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Transfuturist comments on [FINAL CHAPTER] Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 122 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Gondolinian 14 March 2015 04:00PM

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Comment author: buybuydandavis 16 March 2015 12:22:27AM 7 points [-]

I thought faster than Voldemort, even though he was older than me and smarter, because... because I had a reason to think. Voldemort had a drive to be immortal, he strongly preferred not to die, but that wasn't a positive desire, it was fear, and Voldemort made mistakes because of that fear. I think the power that Voldemort knew not... was that I had something to protect.

This looks like a false to facts rationalization by Harry.

Voldemort actually didn't know about the partial transfiguration, right? Neither was he likely to know about carbon nanotubes. He simply didn't have the data to anticipate Harry's move. (Though I'm among those who think Voldemort should have taken Harry's wand prior to their chit chat.) If anything, Voldemort lost because he was lazy and over confident, not because he was afraid and therefore thinking poorly while all wands were on Harry.

And shouldn't fear and threat prime Voldemort's "dark side" at least as well as Harry's?

Comment author: Transfuturist 16 March 2015 07:25:48AM 0 points [-]

The dark side is Voldemort's thought patterns. In other words, Voldemort is constantly in the dark side.