bramflakes comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 117 - Less Wrong

2 Post author: Gondolinian 08 March 2015 07:00PM

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Comment author: bramflakes 09 March 2015 08:45:46AM *  7 points [-]

If Harry needed his wand to demonstrate something (which he very plausibly might have), it would have made no sense to take it away.

So have him drop it and a Death Eater confiscate it, and if he says he needs it to demonstrate something, Voldemort can ask "do you plan to usse it to attack me, sservantss, or to esscape?" before returning it to him. Then as soon as he's done, confiscate it again. That's an extra 10 seconds; which is a small price to pay to hedge against a Black Swan.

Voldemort doesn't know about Partial Transfiguration, but he does know Harry has powers he knows not, which is what this entire charade was about in the first place! I would've done it it just in case.

Comment author: dxu 09 March 2015 07:31:14PM *  2 points [-]

There's an easy way out of that one: Harry should precommit to not begin thinking of any possible plans of escape using his wand until after getting it back.

Comment author: TobyBartels 10 March 2015 06:13:39AM 0 points [-]

From LV's perpsective, that would still be an improvement. It seriously curtails Harry's thinking time.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 March 2015 12:11:42PM -1 points [-]

Because you hadn't decided shortly before that Harry was an idiot.

Comment author: Velorien 09 March 2015 12:37:41PM 5 points [-]

You can't have it both ways. Either Harry is dangerous enough to justify the full suite of precautions, or he's an idiot, in which case what you need isn't "the full suite of precautions minus disarming".