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ArisKatsaris comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4 - Less Wrong
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The "low hanging fruit" which you argue Harry ought be researching... they seem to involve organ transplants and the manipulation of dead bodies with "electric transmitters in their mind which mimicked the signal sent when someone cast a test".
Are you serious? How the hell would a first-year student of Hogwarts perform these experiment? How can you call these "low hanging fruit"?
Low hanging meaning that the concept would be fairly easy to come up with, reveal a lot about how magic actually works, and it would be simple to implement. If you can convince a dying wizard who sympathizes with muggles to donate their body to science, the rest is easily within harries means. Also, harry could even test the idea on himself or draco first. If you set up a radio to mimic human brainwaves, tell the wizard to hold onto a wand without casting any spells, and mimic the signal from a wizard casting a spell, you would be able to at least confirm whether or not it is worth trying to get a unconscious / dead / completely artificial body.
As for the organ transplant, that idea sucked which is why I should not write when I am tired, there are a lot more tests you should logically do first. I imagine that you could find a dying wizard who consented to the experiment and was willing to be an organ donor, a muggle who needed a new heart, and see what happens, but since there is no evidence that the DNA in your heart, mind, feet, etc is what is read, it would make more sense to wait until later.
And finally, I resent the implication that his being a student makes a difference :p if their society makes it impossible him to do it, he has more than enough influence to get help from an adult.
How exactly do you propose that they set up a radio to mimic human brain waves? Not only would this be extremely technically complicated, almost certainly beyond Harry's resources or knowhow, even if the source of magic actually constantly reads wizards' brain waves, what reason do we have to suspect that it would not be able to distinguish neurological activity from a radio transmitter projecting the same patterns?
It sounds like a huge amount of work for a test which stands a great chance of being completely useless given that Harry doesn't have anywhere near enough data to home in on this as a meaningful avenue for investigation.