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solipsist comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113 - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: Gondolinian 28 February 2015 08:23PM

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Comment author: solipsist 01 March 2015 02:38:47AM *  3 points [-]

Evidence we have the Harry doesn't

  • Harry's recently studied on shaped transfiguration made it to his published thought bubbles at the beginning of the final arc -- it will be used.
  • Mr. Grim will probably survive, or have a dying aria, or in some other fashion reveal the story of Peter and Sirius. EDIT I suppose someone could just recognize his dead body.
  • Snape can't just die -- he doesn't love Lilly anymore, which means something, and Voldemort returned a favor -- he's got stuff to sort out.
  • Harry hasn't used the Foreshadowed Weasley Loot in his pouch. He can use the pouch now, or use it later, but he cannot simply let the pouch fall into Voldemort's hands. Maybe Hermione could retrieve it?
  • Unusually, there is not a literary constraint that Harry survive more than to "evade immediate death". That's explicit in the author's challenge, and I think we have a good method of reviving Harry. The explicit lack of constraint is medium evidence Harry's solution will be fatal.

Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line...

(black robes, falling)

...blood spills out in litres, and someone screams a word.


The earlier experiment had measured whether Transfiguring a long diamond rod into a shorter diamond rod would allow it to lift a suspended heavy weight as it contracted, i.e., could you Transfigure against tension, which you in fact could.

Comment author: bramflakes 01 March 2015 03:13:09AM 9 points [-]

The Foreshadowed Weasley Loot was invoked - the gun.

Comment author: solipsist 01 March 2015 03:17:47AM *  6 points [-]

I was going to correct you

Some of these items are expensive even in the Muggle world, and your contact may have to go outside Britain; but one hundred Galleons will be enough to pay for it all

But then I remembered -- no handguns in Britain! That was a clue I missed right there!

Comment author: Alsadius 01 March 2015 03:18:53PM 5 points [-]

That happened about 1997 after a famous school massacre, but the story is set in 1992. Guns are still available in the UK(though, obviously not so freely as in the US).

Comment author: TobyBartels 03 March 2015 02:19:33AM 0 points [-]

Right, so what he actually must asked them for is a gun that was already banned in the UK but not in the U.S.. Maybe one of those ‘assault rifles’?

Comment author: Alsadius 03 March 2015 04:26:03PM 0 points [-]

You think he had two guns in his pouch? I mean, it's not impossible, but it seems unlikely(and if he did, why did he use the lesser gun to shoot at Voldemort?).

Comment author: TobyBartels 03 March 2015 11:32:28PM 0 points [-]

Not seriously. I'm just trying to save the beautiful theory (that what the Weasleys' contact had to leave Britain to get was a gun) from the ugly fact (that guns were available in Britain at the time).