The logical implication being that wizards are not overly concerned about old age, because very few of them ever die from it. Something else - A dark lord, screwing up a spell, the magical wildlife, a succession dispute.. will get you first... This logic could well deter a lot of people from attempting alchemy ; Succeeding in making a stone without being as good a survivor as Flamel carries a significant risk of dying now to violence instead of in 90 years to natural causes.
For that matter, screwing up an attempt to make the Philosopher's Stone might very well be one way to invite a premature death. Alchemy isn't necessarily safe.
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 87. The previous thread has 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, 17.
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: