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DanArmak comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 18, chapter 87 - Less Wrong Discussion
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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.
How many centuries does the world's greatest alchemist have to spend on one problem before it becomes more useful to do research and use his vast wealth to benefit humanity?
Oh, at least fifty or sixty.
More seriously, one can do both. Sure it's hard to perfectly and completely solve the problem of best using unlimited gold, taking into account appreciation etc. But on the margin, it's pretty clear the world could stand a few more billions given to charity without hurting the economy too much.
And, there's no evidence Flamel has used his vast wealth to benefit humanity - certainly not in proportion to that vastness. In a counterfactual world where Flamel spent a year out of every ten using gold to benefit humanity, we wouldn't see nearly as many good causes that could really use another million dollars.
Yeah, it is odd that we haven't seen evidence of the world being improved by large anonymous donations of gold. Maybe I was wrong to assume Harry was talking nonsense when he decided the stone creating gold was just a rumor.