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wedrifid comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8 - Less Wrong
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A rememberall.
Surely this would also be a relatively high priority for his research too. In fact Harry explicitly made a note to himself to research mental magic near the top of his todo list. That should have turned up a device or spell that detects obliviations and he should be in the habit of using it on himself regularly. Which reminds me about the research he is supposedly doing. What has he discovered? What useful spells has he learned? He's supposed to be a genius of near-Hermione level academic skill and far more strategic thought. When are we going to start seeing him pull out awesome, practical magical knowledge or skill?
And somewhere, someone begins thinking paranoidly, 'yes, Harry has made very little practical progress, compared to how much time he has put into scheming against bullies, breaking into Azkaban, and fighting Ender's Game - and isn't it interesting that all 3 seem traceable back to one particular person?'
I was about to respond to wedrifid in agreement, suggesting that were actually several loose ends where Harry ought to have interesting research results, which I would very much like to read about. And yet it's already April! So I was feeling a bit disappointed.
But your explanation has cheered me up immensely.
I doubt the Ch. 6 signal was magic, since he'd invented it and the recognition code before knowing about magic, and implemented during his first shopping trip. I don't think you'd need magic to signal obliviation or a full-on groundhog day attack.
Magic-wise, I'd suppose that obliviation would make a rememberall signal permanently, but then it seems like that would be important to for obliviators to counter somehow.
Magic leaves an armory worth of potential Chekov guns laying around. If owling hand grenades isn't enough to win the next war, it should be something interesting.
Oh, I agree. I speak of upgrades to his precaution measures which I would expect him to have by now.
Your point regarding countermeasures is important. Particularly savvy wizards can be expected to think of that. For this reason I would expect harry to maintain his mundane tactics as well. This exploits the known blind spot of nearly all non-Quirrell wizards. Improving his mundane signalling system has also been raised in importance now that Harry is aware of the possibility of Obliviation and has more reason to expect enemies to be motivated to use it.
An example being the money earning scheme. I would probably enjoy reading about other tactics that Harry considers even if they do not end up being Chekov guns!
This was brought up before:
Of course, there still hasn't been any sort of resolution from that, though there are a number of interesting theories...