Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 118

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 118 — LessWrong

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The fact that he's wearing it at all stuns me. It needs to be maintained by a coven of the greatest wizards around.

Imagine: Harry dies (heart attack, stroke, stabbed by Goyle, whatever) Handless amnesiac Voldemort appears, dies of human transfiguration sickness after a few deeply confused minutes Horcrux network activates.
Best case, this amnesiac being can't figure out how to possess anyone. Medium case, somebody gets possessed by the clueless shade.
Worst case: network was built to supplement current memories with dump of previous ones (we can see by the part where Voldemort Confounds himself before the Mirror that he had thought about the concept of changing his mental state), and the Dark Lord is back in business

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drethelin11y00

Meh: It's been like a day and there are tons of steps Harry need to take longterm. He might even have started taking these steps offscreen.

5Astazha11y

Agreed, and add to all of those risks that Harry is an obliviation noob and he may not have gotten the wipe right. We don't know what Voldemort will or will not remember if he wakes. Even in the medium case of possession by an amnesiac, V might figure out who he probably is, or get briefed by a servant who figures it out. The list of recently deceased epically powered wizards in the world is pretty short. And Harry is being naive again: [...] The issue with psychopathy is not that these people are not happy, but that they are not capable of empathy. Not that it needs to be taught, but that the brain circuitry for empathy is not functional. Being raised in a kind versus abusive environment matters, but the difference that produces is between someone who is merely cold, selfish, manipulative, and calculating versus someone who is all of those things in a serial killer kind of way. Muggles have no therapy for it. Maybe magic does, but it isn't a question of teaching Quirrell to be happy. Quirrell will have to be changed into a person who is a capable of genuinely caring about people who are not him.

2ChristianKl11y

If Harry would give it to Moody and Bones, they would very likely go through with the mirror plan and remove Voldemort from time. Harry seems to hope that he can later recover part of Voldemort's magic.

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