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MugaSofer comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 18, chapter 87 - Less Wrong
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Ok. Big analysis of Patronus magic coming up.
Central Assumption: The Stone and whatever saved infant Harry from Voldemort are both based on Patronus magic.
We have already seen the True Patronus, which is powered by an absolute rejection of death and serves as an antithesis for the killing curse.
Perhaps whatever saved Harry is caused by a terminal value in a specific person surviving (the mundane Patronus does not reach that level)
Perhaps the Stone is powered by a rejection of personal death in a non-universal, non-utilitarian way?
I suspect that Harry will use the True Patronus to provide immortality.
I reckon Voldemort accidentally performed a ritual, sacrificing Lily Potter and granting Harry Boy-Who-Lived status. But ... it's certainly not worth rejecting out of hand.
I'm not sure I would call the True Patronus "an antithesis for the killing curse." It seems more of an antithesis for death!dementors.
I'm not sure what you mean by "terminal value" here.
Wouldn't that make Quirrelmort an ideal candidate for stonemaking?
Woah there. That thing is overpowered enough as it is. If it starts raising the dead then, well ... let's just say that sounds a little too easy. I thing EY is too good a writer to simply hand his protagonist a get-out-of-plot-free card like that. Harry is already powerful via rationality - he doesn't need the author to hand him the solution to all his problems, and if he did, it would IMHO suck horribly.
Um ... no offence, or anything.
Immortality isn't a solution to all problems-- there's still dealing with people to consider.
The Killing Curse is
Not only that but Harry says that wanting them dead needs to be a terminal value in your utility function. Thats what I meant.
I assumed that he blocked Quirrelmort's curse due to their magical interference, not because the True Patronus is actually intended as a way of blocking Avada Kedavera
Whether or not the True Patronus can block anyone else's Killing Curse, the way it's described above sounds pretty antithetical to me.
Oh, I see. Because the True Patronus is a magically embodied preference for life over death ... interesting.
Also, the Patronus automatically moved to block the killing curse based on Harry's preference, without his will or knowledge of the magical interference.
I reckon that was Dumbledore's and Lily's (and maybe James') plan.
What's the evidence that Voldemort actually cast a killing curse at Harry? That he tried to kill him in any way?
It's possible to determine the last spell cast by a wand.
In MoR, aren't we told that Bellatrix took the wand from the scene of the crime?
Actually, not true that I can see.
If what she said was true, we only know that she had the wand and hid it in a graveyard. We don't know when or how she got it. If Dumbledore did find Harry, he should have found the wand as well, if it was there. Similarly, if Bellatrix had found the wand at Godric's Hollow, she should have found Harry too, and killed him.
If they're not lying, I conclude that Voldemort gave her his wand before he went to Godric's Hollow. If he ever did go to Godric's Hollow.
An aside on Bella - she is described in much the same terms as Hermione.
As long as you're working inconsistencies, the Pettigrew/Black encounter is obviously wacky too.
EDIT: Add another quote to the collection
Didn't remember this one at all, but it looks significant. The "him" referred to is Quirrell. Harry had seen him at the bar on his first visit to the Leaky Cauldron, and had asked McGonagall about him. "Sense of loss" is from James and Lily getting killed, or some positive connection to Quirrell?
I think this is unwarranted. We have no reason to doubt Bellatrix's version, so on the fatal night she: arrived at location A, following direct orders from Voldemort, and waited for him to arrive; Voldemort failed to arrive within the expected period; she went looking for him, but could not find him; at some later period, she hid his wand in a graveyard.
This is consistent with Voldemort ordering her somewhere to wait for him to do something to the the Potters; Voldemort failing and dying; Bellatrix going to the Potters' house; not finding him, finding his wand; and then hiding the wand.
Not finding Voldemort is far more important than killing a random baby who had no possible connection to anything that night - as everyone knows, the Killing Curse cannot be blocked, and certainly not cast by a baby, so something else must have happened to Voldemort.
By your theory, she knows enough to look for him at the Potter's house. She sees known enemies, Lily and James, dead. She can't find Voldemort. Instead, she finds his wand abandoned near to the crib of the Potter child. She possibly saw what looked like a burn out husk of a body near the wand.
Upon meeting a completely defenseless child of prominent known enemies, I think her impulse would be to kill him, particularly since the missed return and abandoned wand would seem to indicate that something went wrong for Voldemort in this attack. It's not like it would take a long time to break a baby's neck, or slit it's throat, which would be her natural inclination anyway.
She expected to meet her at location A, not at the Potter's residence. Where did she need to rush off to that she wouldn't have taken a moment to kill Harry?
The Potter child is not some "random baby" - he is the son of the couple who effectively started the opposition against Voldemort, and that's even if she knew nothing about the prophecy and potential schemes by Dumbledore and Voldemort based on the prophecy.
Also, I wonder where Dumbledore is during all this. By whatever theory, I'd expect him to monitor or check on the situation in some way.
No, she finds what might be her lord's body - unthinkable thought, how could he possibly die? - near the dead body of their enemy Lily Potter. There does happen to be a live baby somewhere, but that's not important.
Anywhere she might find her lord. She is insane and brain-damaged into unyielding loyalty and fanatical devotion to her lord. Anything to do with him takes priority over casual mayhem and slaughter.
Yeah, that's always been a question in canon too. Perhaps the alarms went off but it just took him long enough to get there. From the description of the actions, it could all go down in under a minute: bust down the door, curse James Potter, fly upstairs, chat with Lily for 15 seconds, and curse her and then the baby.
Again, what she would find at the house is entirely conjecture. The only thing we know is what the house looked like after Albus showed it to others. So I don't think she necessarily saw the burnt out husk.
But let's assume that at least Harry is there. The child of two of the greatest enemies of her Lord, who now look like they might have participated in his death, lies in her grasp. For some reason, you think this would be an "unimportant", "random baby" to Bellatrix. Would Lucius or Draco in similar circumstances find such a baby unimportant to them? I think you're completely disregarding the human impulse to revenge, which seems to much much more pronounced in Death Eaters.
Again, I don't think Bellatrix's attitude toward Harry would be casual at that point. Her Lord may be dead. Her desire to strike out at anything would be enormous at this point. But she doesn't just have anything, she has a very particular and special something to strike at.
Taking vengeance against his enemies has everything to do with him. Imagine her regret if she had had The Boy Who Lived in her grasp, and did nothing.
On Dumbledore and a potential alarm - I'm fine with the idea that the encounter was too short for Dumbledore to make it there in time.
The window for Bellatrix to show up is after Voldemort is late enough for her to leave where she was told to wait, and before Dumbledore arrives. That appears to me to be an empty set if he has any kind of monitoring going on. EY gives little specifics about the setup of Godric's Hollow. In canon, it's a village with a decent population. I don't remember all the secret keeper mumbo jumbo, but wouldn't you expect a village of wizards to quickly notice a battle that leaves a home in "ruins"? That Dumbledore arrives first indicates that he must have had some kind of monitoring going on.
One amazing factoid from a Harry Potter Wiki:
That is too funny. Much like how Death Eater seems more appropriate for Mr. Glowy Person than Malfoy.
I thought so too.
Further, the assumption is that he just cast Avada Kedavra against Lily and James. So that would have been the last spell if he cast no spells at Harry and just left. Or tried to throttle him with a pillow.
How do we know he cast any more spells? How do we know he cast any spells at Harry?
The Dumbeldore plan, to trick him into accepting a bargain by ritual magic and then violating that magic seems like something that would have been obvious to Voldemort.
I never thought it made sense for Voldemort to try to kill Harry, or at least try to kill him himself. But if he did try, maybe Dumbledore (with the Potters' consent) booby trapped Harry in some other way? Maybe that's where the magical resonance between them comes from.
If we're assuming a clever Voldemort, there's any number of ways that 'check his wand's last recorded spell' could fail to be conclusive evidence. He could've used someone else's wand (a backup wand is a good idea for a ton of reasons). He could've brought someone else to do the actual deed (how else did Bellatrix get to the wand before anyone else showed up like Dumbledore or Aurors?). He could've used any of a billion Muggle methods, as you point out (plausible since we know about Pioneer and Dumbledore regards clever use of Muggle tech as pointing to Voldemort). He could've used an innocuous spell in a fatal way (a dark lord in hiding could be expected to use Apparating all the time, and Apparating seems like it could be quite fatal given 'splinching'). He could simply have broken the detection spell and set up a false audit trail, as it were. And so on and so forth.
The official story seems completely inferred.
Lily and James are dead. Harry has a scar. There is a burnt husk of something nearby.
In fact, not even so much. What the world sees are Dumbledore producing the dead bodies of Lily and James, a scarred Harry, and a burnt husk of something.
One point against a Dumbledore conspiracy theory - how would he know that Voldemort wouldn't show up a week later and blow his story?
Are you saying that they tried and failed to do this? Or just that it was no accident?
Well ... he does have the scar. And something happened. I mean, its conceivable that he just took the opportunity to fake his death, but it seems simpler to suppose that he was actually killed, survived via horcrux, and possessed Quirrel. And it happened roughly the same in canon, where he defenitely cast the curse.
Yeah, meeting the clear terms of ritual magic seems like quite a freakish coincidence unless that had been their plan. So I think they tried this, or at least tried to give the appearance to Voldemort of doing this, so that he would feel himself safe from other traps.
As for the scar, anyone involved could have given Harry the scar, in a myriad of ways.
Ha! Maybe Dumbledore gave it to Harry after finding him alive in his crib.
Evidence - unidentifiable burnt out husk of a body. Scar on Harry. Voldemort at the scene of the crime. Voldemort presumed to want Harry dead. That's pretty weak tea.
The best bit of evidence I can see is the one no one talks about - the feeling of Doom and magic resonance between Harry and Quirrell. It seems credible to me that Voldemort might not have anticipated that, and it was Dumbledore so booby trapped Harry with that resonance.
First, is the True Patronus really that overpowered? We know that it can be used to destroy Dementors, but that is a very specific limited purpose and will have no value after The Great Dementor Hunt.
Do we know where Dementors come from? Could it be possible that the Killing Curse creates them?
I don't think that the True Patronus is going to be an easy way to bring the end of death. It would not do it on its own and would probably be much harder than figuring out how to kill dementors.
It can be used to block the Killing Curse, but Quirrelmort probably is smart enough (and has been around Harry long enough) to make use of some transfigured depleted uranium slugs and a Mass Acceleration Charm. Or fire. Or lightning. Or anything, really. It merely neutralizes another seeming game-breaker. (While Mad-Eye Moody's description makes it sound very powerful, but I don't know if anybody has ever actually used it through all barriers or over intercontinental ranges, and the ability to dodge it indicates that it cannot be THAT good of a homing spell.
Here is an alternative interpretation of the prophecy:
THe one: Harry With the power: The True Patronus To vanquish the dark lord: The Dark Lord is not Voldemort, but rather a personification of death (maybe even a literal personification of death such as the grim reaper as a King Of Dementors. approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him. :Heroism is often called 'death defying'. Alternatively, it could be a wierd interpretation with Harry being born from his biological parents to his adoptive parents. His adoptive father is a biochemist (IIRC) who works in a field that is probably connected to medicine. Perhaps he has made three significant medical discoveries? Although I am not sure about the whole thing with being marked as his equal or whatever.
No, I was really, really unclear. The way I see it: Mudane Patronus: A powerful but non-general preference for life rather than death embodied in a desire to protect. True Patronus: A fully general preference for life over death Avada Kedavra: A non-general preference that a specific person die Hypothetical Apocalypse Spell: A fully general preference for death over life. It's unlikely that anybody would ever cast this. Possibly connected to the ritual that will summon death itself? Ritual to summon death itself: True Patronus may be the counterspell to dismiss death. Horcrux: Requires a selfish preference for your life to exceed your acceptance of the sacrificial victim's preference. Philosopher's Stone: Possibly requires very difficult magic and an explicit,non-general but non-selfish preference for life over death.
I think that using the True Patronus charm to end death might (some or all): A) not end death by itself, but open the door to a magical, Muggle, or combination immortality method B) lead to the discovery of a higher-level method of operating the Atlantis system, letting one use magic to directly fulfill any preference C) Re-activate a latent immortality function in the Atlantis system. It won't be easy, or a plot-breaker.
Yeah, I thought I heard somebody say they are spontaneously generated in places of extreme rank immorality, death, or negative utility (in which case WWII probably generated many of them due both to city bombings and the Holocaust, for example).
Does anybody know what happens to Dementors re: Muggles? They cannot use the Patronus. Do wizards collect them all at Azkaban, or what?
In cannon, according to word of God, muggles cannot see dementors, but dementors can induce depression in muggles, and in extreme cases put them in a coma.
Edit, this comment was redundant.
It seems to me that you need to do more than just prefer immortality for all. Harry's happy thought is not just that he wants people to stop dying, but that he has a great deal of hope--confidence, even--that it will happen, one day.
Re where Dementors come from, I assumed the "ritual to summon death"(rope that has hanged/sword that has slain) is where they come from.
First, the question remains: Why would anybody cast the apocalypse spell (Dumbledore mentioned omnicidal maniac Dark Lords, though).
Second, I still don't think the True Patronus is all that powerful. It cannot be used offensively against anything other than dementors and it does not defend against any magical, technological, natural, or creative-use-of-magical (such as the Mass Accelerating Charm) other than the killing curse, including ones that are just as fatal and which are probably almost as hard to shield against. Moreover, in noncombat uses the True Patronus gives almost nothing that cannot be given by the mundane Patronus or other mundane magical or mundane technological means. (the only thing I have thought of is an unforgable signal of anti-deathism to people able to understand the philosophy of the Patronus or the True Patronus.
Considering the protagonist got it simply for being the protagonist, it turns dementors from unstoppable soul-eating monsters to a trivial threat (they can't even see you), and it may be able to stop the (unstoppable) killing curse ... it's pretty damn powerful. Not "winning-every-conflict" powerful, tipping-over-the board powerful.
THe one: Harry With the power: The True Patronus To vanquish the dark lord: The Dark Lord is not Voldemort, but rather a personification of death (maybe even a literal personification of death such as the grim reaper as a King Of Dementors. approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him. :Heroism is often called 'death defying'. Alternatively, it could be a wierd interpretation with Harry being born from his biological parents to his adoptive parents. His adoptive father is a biochemist (IIRC) who works in a field that is probably connected to medicine. Perhaps he has made three significant medical discoveries? Although I am not sure about the whole thing with being marked as his equal or whatever.
I have to admit, I find these alternaive interpretations ... unlikely.
I'm guessing that "Apocalypse Spell" is where dementors come from.