drethelin comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 17, chapter 86 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Alsadius 17 December 2012 07:19AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (606)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: drethelin 20 December 2012 08:21:21AM 4 points [-]

It's hard for me to imagine you're not trolling with that comment. We're talking about an entire culture that dresses in a combination of period garb, fictional accouterments, and ignores almost entirely the "20th century" world around them. No one comments on Quirrel's Turban or Moody's unique to him skull staff.

Also: To this day, the 21st century, people sometimes suffer eye injuries and wear eye patches, and they're pretty large

Also: Google image search for steampunk eyepatch

Comment author: Alsadius 20 December 2012 10:22:14AM 1 point [-]

Okay, using centuries to describe wizard fashion was a silly thing to do. And I was unfamiliar with serious modern eyepatches - most of the time I've seen something for that purpose, it's either sunglasses of some sort, or an "eyepatch" that's more of a temporary dressing than anything.

Though I don't see why a turban would raise eyebrows. Admittedly, white guys wearing them is unusual, but turbans are hardly rare. And everybody knows Moody's a bit of a loon, so...well, I suppose that by explaining why he has his weird headpiece, I'm also arguing for why he could probably get away with an eyepatch if he wanted to.

Maybe he got the Eye in a way that was made public despite his best efforts, and so he figured he'd do better to obfuscate its exact powers than to try to conceal its existence?

Comment author: pedanterrific 20 December 2012 05:01:17PM 1 point [-]

One could argue both ways. As I recall, he knocked over some third-world (or, since it's magical, negative-third-world) country to loot the artifact from a tinpot dictator. On the one hand, that sounds pretty dang public on the face of it; on the other, he phrases it as 'somewhere he doesn't have to worry about silly rules' (such as "don't hunt down and kill people because you want their things"), implying Britain isn't paying a lot of attention to the place in any event.

Comment author: pedanterrific 20 December 2012 05:14:28PM *  0 points [-]

Moody's unique to him skull staff

What are you talking about?

Edit: Ah, that's something they invented for the films.