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gjm comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 - Less Wrong
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Harry is the first because he's the first wizard to be familiar with transhumanist ideas. (Why, in the MoRverse, did such ideas not crop up before? Dunno. Maybe because the only forms of death-defying magic known to wizardry are things like Horcruxing that would only be done by the Bad Guys, so that the idea of defying death is seen as characteristic of Bad Guys. Maybe because wizards are (for good reasons) keen on tradition -- that is, after all, how they learn most of their spells, and it seems like new magical discoveries are much rarer than new scientific ones -- so that the tradition (pretty well entrenched even in our society) of finding excuses for death, reasons (however specious) to think it a good thing, has been too strong to break. Maybe it just happened that way; lots of ideas go un-thought-of for a long time even though there's no particular reason why they shouldn't have occurred to someone.
Well, I haven't read canon, but I think Flamel is portrayed as a Good Guy whose elixir-of-life-producing-rock is sought by Dark Wizards. (And I think he'd used it on himself and remained a Good Guy.)
I'm guessing in MoR there should be no (actually working to significantly prolong life) philosopher's stone, as not using that more widely would be altogether too crazy.
No more crazy than reality.
No, still more crazy. The value of continued healthy survival is greater than the value of 5% chance at distant future revival.
Good point. It's still an appealing enough metaphor, though, that I wouldn't be entirely surprised if EY made a thing out of it. (I personally would favor portraits over Elixir to represent cryonics, though.)
The Philosopher's Stone is mentioned in MoR: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/4/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality
Only as a method for producing silver, which is uninteresting/irrelevant.
In context, Harry is asking about Sickles specifically, which are silver & not gold. So Griphook's reply is consistent with the Stone being able to do both silver & gold, as well as the classical Stone's exclusive gold*. If Harry had asked about coining a ton of Knuts or Galleons and Griphook had replied assuming silver, then that'd be strong evidence the Stone only did silver in the MoR-verse.
*I've done a bit, not that much, of reading about alchemy; I don't remember the philosopher's stone ever supposed to be able to do silver in addition to gold.
Is there a particular reason to expect, the Stone having been introduced at all, that its powers would be changed? That seems somewhat less acceptable a change than simply leaving the Stone out altogether.
I'm guessing that the working Philosopher's Stone does exist, but it is quite magically difficult to create, and many wizards have Dumbledore's attitude towards death. This would explain why more people do not use it. In canon, Flamel is noted as being historically significant for being one of the people to have successfully created the Philosopher's Stone. (Of course, in canon, it states that Dumbledore worked with Flamel on 'alchemy', presumably meaning the creation of the Stone. Does this conflict with Dumbledore's attitude towards death in MoR, or would Dumbledore have worked on the Stone without intention to use it for another reason?)
There's a lot more to alchemy than the Stone, which Flamel must have had for some centuries before Dumbledore's birth. So Flamel is a great alchemist, from which flow two consequences: Flamel made a Stone several centuries ago; more recently, Flamel worked with another talented alchemist, Dumbledore, probably on something else (since Flamel already had a Stone and Dumbledore wouldn't want one).
Flamel worked with Dumbledore to discover the 12 uses of dragon's blood, I believe, and was 666 when he died.
Now that's just strange - why would there be only 12 uses of dragon's blood?
From canon, I get the impression that no uses of dragon blood were known before Dumbledore's time; else there's not much scandal in Rita Skeeter's accusation that Dumbledore didn't discover all of them. So no uses known, Dumbledore publishes twelve uses, and then the rest of the world assumes that there is nothing further to learn.
Imagine MoR!Harry's exasperation on learning about this incredible complacence and lack of curiosity! He'll probably think of five more uses immediately when he hears about the first twelve (then worry afterwards about his Dark Side, since every one of them is a method of killing).
When I read that I imagined that there something like 12 major magics with dragon's blood and that there was some underlying theory that made there be exactly 12 of them.
Quite interesting, actually. I missed that.
The canon (and also the historical) philosopher's stone could cause immortality, and also create gold.
That Eliezer would mention it here, in this way, is presumably a hint that this one does not do either of those things.
Thought: This also possibly means its makers mislabeled it but failed to notice their confusion.
It could just be extremely difficult, known only to a selfish few, with the knowledge heavily guarded (perhaps using the Interdict of Merlin).
In canon, Nicolas Flamel may have toyed with being a bad guy, but in MoR he would definitely be a bad guy … for the opposite reason.
Flamel stays Good (and in particular is friends with Dumbledore), but eventually his use of the Stone is portrayed as having been a bit unwise.