NancyLebovitz comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Unnamed 27 May 2010 12:10AM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 July 2010 01:59:50PM 0 points [-]

Cremating people isn't enough to make sure they're dead if you have backup records and nanotech. I don't know if that approach has been used on a naive villain in fiction.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 12 July 2010 02:57:52PM 4 points [-]

"Elementary"

"The suspect disintegrated himself," wept the overseer. "Complete nanodissolution. Now we'll never know who he was. Could have a backup anywhere."

Collapsa-T clucked. "He wept a single tear while climbing the ladder. I have retrieved sufficient DNA to extend a partial quantum snowflake." The device retrograded briefly, folding all eleven dimensions like protein. "Success!" it finally decided. "In the 312th tier of the 99th fold of a relatively low-probability third-order curve, I have found a faint residual memory that yielded to electrical torture." A few calculations later, it had a sufficiently distributed bell curve: "The suspect is Hamma bin Tio. He is a combat algaeist, which explains the theft at the fungal refectory. His preferred backup venue is the Starbucks in Cairo."