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maia comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 20, chapter 90 - Less Wrong Discussion

9 Post author: palladias 02 July 2013 02:13AM

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Comment author: William_Quixote 02 July 2013 07:09:43PM *  19 points [-]

you're uh, assigning just a tad too much power to the well above average biochemist.

More seriously, I think Harry's path here is much more magic than bio focused. He's seen memories removed and copied. If he can figure out how to remove ALL the memories from a body, and if he knows the obliviate charm, and if dead cells work for poly juice (which they should since hair is dead) then he has a decent path using only minor variants to known magic.

Comment author: maia 02 July 2013 09:14:38PM 3 points [-]

But the way memories are stored in Pensieves, all they provide is a firstperson video feed of things that have happened. That's not enough information to make up a whole person.

Comment author: William_Quixote 03 July 2013 02:02:10AM 4 points [-]

Is it first person video, or first person full sense feed (including sound smell, feel of the chair etc.)? Because if its a first person full sense feed, plugging that into human brains is how we get people right now.

If you push the same feed into a brain, you might get the same person at the end. I'll note that the Mr. Bester storyline makes a point of showing how reproducible thoughts are given the same conditions.