anotherblackhat

Seems to me the force needed to penetrate tracks the diameter, but the strength tracks the area of the cross-section.
That is, decrease the thickness by N and it decreases the force needed by N but the strength by N squared.
Below a critical thickness, the wire would just break.
Spiderwebs don't slice you up if you run into them.

I think it's pretty obvious.
Voldemort has always been attracted to power, and it's well known that Hermione is the most powerful witch of her generation.
He made several overtures to her, but was unable to turn her from her path, and so he killed her.
Upon her death he felt great remorse (such was his passion) and decided to bring her back from the dead (such was his power).
Dumbledore tried to stop him, and so was eliminated.
In fact, Voldemort was so enamored of Hermione, that after she was brought back, he use dark magics to give her even greater power.
Quir... (read more)

I notice you are confused. I think you've made two questionable assumptions;

Assumption 1. Wizard Children are not generally treated as competent at age 11.

Assumption 2. The children making the announcement at Hogwarts are responsible for brokering the deal. I.e. they aren't just mouthpieces for their respective families.

Assumption 2b. The Hogwarts staff is aware of 2.

Assumption 1 might be true - but I note that the age of majority has been increasing over time, and wizarding society is in many ways old timey. It seems reasonable to me that allowing a chil... (read more)

True Patronus couldn't look like a snake.

I see no justification for that statement. Perhaps True Patronuses can't take the form of an animal, but that says nothing about what they can look like.

Would a sentient snake wizard say a True Patronus can't look like an ape?

Well, it's probably supposed to be spelled "Momroe" as in "David Troll Momroe". :)

It's spelled "Monroe" in Chapter 86, and there's a "Most Ancient House of Monroe". Personally, I never get these names right either, but I keep a text file handy with all the names, and hard to spell spells like Legilimency Occlumency Occlumens, and Legilimens. Then it's just a simple matter of cut and paste.

Quirrell's dash to the scene ... indicate that they are afraid of what this experience will do to Harry.

It seems more likely to me that Quirrell's dash was primarily for the purpose of burning holes in Hogwarts. Despite leaving before Harry, and Harry stopping to pick up the twins and stopping at the library, and supposedly making a more direct route, Quirrell still failed to arrive before Harry, or for that matter, at all.

I'm not saying Quirrell is unafraid of what this experience will do to Harry, just that I don't believe Quirrell's dash is evidence of that.

There's a scam I've heard of;

Mallet, a notorious swindler, picks 10 stocks and generates all 1024 permutations of "stock will go up" vs. "stock will go down" predictions. He then gives his predictions to 1024 different investors. One of the investors receive a perfect, 10 out 10 prediction sheet and is (Mallet hopes) convinced Mallet is a stock picking genius.

Since it's related to the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, I'm tempted to call this the Texas stock-picking scam, but I was wondering if anyone knew a "proper" name for it, and/or any analysis of the scam.

There is a contradiction here between "lucky" and "coin flip". Why does he get lucky on Earth?

I don't see the contradiction. C-Omega tries the same con on billions and billions of planets, and it happens that out of those billions of trials, on Earth his predictions all came true.

Asking why Earth is rather like asking why Regina Jackson won the lottery - it was bound to happen somewhere, where ever that was you could ask the same question.

In the original problem Omega runs a simulation of you, which is equivalent to T-Omega.

I co... (read more)

Consider the following two mechanisms for a Newcomb-like problem.

A. T-Omega offers you the one or two box choice. You know that T-Omega used a time machine to see if you picked one or two boxes, and used that information to place/not place the million dollars.

B. C-Omega offers you the one or two box choice. You know that C-Omega is con man, that pretends great predictive powers on each planet he visits. Usually he fails, but on Earth he gets lucky. C-Omega uses a coin flip to place/not place the million dollars.

I claim the correct choice is to one box T... (read more)

on 3; From chapter 6

As his hand touched the back door's handle, he heard a last whisper from behind him.

"Hermione Granger."

"What?" Harry said, his hand still on the door.

"Look for a first-year girl named Hermione Granger on the train to Hogwarts."

"Who is she?"

There was no answer, and when Harry turned around, Professor McGonagall was gone.

Seems clear to me that the whisper came from McGonagall - Harry was talking to her, Harry turned his back and heard a whisper from "her" that sounded like her. Harry ... (read more)

Doesn't follow. Consider;

I claim a rock is a non-person.
I expect you accept that statement, I expect that you therefore have a non-person predicate function, yet I also expect you haven't found the answer.

I accept that in order to classify something, we need to be able to classify it.

I'm suggesting there might be a function that classifies some things incorrectly, and is still useful.

Yes, that was sort of the point - you can't make a function for "is a Turing machine" that works in all cases, and you can't make a "is a non-person" function that works in all case either. Further, the set of things you can rule out with 100% certainty is to small to be useful.

Don't see how that relates to my suggestion of a probabilistic answer though. Has anyone proven that you can't make a statistically valid statement about the "Is a Turing machine" question?

Consider the intuitively simpler problem of "is something a universal turing machine?" Consider further this list of things that are capable of being a universal turing machine;

• Computers.
• Conway's game of life.
• Elementary cellular automata.
• Lots of Nand gates.

Even a sufficiently complex shopping list might qualify. And it's even worse, because knowing that A doesn't have personhood, and that B doesn't have personhood doesn't let us conclude that A+B doesn't have personhood. A single Transistor isn't a computer, but 3510 transistors might be a... (read more)

Cannon!Snape has loved Lily since the two of them were children - considerably longer than 11 years. I don't think it's unrealistic at all. While I wouldn't call such a love typical human behavior, it's also not particularly rare. There are thousands of people who still profess love for Princess Di for example.

I doubt that it was telling Snape what an idiot he is that angered him, but rather saying Lily was shallow and unworthy.

I agree that it's weird that someone who could carry a torch for that long would stop just because an 11 year old boy gave t... (read more)

The P.S. doesn't grant unlimited wealth, it grants unlimited gold and/or silver. A large part of the value of Gold is related to it's scarcity, so teaching others how to make stones would affect Flamel's personal wealth - oh, and probably destroy society too. And making everyone immortal includes the Voldemorts, the Grinwalds, and Baba Yagas of the world. and it's not like he personally is killing those people...

See how easy it is to rationalize letting everyone die? And I came up with those in just a few minutes - imagine having six centuries to make excuses.

The "All possible worlds" picture doesn't include the case of a marble in both the basket and the box.

They weren't planning on it, but the information was sent nonetheless. P(Someone is going to go back and stop them from going back|They came back) < P(Someone is going to go back and stop them from going back|They did not came back)

That presupposes that P(Bob came back) is not affected by your decision to send the information further on. I'm postulating that IF you would have sent the information further back, THEN P(Bob came back) = 0. Of course, it might not actually work that way, but if my supposition is correct, then Bob not coming back tells you nothing. The event only carries information if you aren't going to make use of that information.

Perhaps the reason he didn't is because you would have sent that information back in time, and so he couldn't.

But every time someone uses a time turner, they send that information into the past. If it didn't block them then, why would it block them now?

Because you would have sent that information back in time. It didn't block them "then" because they weren't going to send the information further back. The effect could be more subtle - instead of preventing you from succeeding, it could prevent you from trying (don't mess with time) or ... (read more)

You don't actually know that Bob didn't see the enemy at the pass, you only know that for some reason, Bob didn't come back and tell you. Perhaps the reason he didn't is because you would have sent that information back in time, and so he couldn't.

Another possibility is that information loses "coherence" the further back it travels. (or forward, depending on which side your standing on) Think of it as a signal to noise problem - six hours isn't the limit, it's the limit of what we can correct for with the magic of the time turners. Prophecy s... (read more)