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sanyasi comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 - Less Wrong
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While I agree that this might be the case, there is a logical defense for the case where Harry is non-Voldemort. Consider, if you were Voldemort hiding horcruxes. Where would you put them?
Now if you are not very smart, you would probably put up some protections, and you will expect the hero to try to break them. If you were smarter, there would be some feints and double feints and deceptions involved in the process. But if you were very smart, you would go for the hardest locations, as Harry named. These might represent a kind of "fixed point" of hiding places: You know the hero will find out, but its not like you could do any better. The perfectly-logical-Quirrell knows that Harry will figure it out, but nonetheless, he has no better option! Any other choices would only make the quest easier, not harder.
Now since Harry is brilliant, he figures this out independently. Because with the above fixed-point theorem that these 5 locations are the hardest possible even assuming common knowledge of the theorem and the 5 locations among your foes, then every sufficiently smart thinker will come to the exact same conclusions independently, which in this case are Voldemort and Harry.
(Personally I disagree with the locations as Harry says them: There is one better: Randomize everything that Harry said. Of the 5 hardest options, make a probability distribution over them [weighted by difficulty: I would expect the space version to be weighted higher as it seems harder to find things in space than say the earth version of digging a hole a kilometer under the ground of which there are a much smaller number of hiding spots.] Then, randomize each version so that the launch trajectory (in the space case) or the burial site (in the earth case) is selected randomly. Finally, build a machine that will do the randomized selection and auto-launch independently, so that you yourself are unaware of the selected locations. Even obliviation seems weak: perhaps there are ways to be unobliviated ex-post.
This way, a machine chooses 7 modes (space/air/water) randomly for your 7 horcruxes. I imagine there would be 4 space horcruxes, 2 air horcruxes, 0.5 water horcruxes, etc. (depending on the probability distribution chosen) Ideally you would obliviate yourself ex-post so that you don't remember the probability distribution you chose. Then once the modes have been selected for each horcrux the machine spits out for each of the horcruxes a random trajectory/location and launches. Then you destroy the machine (and sufficient surroundings so that remaining bits of information cannot be used to reconstruct even partially the entropy bits surrounding the machine to regenerate the random numbers). Then you obliviate yourself of every thing.
Even then, this isn't foolproof, because a smart enough person looking to find out where your horcruxes are would arrive at the same conclusions and realize what you've done. But it is the strongest possible that could be done. (That is, if I haven't made a mistake: which I don't claim to have. I'm not Quirrelmort/Harry smart, I'm dumber. Presumably if they came up with the solution it would be without any holes I might have overlooked)
Randomization is the only hope here. Your solution needs to be sufficiently hard that you yourself cannot ex-post figure out where they are, so that the hero cannot either. The more random, the larger the search space for any future searcher, and no additional information can be obtained. Harry does grasp this by suggesting obliviating yourself after randomly selecting a trajectory for the space case, but I would make that more rigorous and have a very strong random number generator of which you were a not part of.)
If a horcrux of Type 1 is found, that greatly increases the chance another horcrux of Type 1 is findable. You actually do want to use as many different modes as possible, not randomize across modes, because the probabilities are not independent.
Speaking of horcrux types, will you give us some hints as to just what effect such devices have in the MoR universe? ie. Backup copies, respawn points, part-of-your-intellectual-capacity, etc. Can a voyager horcrux allow you to recover from a 'death' back on earth despite being a gazilion miles away?
I second this. We have to know the rules if it's going to be important later on (else it's an Ass Pull), and I rather suspect that it will be important in the finale.
Which raises the question: is Harry going to "win" (defeat QM/bring about the Magical Singularity/generally wrap up the plot) in one year, or seven, or some other number? And is Eliezer going to keep writing that far?
No way is it going to be one year, way too many plot threads. Take Bacon's diary, it's not going to become relevant until Harry has the chance to start to read it, which he currently thinks requires learning Latin first.
I don't see that as a Chekhov's Gun, just a sweet quest item. (Note that it hasn't been mentioned again.)
Chekhov's Gun for this story would be James Potter's rock.
It has been mentioned again in chapter 37. I'm pretty sure it will come up again, at least in passing, but probably more than just that.
Yeah, having Bacon's Diary equipped gives Harry a totally sweet +1 to all his attacks. And it doesn't even use up a weapon slot!
Wow. I've totally missed that as potential grounds for a subplot. I just considered it 'scenery' in the early chapters.
I wished he'd hurry up and read it; I want to know what it says!
So, I don't so much mean one year vs. 7+ of in-universe time; I mean one JKR book-length vs. 7+ JKR book-lengths worth of writing. (I.e., is Eliezer shooting for 75kword, 1.1Mword, or something else.) Should have been more clear about that.
Eliezer is already way over 1 book length (265k words, more than even Order of the Phoenix), I don't see him finishing the story short of at least 600k words, probably considerably more.
I feel like the story is more than halfway done already, although I'd be pleasantly surprised to be wrong.
Even so, I would think that having all of them off planet Earth would be preferable to some on it and some off. Inside the Sun, inside some of the ice-moons of the gas giants, and on various random trajectories out of the solar system (not strapped to a probe whose telemetry we know very well, for goodness' sake) would seem to be optimal. Of course this all depends on Voldy's actual ability to put them there.
Then there's the whole issue of traps/alarms. Trapping is probably not worthwhile if you're hiding in highly-inaccessible places, since if your enemy can get there she's pretty powerful already, and the traps could easily draw attention. (On the other hand, if you have something as crazy as the Big Bowl o' Poison one, where the enemy somehow is forced to injure himself to get the horcrux, with absolutely no way around it, then it could be worthwhile.) (Silent) alarms, on the other hand, seem absolutely essential: you must know if one of your horcruces has been touched, let alone destroyed, so you can take appropriate steps.
Well, both goals should factor into your decision. The probability of hiding your (n)th Horcrux in Type 1 should be (much) less than the probability of hiding your (n-1)th Horcrux there, but you still want to inject a bit of randomness into how many Horcruxes go where...otherwise a devoted pursuer might be able to deduce the general location of your one remaining Horcrux after deactivating your first six, thereby saving a crucial few weeks and thwarting you once and for all.
The Wizards can create dimensionally orthogonal pockets of spacetime (for their bags of holding, mokeskin pouches, and TARDIS trunks). If a Horcrux simply has to be hidden where no one can get at it, and doesn't have to maintain a signaling link to the "rest" of the maker's "soul," perhaps Voldy could have made some dimensionally transcendent space (like a BoH or the Mirror of Erised), put a Horcrux in, then destroyed the connecting interface with our reality. Basically, a magical corollary of multiverse cosmology, where the Horcrux is placed in a new "pocket universe" that is then separated from ours so that it cannot be reached even in principle.
I would guess from MoR canon that relativity-compliant signaling is not necessary for a Horcrux to work, since light-lag between Earth and the Pioneer Horcrux would already be significant.
Horcruces: the ultimate "spooky action at a distance"!
I can easily imagine that, if the Pioneer Horcrux is the last undestroyed Horcrux and Voldemort is killed, there will be a significant delay until Voldemort gets a ghostly form, while the signal of his death travels to Pioneer and back.
On the other hand, the Pioneer Horcrux may be constantly sending out signals reminding magical reality to give Voldemort a ghostly form if he is ever killed, in which case there will be no delay (unless Pioneer falls into a Black Hole).
Of course, the other possibility is that Voldemort's ghostly form will appear on Pioneer itself, but presumably he thought of that and ruled it out before making the Horcrux.
Chapter 20:
You're right!
Voldemort should be destroying all of his other Horcruxes (made in weaker moments), then committing suicide. When he discovers, after his suicide is irreversible but before he actually dies in this form, that Harry is an accidental Horcrux who must (or so it seems) also be killed before Voldemort's ghostly form can appear on Pioneer, drama ensues.
I fail to see how life in deep space + life on earth < life in deep space, especially considering that V. is super against dying.
It depends on how things work, of course, but the danger is that he will be stuck in an incorporeal form on Earth forever. When canon!Voldemort is flitting about in Books 1–4, possessing Quirrel's head, drinking unicorn blood, a little baby cuddled in Wormtail's arms, it's not clear that he's in a form that can be killed at all, but it's not a form that he appreciates either. So it may be that the only way to sail the stars on Pioneer is to get a body to be killed in (and I don't know whether MoR!Quirrel's will do or he needs to be resurrected as at the end of canon Book 4) AND have no closer Horcruxes to reappear near.
But if he has things under good control, then you are right. He can have fun on Earth, using his terrestrial Horcruxes at need, then only go to Pioneer at the end, when life on Earth loses its charm (or when his plans on Earth are complete). As long as he knows that he can create the conditions for resurrection on Pioneer when he wants them, then you are right.
Or he thought of that and eagerly anticipates it as the end of his struggle.
Or he thought of that and reluctantly accepts it as a second-worst scenario that is better than a final, mortal death. In JKR-canon, Horcruxes don't just send a signal to regenerate soul bits, they are fractions of a soul...if I were an evil Dark Lord in MoR-canon-world, I might accept a fractured existence in deep space, but I would not accept a fractured exsistence in a pocket universe that contained nothing else and was a priori inaccessible to my familiar world(s), even given that I hate and fear death, anticipate a triumphant galactic civilization, etc. Being alone and mostly dead in an empty vacuum for eternity really sucks.
Well, given enough time you might be able to make new pocket universes and give them life or the like. And if things get bad you can always destroy the Horcrux yourself.
Oh, c'mon, that's just reckless. In JKR-canon, Voldemort emerges from his first pseudo-death as a fragment of his former self, dependent on familiar landscapes and pre-existing allies/victims as he tries to regain enough life force just to remember who he is.
Conjecturing that (a) creating life-filled pocket universes is possible, (b) you will have the tools/resources with which to do so in a hard vacuum, (c) the part of you that survives your body's death will have enough of the right kind of magical power to do so, AND (d) the capacity to spontaneously re-generate your psychological infrastructure without external stimuli after suffering a death of unknown type and origin is just begging for Occam to come up and slit your throat. Remember that if you're wrong about any of these conjectures, you are moderately likely to spend eternity in semi-conscious isolation from literally everything.
Claiming that you could destroy the Horcrux yourself doesn't buy you a whole lot of leverage; the whole plot of Books 6 and 7 in JKR-canon is that destroying a Horcrux generally takes an epic-level artifact, a character with a pure heart and a focused mind, AND a whole lot of effort. These are not tools that you have access to when you're a pseudo-murdered villain floating around in an empty pocket universe.
Points in paragraphs 1 and 2 are valid. Three is wrong. I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that psychological properties were not fully functioning. Moreover,according to book 7, regret and remorse of the creator of a Horcrux will destroy it. If you are stuck in that state for a few hundred years in that state, likely the Horcrux will be destroyed by you simply being terribly regretful about the situation.
I would normally suggest throwing the horcrux across a horizon (black hole or outside the future light cone). But in a world with time travel and apparition that doesn't seem quite so safe. I would weight the distribution more in the direction of space, leaving the 'air' ones out altogether.
If possible I would make the acceleration factor on the space bound item vary based on quantum effects at regular intervals, leaving it thoroughly distributed across an ever expanding part of the universe.
It matters somewhat just what the device being hidden is made of and whether it can, say, resist insane tidal forces, supernovae and the like. The flying item may need to be programmed to avoid such things or perhaps dive right in, depending on the specifics.
The other thing to consider is that obscurity isn't the only way to make something inaccessible. Even if the direction is guessable, spending sufficient effort in making the item accelerate into space could make it extremely hard to find. If you can charm the item to accelerate at 10g away from the earth forever and also manage to prevent anyone from chasing after it for 10 years then you have made your horcrux damn hard to catch.
Before I did any of these things, well, at least before I did it with the >=3rd horcruxes I would thoroughly research just how the horcruxes manage to make you unkillable. I would need to confirm that wherever I hid a horcrux enabled the horcrux to do its thing in a way that is useful. ie. I don't want to respawn inside black holes, outside the light cone of everything I hold dear or even inside any volcanoes.