Sheaman3773 comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: Unnamed 25 August 2011 02:17AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (653)
Tags: harry_potter fanfiction fiction hpmor

Comments (653)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Sheaman3773 04 September 2011 05:43:30PM 2 points [-]

And Harry believes he knows an important piece of the spell that made the Cloak.

Sorry, where was that stated?

Comment author: hairyfigment 05 September 2011 03:25:25AM 5 points [-]

Ch. 56:

And Harry knew, now, that the concealment of the Cloak was more than the mere transparency of Disillusionment, that the Cloak kept you hidden and not just invisible, as unseeable as were Thestrals to the unknowing. And Harry also knew that it was Thestral blood which painted the symbol of the Deathly Hallows on the inside of the Cloak, binding into the Cloak that portion of Death's power, enabling the Cloak to confront the Dementors on their own level and block them. It had felt like guessing, and yet a certain guess, the knowledge coming to him in the instant of solving the riddle.

Bellatrix was still transparent within the Cloak, but to Harry she was no longer hidden, he knew that she was there, as obvious to him as a Thestral. For Harry had only loaned his Cloak, not given it; and he had comprehended and mastered the Deathly Hallow that had been passed down through the Potter line.

Comment author: Sheaman3773 05 September 2011 08:26:18PM 1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: hairyfigment 05 September 2011 08:30:41PM 0 points [-]

...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.

Comment author: Sheaman3773 05 September 2011 08:47:10PM *  1 point [-]

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:

Harry believes he knows an important piece of the spell that made the Cloak.

Comment author: hairyfigment 06 September 2011 04:50:14AM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Sheaman3773 06 September 2011 06:42:00AM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 04 September 2011 05:51:16PM 1 point [-]

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.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit