Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

Or he's significantly more attached to Harry then he pretends to be. He mentioned a while ago that he thought about killing Harry, but decided not to do it.

Every possible point of intervention. Don't just kill him, you may fail due to prophecy nonsense; you'll come back, but who knows what he'll do in that interval? Hermione is a good back-up plan, but don't just revive her, make sure she doesn't die again. And you may as well simultaneously advance a third plan to avert it (the "what comes next" Voldemort mentions in 112), because all the stars everywhere exploding is just that bad and you really should take it at least that seriously.

edited 25th Feb '15 11:39:44 PM by Einander

And the Horcruxes might keep Harry alive too. If Voldemort knows that, the last thing he wants is to have Harry realise it. This explanation also makes sense from a meta perspective, since that way you can keep the whole "lives as long as the other lives" bit.

From Chapter 94; It was verified that the magic radiating from the toe-ring was indeed the magic of a portkey, and not the magic of a Transfiguration.

So yes, at the time he was searched, that location was checked. What better place to hide something than somewhere that's already been searched?

So what are the odds that Hermione is going to sacrifice herself in an attempt to save Harry? And what are the odds that this will work exactly the way his biological mother's sacrifice worked, and for the same reason?

She can't sacrifice herself now that she is basically immortal as possible with troll regeneration, unicorn blood(she is an alicorn princess) and a horcrux.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

She is still vulnerable to Voldy any number of ways. I think he mentioned that the Avada K still works on her. She might or might not come back via the horcrux, but that might still count insofar as the magical protection is concerned.

Harry giving up his life for the school's students worked in canon even though what actually got destroyed was Voldemort's soul fragment, though admittedly it felt like a copout.

Yeah, my question was more along the lines of where Harry did hide Hermione's body in that case, since his person and his room were both searched. Admittedly in hindsight, since it was certain he would be searched once the body was found missing, it should have been quite easy to hide it somewhere else in the castle until he'd been cleared of suspicion.

edited 26th Feb '15 9:21:49 AM by ashnazg

The killing curse could kill her despite her troll regeneration and unicorn blood, but with a horcrux she can come back even against a killing curse.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

I .. don't think he managed to hide Hermione at all. I have this sneaking suspicion that the adults just went "Well, that's a fucked up way to express grief, lets trap her corpse because Quirrelmort is going to want to hex it somehow at some point".

Also there is just no way that is the first time someone has used the stone to resurrect people. Every part of the rite was ancient lore, known to the order of the pheonix. Who were presumably told by Flamel.

I haz Wacky theory, you see. I think the reason Dumble acted so strangely and arranged to die due to Harry was to fulfill the conditions of the prophecy, taking on the mantle of the dark lord to be defeated (and he qualifies.) So that people with better odds of success than an 11 year old can take out Voldemort without fighting a prophecy as well as him.

edited 26th Feb '15 10:39:50 AM by Izeinsummer

I don't follow. Please explain further?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

@crazysamaritan25th No! I mean an external hard drive. The same kind used by the horcrux spell.

Post 6975 "Basically the horcruxes are suppose to be running/stored on a physical computer somewhere. And the AI that lets wizards float stuff by saying "wing guardian leviosa", when its seem someone touch the associated object over rides their brain. "

edited 26th Feb '15 2:44:42 PM by supermerlin100

Fair warning, this may well just be heading right into epileptic trees turf.

Dumbledore just cast himself from time in order to fulfill the prophecy about Harry Potter.

That line about how Harry will have to find some other dark lord to vanquish? It was not about the far future at all, it was about the next four minutes.

Let me explain: As long as the prophecy is in play, only Harry can defeat the dark lord. And that is not going to work against Voldemort. An 11 year old, no matter how resourceful and clever is just not going to come out on top of that fight. But just as the prophecy could have been about Neville as well as Harry, there is also more than one dark lord it could be about. The story pointed this out earlier.

So the prophecy is no longer in effect. Voldemort can be defeated by anyone with the firepower and a counter for the horcruxes.

And Dumbledore, the order of the pheonix, and everyone else he could bring in on it have crowdsourced a smackdown, which is about to land.

Most of this smackdown is in the form of longterm plots that are about to bear fruit.

From the top: Dumbledore knew who Quirrel and Harry were, from day one. Each and every single piece of information given to Harry was relayed in the expectation that Voldemort would hear it.

Dumble, Flamel, et all made a fake true cloak of invisibility. The point of this being to provide misinformation about what the mark of the deadly hallows looks like. I don't know what the "stone of resurrection" actually is, but I think Voldy will not like what it does, not one tiny bit. At a guess, it is for mapping out the magical "net" and find the darn things?

Alternatively, they just cursed the stone. The key point is that this wasn't sloppy info-sec, they darn well knew Voldemort would learn of the cloak and the mark, so his use of these artefacts cannot possibly be to his benefit.

The people who just apparated in: Not death eaters. They're masked and cloaked minions. That's such a cliche it's actually painful to contemplate.

Voldemorts use of the stone to raise the dead is not the first time it has been used to do that. The rite he intended to use is not original to him, it is an old piece of lore, and it is an old piece of lore Flamel told the order of the phoenix about. This means "Flamel" has been able to raise anyone who still had foes and servants living and known graves of ancestors.

So it isn't new. Not widely used, but not new. Note that this isn't a good rite for defeating death in general, simply because most people dont have the first two at all. But it is a very effective way to ditch an identity for any of her collaborators who are in it for the long haul. Which means a lot of very powerful, supposedly deceased wizards and witches owe her. And he just tried to have her killed. (May even have succeeded. If so, she's probably already back up and wanting her stone back before anything expires.)

That is what the hour's delay in Snapes room was about - it was to take all the deatheaters into custody, and gather people up for a seriously onesided bout. The reason this ends in "liters of blood" is that the plan is to drain Voldemort dry so that they can raise as many of his victims as possible.

Oh, and Dumbledore didn't have unique access to divination, beyond a season pass to the hall of prophecies. That would make the plot unsolvable, because we can't reason a-causally.

Oh, and Dumbledore didn't have unique access to divination, beyond a season pass to the hall of prophecies. That would make the plot unsolvable, because we can't reason a-causally.

I think that's the only part of your post with a non-negligible chance of being true.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Speaking of prophecies, I just had a wacky idea - maybe the reason that Voldemort's mildly inclined to not kill Harry is that he's discovered the Peverell prophecy, and also that he and Harry are Peverell's heirs. So he's interested in finding out whether the time to fulfil that prophecy is approaching (conquering death is certainly a major goal of his), and whether Harry might be the one to achieve it - but only strongly enough to make him disinclined to kill Harry, not enough to make him rule it out entirely as an option.

There remains the question of who the third son is. Dumbledore is the obvious candidate, but whether he's descended from the Peverell line is unclear in canon, and if that wasn't a Mirror trick then he's trapped now. He did ensure the Elder Wand wouldn't be trapped with him, though. (Speaking of which, Quirrelmort entirely ignored Dumbledore's wand and the rod of the Wizengamot. Unless I'm misintepreting the scene and Dumbledore didn't manage to throw them out of range after all. Or it was a Mirror trick.)

edited 27th Feb '15 7:12:59 AM by ashnazg

The Horcrux 1.0 was a save-state that did not allow for mental activity. It creates, in a sense, a MoR ghost. No mental activity occurs. This was considered a flaw from Riddle Sr's perspective.

Remote access from the "Source of all Magic" would mean minds are irreducible and non-physical.

Yes, "magic augments your mental activity so that it operates without your neurons" is a model that cannot be distinguished from "magic allows your mental activity to continue without physical representation". In a materialistic model, the mind is generated from the neurons, and changing them changes your mind. Animagus and Horcruxes violate that.

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Prophesy says Riddle Sr cannot kill Riddle Jr, without leaving part of Jr around. Sr says he plans to violate prophesy at every turn, and his first action is not to destroy every remnant of Jr. In Rowling's canon, prophesy would be fulfilled without having heard it. Even without the prophesy, Jr would want to stop Voldemort, but Voldemort has found no reason to oppose Jr. Which means Sr still plans to have the "eternal battle" of Riddles, and violate prophesy by not destroying Jr.

http://hpmor.com/chapter/89

Right now, this is reminding me of The Lord of Dark. If Riddle Jr will make good on his plan to remake the world/universe into a better one, then he is the end of the world.

edited 27th Feb '15 8:48:46 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

It is simple. The source of magic simulates your human brain when you turn into an animal and the brain simulator controls the animal body remotely. No need for the mind to be non-physical.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

That's a slightly different argument. I see ~Supermerlin100 claiming the horcrux is the item running the AI of the mental simulation, not the "Source of all Magic". Which is wrong, because a book cannot operate as an AI in the sense we require. What they have right: The "Source of all Magic" can see when a person touches a horcrux and overwrite their mind with the mind stored in the horcrux. The mind in this case cannot be running in the horcrux, and must be somewhere else, or in the "Source of all Magic".

Since no-one in the wizarding world is able to physically observe the "Source of all Magic", it is not physically present in any relevant sense, nor can it be broken down. The creates a filter that makes any model of the world where the "Source of all Magic" is physical indistinguishable from a model where the "Source of all Magic" is non-physical. So if the "Source of all Magic" is dualistic or material is unknowable at this time.

If the "mind" is running off of a book, then Dumbledore is right, because a book cannot physically operate like a human mind, unless extra complications are created. If the "mind" is operating off of the same method animagi use, then either one could still be right, and we just can't determine who is.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I am pretty sure the source of all magic is probably physical. Harry's original idea about it strikes me as sounding like something I think Eliezer or someone else said about the meaning of supernatural existences.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

No I'm not.

@crazysamaritan: While I agree that both the "Horcrux is a constantly-updated backup" and "Horcrux is an anchor for a consciousness separate from physical objects" options are reasonably similar in complexity, I wouldn't say that they're perfectly indistinguishable - from the perspective of the Horcrux-user who died, the two options would be different, since in the former the consciousness that reawakens in the Horcruxes wouldn't be the same consciousness. Unfortunately the only person that can distinguish them would be the one that just died, so it's true that there is no way for any living person to know which would be the case.

Well a supernatural soul is more complex than a physical mind remote controlling their body from a distance so I put my bets on it being that.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

There is no way to distinguish whether a reawakened consciousness is "the same" as the one that just died, assuming memory of continuity. It's not really a meaningful distinction.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Well if the source of magic is simulating an upload when people turned into animals or with Voldemort horcrux 2.0 then that is something that exist and their personality could be damage by breaking the simulation. Not possible to test at the moment but possible overall.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

Aaaand the author challenges all the readers to provide a solution within 60 hours, or else. Ballzy.