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gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8 - Less Wrong
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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...
Well, that too. ;)
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.
If they had such a plan which really truly required them to be non-magical* and somehow was superior to all magical plans, they could just burn their power themselves...
* This makes me very wary as it sounds perilously close to conjunction fallacy. The set of 'non-magical \/ magical plans' ought to be larger than either subset...
Example: Have your enemy burn your magic. Your enemy thinks you are safe and lets their guard down. Your minion sacrifices themselves and you absorb their magic. You win.
Admittedly this plan will involve more than three things going right in a row.
I was going to say that this step seems like an assumption, except Eliezer just made Dumbledore say that was the secret to Grindelwald's success, so...
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.