DanArmak comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 21, chapters 91 & 92 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (366)
AI-1: And so we have decided to grant the humans great powers
AI-2: but when we bestow our awesome power upon the puny humans they may become arrogant and forget that they are small and ridiculous
AI-1: we've thought of that, and have a solution...
Wingardium Leviosa!
Except that said humans won't develop the language where those not-words sound kind-of-sensible for a few more thousand years. And even then, most of the people in the world wouldn't get the joke. (Do French wizards cast French spells? What about the Chinese?)
Probably. Quirrell teaches at least one spell which is clearly neither of English nor Latin origin.
Excellent point, I'd forgotten about that. Ma-ha-su.
Since Eliezer does nothing accidentally, this is very strong evidence that wizards invent spells with words related to the language they speak, and that spells then have a high turnover rate that doesn't let them survive longer than their languages.