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.

Comments (653)

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

Comment author: gwern 05 September 2011 08:35:09PM 1 point [-]

He never said that his Muggle allies were killing themselves; the blood sacrifice mentioned could easily be from those who were killed in the Nazi extermination camps.

Is there a difference, from the magical point of view, between Muggle allies slaughtering each other to fuel Grindelwald, and slaughtering non-allied Muggles to fuel Grindelwald?

Comment author: Sheaman3773 05 September 2011 08:56:33PM 1 point [-]

In a number of magic systems, the willingness of a sacrifice can have a huge impact on its effectiveness, ranging anywhere from a willing sacrifice granting significantly more power than the unwilling to requiring the sacrifice to be willing for it to work at all.

I'm uncertain where Potterverse stands on this, let alone MOR!Potterverse.

Assuming Voldemort's ritual in GoF was more than empty words, willingness is important, or at least notable, given:

Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son. Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master. Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe.

Italics added to emphasize parts concerning consent.

Comment author: MatthewBaker 06 September 2011 06:46:58PM 11 points [-]

Also, many parents in the holocaust were forced to either leave there children or die. Many were forced to sacrifce themselves for their significant other or watch them both die. Consent (as wormtail shows) can be based on a wide variety of factors that might not involve you being truly aligned with how you feel about the ritual itself. A muggle might walk into the gas chamber willingly to save his/her spouses life but the harry potter verse never deals with "how much consent is consent".

Comment author: TobyBartels 07 September 2011 06:58:44PM 3 points [-]

I wish that this comment weren't buried behind "continue this thread"; I don't want to be the only one who votes it up.

Comment author: gwern 05 September 2011 09:07:46PM 0 points [-]

Sure. So in one ritual we know of, consent and lack of consent matters. But that doesn't argue much one way or the other about the proposed scheme for how burning your magic might be a winning strategy.

Comment author: Sheaman3773 05 September 2011 09:25:56PM 0 points [-]

My point in bringing it up was that we don't know if his minions were sacrificing themselves or others, so the last step is still an assumption.

Even if Grindelwald managed to have minions loyal enough to sacrifice themselves, though, there's no guarantee that anyone else's minions would be that loyal. I'd say that it's a gamble pretty much no matter what.