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?

The only other one that springs to mind is the one with the Nine-Brained Kyuubi.

Got any more?

Fanfiction Thread

You have now spent three whole posts trying to establish a particular meaning for the word "scarcity", without either giving a really clear definition or (apparently) persuading your audience to go along with your definition.

If you are contemplating doing likewise for other terms, may I suggest a structure more along the following lines?

"In later posts I'm going to be talking about X. Unfortunately, X has a different meaning in economics from elsewhere. What it means in economics is [PRECISE TECHNICAL DEFINITION] or, in plainer English, [INFORMAL BUT EXPLICIT PARAPHRASE OF DEFINITION]. This is a more useful notion in economics than the usual meaning of X because [REASONS], and it's reasonable to use X for it rather than making up a completely new term because [EXPLANATION OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NORMAL AND TECHNICAL SENSES]."

After that, if you think it's still needed, would be the place for metaphorical illustrations of the economists' use of X.

So, e.g.,

"Economics is all about the allocation of scarce resources. But that word scarce, here and in my later articles about economics, doesn't mean quite what you probably think it does. A resource is scarce, in the economists' sense, when it's demand at zero cost would exceed its supply at infinite price; that is, when there is use for more of it than can ever be had. This can be true even if we generally consider that there's plenty of it, and it can be false even in situations where it seems like there's very little. What actually makes the allocation of a resource an economic problem is simply the fact that we (as individual agents, or considered collectively) have to choose what we do with it. Consider, for instance, gold. Gold is rare and scarce, but in a slightly different world it could be just as rare but not scarce. If no one had any use for gold, no one found it nice to look at, and it didn't happen to be used as a conventional medium of exchange, it would not be scarce; and no one would care about it and there would be no need to think about how it should be distributed, so economics would take no interest in it. Then if, one day, it occurred to someone that because of its rarity good would be a good substance to make money out of -- why, then it would become scarce, without any changes in its rarity, and suddenly economics would apply to it.

"Although rarity and scarcity are not the same, they are clearly related. Things that are rare tend also to be scarce, because most things have uses and because (as with gold in the hypothetical example above) a thing can become useful precisely because of its rarity, at which point it becomes scarce too. But what matters for economics is scarcity rather than rarity, because it is only when there are choices to be made that there is any point discussing how we should or do make them."

(I an not sure whether the above captures exactly your usage of the term. But then, that's part of the problem.)

Note that the above takes less space than any one of the three posts so far dedicated to the notion of scarcity in economics.

[Edited for clarity. And to fix a mobile-device text recognition error; thanks to Good_Burning_Plastic for pointing it out.]

What other work...?

Splendid. As inexplicably haunting as the rest of your work. Looking forward to more.

Please post this one as a review.

Here is my best attempt at a delaying tactic, after sleeping on it. Please tear apart/suggest better ways in which LV might tear apart, to replace the poor placeholder responses he has here.

--

"Agree that I musst die, if it ssavess world. But thiss iss not besst way to kill me. Ssee how you can benefit more, given your goalss."

"Explain."

"Believe power you know not doess refer to power to desstroy life-eaterss. Life-eaterss will find you eventually, teacher. Know you. Will hunt you down, ssomeday. Eat all of you, all of world and magic, in the end."

"Sso you will give that magic to me, now."

"You can never reach needed sstate of mind - incompatible with deadly indifference. Sschoolmasster could never casst - incompatible with acceptance of death. Majority cannot casst, and in the tessting, sstandard defence againsst life-eaterss iss ssacrificed. Will weaken your alliess greatly, should I randomly try to teach."

"What do you proposse, then?"

"Take me to life-eater prisson. Allow me to pour out my life and magic there, eradicate them wholly. How I wisshed to do sso, during the resscue! You called me back, then."

"..."

"Many advantagess to you in thiss. Can decimate your final enemy, wipe out their greatesst colony, certainly buy you yearss. Removess them before Wizengamot'ss death throess can releasse them againsst you. Freess your remaining alliess, ass thosse here failed to do. And I am utterly desstroyed - can leave no ghosst behind me. Nothing to fuel ssecret devices of Sschoolmasster's. Presumably, reduced rissk that your great creation will recognisse my spirit - for I doubt you have tessted that."

"You will not desstroy all of them, and sso I will have to find another ssolution anyway."

"Ssolution iss girl-child. Sshe iss closse to learning sspell, and now immortal. My death could drive her to hunt life-eaterss forever; thiss iss not beyond your sskillss at manipulation. You know sshe wantss to be a hero."

I saw the thread title and assumed "Maletopia" was a Disney AU fanfic about a perfect society run by rational!Maleficent. Disappointed now.

BTW, not related to the plot much at all, but I think I get the point of the dungeonrun first year students can beat.

The mirror is set to show students their CEV, which Harry dismissed as "Themselves in some very desirable situation". Is dismissed the right word? Eh, anyway, I don't think the people Harry talked to quite managed to convey the magnitude of it to him.

Slytherin's core insight, the thing his house if founded on, is that people become who they are supposed to be by pursuing their ambitions, or at least that is the opinion of Quirrel the teacher-persona. I don't actually care if he truly believes that, because it just strikes me as an important truth.

The mirror tailors good and sound ambitions for people. Or at least it does for any student which has a CEV which could conceivably be achieved via their own efforts. And they are, after all, witches and wizards.

Putting it behind an obstacle course makes people value and pay attention to what it gives them. It is a really impressive piece of pedagoguery.

So basically, the entire thing isn't about Voldemort at all. It's about teaching. Wonder how much of slytherin house did this run? Because it obviously is the house that would benefit the most from it.