Harry thought he could figure out who the Death Eaters were by checking their arms for the Dark Mark. Turns out it's not that simple.
Like I said, Voldemort is one of the only two or three competent wizards shown.
Does either of you even have any reason to believe that there isn't a magical precaution against sending dangerous objects through the owl mail system?
It's more likely that there isn't than that there is, and it's something to be (quickly and easily) tested. This particular example aside, owling bombs isn't intended to be taken literally; it's a stand-in for a simple attack that wizards don't expect. Any particular such attack may not work, but I strongly expect that if Harry dedicated a whole day to thinking up and actually trying such "low-tech" attacks, vetting them with Dumbledore against known defenses to save time, then he could come up with enough attacks to take down at least half the Dark Lords in recent history.
On the one hand, the fact that owl bombs are not a common tactic is itself evidence against the being usable. On the other hand, in canon you could definitely send dangerous objects through the mail.
Edit: New thread posted 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 86. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments.
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, 15, 16.
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: