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ChrisHallquist 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?
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.