gattsuru comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 114 + chapter 115 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Gondolinian 03 March 2015 06:02PM

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Comment author: MarkusRamikin 03 March 2015 06:29:57PM *  10 points [-]

Chapter 90:

even a simple Obliviation will stretch the edge of your current stamina. It is a dangerous art, illegal to use without Ministry authorization, and I would caution you not to use it under circumstances where it would be inconvenient to accidentally erase ten years of someone's life. I wish I could promise you that I would obtain one of those highly guarded tomes from the Department of Mysteries, and pass it to you beneath a disguised cover. But what I must actually tell you is that you will find the standard introductory text in the north-northwest stacks of the main Hogwarts library, filed under M.

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.

Comment author: gattsuru 03 March 2015 07:09:35PM *  9 points [-]

So there is no defense against Obliviation that Voldemort could have prepared for himself?

With perfect sight toward the future, perhaps he could have. It's far from convincing that it would have actually helped, without blocking thirty other vulnerabilities.

Obliviation's particularly interesting because it requires no upkeep, but it's far from the only thing that would bypass Horcruxes. Voldemort's just as vulnerable to being repeatedly stunned, to petrification (hence the murder of the basilisk), to transfiguration, to the Imperius, to pretty much any mind-affecting charm. The biggest defense is, well, the same as anyone else's defense to the Killing Curse -- don't be there. Creating a defense specifically against large-scale Obliviation isn't very valuable if the attacker has countless further options to permanently disable anyone so defenseless as to be vulnerable to an Obliviate.