“No, no, you have to drop them at the same time,” I yelled.

“What?” shouted Noel.

“I said, drop them at the same time!”

“I can’t hear you!”

I facepalmed like I was in a cartoon. I really should have done this myself. No, wait, I could still do it myself. I stomped off to the other side of the cliff after gesturing for Noel to stay put. After puffing and heaving my way to the top, I grabbed my knees and caught my breath. In between breaths, I managed to ask Noel to hand me the two similarly shaped rocks, and explained to her what she needed to observe at the bottom. I’d already explained it to the Roja tribesmen who were standing below the cliff, so repeating myself for Noel wasn’t too hard.

“So all I have to do is see which one hits the ground first and then pick them both up?” asked Noel.

“Yep,” I said, still trying to catch my breath, “you got it.”

I watched Noel go all the way down. When I saw that she was in place, I held both rocks up at the same height and let them go. They fell down to the ground very quickly, and I sighed deeply when I thought about how slowly I would be going down myself.

When I reached the bottom, Noel had picked up both rocks. “Was that a trick question?” she asked. “They both hit the ground at the same time.”

“Yes, they did!” I said. “But they’re different weights, aren’t they?”

“Why does that matter?” she asked.

“It doesn’t,” I said. “Or at least, it doesn’t matter in your world.”

“What do you mean?” she said.

“You saw how relatively simple that demonstration was right? In fact, the way you were so unimpressed by its conclusions tells me you already know that how heavy an object is doesn’t change how fast it falls through the air, only the shape of the object can do that,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant,” she said, sarcastically.

“The point is, you weren’t surprised by the way these two rocks fell. The way things fall is something you already knew and considered common knowledge. In fact, it’s something that you can easily prove too,” I said. “But in my world, people assumed, for hundreds of years, that the mass of an object changes how fast it falls.”

“Did things fall differently in your world?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “They didn’t.”

“But then why would people believe something like that?” she said.

“Remember those guys with funny names? Specifically, Aristotle?” I said.

“Sort of,” she said. “I’ll admit I can’t really remember their names. Maybe they’re being translated in a weird way.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But that’s not important. What’s important is that you know that Aristotle’s claims about gravity, which is the force that kind of pulls everything to the ground, were accepted for hundreds of years despite being so clearly incorrect! Anyone who dropped two stones from the same height could tell the mass doesn’t change how fast they fall, yet some of the smartest people on my planet just took Aristotle’s word for it.”

“Haven’t we been doing the same, though?” she said. “Aren’t spells like the elemental magic system or the motion freezing magic based on things those people with weird names said, even though those things might be wrong?”

“Yes, you’re right!” I said. “Although those arguments were rational, they were not always true. But we’ve been running with them because they were useful.”

“Useful because we could use them to create magic very quickly?” she said.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Yes, but also because they helped us better understand knowledge as well as what sort of knowledge could be used in this world’s magic system,” I said. “You see, I’ve been trying to do something kind of crazy, ever since I found out about the fundamentals of this world’s magic.”

“Something crazy?” said Noel.

“There were a lot of stories, back on my Earth, of people who would one day find themselves in a different world, one full of mysteries and magic,” I said. “But most people didn’t have to do what I’ve had to do here. Most people from those stories didn’t have to invent their own magic system!”

“We already have a magic system, though,” said Noel. “Knowledge and wisdom, isn’t that our system?”

“Of course not, those are the fundamentals. Magic systems are the things we’ve been building on top of those fundamentals. The different elemental magic spells, those form an elemental magic system. Motion magic based on pure reason, that’s its own system. And now that I’ve experimented with these systems and broadened my understanding of knowledge based magic, it’s time to build another foundation from where I can build a better magic system!” I said while sporting a wide grin.

“Another foundation?” she said.

I nodded. “We can argue and explore the nature of knowledge forever. But now that we know that our knowledge of something doesn’t have to be completely ‘true’ or accurate, for it to be useful in magic, we can define ‘knowledge’ as best we can and use that definition as a foundation for other spells.”

“You want to define knowledge?” said Noel.

“For now,” I said. “I think we can say that knowledge must be justified true belief.”

“Justified true belief?” she said.

“It means for something to be knowledge, it must be true, we have to believe that it is true, and we must be justified in believing that it is true,” I said.

“I don’t get what that means,” she said.

“For example, if I believe that this rock will fall to the ground when I let go of it, the fact that this rock will fall to the ground must be true. I must also believe that this rock will fall to the ground when I let go. And finally, I must be justified in believing that this will happen. Dumb luck or something like that must not be the reason why my belief was true.”

“I think I get it,” said Noel, “maybe. But why did you say all of this like it was a big deal? Sounds pretty obvious if you ask me.”

“It’s a big deal because it gives us an answer to the question of: what does it take to ‘know’ something? And now that we have an answer to this question, even if it isn’t a perfect one, we can start looking beyond pure reason. We can start looking at the world around us and use the knowledge that we gain through experience, as long as it fulfills the other criteria of being justified true belief,” I said.

“You mean like the fact that the heaviness of an object doesn’t change how fast it falls through the air?” said Noel.

“Exactly! We just saw that it was true. We believe that it is true. And we are justified in believing this because we saw it happen,” I said. “Thus, it’s a piece of knowledge that we can use to make new magic!”

“What kind of magic could we even make with that?” said Noel.

“Er,” I said. “See, this is why we were using pure reason when we were short on time. It’s a lot easier to create that sort of knowledge, since all you have to do is use words. For this kind of magic, we need to observe a lot of things and then hope all the pieces fall together with our ‘wisdom’ and let us make some sort of magic. That’s what I did for my chemical fire magic as well as what we did for the rain magic.”

“Yes, those spells were very inefficient and not nearly as powerful as they should have been, because although the knowledge they were based on was true, and we believed that it was true, we were not justified in believing it,” I said.

“So what you’re saying is, so far, all the magic we’ve been using has been missing one of the three things you used to define knowledge. Our elemental and motion magic were based on justified beliefs, but they weren’t true, and the rain magic was based on true beliefs but they weren’t justified,” said Noel.

“Wow, you’ve really gotten the hang of this already,” I said. “That’s exactly right.”

“And so the magic you want to make now, since we have a little time out here on Bek Tepe, is the kind of magic that is based on knowledge that is justified true belief?” said Noel.

“Yes! And you know what that means?” I said as I picked up some rocks.

“No, I don’t,” said Noel.

I handed her the rocks. “It means we have to observe a lot of things and that we have to repeat them several times, just to make sure they didn’t happen because of luck or something.”

Noel sighed and took the rocks. “How many times do I have to throw these rocks down the cliff?”

“Let’s say for however long it takes me to teach these humans everything I just explained to you,” I said.

“But that’ll take all day!”

“Well then,” I said with a smile. “You better start climbing!”