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MarkusRamikin comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 114 + chapter 115 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (423)
Chapter 90:
So there is no defense against Obliviation that Voldemort could have prepared for himself?
I confess I expected paranoid-Moody thinking from Harry, not Far-mode Good thinking. The stakes are so high that anything other than ruthless pragmatism feels insane to me.
One defense against obliviation would be to keep creating old-school horcruxes at regular intervals. As I understand they contain snapshots of current mind-state so should be unaffected by the main copy getting obliviated later. He might not be quite gone yet.
Like those 30 year old infectious samples of smallpox that keep turning up in NIH/university/etc freezers.
Wait, they do? Should I be worried?
They do show up. It's a risk, but so far I'd say it isn't something to be very worried about.
Modern civilization doesn't seem to be too bad at dealing with infectious diseases.
OK, I'll trust the institutional descendants of whoever lost track of the virus samples to contain and destroy the virus samples. They'll probably be paying closer attention now. As long as none are mislabelled and thrown into the general trash.
Actually, I meant that even if people get infected (not very likely), I'm willing to be that modern civilization could contain and end the problem before a significant number of people got infected.
That's probably true too, but I'd hate to think what would happen if it it got loose in place with a less capable medical system, like Guinea.
With perfect sight toward the future, perhaps he could have. It's far from convincing that it would have actually helped, without blocking thirty other vulnerabilities.
Obliviation's particularly interesting because it requires no upkeep, but it's far from the only thing that would bypass Horcruxes. Voldemort's just as vulnerable to being repeatedly stunned, to petrification (hence the murder of the basilisk), to transfiguration, to the Imperius, to pretty much any mind-affecting charm. The biggest defense is, well, the same as anyone else's defense to the Killing Curse -- don't be there. Creating a defense specifically against large-scale Obliviation isn't very valuable if the attacker has countless further options to permanently disable anyone so defenseless as to be vulnerable to an Obliviate.
I would have thought he would rig up some dead-man's handle which explodes, killing him, if he is ever knocked unconscious. However, he would have to deactivate it when going to sleep, so he would still be vunerable then.
Besides all the foreshadowing about Quirrell's plan being to lose a battle to Harry, isn't it rather convenient that Quirrell just happens to arrange for Harry to learn the spell that Harry uses to defeat him?
Not really. Mind magic is one of Harry's top priorities, Quirrell is the first person he'd ask about Obliviate, Quirrell has no reason not to tell him, and Obliviate wasn't exactly the spell Harry used to defeat Quirrell in the first place. This outcome is about as likely in the world where Quirrell wasn't expecting to lose as in the world where he was, so it doesn't shift the priors substantially.