get taken down by other magi hired by the conquered people.
3. Magi are rare enough that the entire spectrum of human employment desires is not represented and "go into politics" is one of the things that isn't.
4. Many magi don't like the idea of magi being in charge because it sets up an environment that's bad for research, or it turns normals against magi and makes it hard to have a quiet drink at your local, or etc. As a result, if any mage tries to steal power, others show up to stop him.

Probably others, but that's what I get offhand.

u/Shadawn [+3] (2 hours later)

I do not want the world not ruled by magi. I do not want the world ruled by them either. There are tons of excuses for any position, they are anywhere. I want to know people opinion on how would world look like, if some people are granted this power while staying human otherwise.

As an experiment, imagine if you're playing RPG game against /u/alexanderwales . He's a King, interested in building strong kingdom and eventually leaving power to your heir. You're the Archmage, influental in the Guild (perhaps not the leader, but on the High Council). You seriously disagree with the King on several domestic and international policies, and consider successful rebellion worthy endeavor. What are your chances of rising to power, against the chances of getting executed for treason?

Some additional thoughts:

1. I'd say other members of a Council are willing to listen. They have their own worries (would prefer lower rates on magical ore and less community work) and consider you a peer, while King is kinda "outsider".

2. While current Dynasty ruled for several generations, change of ruling family isn't uncommon in the world. Preventing your rise to power isn't terminal utility function for anyone besides Royal Family.

u/xThoth19x [+2] (8 hours later)

The simple answer? If I am patient, I enchant his heir at birth and/or replace it with a magical homoculus that acts as a person. Then wait. This also assumes that I have life enhancing abilities. If there are no defenses against it, just plain old mind control the king and subtly move towards my positions while publicly going against me so that the other members of the council don't notice. That can also be accomplished with a suggestion spell. The reason I don't mention trying to replace the king entirely is that it seems impossible that there would be no defenses against that whatsoever. Replacing him (a la polyjuice and the like) would lead to issues of Clark/Superman. Having a cloned body do so might be possible. Politic-ing the council into staging a coup is the way it works in real life, and well that sometimes works rather well. Something like an unbreakable vow to keep everyone from defecting, perhaps with a subtle trick in the wording to enslave the others might help.

u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (23 hours later)

and consider you a peer, while King is kinda "outsider".

Here's where I don't fully agree. In many ancient cultures and/or smaller fiefdoms strength of arms and the ability to fight were still a factor important enough to not be eclipsed by wealth alone. Yet there have been many warriors more loyal to their crippled/infirm/child lord than to some disloyal warrior who wanted to take over. Magic capabilities seem just like a more extreme version of that to me. So that Archmage could quickly find himself magically shackled and get a magic missile pushed down his throat in the town square in front of the totally mundane king Wilfred II, grandson of the conqueror Merlin I the Everburning or whatever.

u/RandomDamage [+3] (an hour later)

On the "why wouldn't these powerful individuals rule the world": I think that would be because most of them wouldn't want to, and getting them to cooperate in large groups would likely be similar to herding cats.

u/Manthyus [+2] (10 hours later)

How is this not an x-men situation, except without the random crazy power differentials (and power creep because comics)? "Witches" were already persecuted in medieval times when they didn't even exist.

Like with x-men, whether or not you'd get a proper revolution/war/whatever depends on the ratios. Too few in the population and they'll never meet, recognize each other, and organize anything. Somewhat more and they'll still lose to feudal lords who view them as a threat. Lots and they'll succeed, sure, but it wouldn't be an easy rule. People don't like people who are different, especially if they have abilities they don't understand. Any mage ruling openly would likely need to exercise extreme control through fear and violence. If someone did it successfully, it would more likely be with a puppet ruler. But that's inconvenient in a lot of ways, and makes mages "taking over the world" in some kind of conspiracy when the fastest means of communication is horse very unlikely.

I think it'd make an interesting setting for a solid if mostly derivative story, but no magocracy.

u/Bowbreaker [+3] Solitary Locust (a day later)

The difference is that witches didn't exist. If there had actually been people who can reliably and predictably fly, curse cattle, heal or cause diseases, speak with spirits or mind control people I bet you that someone would have made very good use of that and that over time the pro-witch people would dominate history compared to the anti-witch ones. Not to mention that crusaders would have had a much harder time conquering and converting witch-based pagan areas.

u/notmy2ndopinion [+2] Concent of Saunt Edhar (14 hours later)

Let me try a thought experiment and do a find/replace here...

Let's assume an Effective Science/tech exists in a technologically medieval or below setting. The exact efficiency of science/tech may differ, but follows these laws:

1. Science/tech can be worked to do wide range of desired effects. Not everything is possible, but a lot of things are, and with training you can get exactly those results you wanted. Also, unlike special powers, science/tech can (and need to) be trained.

2. Science/tech can be worked with minor gestures/words/thoughts on the spot. Long expensive studies with thousands scientists helps to achieve something grand, but is by no means necessary for everyday, relatively minor stuff.

3. Science/tech is very combat-efficient, especially in the hands of trained scientist. Experienced scientists/tech can beat at least tens of soldiers.

4. There are no significant drawbacks to science/tech, and no "artificial" limiting mechanics (like constant total power for Nasuverse or other stuff forcing Masquerade).

5. Science/tech is rare talent showing randomly and isn't inheritable (otherwise normal humans would be outcompeted in reproduction very fast, I think).

With these conditions, is there any way for society to NOT be ruled by scientists? In my opinion, even if science/tech gets discovered in established society, things will go down like that:

1. Science/tech users start to stir up society. They show feats on the battlefields and in common life. Fireballs/Guns/Grenades/Atomic Bombs start flying around, and they're reproducible. In 10 years max rulers are bound to notice that and start to be doing something much.

2. Wise leaders will invite scientists in their power structure. Science/tech Guilds will rise and quickly (several decades) gain power. Societies not recognizing or persecuting scientists will be at significant disadvantage in any military or even business (if science/tech is applicable) conflict.

3. Second-generation scientists, less loyal to King and more to the Guild of peers take charge. Conflicts of interests are bound to arise. I think scientists will have significant advantage with all their extra abilities and relative unity (less amount of agents means easier to cooperate)

4. Soon some scientist will stage a rebellion, or assassination, or coup d'etat. Even if it fails, next attempt will come soon, and is bound to succeed with all extra abilities in possession of scientists.

Voila, scientocracy! In my opinion, it won't even take 100 years for scientists to overtake most of the world.

TL;DR: I think Efficient Scientists will overtake most of the world in less than 100 years. Do you (dis)agree and why?

No, I don't think it follows. Scientists have a lot of pull and influence, but it takes more than a special skillset of knowledge, I.Q., or ingenuity to become a "scientocracy"

u/Bowbreaker [+3] Solitary Locust (a day later)

A scientist rarely can beat many people with his personal invention. Gun builders and gun users are often different people. Scientists also need tonnes of resources and someone to feed them while they spend time doing science. Magic on the other hand is as if most (if not every) technological advance can only be used by people who understand exactly how it works, while also being dirt cheap and having low hanging fruits galore (or at least I think it is supposed to be easier for an isolated mage to learn how to fly than it is for an isolated human to build a plane without ever having been near one).

Still maybe not enough for a revolution but you can't just compare it to science.

u/Jiro_T [+1] (a day later)

Also, science can be taught. Only a small random selection of people can be mages at all under this scheme and they don't need to be taught by other mages or by mage-studying scholars.

u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (a day later)

OP did mention about it requiring training of some kind though. How much or what kind of training and what, if anything, can be completely self taught doesn't seem to have come up yet.

u/rhaps0dy4 [+1] (a day later)

there was a great lesswrong post about coordination between highly motivated people as a superpower. In real life, if there was a one in ten thousand genetic trait for selfless cooperation among carriers and lust for (collective) power, those people would absolutely rule the world.

Please try to find it! :)

u/want_to_want [+1] (2 days later)

It took me a long time to really understand George R.R. Martin's fable about power, but I feel that it answers your question pretty thoroughly:

“Power is a curious thing, my lord. Perchance you have considered the riddle I posed you that day in the inn?”

“It has crossed my mind a time or two,” Tyrion admitted. “The king, the priest, the rich man—who lives and who dies? Who will the swordsman obey? It’s a riddle without an answer, or rather, too many answers. All depends on the man with the sword.”

“And yet he is no one,” Varys said. “He has neither crown nor gold nor favor of the gods, only a piece of pointed steel.”

“That piece of steel is the power of life and death.”

“Just so… yet if it is the swordsmen who rule us in truth, who do we pretend our kings hold the power? Why should a strong man with a sword ever obey a child king like Joffrey, or a wine-sodden oaf like his father?”

“Because these child kings and drunken oafs can call other strong men, with other swords.”

“Then these other swordsmen have the true power. Or do they?” Varys smiled. “Some say knowledge is power. Some tell us that all power comes from the gods. Others say it derives from law. Yet that day on the steps of Baelor’s Sept, our godly High Septon and the lawful Queen Regent and your ever-so-knowledgeable servant were as powerless as any cobbler or cooper in the crowd. Who truly killed Eddard Stark, do you think? Joffrey, who gave the command? Ser Ilyn Payne, who swung the sword? Or… another?”

Tyrion cocked his head sideways. “Did you mean to answer your damned riddle, or only to make my head ache worse?”

Varys smiled. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.”

“So power is a mummer’s trick?”

“A shadow on the wall,” Varys murmured, “yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”

Since the wizards you describe don't have any particular advantage at leadership, I don't think they can take and hold power, unless they spin it as divine will or something. And even that is a bit iffy, if new wizards appear randomly all the time. A Worm like scenario seems more likely, with some wizards forming a "hero" organization subordinated to non-wizard authority, and other wizards choosing to become "villain" loners.

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