Its purpose might simply have been to slow down the rate of high-level spell development and use. We know that the greatest body of magical lore would have been lost with Atlantis (going with the theory that the Atlanteans created the Source of Magic) and that magical research appears to largely be the province of individuals. The Interdict of Merlin would be like going to medieval Europe and saying "OK, you can carry on developing science/natural philosophy/etc., but you can't read any classical works, and if you want the latest research, you've got to get it in person rather than reading your fellow thinkers' texts".
Is anyone here familiar with the "Labyrinths of Echo" sequence by Max Frei (the first book of which has recently been butchered into English)? That has the central premise that magical power is fuelled by the magical axis running through the the world, and that overuse of said power has nearly drained away the soul of the planet. As such, the protagonists are a magical police force dedicated to protecting the ban on high-level magic so that the heart of the world can recover and the all-too-near apocalypse can be averted. I wonder if the Interdict of Merlin is based on a similar idea.
It appears to me that the original purpose of the Interdict was as a form of DRM for strong spells. If you want to disseminate a spell, you can't just take a book, magically duplicate the book, and pass it out to all your friends. Learning a powerful spell thus required a willing trainer to teach you the spell, and you couldn't duplicate the knowledge contained in your mind until you knew the spell well enough to teach it yourself (and teaching something is harder than just being able to use it).
If you take this as a starting point, it's just basic class...
The next discussion thread is here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 84. The previous thread has passed 500 comments. Comment in the 14th thread until you read chapter 84.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: