JoshuaZ comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 10 - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Oscar_Cunningham 07 March 2012 04:46PM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 12 March 2012 10:50:41PM 5 points [-]

Or a potion of instant death if it instead stored the decay effect from the dementor.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 13 March 2012 12:26:52AM 5 points [-]

That's so easy to do you don't even need magic.

Comment author: aladner 12 March 2012 11:21:12PM 2 points [-]

I'd imagine that would be determined by the other ingredients and stirring patterns. It could also be used to make someone invisible to dementors, immune to the effects of dementors, temporarily unkillable, give off their own dementor-like aura, or just look like a dementor. Depending on what the other rules are, that cloak could be very valuable.

Comment author: ajuc 14 March 2012 05:25:38PM *  2 points [-]

Testing which potion we got by such and such stirring pattern would be fun.

You give it to your hero and he is instantly dead. Or you give it to some criminal sentenced to death/Azkaban and he becomes unkillable for a month, or invisible to Dementors :)

Or you give it to rat and nothing happens - you try to kill the rat and he's killed - maybe that was potion that makes you invisible to dementors?

Comment author: gwern 14 March 2012 06:23:25PM 3 points [-]

That sounds a lot like modern drug testing, actually...