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dclayh comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 - Less Wrong
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Well, all the bits after finding out about Voyager could be done with the liberal use of Imperius, legilimency and other magic.
Alright, I'll modify my intimately familiar claim. He needs to be only reasonably familiar. Up in the top few percentiles of Americans/Englishmen vis-a-vis space knowledge, but not much much higher.
However, if you assume he got in just by using Imperius, this reinforces my point about the respect Quirrelmort needs for Science. A normal arrogant wizard wouldn't even bother to ask his pet muggle NASA technician to disable all the alarm systems. ('Alarm systems? What are those? I don't detect any wards or magical traps, therefore I can just walk in and make a horcrux.')
Depending on the magical system he could well bypass them accidentally. In the Buffyverse, for example, runes designed to protect against magical detection also work against any form of modern surveillance. In the HP universe I would expect Harry's cloak to protect against any visual detection technology and a Voldemort strength anti-detection spell would probably also be sufficient. Pressure sensitive plates would be a different matter but may also be the sort of thing that a wizard would expect. In fact, a competent wizardly burglar would quite possibly levitate as a matter of course while on a job.
Apparate to wherever it's being stored, Horcrux it, apparate out. Even if there is an alarm to set off, you're in virtually no danger.
And risk the materials in the storage being thrown out as possibly contaminated or damaged beyond tolerances?
(Actually, can one apparate somewhere one has not been?)
Only if you're suicidal. It's stated that you can't, because you'd likely end up overlapping with some object; I suspect there's a good chance you could, if the target area was in space, but I wouldn't want to try it on the ground.
Another crime of the wizarding world - they are why it still costs thousands of dollars per ounce to put stuff into space.
Truly, they have much to answer for!
Choosing not to help is not, generally, considered a crime. There are of course exceptions in the case of imminent loss of life, but sending things to space is not one of them.
So while it may be, in a sense, their fault - it isn't a crime.
I lack any pithy word like 'crime' to express my sentiments; 'the Wizarding world has much disutility to answer for' does not come off right at all, and 'has much evil to answer for', while true, is a bit stronger than I'd like.
(Because no doubt someone would immediately question exactly how many lives cheap access to space would save and how many lives qualify as evil exactly?, and someone else would point out that it has significant downsides inasmuch as it democratizes weapons of mass destruction ie. heavy metal rods raining down from space on the cheap - and it's just a discussion I'd rather not get into.)
The wizarding world is not living up to its potential. :)
Which gets to the interesting question of what the wizarding world owes to muggles. Giving muggles what gwern thinks they should get would be a tremendous amount of work for wizards-- and either they force a lot of forgetting, and maybe enough isn't possible, or they radically change their society, which they like as it is. And they might be right that they'd risk serious persecution. It is certainly the case that they would suffer ridiculous persecution. They'd be chased by paparazzi-- isn't Rita Skeeter enough?-- and harassed by wannabees.
The help/reward ratio reminds me of The Marching Morons.
Eh, if they're worried about overwork, the free market will sort that out. As for their society - the Amish are awful insular. Orthodox Jew sects can be insular, as well as Mormon groups. It's not hard to seal yourself off quite well in the modern world, and given that even your most mediocre Hogwarts graduate could command millions (it's magic, after all) they can afford excellent security.
I don't doubt that wizards could make up a ton of plausible-sounding excuses to maintain their apartheid.
Forget crimes of inaction-- what about the fact that the wizarding world erases memories in order to prevent their secret from getting out?
Arguably self-defense. If we're looking for active crimes, how about covering up the various crimes of wizards? Not just activities due to Voldemort, although a close read of canon likely would turn up many crimes where the wizarding world decided its own punishment was good enough and never even allowed the harmed muggle's survivors any input into the process, but just bad guys - like the ones who enchant muggle artifacts. Do you think Arthur Weasley ever turned over to muggle police any wizard whose artifact killed or injured a muggle? Not likely.