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.

Alicorn comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 16, chapter 85 - Less Wrong Discussion

9 Post author: FAWS 18 April 2012 02:30AM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (1106)

Comments (1106)

Sort By: Best

Show:

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

Comment author: Alicorn 19 April 2012 05:36:57PM * 1 point [-]

why assume a human death is required?

I would be astonished if Eliezer wrote a story in which it were implied that murdering, say, a centaur, was on an intrinsically more justifiable moral ground than murdering a human (ceteris paribus). But you probably meant a nonsapient animal.

Comment author: TrE comment score below threshold [+] (9 children)

Comment author: gjm 19 April 2012 08:15:50PM 18 points [-]

The Killing Curse is unblockable, unstoppable, and works every single time on anything with a brain.

Professor Quirinus Quirrell, HPMOR chapter 16. Unless he's wrong or lying, nonsapient animals are killed by it just fine. (In canon, doesn't the Fake Defence Professor Du Jour use it on a spider in, er, book 3 or thereabouts?)

Which reminds me of something. At (IIRC) that point in canon, the teacher who's introducing the Killing Curse says something like "It kills absolutely anything, every time. Only one person has ever survived one, and he's right here in this classroom". Here in HPMOR we have Quirrell introducing the Killing Curse in a classroom that's got Harry Potter in it, and everyone knows the story just as much as in canon, and he conspicuously doesn't make any such remark.

Maybe it's just coincidence. But (assuming, as is customary, that Q=V) it looks to me like another bit of evidence that in HPMOR what happened at Godric's Hollow was not that V. attempted to AK Harry and failed.

Comment author: kilobug 20 April 2012 11:59:14AM * 5 points [-]

The Killing Curse is unblockable, unstoppable, and works every single time on anything with a brain.

Not related to the current discussion, but I was always very unsettled by that kind of affirmation.

From both canon and MoR, the Killing Curse looks like missile spell. A bolt of green light flows from the wand to the target, and kills it. But the bolt can't get around material objects, it doesn't go through them, and it doesn't switch directions to avoid them like a seeker missile could do.

It can't be blocked by raw magic (Protego and similar) but what prevents Actio, Wingdarium Leviosa or Free Transfiguration to be used to create a physical barrier to block the spell ?

And going even further, couldn't armor be made to block the spell ? It kills through clothes, but can very thick clothes prevent the effect ? If you make an armor with two layers, physically separated, the outer layer kept from touching the inner layer through electromagnetic forces or magic, would the outer layer count as an obstacle ?

Comment author: Xachariah 20 April 2012 09:01:18PM * 9 points [-]

The grim version of an ongoing joke in some potter circles is that you could strap a bunch of puppies to your body and use them as living armor.

My favorite mental image is covering yourself in bees. What can I say? I'm a fan of Eddie Izzard being able to beat the Dark Lord.

Comment author: gjm 20 April 2012 12:29:22PM 5 points [-]

Yeah, it's yet another thing JKR didn't think out very well. It's said to be a super-extra-deadly unblockable spell, but in practice there's nothing in what actually happens to show that it's any more dangerous than any number of other spells.

Comment author: Multiheaded 02 May 2012 03:16:58PM 2 points [-]

What she probably meant is that it's exceptionally good at penetrating innate resistance, magical barriers, that sort of thing. So, the prime spell for killing serious targets. Something that min-maxing DnD players would find useful in a duel.

Comment author: glumph 20 April 2012 06:26:35PM 3 points [-]

It can't be blocked by raw magic (Protego and similar) but what prevents Actio, Wingdarium Leviosa or Free Transfiguration to be used to create a physical barrier to block the spell?

Nothing. Indeed, Dumbledore blocks the killing curse in canon (Order of the Phoenix) by animating a statue to jump in front of it.

So if AK is in any way unblockable, it is unblockable only by magical means.

Comment author: TrE 19 April 2012 08:23:27PM 0 points [-]

Oh, correct. I didn't do my homework here. This implies that nonsapient animals do have a soul, which I didn't expect in the MoR-verse.

Quirrellmort not saying that Harry survived the killing curse might indeed be evidence for V. not failing to kill Harry, but intuitively, it seems like a very tiny bit of evidence.

Comment author: bogdanb 20 April 2012 06:15:26AM * 14 points [-]

This implies that nonsapient animals do have a soul, which I didn't expect in the MoR-verse.

Or simply that the “separate the soul from the body” is just a mumbo-jumbo explanation from people that believe in souls.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2012 07:48:49AM 1 point [-]

Well, we know that either harry has an actual means of blocking it, OR, that Quirrel and Harry's magical dissonance can disrupt the killing curse.

Alicorn comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 16, chapter 85 - Less Wrong Discussion

Article Navigation

Comments (1106)

Nearest Meetups

Virtual Study Room

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Recent Open Threads

Recent Rationality Diaries

Recent Wiki Edits

Top Contributors, 30 Days

Recent Karma Awards

Comments (1106)

Top Contributors, 30 Days

You'll need to login or register to do that

(Don't worry, it only takes a few seconds)

Create

Login