History Headscratchers / HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality

** [[spoiler:Despite knowing a great deal of information theory and caring about rationality, Harry is still influenced by his emotions, and his mysterious dark side carries a heavy bias regarding death.]]

Let's see. The description of the so-called perfect delivery system is:

''"what you used if you wanted to communicate with someone without anyone else knowing that the two of you had talked. The sender gave an envelope to someone who had a reputation for being a reliable messenger, along with ten Knuts; that first person would take five Knuts and pass the envelope to another messenger along with the other five Knuts, and the second messenger would open up that envelope and find another envelope with a name written on it and deliver that envelope to that person. That way neither of the two people passing the message knew both the sender and the recipient, so no one else knew that those two parties had been in contact..."''

But where does the enveloppe with the name come from ?

* From the person wanting to pass a message.
** But then the second messenger ''knows'' who the sender is… ?!?

But where does the enveloppe with the name come from ?

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** According to MoR!blood purists, the weakening in magic anyone could observe was caused by dilution of blood, but since Harry somewhat proved that magic is not weakening because of that reason, and that muggelborns are not weaker than purebloods, Lucius' whole castle in the air crumbles, thus Draco is pretty shocked.The problem is that interbreeding in the MoR-verse is not a cause for loss of subjective magical power.
** At least in the MoR-verse, power and wealth in the wizarding world used to be extremely concentrated in the noble houses. To a large degree it still is, to the point Draco thinks he could beat a rape charge no problem. Lucius may be somewhat concerned with preserving magical power, but acceptance of muggleborns would create an emerging middle class of wizards who are not indebted to the Noble Houses (remember that home or business loans are typically handled by asking the Noble you're friendliest with) and may soon develop and deploy financial techniques unheard of in Wizarding Britain to vastly upset the socio-economic balance, whose families cannot be easily leveraged against them because of muggle protection laws, and, as evidenced by Hermione, hold the potential to become some of the greatest wizards of their generations. Claiming the suppression of muggleborns is about blood purism and the preservation of magical strength is just a way to motivate the wizard underclasses who otherwise would likely be loathe to support the Noble houses.

** Is there any reason why they couldn't avoid the problem of limited use of the Stone by simply transfiguring a copy of the Stone and using the original to make it a permanent transfiguration? Seems if that were done then you could effectively eliminate any problems of limited use by making as many Stones as you needed.

* I don't know if this is horror or brilliance, but if people can get permanently transfigured, then their bodies can no longer change and women can no longer get pregnant. Not of infertility, just that their bodies won't change to accomodate a growing fetus. One can only imagine what would happen if after many years (and many sexual encounters) a woman managed to reverse the permanency of the eternal youth transfiguration.

** The stone doesn't actually make transfigurations permanent. It makes transfigurations ''real'', as real as if it had arisen naturally. So Flemel was still aging, but would just transfigure himself younger every few years. That will make granting immortality to everyone a logistical nightmare, since they'll need periodic updates, but if nothing else it will give them a few centuries to come up with more permanent solutions.

** I don't think the stone can turn you into an ''eternaly'' young person - just young, if that's what you asked for. You will still be a person, and thus will be aging and changing.

*** But that doesn't explain why Eliezer changed the founding date. If Hogwarts was founded a thousand years ago in HPMOR just as in canon, it would obviously be around in Roger Bacon's time.

*** They are also conditioned to mutilate themsleves for failure, unless that part was dropped - I don't remember if it was ever mentioned. It stands to reason that their "enjoyment" is enforced upon them, like mental "stick and carrot". I agree that there are worse aspects of the wizarding world that Harry tackles heads on, like Azkhaban, but it is indeed strange that he doesn't spare a single thought about the brainwashing of an entire species.