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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8 - Less Wrong
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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'm saying "an important piece of the spell" because you used that phrase.
My point is: Harry knows that the Cloak keeps him hidden, not just invisible; this is similar to Thestrals; there's Thestral blood painted on the inside of the Cloak.
None of that indicates that he knows how to replicate this effect, which is what I thought you meant when you said:
Yeah, I wrote the grandparent hastily and badly. I felt confused about the difference in interpretation. But it doesn't seem like an interesting difference; looks like you just took "spell" to mean the effect rather than the cause.
I hope you'd agree that knowing part of the cause should increase the chance of successful replication.
I do agree that knowing part of the cause should increase the chance of successful replication. I just think that there's still a long way to go. We're probably both reading more into each others' posts than we should.
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.
While never being explicitly discussed either way casual destruction of artifacts as powerful as the deathly hallows doesn't happen in Harry Potter. It occurring in the movies is something new and I am comfortable with my initial reaction of surprise and disappointment. I hope MoR doesn't base its own magical reality on the one evidently depicted in the movies because it just wouldn't be either as appealing or as coherent.
What's wrong with having powerful objects that are easy to destroy? I mean most advanced pieces of technology in our world aren't that hard to destroy, or at least render inoperable.
Personal preference and internal consistency. It's ok if the elder wand is just a stick but I don't have to like it.
As I mentioned in another comment, in the MoRVerse it's strongly implied that all artifacts (which as I said are more clearly categorized as such in MoR than in canon) have some extra durability in them (as Quirrel says the FiendFyre would be used to destroy an artifact like the Sorting Hat) -- so I don't think you need worry about this.
Of course, the castle can be nuke-proof in other meanings than just “a point-blank nuke wouldn’t destroy it”, I imagine.