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Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 24, chapter 95 - Less Wrong Discussion
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For this post, I meant premise of my analysis. More generally, my priors tell me that is the author's viewpoint of the world, though I wouldn't presume to guess.
Why should the author's viewpoint of the world determine the author's viewpoint of the HPMoR world? Presumably the author also believes that magic does not exist.
Because it seems likely that someone like Eliezer would write a magic system of the sufficiently-advanced-technology-is-indistinguishable-from-magic sense rather than the waves hands-because-magic!-waves hands sense.
Further, if souls existed, Harry would have no reason to want people to not die, which kind of breaks the story (unless I suppose there's some mechanism to kill souls, which I admit would be interesting)
If souls exist, but the afterlife doesn't exist or is just really bad/boring, then Harry would have a good reason, to either not let people die or to bring them back once they do.
Isn't AK supposed to destroy the soul?
No. The Dementor's Kiss destroys the soul; but the Killing Curse strikes at it, severing it from the body.
If AK/Dementors actually did destroy the soul, how would anyone know without direct access to the afterlife?
There's a spell that doesn't reveal the true cloak of invisibility, but indicates that such an artefact is present. You could imagine a corresponding spell for souls, or a dog which only barks at soul-imbued creatures (may bark twice at soul-imbued postmen and once at soul-less postmen. In which case you'd need to ask "are you a postman" using veritaserum to distinguish false positives for souls.).
How would you distinguish this from a spell which merely tests if one has been exposed to the Dementor's Kiss?
If it gives a positive response to humans and some/all intelligent non-humans but a negative one to people made brain-dead through purely physical means and/or various animals?
We still have no way of knowing if it's testing for souls or brain activity.
Divination.