= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Xachariah comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (653)
Has there yet been any Word of God on firearms in the Methods of Rationality? I know that the other Word of God has the famous quote, "In a fight between a Muggle with a shotgun and a wizard with a wand, the Muggle will win." I'm curious if this sort of thing still holds for MoR.
Hogwarts, being a school, wouldn't have narrative need to involve any guns directly. Fights between bullies and students rarely end with gunshots even in the real world afterall. But the mere existence of such objects casts ripples on everything else. Just like modern warfare is dominated by the existence of nuclear weapons even when not deployed, guns remaining effective would dominate the shape of all wizard conflicts. Home invasions go from safe for the better wizards to potentially lethal any time. Public takeover (as in Deathly Hallows) becomes impossible. Support from demihuman races become pointless if open battlefields are impossible. Hell, all the death eaters in total seem almost comically weak against a single battalion of trained soldiers loaned from a friendly country and supported by a wizard or two. Death Eaters might be an effective terrorist organization, but could not be the army of a ruling party.
I expect that the story will remain centered on ideological and political differences, with combat remaining non-lethal. But still, knowing that you can pull off an assassination at literally zero risk to yourself at any time (Invisibility Cloak + Sniper Rifle + Portkey + Time Turner) has to do something to an actor's willingness to compromise with rivals.
A gun might top a wand for a lethal quickdraw, but magic has a ludicrous number of tactical advantages. A home invader with a gun, for instance, is no longer a threat when you can use charms to make it impossible for them to be aware of the existence of your house.
The sniper rifle doesn't make this much easier; it's loud (although it might be quieted magically) and Avada Kedavra is a surer kill. Anti apparation spells probably cover portkeys, or if they don't, there are probably other spells to deal with them. Plus, you can't pull it off "at any time" given that it can be stopped by a standing anti-apparation spell and a closed door, which are pretty minimal precautions for a high profile political leader.
If you're really creative, you could probably assassinate just about anyone, but this is more or less true in real life, and prevented largely by the extremely small overlap between people with that kind of creativity and people who want to pull off assassinations.
I was considering more a wizard vs wizard+technology situation. Presumably wizards already figure out ways into charmed houses; the addition of guns just make it easier once you've already located it.
The benefit of a sniper rifle is the range. Harry Potter magic seems to be effective at about a dozen yards at most. The longest confirmed sniper kill is over one and a half miles without any aid of aiming magic; the sound of the bullet arrives about 5 seconds after you're already dead. That should leave you well outside of the range of any anti-apparition wards, and require knowledge of ballistics to even track you to your shooting spot. Lee Harvey Oswald would have gotten away easily if he could apparate or portkey; as it was he was able to walk around for an hour until police were tipped off to his suspicious activity. Voldemort specifically seems to have an odd thing for meeting in the outdoors, and Dumbledore is fond of watching Quiddich. It's not like there would never be an opportunity.
Voldemort met outdoors in a graveyard in the series, once, and that was at a point where nobody but his servants ha any idea he was alive. Secrecy was the Death Eaters' main weapon.
As for assassinating someone like Dumbledore, you could probably do it if he weren't already suspicious enough to take precautions against it, but you could do that with magic as well. Warfare technology would certainly have uses in the wizarding world, particularly for a smart individual, but it's not like any particular combination of technologies and spells is simply uncounterable, it just makes things much more complicated and forces everyone to become more paranoid.
Aside from raising standing shields, taking undisclosed routes or teleporting to safe destinations and all the other precautions one might take, magic might take bullet tracing to entirely new levels. "Find the gun that fired this bullet" and "Find the person who fired this gun" spells may very well exist, or be easy to invent once they're needed.
I'm thinking McGonnagal could set up a decent nuclear defense system too. Charms that detect incoming airborne objects and transmogrify then into pigs seem right up her alley.
In general it seems that magic gives far more defensive options than technological weaponry. These days our defensive options are pretty much MORE ATTACK! But magic has invisibility, shields, teleport, (extra) secrecy and flipping time turners!
See "Secrecy and Openness". I directly contradicted Rowling in that chapter for exactly that reason. Roughly, a good wizard or witch who knows what's coming can easily raise a shield against bullets. Bombs are more difficult, although e.g. the Castle Hogwarts would just shrug them off. And there are ancient devices and certain old structures that could stand up to point-blank nuclear weapons, but they're rare.
Is the Castle of Hogwarts one of the structures which is nuclear weapon proof?
That was hard to decide. I eventually figured on "No" - the Four Founders are too recent, and shouldn't have the magic level necessary to produce large-scale nuke-proof structures.
Hmm, that gives us some interesting data about the decline of magic. We now know that the power decline included a decline in defensive magic, and this may be the first explicit statement of a type of magic that was capable at some point in the past that the Founders could not use. I'm sure this would be quite useful for Harry.
Also, I think this sort of thing might depend on practice on the size of the nuke by a lot. Some stone buildings in Nagasaki survived relatively intact and are still in use. On the other hand, that bomb had a yield of only around 20 kilotons of TNT. A lot of modern bombs are in the megaton range. So Hogwarts should be able to stand a chance to partially survive a small nuke simply due to the fact that it is a big castle with very thick walls. It shouldn't take that much magic to make that size nuke completely survivable. So even if Hogwarts can't survive a direct strike from a megaton weapon, maybe it should be able to survive a small nuke?
Edit: Another thought, if Dumbledore is now worried about the possible use of nukes wouldn't he try to upgrade the castle's defenses against specifically that sort of attack? It might be that very ancient powerful structures would survive a nuke because they are just that powerful, but even if that sort of general power doesn't exist in the modern time, there are still specific anti-nuke strategies that one could do. If for example one had a spell on the Hogwart's grounds which prevented explosives from detonating that would force a minimum distance for nukes to be used (since nukes need a conventional explosive to make the fission core go critical). One could get around that by having a gun type fission bomb with something other than explosives to launch the bullet (say compressed gas). This would put a severe limit on the maximum yield of the nuke and would mean that no pre-existing nuke would work. Another option would be to have some sort of pre-set transfiguration for the outer walls of the castle, so that if certain events occur the outer walls automatically transfigure into highly durable substances. Harry would probably have other ideas as well. Dumbledore should maybe be asking Harry for advice since Harry is both more creative and has a much better idea in detail what a nuclear detonation requires what the results would be.
You're making this too complicated. As evidenced by the levitate-slowly-to-the-ground spell, they've already got magics in-universe that impede the maximum kinetic energy of an object.
Just surround the entire area with a field that inhibits maximum relative velocities to something an arrow could achieve. No more guns, no more bombs, no more nukes. Problem solved.
I assume that at a certain power level, even magic can't protect you. Atlantis at full power probably couldn't defend itself against, say, a gamma ray burst, a black hole pulling the solar system into it's gravity well, our sun going supernova, or heck, the sun just expanding due to old age.
A spell to protect against incoming shockwaves would probably require vastly more energy than a spell that targeted and halted igniting charges. Although ironically it seems much more muggle thinking to halt a theat with through intricate understanding of the mechanisms than to just pump more power into it.
Not to mention whatever it was that destroyed it.
I was just thinking that while the Cloak of Invisibility shouldn't protect its wearer against nukes -- intuitively, nukes can kill you without anyone knowing your precise location -- the job shouldn't require a greater level of magic than it took to make this artifact. And Harry believes he knows an important piece of the spell that made the Cloak.
Let's see if he got that right, and if he can generalize correctly (using only the new info that Quirrel gave him).
Sorry, where was that stated?
Ch. 56:
Ah, I see. I misunderstood you; I thought that you meant that Harry knew how to replicate an important piece of the spell that made the Cloak, not that he understood part of how the Cloak functioned.
...I don't know what you mean by "important part of the spell" if you exclude secret ingredients, physical motions like drawing a symbol, or the vague-but-intuitive general procedure behind these.
I believe that the implication here is that the cloak's behavior around Dementors is very similar to some of the behavior of the Patronus 2.0.
Stopping nukes specifically with magic would be simple. Just gate all the free neutrons in a radius to a hundred miles vertically up. Nuclear bombs might as well be fuelled with toffee.
Magic seems to operate on a human level intuitive scale. Doing something just to free neutrons wouldn't fit that pattern.
At least one wizard (Harry) can go deeper than the human level, so it might be possible.
So turn the fuel to toffee.
Is the cloak of invisiblity one of the devices that would stand up to a nuclear weapon?
Well, if the final movie is anything to go by, then it shouldn't be. Harry breaks the Elder Wand into pieces at the end of the film, which shows that the Deathly Hallows clearly aren't indestructible. (In the book, Harry returns the wand to Dumbledore's grave instead of destroying it, which doesn't tell us anything about whether he could have destroyed the wand.)
HP:MoR does imply however that one needs extra-special power to destroy artifacts -- e.g. the FiendFyre which in canon is one of the few things that can destroy a Horcrux, is also mentioned (not by name, but implicitly as a type of cursed fire) in HP:MOR by Quirrel as what would be used to destroy an artifact like the Sorting Hat.
So I don't think Harry just snapping the Elder Wand in two could happen in the 'verse of HP:MoR.
It really shouldn't have been allowed even in the movie. (NB: I haven't seen the movie; I'm only relying on CronoDAS's description.)
Possibly the reason he could destroy the wand was that he was its 'master,' (for those who don't know a large plot point in the final canon book and movie was that wands have particular masters that they are bonded too, and so can only be wielded fully by them or someone who defeats them. Hence why Voldemort couldn't use the elder wand properly. )
Presumably having access to all the wands power as harry did at the end would allow one to override the safeguards against destroying it?
Gah? Seriously? WTF did they change that? That's arbitrary.
I somehow lost interest in the movies after about 3 or so. Not sure why. Possibly because Ginny wasn't nearly as cute or as sane as in the books and possibly because I just didn't want to see Ron's face or hear him say stupid, stupid things.
Well I suppose destroying it is possibly less insane than leaving it with Dumbledore where anyone would look. Just not as sane as keeping it, being badass and cough "optimising" the world.
Because he wanted nobody else to have it, and frankly the book solution of "I'll hide it, and hope nobody finds it again" was extremely inadequate; especially after dozens of people had heard Voldemort and Harry discuss its existence.
The movie version of snapping it in two and throwing it away made the point much louder and much more finally.
They, not he. The changes to the magical world regarding the casual destruction of magical artifacts are far more significant to changes to irrational!Harry's decision making.
(See third paragraph.)
The concept of "artifact" isn't nearly as neatly delineated in Harry Potter canon as in the MoR!Verse.
In canon, it's Horcruxes that are very hard to destroy -- other magical objects not necessarily so. I don't believe there's anything even in canon that would have prevented Harry from snapping the Elder Wand in two.
Of course, the castle can be nuke-proof in other meanings than just “a point-blank nuke wouldn’t destroy it”, I imagine.
Since magic in the HP universe has the property of not having to make sense, one could imagine a spell that simply makes guns not work, or that makes all projectiles move slowly, or that causes everyone within the area to miss what they aim at.
The ending battle of Deathly Hallows pretty much treats wands as if they were guns. You could edit the film to replace all the wands with guns and have very few instances where anything looked wrong. So far HP:MoR has made the magic feel more magical than that.
A muggle could easily shoot an unprepared wizard. However, shouldn't there be magical protections against firearms?
The most recent update would suggest that fairly standard shielding charms can stop blunt impact.
"Daphne could hardly see the movement as Susan seemed to hit the corridor wall and then bounce off it like she was a rubber ball and her legs smashed into Jugson's face, it didn't go through the shield but the sixth-year went sprawling backward with the impact"
There appears to be conservation of momentum, but the momentum from typical firearms spread out over your entire body isn't even going to leave a bruise, assuming said charms are up to dealing with something with as much sectional density and velocity as a bullet.
IMO a good model for wizard duels vis a vis muggle innovations and creative thinking is the ritualized warfare practiced in the Americas in pre-Columbian times. Lot's of punches pulled, lots of unstated mutual agreements not to escalate, and a general low-intensity level of aggression that doesn't get too many people killed.
Just not partially motivated by the need to capture opponents for sacrifice?
Perhaps sacrifices are the real source of magic. Not really equivalent exchange, given the trivial uses magic is usually put to, but that's thermodynamics for you - 'you can't win, you can't break even, and you can't quit'.
Hm. In Chapter 74, we learn that all ritual magic requires a sacrifice, and Harry muses about all the pulled punches in wizard warfare. Iiinteresting.
This is one of the few speculations that I would actually like to see confirmed-- I find it very satisfying, for some reason.
Especially since Quirrell/Voldemort specifically mentions that it is possible to sacrifice "a portion" of one's own magical power -- permanently -- to achieve 'great effects'. I imagine a nefarious individual could conceive of a rite whereby the sacrifice of another wizard's life -- and by extension, his magic -- would cause at least some portion of that magic to be transferred to yourself.
Perhaps older wizards were more powerful because... they had more power? One could easily conceive of Godric Griffindor using this method of execution upon potential Dark Lords in order to combat more-powerful ones.
That seems like an effective method of imprisonment. Force the wizard to expend their power permanently in rituals (or just one powerful ritual). Such a prison would be significantly safer than Azkaban, since any wizards which escape would be effectively useless. They would be permanently helpless; some might consider it an even worse fate than dementors.
On further thought, perhaps that is why the public accepts dementors. Imagine what the prison system could have been before dementors were harnessed for prison work. The state would have an incentive to label people as criminals, so that it could burn their magic. The entire situation would degrade into an ever worsening police state. The discovery of dementors for prison use would be a humanitarian breakthrough akin to the abolishing of Capital Punishment.
I'm impressed. That's WH40K-level crapsackiness.
It's also straight out of Vampire: the Masquerade - Vampires can become stronger and more vampire-ish by eating the "souls" of other vampires. This is considered a heinous crime in vampire society and is punishable by Final Death.
Apart from, y'know, still being humans, right?
If any of those previous Dark Wizards were dangerous even as ordinary humans, they wouldn't've lost in the first place.
I'm immediately reminded of discworld where technical improvements in magical theory have gotten to the point where a spell that originally required the sacrifice of a human being can now be performed using a few ccs of mouse blood.
Hmmm, what if the practice of magic is weaker in the present of MoR because ritually sacrificing a few dozen peasants for purely experimental ends is considered in bad taste?
I can see Dumbledore BSODing over the discovery that Hogwarts is actually powered by the hearts of ten thousand orphans somewhere down in the foundations.
I think we can rule that out on the basis that Godric Griffindor wouldn't have stood for it.
Perhaps there is a charm in MoR. Although in cannon there were arrows killing wizards.
I'm not really concerned about muggle vs wizard, but rather wizard vs wizard. As was mentioned earlier in the story, any spell you can throw out requires them to expend effort to negate. And guns can spit out quit a few 'spells' per second as well as from beyond unaided sight range. Even if a shield existed, guns would still be changing things by forcing enemies to keep up that shield at all times.
Plus there's also the question of IEDs. They pump out enough damage that I doubt any wizard could withstand one. The IRA was active during the time period, and made use of carbombs; it would be unusual if someone like Seamus Finnigan didn't know about them.
There might be a spell for inactivating guns and/or destroying them.
It's odd that wizards are immune to flame (couldn't be burnt as witches) and yet they're so vulnerable to impact.
It would be interesting to throw a Spell of Coherent World-Building.
They didn't have an always-on immunity to flame, they cast a Flame-Freezing Charm. Deadly impact is usually too sudden to prepare against, whereas you can see them building the fire minutes in advance.
Right after the Azkaban mission, McGonagall, Snape and Dumbledore hold council together. I remember that after Dumbledore shows terror at the idea of a Harry vs. Voldemort war fought with Muggle weapons (he's thinking of nukes), McGonagall thinks something like "firearms aren't that dangerous for a prepared witch".
Part of the time when I was reading Deathly Hallows, and all of the time I was reading MoR I always expected Harry or at least SOMEONE else to act like Kiritsugu from Fate/Zero. Imagine: Enchanted portkeys with no destination yet programmed in attached to home made bombs, flash-bang grenades as a staple in wizarding duels to disrupt aiming/concentration, to say nothing of the videogameesque ability to actually carry around an entire armory with you or heal yourself much quicker EVEN IF YOU DON'T USE MAGIC.
(For those of you who don't know, Kiritsugu is a mage assassin who takes advantage of the Magic Association's technophobia and uses weapons as a regular part of the kit: Mages aren't going to defend against you if you're a mile off with a sniper rifle and they aren't going to defend against landmines if they don't know they exist!)
Edit: Actually, scratch the Kiritsugu idea I just want Neville to cast a shield charm of some sort at his feet so he can rocket jump from staircase to staircase at some point. Pity Quake 2 is five years in the future.
"It would be silly if anyone could win the whole war at any time just by owling him a hand grenade," Harry thinks in Ch. 37. A Fate Zero style conflict between a sane and a non-sane wizard ends very quickly, and if two sane wizards ever fight each other...
I sort of assumed that's what we were expecting in the eventual Harry/Quirrel showdown...
Rowling said somewhere in an interview that there were ways of making yourself impossible for an owl to find; whether this is a blanket affect or could be lifted for select targets is unclear. Otherwise, the Aurors could have just owled the Death Eaters something and then followed the owl to their hiding spaces.
Yes! Rocket jumping Neville please! In fact, the more of Neville fighting stuff the better.
I have to say I find the notion that rocket-jumping would be better than existing magic pretty suspect.
Well, a number of schools in the real world have gangs that do shoot each other with guns, oftentimes in the school's parking lot.
That's not how I remember the quote at all. What I remember was more along the lines of "a pure-blood fanatic versus a competent Muggle with a gun would lose," with italics added to indicate which part I'm unsure of the wording on. Which, of course, has completely different implications.
I searched for the original quotation for what I remembered and for the quote that you posted. I couldn't find mine, irritatingly enough, but I couldn't find an original quotation of yours, either. Do you have it?