Gabriel comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 114 + chapter 115 - Less Wrong
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Comments (423)
When did Harry learn Obliviate?
Chapter 90:
So there is no defense against Obliviation that Voldemort could have prepared for himself?
I confess I expected paranoid-Moody thinking from Harry, not Far-mode Good thinking. The stakes are so high that anything other than ruthless pragmatism feels insane to me.
One defense against obliviation would be to keep creating old-school horcruxes at regular intervals. As I understand they contain snapshots of current mind-state so should be unaffected by the main copy getting obliviated later. He might not be quite gone yet.
Like those 30 year old infectious samples of smallpox that keep turning up in NIH/university/etc freezers.
Wait, they do? Should I be worried?
They do show up. It's a risk, but so far I'd say it isn't something to be very worried about.
Modern civilization doesn't seem to be too bad at dealing with infectious diseases.
OK, I'll trust the institutional descendants of whoever lost track of the virus samples to contain and destroy the virus samples. They'll probably be paying closer attention now. As long as none are mislabelled and thrown into the general trash.
Actually, I meant that even if people get infected (not very likely), I'm willing to be that modern civilization could contain and end the problem before a significant number of people got infected.
That's probably true too, but I'd hate to think what would happen if it it got loose in place with a less capable medical system, like Guinea.