Sufficiently Advanced Technology. The Person and the Page. Sotah 47a

Arthur C. Clarke, the British science and science fiction writes, expressed what is known as Clarke’s three laws:

(1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

(2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

(3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Our sugya on Sotah 47a reminded me of Clarke’s third law. A brayta instructs that even as we might disapprove of someone’s actions from a religious perspective, we should take care not to push them away with two hands. We should not follow the lead of Yehoshua ben Prachya nor the navi Elisha, who pushed away their respective students, with disastrous results.