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grautry comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 18, chapter 87 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Re: Flamel and his open-secret-recipe for the Philosopher's Stone.
Here's a quote from chapter 61:
And yet, the recipe is openly available for everyone to see. If anyone could reproduce the stone from the recipe, it would be the very intelligent, rational(and very interested in immortality) Voldemort.
So, how do we reconcile these two facts?
One option is, of course, the published, known recipe is a fake. The stone is real but Flamel lied to everyone about the recipe. That's certainly a plausible - if boring - explanation of the facts. The other plausible explanation is as Harry says - maybe the stone is a fake. Maybe Flamel is immortal because of Horcruxes and he invented the stone as a way to keep people off the trail of his phylacteries. Maybe Flamel isn't immortal at all, maybe he pulls of a Batman Begins Ra's Al Ghul style of immortality. Any of a dozen options is possible.
However, if we take things at face value, I think we can end up with a more interesting conclusion - I think this might be our first piece of evidence(it's not very good evidence, but evidence nonetheless) that the Interdict of Merlin is an actual, real magical effect, rather than just a cultural thing or a legend. The reason people can't reproduce the stone is because the Interdict obscures some part of the recipe.
I guess this is testable - do we know if Flamel had any apprentices to whom he tried to personally explain how to make the Stone?
Why would we doubt it? It's a fact that high level spells cannot be passed down in writing. Surely many wizards tried to, if only to discover which spells are "high level". Presumably there's a sharp distinction between spells that can be written down and those that cannot. If wizards occasionally invented new ways to write down spells previously thought to be "high level", then they wouldn't assume that any other high-level spells couldn't also be written down by unknown techniques.
The simplest explanation for wizards believing in the Interdict is that it matches their personal experience. The Interdict behaves like a law of nature; every powerful wizard would rediscover it, even without existing tradition.
I don't think Flamel wants to explain to anyone how to make it. Instead he hoards it to himself.
My primary reason for thinking this is due to narrative causality. Harry wants immortality for everyone. If Flamel was like Harry, he would not be in hiding, instead he would be a famous immortal wizard who spent centuries trying to teach the best wizards of each generation (like Dumbledore) to duplicate his feat - or making more Stones for others. The actual Flamel seems set up to be a deathist and eventual foe of Harry's.
The other possible explanation is that making the Stone requires harming others so much that it becomes immoral to make it. This is true of a certain other famous way of making the Philosopher's Stone, and it also matches the Fundamental Law of Potion-Making.
I don't think making the Stone requires an evil act, or Dumbledore wouldn't be an ally of Flamel, and he wouldn't harbour the Stone in Hogwarts. But it may require some exceptionally rare components, circumstances (like some conjunction of planets that happens only every few centuries) or skills making mass production of it impossible (at least until someone understands the deep laws of magic).
Possibly making the stone requires A POWER THAT THE DARK LORD KNOWS NOT.
The Stone could be somehow Patronus-based?
Or he may not know how it's made. He says that Flamel assures him that Voldemort couldn't possibly make the stone on his own, so clearly Dumbledore doesn't consider himself fit to judge that.
if anything, this makes it more likely that the creation of the stone requires something Voldemort lacks - such as innocence, youth, or, oh heck, virginity.
Tentative: Maybe it takes liking living things-- Voldemort doesn't seem to have any sort of generalized liking for anything but himself and his snake.
Which is... what?
Is a spoiler for a certain other work of fiction, but basically involves killing lots of people. It's even less efficient than a Horcrux, which in principle can make one immortal person out of two mortals, because it requires killing ever-increasing amounts of people to maintain an immortal life. I think.
For those who want to know, the work in question is Shyyzrgny Nypurzvfg.
I was wondering about Illuminatus! but it didn't seem to be an exact match.
I have to say, I personally have not gotten the impression that Flamel was being set up as an opponent to Harry - and this "open secret" notion only makes this seem more likely (it's not that he wants to be the only immortal, but that he's the only one capable of achieving immortality, was my thinking.)
That's a good point about the Fundamental Law of Potion-Making, although since Hermione was talking about how all Alchemy needs precise magic circles I would guess it's a distinct branch of magic to Potions.
That would be more believable if he wasn't hiding himself and his Stone, and had spent a few centuries trying and failing to teach others to make Stones. Or if he had used the Stone to make as many more others immortal as possible, unless himself and his wife are the limit of its power. Or if he himself had made more Stones to give away.
You mean the stone that can be used to bring back Voldemort?
Well, he did make the recipe freely available.
Well, it seems like a smart design choice to include one companion in the allowance of Elixer - after all, the most common source of angst over immortality is watching those you love wither away, right?
Perhaps he wants a cabal of limited size, or doesn't trust people to be among the Immortal Few outside of his wife.
He could be the hero. I mean, if the stone was just handed to me, and I wanted to make everybody immortal I would need a distribution network, need a way to deal with the inevitable hordes of deathists, need a way to deal with natural resource consumption (which I don't think the stone reduces) such as developing interstellar colonization, need a way to get people to slow down reproducing....
Deal with economic issues, and the people who fail to update on their beliefs until the Grim Reaper updates for them....
So if the stone was just handed to me, I would form a cabal of about a hundred immortals and start rapidly solving problems (using unlimited budget) until I have it ready for mass distribution.
OHHH NEW IDEA!
Flamel will end up taking in Harry and they will bring about the end of death.
It's possible, I suppose. I don't think Flamel is intended as the villain, though. If he's just evilly suppressing immortality for the masses, then Harry will kill him and take his stuff. Seems like the Stone being an interesting aside and maybe minor McGuffin, along the level of it's importance in Canon, rather than rendering the main plot completely irrelevant.
So before there was a Voldemort he was tutoring others in making more Stones, then?
We don't know that. Maybe the recipe became known despite his wishes. Maybe someone else invented it and he just used it. Maybe it's a misleading or incomplete recipe he published, and that's why everyone has failed to execute it.
Including two companions would be twice as smart. Including a hundred companions would be a hundred times as smart. Restrictions on the number of companions must come from some external limit on the Stone's power, not from the limit of his desire. I don't believe anyone would say to themselves, I'm designing an elixir of immortality, let's make it include one companion, but not two, I only have one wife.
Well, that's not what I said in the part you quoted, but as a matter of fact my suggestion was that he tried and failed to teach others the secret. Because the conditions for immortality are narrow and rooted in virtue ethics and the like. That's my theory, anyway.
All plausible suggestions. However, I have't gotten the impression that Flamel was being set up as a villain. This is all speculation, and the fact that there are other possibilities does not mean my suggestion is somehow flawed.
I was thinking of Atlantian wizards or whoever designing this thing so it's worth having, but doesn't actually have a massive impact on the world. Obviously Flamel would have to be either evil or crazy or, most likely, both to impose such a limit himself.
It was a rhetorical question. My point was that I believe Flamel has not dedicated his life to either teaching people to make Stones, or creating more Stones himself for others to use, or even using his one Stone on others. And that is because he doesn't value the immortality of others, which is probably because he is a hypocrite deathist. And that will bring him into conflict with Harry when Harry learns of it.
It's also possible that Flamel will have a background story of trying and failing to teach others to make Stones. But if he had Harry's values, he would have dedicated all his life over several centuries, all his (putative) unlimited wealth and all the friends he could make with the promise of more Stones, to overcoming this failure. I predict that if there was such a failure, he has not Tried Really Hard to overcome it - he did not behave as though literally the lives of everyone in the world depended on it.
Not a deliberate villain, but almost inevitably someone who can be blamed for not making lots of people immortal.
Incidentally, if it really grants unlimited wealth, that is also sufficient to have a massive impact on the world. Think what someone could achieve, just by influencing others, if he had the power to produce and withhold arbitrary amounts of money, and lived for several centuries and so could enact very long term plans.
The P.S. doesn't grant unlimited wealth, it grants unlimited gold and/or silver. A large part of the value of Gold is related to it's scarcity, so teaching others how to make stones would affect Flamel's personal wealth - oh, and probably destroy society too. And making everyone immortal includes the Voldemorts, the Grinwalds, and Baba Yagas of the world. and it's not like he personally is killing those people...
See how easy it is to rationalize letting everyone die? And I came up with those in just a few minutes - imagine having six centuries to make excuses.
People already have well-known, cached thoughts excusing why rich people who don't share their wealth are not evil, and why death is really good and shouldn't be avoided. One doesn't need to think about it for centuries, just ask Dumbledore.
I am well aware that's what you believe, and it's certainly not trivially false. I was offering an alternative hypothesis.
But it's entirely possible that he really did try to save everyone, but his personal source of immortality was insufficient for the job. Hell, in canon at least he was still making original discoveries with Dumbledore, so he could well be devoting effort towards reverse-engineering the stone or developing a more useful version. But it's not all that terrible to give up on solving a particular problem, that may in fact be unsolvable, after you've spent centuries trying and may well have determined from theory that it cannot be done.
That's been the general assumption, but my point is that he may, in fact, have tried to save as many as possible (it's consistent with the recipe being freely available and with certain aspects of historical alchemy.)
That's unlimited amounts of gold. And he may, for all we know, be engaged in using his funds to improve the world (while trying to avoid detection by Dark wizards.) Or the lead-to-gold aspect could actually be a rumor, I suppose.
Certainly what you propose is possible. But I don't feel that it's probable. The goal of making many or all people immortal is of immense value. The effort devoted before giving up should be commensurate. The theoretical proof that it is impossible should be extraordinarily strong before people ought to stop trying to refute it.
Or making the stone has some mental prerequisite, like casting Avada Kedavra or the True Patronus. One, in this case, which Voldemort cannot meet.
Possibly like the Mirror of Erised in the original the prerequisite is not wanting immortality? That would explain why Voldemort can't make it, and why Flamel was so casual about death in Canon.
Epileptic trees (Given the reference to 'hoarded lore' maybe flamel's desire is for knowledge preservation not self peservation?)
I just took this at face value, that no one alive but Flamel is powerful enough to make the Philosopher's Stone.
This could be because the magic is going away, so no wizard of any generation much later than Flamel's can possibly make the Philosopher's Stone.
I like the Interdict of Merlin theory too, though.
So why did nobody before Flamel make one?
Do we know that nobody before Flamel made one, as opposed to him being the last surviving wizard able to make one?
Explicitly, no. But it's a source of immortality - why wouldn't they still be around?
Someone killed them? The stone doesn't protect against unnatural death, and I imagine they'd be targets for powerful wizards.
That was my thought exactly. Any Dark (or Light) Lord rising to power would want to knock off any ancient immortal wizards who still happened to be around first, as they'd be an obvious threat to their plans. Historically immortals probably got wiped at the start of each big Wizarding War.
But the immortal and powerful wizards are exactly those who ought to be hardest to bump off, as well as those who are least likely to care about you rising to power(as long as you're not dumb enough to piss them off personally).
Yeah - also, when you multiply out the yearly chance of a random mishap over centuries, it adds up. Or to be more precise, when you multiply out the yearly chance of not dying in a random mishap over centuries, the product may be pretty small. Especially in a world where possible "random mishaps" include "roasted by dragon," "spell gone horribly wrong," etc.
Maybe they've gotten bored with the wizarding world.
Possibly. But it's not the default assumption.
I'm pretty sure he's referenced as the sole maker in the original canon.
It's possible that Quirrell's ongoing issues with fine motor control have been with him for long enough to become known. He's not going to be able to make the Philosopher's Stone that way.
If that were all, he could just Imperius someone though.
If it is possible to Imperius someone into making magic items/performing rituals... Well, it makes the Imperius Curse just that much more brokenly overpowered. (Not that it isn't brokenly overpowered already.) Imagine Imperioing a random person into being the binder for the Unbreakable Vow you want to make with someone. It completely removes the nerf EY gave the Unbreakable Vow. (At least for people willing to throw around the Imperius curse like that.)
So you're replacing 'lose a portion of magic' with 'risk being sent to Azkaban'? It changes the cost of binding but it certainly doesn't remove it.
Well, as Quirrell pointed out, the restrictions of the Unbreakable Vow are easy to get around if you're creative. They're simply the reason that it's so little used as a function of regular society.
Exactly! But if you could Imperius someone into being your binder, that would remove that cost, and so the Unbreakable Vow would be used a lot more. Therefore, it must not be possible to do that. (Or maybe everyone is just too stupid to think of the possibility, which actually is consistent with the wizarding world we've seen...)
The Imperius curse is one of the Unforgivables. Using it to coerce a binder for the Unbreakable Vow is Not Allowed. The fact that being convicted of using it carries an Azkaban sentence probably prevents people from using it casually.
At best, the Imperius curse could make the Unbreakable Vow common in irregular society, the segment that casually breaks laws that could get them put away for life if they're caught.
I was more thinking of the Lucius Malfoy type. It is well enough established that the way the Wizarding legal system works, with a little bit of effort he can get away with almost anything. In addition, he seems to be the type of person to most benefit from Unbreakable Vows: That is to say he deals with many contacts, and most of them are not the most trustworthy people in the world (and that is putting it mildly).
Lucius's social capital is limited. Some of the Wizengamot are his fast allies, some are simply biased in favor of the nobility, but if he was regularly being accused of imperiusing people, and showed signs of more and more people holding to agreements with him that were clearly not in their interests, he'd probably get the aurors on his trail. Except for the people who're Death Eaters themselves, or most of the way there, he'd go from "One of Us, even if he's involved in some sketchy stuff" to "A pressing threat."
Your points are good, and I understand what you are saying, and that probably is enough reason to accept why Lucius is not imperioing people in the story, without positing that you cannot bind an Unbreakable Vow while under an Imperius.
However, with that said, I don't think you understand just how powerful the Unbreakable Vow is. There is a reason why EY nefed it so much in HPMOR, and if you can simply get around that with a simple Imperius curse... Maybe in this alternate world the Imperius curse would still be illegal, but I doubt it. Because the people who use the Imperius curse have the full power of the Unbreakable Vow at their backs, and they would quickly have the laws changed to their whims.
("But how is the Unbreakable Vow that powerful?" some may ask. Well, it is a complete and utter solution to any game theoretic problem, at all. For example in the one-shot prisoner's dilemma, the Nash equilibrium is Defect-Defect. But if you use the Unbreakable Vow, you can get both sides to Cooperate. (And both sides will agree to the Unbreakable Vow because Cooperate-Cooperate gives them a better result than Defect-Defect.) And so much of your normal human interaction is that kind of game, which is trivially solvable if you have such a powerful commitment mechanism.)