wobster109 comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89 - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Vaniver 30 June 2013 01:22AM

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Comment author: wobster109 17 July 2013 06:55:57PM -1 points [-]

I'm actually very very bothered by "0.3% of the speed of light". This is 900,000 meters/second. A passenger airplane flies at slower than 300 meters/second. Harry is flying 3000 times faster than an airplane?

Let's say a broom accelerates a thousand times faster than a car. A car can go to 60 mph in 7-8 seconds. Let's say 5 seconds. That's an acceleration of about 5 meters/second squared. Let's say Harry accelerates 5000 meters/second squared (an impossibly large acceleration). It would take him 3 minutes to get to that speed. All the while experiencing 500 G force, that is 500 times the force of gravity. The record G force survived by a human is 46.2.

Seriously. This is 9000 football fields in ONE SECOND. He can't possibly be making those turns and bumping the Weasleys like a bludger. He'd be killing them all (in a fraction of a second). Throw in some more zeroes please! 50 meters/second (about 100 mph) is the limit of what I find believable.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 July 2013 07:10:32PM 4 points [-]

It was (dark) humor. Hyperbole. Of course he's not going at 0.003c!

Comment author: [deleted] 17 July 2013 07:21:17PM 7 points [-]

Awww, I would have said it was (light) humor.

Comment author: wobster109 18 July 2013 09:40:58PM 1 point [-]

Aha, ok. Thanks for responding :)