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Mass_Driver comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 10 - Less Wrong
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Ch 78 You know, of all the things in the chapter, the law of Potion-Making seems the most important, by far - if I understand it correctly, it has staggering implications.
It's clear that you can extract more than purely physical processes from ingredients - since we have potions that bestow even entirely abstract concepts like luck(and canon!Snape claimed to be capable of brewing fame and glory, I'm unsure if MoR!Snape claimed the same).
So, could you, say, take a CD with some software on it and use it as a Potions ingredient in order to extract the mental work that went into programming that software, creating a Potion of Excellent Programming or something? Or, even better - could you take a copy of some brilliant scientific research paper, extract the brilliant scientific genius out of it and use the resulting Potion in order to create an even more brilliant scientific breakthrough? That's godhood in one shot right there.
I also have to wonder how Potion-Making interacts with the Mind Projection Fallacy. If you use a video game as an ingredient, can you create a Potion of Fun out of the video game or no? Fun isn't an inherent property of video games, it's in the minds of the players.
This thread is a little silly, even by local standards. First of all, the fact that a potion can be no stronger than its ingredients doesn't imply that a potion will always be as strong as its ingredients -- there are probably all kinds of other restrictions on what can be effectively brewed. By way of analogy, most Volvo engines don't run at Carnot efficiencies and most split pea soups don't run at more than 0.01 efficiency.
Second, all of the canon/fanon magical ingredients are non-copiable...a feather or a squished animal is not like a CD or a video game or a piece of parchment. Perhaps you could use the original of a piece of parchment if you didn't keep a spare copy, but EV drops lots of clues -- potion conservation was apparently designed by someone who thought the universe was fair, potion brewing is a substitute for a small, safe sacrifice, etc. -- everyone who's trying to figure out how to make a potion out of costless intellectual property is playing a different game than the one Harry's playing.
Third, advanced electronics tend to malfunction in proximity to strong magical auras -- so far the most advanced Muggle artifact that's been successfully used to interact with wizards are a car battery and a solid-fuel rocket -- both of which basically just discharged their stored energy, without any controls more subtle than an "on" button.
Fourth, would it really be fun if Harry put Science into a cauldron and took out a flask full of Win? A major theme in the fanon so far is the importance of working together in teams and coalitions. Harry already has enough power to singlehandedly overcome most casual bands of students. He destroys Dementors, outwits Headmasters, is fabulously wealthy, incredibly famous, has above-average magical strength, bloody single-minded discipline & determination, and of course an excellent background in basic cognitive science. If he suddenly became an expert programmer, researcher, etc. and broke Merlin's Interdict, he'd have enough power to singlehandedly overwhelm adult powerhouses like Lucius or Flitwick...I don't buy it. I predict that Harry will be prompted to learn how to play politics on a national scale, just as Harry has recently learned how to lead teams on a school-wide scale.
Wait, someone's calculated this?