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paper-machine comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (503)
I really like "Parseltongue 'if' is material implication", but if this were true I'd expect Voldy to know about it and request clarification, e.g.,
"Explain exactly how they will die, or I will shoot you in five seconds."
"The world will end if I tell you!"
(admittedly non-optimal)
Not necessarily. Parseltongue, if I understand it correctly, forces the speaker to tell the truth as he/she understands it (while bypassing Occlumency). If Harry knows about material implication (which he almost certainly does), he can utilize it in such a manner, but it's unlikely that Voldemort has ever encountered something similar. This isn't your standard clever wordplay that anyone smart can think of, after all--it's formal logic, which is decidedly Muggle.
So it's nonstandard clever wordplay. Voldemort will still anticipate a nontrivial probability of Harry managing undetected clever wordplay. Which means it only has a real chance of working when threatening something that Voldemort can't test immediately.
Correct. I address this in another comment.