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linkhyrule5 comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 104 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (189)
Hm.
So, as we approach the end of the fic, there's one question left that looks really hard.
Let's try to solve it!
...but in all seriousness: I expect Harry to solve Death before the end of the fic - it's too central to both Harry's current motive and thus the current plot arc, and Eliezer's motives in writing this fic, to avoid, even putting aside the conspicuous Peverell prophecy.
There is not enough time left for Harry to do this by learning some secret art or by putting his own spin on an existing spell. Therefore, this problem should be soluble with what Harry has on hand.
For now, I will treat Quirrelmort and Dumbledore (come on, you don't honestly think he's going to be absent for the big climactic duel of words and ideals, do you?) as resources - never mind how Harry convinces them for now.
Am I missing any resources?
A bunch of unspecified Muggle items he got the Weasleys to obtain for him.
You're missing sextillions of resources, although only a few hundred billion are in this galaxy and only one is near enough to use immediately without FTL.
The stunning aspect of "the secret to creating new potions" isn't just that you can expend energy accumulated in some magical ingredient, it's that sunlight counts as magical energy. Yottawatts of power plus the ability to transmute elements might be useful...
ಠ_ಠ Why are you taking Harry's far mode pronouncements as binding on his near mode actions? Not only is that dubious for humans in general, we know Harry has a mysterious dark side that can take control and does want people dead if they're annoying.
I don't see how that's different from "hating" Quirrel; if you Other someone by being angry at them, you don't stop being angry at them once they're Othered.
How? Remember the bits about being careful to not leak info to allow people to go back in time? (Though 'info' clearly is defined as being 'plot-relevant info' rather than 'physics-relevant info,' so that independent time travel is possible at all.)
I believe it's the Killing Curse 2 that Harry believes he can't use (he can't be indifferent to killing someone.)
Right. I read linkhyrule5 as saying that 1) Harry wouldn't hate someone enough to use Killing Curse 1 (which I disbelieve) and that 2) Harry could use Killing Curse 2 by being angry enough at Quirrel to be indifferent whether he lives or dies (which I disbelieve).
When Harry is negotiating his truce with Lucius Malfoy, Harry painstakingly tells himself why it would be OK for him to kill Lucius. Maybe Harry can also talk himself into killing Quirrell.
I think Harry will have a pretty easy time killing Quirrell, if he gets the sense that Quirrell's continued survival would be a net negative.
Some others, off the top of my head.
Harry knows enough mind-magic to make a person forget every life memory involving the color blue, or their left arm (or cough their animagus form cough)
The imprisoned Beatrix had as much magic as a first year student, and it was considered conceivable that she could complete an animagus transformation. Harry's animagus form, like his Patronus form, would be a person.
Harry has mental ability to become whoever he believes he is.
Cedric Diggory and the Weasley twins have enough magic to cast the spell of cursed fire, which can destroy powerful magical devices (such as Horcruxes and the Deathly Hallows).
Cedric has a time-turner
Weasleys are the heirs of Gryffindor.
Also the controlled transformation Harry learned about in Chapter 104.
Harry won't have enough magic to cast the killing curse for a few years. The character of Lesath Lestrange only exists to give Harry a minion who can cast the killing curse.
We don't know that he can do so deliberately. It's equally plausible that those are examples of his inability to target his obliviations narrowly enough, or even of his general inability to satisfactorily control them.
Where are you getting this? There is no stated link between Patronuses and animagi, and if you're thinking of animagi in animal form being of less interest/resistant to Dementors, it is much more probable that this is because an animagus's thought patterns become more animalistic when transformed (as we know from Quirrell and McGonagall's testimonies), and animals are naturally oblivious to Death.
Do we know this? The only information I recall is that Harry isn't yet capable of casting it. We don't know at what age it becomes feasible. (that and the odds of Quirrell teaching it to them seem rather low)
In canon there appears to be some kind of "one animal per person" rule. The only people where we know both their animagus form and their patronus are James Potter (stag) and Minerva McGonagall (cat), and in these two cases they match. Additionally, Remus Lupin, a werewolf, has a wolf for a patronus and Dumbledore, who is very close to Fawkes, has a phoenix.
That's true. But to me the evidence suggests that "Harry can't create an animal Patronus because he sees that animal Patronuses work through self-deception" rather than "Harry's Patronus animal is a human".
Unrelated conclusion: fursonas are HP canon.
I take the current fight against genre-awareness as some indication that we should not expect Harry to solve death. I more expect he'll end up in a long-term fight against it, with something like magical cryonics (transfiguration or the like) as the best short-term response to actual death.
EY also likes to point out the virtues of hard work. It might seem... too easy, too trivial for an 11 year old to solve death in less than a year.
Maybe, but 11 year old has had skillsofts from a much older person uploaded into him and has access to outright magc.
That older person has access to enormously more powerful magic, fears death more than anything in the world, and hasn't been able to solve Death for decades now. Even though he's willing to use methods that harm others, which Harry wouldn't.
However, there's the Philosopher's Stone, which is supposed to grant immortality, or at least restore health. (The immortality part is uncertain: in canon it let Flamel survive for six centuries, but in HPMOR Quirrel claims that the stone's current holder is not the one who made it.) Presumably it has some finite store of power, otherwise even Dumbledore would want to use it to heal the injuries of young people. So the question is how to duplicate it. We haven't been told why exactly Flamel can't produce more of it; it might be something Harry can resolve, but it could also be a zero-sum requirement to sacrifice lives to produce it.
I feel that the only way Harry could defeat Death would be using the Stone. Coming up with an unrelated solution at this point would not be plausible.
In canon, the elixir of youth is something you have to make and drink over and over; if the Stone were stolen, and you were unable to make a replacement in time, you would die of old age. It's possible that this is what happened, with Flamel as the thief. This would also explain why he can't make more Stones.