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Konkvistador comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8 - Less Wrong
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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.
Huh, I thought the obvious precedent was Larry Niven's story about a world where even minor crimes are punishable by death so that your organs can be harvested for transplantation...
Which means you'd better make sure you drink a lot of vampire souls before they catch you. All of them if possible.
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.
Unless they had some kind of really cunning plan.
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.