= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
solipsist comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 109 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
Comments (160)
(Chapter 104)
(Chapter 109)
Just pointing out: Hermione's body is probably Harry's glasses.
I don’t think this is further evidence. The magical resonance could be caused by the sticking charm, as well; no need for the glasses to contain traces of Harry!magic.
It's not further evidence, but it's a good suggestion for a possible place for Hermione to be. It's safe from Quirrell and unexpected. It's also partially hidden by a different charm (assuming QQ can sense Harry's magic)
It is literary evidence, because EY is talking about the glasses.
It is further evidence, because it's the only thing still in contact with his body.
Why is that further evidence? Transfigurations last for a time, whatever Hermione is transfigured into, she would not revert just because it stopped to be in contact with Harry's body.
For the record, I think it very likely that Hermione is the glasses
I forget, do we have any word on whether damaging an object someone has been transfigured into would affect its ability to retain their information? Glasses have a rather limited operational lifespan- I broke another pair just recently.
Did you enchant your glasses to be unbreakable? I imagine that would be standard in a magic school.
Well, Harry breaks his glasses in the canon books, because nobody ever does anything sensible, but as a more general rule, if you could simply transfigure people into objects and enchant those objects to be unbreakable, and thereby prevent damage to their body structure, human transfiguration would already be possible within ordinary means.
It wouldn't completely prevent damage, but it will prevent any damage that would be noticeable on top of the significant amount of damage Hermione has.
My understanding is that "unbreakable" magic makes the object unable to change at macroscopic level, but doesn't prevent small alterations at microscopic level. And those small alterations at microscopic level, in case of a transfigured human, will lead to DNA damage and similar things. It's not known if the information encoded in the brain will resist or not - it's much higher level than DNA, so there is a good chance it would.
Another possibility if that "unbreakable" works fine on things that have very few moving parts, but if you try that on a human body then they become utterly incapable of changing. Their muscles don't flex, which means they can't breathe and their heart stops beating, and they die very quickly.