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Desrtopa comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 109 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Gondolinian 23 February 2015 08:05PM

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Comment author: Desrtopa 24 February 2015 03:41:39AM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: DanielLC 24 February 2015 03:48:18AM 1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: kilobug 24 February 2015 09:51:27AM -1 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Subbak 24 February 2015 12:54:11PM 1 point [-]

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.