paper-machine comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: Gondolinian 28 February 2015 08:23PM

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Comment author: dxu 28 February 2015 09:08:37PM *  17 points [-]

Is Voldemort familiar with logical syllogisms? If not, it should be possible for Harry to trick him by saying something that seems to imply something else, without actually confirming the second thing as true, a la Chapter 49:

Harry kept his face steady. "I was looking up some facts about the Patronus Charm earlier," he said. "According to The Patronus Charm: Wizards Who Could and Couldn't, it turns out that Godric couldn't and Salazar could. I was surprised, so I looked up the reference, in Four Lives of Power. And then I discovered that Salazar Slytherin could supposedly talk to snakes." (Temporal sequence wasn't the same as causation, it wasn't Harry's fault if Professor Quirrell missed that.) "Further research turned up an old story about a mother goddess type who could talk to flying squirrels. I was a bit worried about the prospect of eating something that could talk." (emphasis mine)

One possible example proposed in a review on fanfiction.net (and the one that set me on this train of thought in the first place) is, "If you kill me, the world will end." Since the world will end no matter what, the consequent is guaranteed true, making the content of the antecedent irrelevant due to contrapositive shenanigans... but Voldemort doesn't know that, and it sounds like the end of the world is dependent on Harry's death.

Comment author: Gondolinian 01 March 2015 12:20:27AM *  8 points [-]

"All your servantss will die if they fire at me. They will die if you do not command them to sstand down NOW."

Comment author: [deleted] 01 March 2015 12:29:38AM 8 points [-]

I really like "Parseltongue 'if' is material implication", but if this were true I'd expect Voldy to know about it and request clarification, e.g.,

"Explain exactly how they will die, or I will shoot you in five seconds."

Comment author: Gondolinian 01 March 2015 12:39:11AM *  5 points [-]

"Explain exactly how they will die, or I will shoot you in five seconds."

"The world will end if I tell you!"

(admittedly non-optimal)

Comment author: dxu 01 March 2015 06:59:36AM *  3 points [-]

I'd expect Voldy to know about it and request clarification

Not necessarily. Parseltongue, if I understand it correctly, forces the speaker to tell the truth as he/she understands it (while bypassing Occlumency). If Harry knows about material implication (which he almost certainly does), he can utilize it in such a manner, but it's unlikely that Voldemort has ever encountered something similar. This isn't your standard clever wordplay that anyone smart can think of, after all--it's formal logic, which is decidedly Muggle.

Comment author: redlizard 03 March 2015 12:09:41AM 1 point [-]

So it's nonstandard clever wordplay. Voldemort will still anticipate a nontrivial probability of Harry managing undetected clever wordplay. Which means it only has a real chance of working when threatening something that Voldemort can't test immediately.

Comment author: dxu 03 March 2015 12:17:50AM 0 points [-]

Correct. I address this in another comment.