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AnthonyC comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 118 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Harry deleted (or tried to delete, we don't know he succeeded) LV/QQ's episodic memory, not his procedural memory (skills and spells). In principle, this could be fixed - in canon memory charms could sometimes be reversed, and in HPMOR most of LV's memories are backed up by the horcrux network. Sufficiently advanced magic might be able to extract those.
Unfortunately, deleting episodic memory while leaving procedural memory intact would mean that Voldemort would no longer remember the things he's able to do.
He might, however, learn his old skills a lot faster than he otherwise would have.
Addressed to everyone, not just AnthonyC: if your episodic memory were deleted and your procedural memory remained (and you could look at it from the outside), to what extent would you consider yourself to still exist?
Approximately the same extent to which I'd consider myself to exist in the event of any other form of information-theoretic death. Like, say, getting repeatedly shot in the head with a high powered rifle, or having my brain dissolved in acid.
Right. This is why I said that total obliviation is worse than death. Not only are you removed, you can later be used to support purposes outright opposed to your goals, as Harry intends to do with Voldemort.
This seems odd to me, though I'm not saying you're wrong. From the inside, my values seem far more akin to habits or reflexes than to time-indexed memories.
I imagine Obliviated!me still having a NO DON'T reaction when asked to support a purpose opposed to my previous goals, because verbalised goals flow from wordless moral habits; not the other way around. (assuming a possibly inconsistent scenario where I retain enough language for someone to expect to manipulate me)
Since Voldemort's goal set was extremely self-centered, I'm not sure results in a universe where he no longer exists can be stated to opposed to his goals in any meaningful way. They simply don't concern him.
Quite a bit. I have a very bad memory for personal history anyway - I have a vague timeline of significant dates in my head, and a handful of random "vivid" memories, maybe one per year, that have been nailed down by neural happenstance. But if you asked me what I was doing yesterday evening, I think I would end up randomly selecting an evening from the last three or so - unless I painstakingly solved it in the manner of a logic puzzle ("I go to the gym on Wednesdays, and yesterday was Thursday, so I guess I was at the gym").