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drethelin comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 9 - Less Wrong
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It really doesn't. They teach transfiguration to the children from about 8 years old and some of them do not completely fail. They tell the students a bunch of things that are really dangerous to do. There are many people below the level of Voldemort who have both the knowledge and skill to kill people effectively with transfiguration if they so desire. It really isn't that much of a genius feat of creativity.
Relatively few fan-fictions are based around the crude exploitation of basic magic for the purpose of terrorism. This says a lot more about what makes a good story than about how hard it is for average wizards to play terrorist. Significant plot arcs about magical terrorists sound cooler if they use fancy dramatic magic that sounds mysterious and hard to acquire rather than the simplest thing that would work.
kind of tangential, but would an arbitrary wizard even know what bleach is?
I suppose the question would be "Is the typical magical cleaning potion harmful when dispersed in small amounts throughout the body?"
I guess you could also just transmute a lot of a solid into gas while bubbleheading yourself and just leave it to disperse.
I would use Aluminium, in small amounts. It wouldn't so much be terrorism as it would be counterintelligence. Literally. Do some experimentation (on political prisoners) first and then some calculations on air dispersal concentrations and work out how much the human body can absorb via untranfiguration without being detected. Then proceed to provide a chronic internal dose of Aluminium to select enemy targets over an extended period. The slow but steady cognitive decline would have no apparent source and would be noticed only after it has been resulting in poor decision making for a long time. Just what you need when you are planning a magical war.
Aluminum sounds like it'd have a long half-life and leave elevated levels in the blood and hair for a long time - and so is easily tested for. It'd be better to use something which washes out quicker. Lots of drugs damage cognition and disappear quickly; maybe scopolamine, but there are probably better suggestions.
That's rather the point. Supplying a dose at a rate that is below the ability to detect at the moment of the untransfiguration causes the aluminium to build up in the brain over the long term and result in a slow but steady decline in function without anything to prompt attention unless the decline in function itself is noticed - and that sort of introspective access is rare.
Naturally drugs are the first things to consider - or more precisely the more extreme potions and the venom of exotic magical beasts. But drethelin was considering the easiest option - that of just getting a bunch of easily accessible matter and transfiguring away. Just grabbing an aluminium can and dispersing it once a day seems like the best choice as far as easily accessible mundane materials go. Naturally if we have already ruled out bleach the more complex human poisons are way out but what do you think would be the best magical poison/venom? Basilisk fang has potential. Spiders could be fun. But now I'm speculating about transfiguring philosopher's stones. It seems the HPverse one only works on metal but if there were a related midaslike substance that was less specific it'd be rather hilarious to turn all your enemies to gold in a flash by standing upwind.
And yet isn't. Even muggles who know what Aluminium is beyond "weird muggle softdrink cans" and know what the effects can be don't bother to test for Aluminium even when signs of toxicity start appearing.
But if they start testing, aluminum will likely be one of them. Aluminum poisoning is not that rare or exotic - your deodorant or Antacids can give you it, and so I assume doctors are at least glancingly familiar with it. This tactic works only until someone learns of it. There must be better substances to use!
This rather seems to apply to the weaponized transfiguration in general. Compared to identifying and removing Aluminum that is dispersed into the cells of the brain - never mind trying to fix existing neural damage - is far more difficult than defending against the whole class of transfigured gas attacks.
That particular tactic is, of course, an optimization within the domain "transfigure arbitrary commonplace solid". Did you consider the alternate substances discussed in the comment to which you are replying? Are there some superior options to those that you would suggest? Creating the perfect magical terrorist attack is naturally of great interest.
If transfiguration can only result in non-magical substances, then science would help to transfigure to CBW agents - ending up too close for comfort. Wards cast in transfiguration classrooms and dormitories to detect intent to violate transfiguration rules would catch those, a wise expansive interpretation would catch the worst I can think of (critical mass of fissile material => will generate gas). The Hogwarts House system should force conformity and channel risk-taking into known paths. If failing to attempt homework would lose points, depression and mental illness could be caught early. Would the wizarding world have something of the culture of manners of the Diamond Ages's Victorians, with wards and parlours working as firewalls and time for threat assessment/decontamination?
This question occurred to me partway through writing the great-grandparent, hence the 'or some other poison' clause. I'd expect naturally unpleasant chemicals to have lower lethal dosage requirements than, say, argon. (Although maybe the mapping involved interacts with molecules such that you'd be better off with mercury. Who knows?)