You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

CronoDAS comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82 - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: FAWS 04 April 2012 02:53AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (790)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: CronoDAS 04 April 2012 06:56:17AM 2 points [-]

A lethal dose of botulinum toxin is indeed tiny; using it as an Ultimate Weapon, though, requires a delivery system.

Comment author: JenniferRM 04 April 2012 04:34:08PM 2 points [-]

Which is also easy with magic.

Comment author: CronoDAS 04 April 2012 08:37:53PM *  1 point [-]

Probably; magic makes everything easier, but you still have to find a way to get the people you want to eat it, inhale it, or get it into their bloodstream, and the Harry Potter world isn't defined well enough to give an obvious way to distribute it in such a way that, say, wearing a gas mask and only eating thoroughly cooked food wouldn't defeat.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 April 2012 01:50:21AM *  0 points [-]

and the Harry Potter world isn't defined well enough to give an obvious way to distribute it in such a way that, say, wearing a gas mask and only eating thoroughly cooked food wouldn't defeat.

Gas mask? That doesn't defeat the most obvious distribution mechanism: transfiguration into oxygen or nitrogen. But of course this would require an actual source of botox. If trying to use transfiguration as an ultimate weapon purely in the sense of 'creating stuff for free' (rather than untransfiguring stuff inside folks) it would be far simpler to transfigure something into radioactive isotopes of common airborne gasses. Oxygen-15 seems like it has a half-life in the right ballpark.

Comment author: Alsadius 05 April 2012 05:13:09AM 0 points [-]

Or just transmute cyanide into oxygen. Or their face into cyanide.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 April 2012 09:53:12AM 5 points [-]

Or just transmute cyanide into oxygen.

I think we have well and truly established that the untransmute-from-gas-hack constitutes a superweapon - whether you use botox, cyanide or rocks. The context, however, was exploring the possibility of using tranmutation itself (without untransmutation) to create powerful weapons (such as botox). Whether the poison you consider is botox or cyanide you can either use transmutation to create it or transmutation to deliver it past the gas masks but not both. In that context the task is to create a lethal substance that can be devilvered easily.

Or their face into cyanide.

If only time travel wasn't limited to 6 hours. Then the natural improvement would have been "Or their mom's face into cyanide". As it happens, though, we are left with considering "transmute their face into cyanide" as a line of sight attack spell. But as Quirrell's explained in his first battle magic class the best spell for that role is pretty much always avada kedavra.

Comment author: Alsadius 05 April 2012 05:18:10PM 1 point [-]

Except that can be dodged. How do you dodge transmutation? It's been established that it has been used in combat by an expert duelist(albeit incredibly dangerously), so I'd wager that it's not without use.

Comment author: pedanterrific 05 April 2012 05:47:16PM 6 points [-]

How do you dodge transfiguration?

You make sure your opponent doesn't touch you with his wand.

Comment author: Alsadius 05 April 2012 06:59:21PM 1 point [-]

Huh, somehow I missed that restriction.

Comment author: pedanterrific 05 April 2012 07:14:16PM 1 point [-]

wedrifid did it first.

Comment author: cultureulterior 06 April 2012 12:07:45PM 1 point [-]

You transfigure (a one atom line in the air to the person and his face) to cyanide.

Comment author: pedanterrific 06 April 2012 05:24:20PM 3 points [-]

Harry can do partial transfiguration; he can't transfigure gases.