But I am saying it can't be handwaived like that. Its like suggesting that humans develop time travel before steam power; and well before other things like space travel, flight.

I was trying to address:

Is this scenario at all likely?

And saying no. We are pretty slow at technology ourselves but the chance of doing brain-manipulations before growing a brain without a body is relatively low.

And also assuming that biology is not going to throw disease-organisms onto the plate of any long-sustaining life planet, seems unlikely.

Assuming the original organics have to absorb a comparable amount of data to what Earther brains do, any brain with stimulus of the outside world will grow, which means overseers in a vat that interact with overseers in bodies will, even if not given stimulus, come to know their bosses and their personalities and moods and what not, and have as much chance of manipulating them as anyone whose only power is a bunch of underlings. How expensive are well trained overseers to replace? That is how much leeway they have in whatever equivalent they find to human bureaucrats with small amounts of power.

Could they develop superintellegent AGI? Depends wholly on their brains architecture, and their skill with artificial selection. Not enough data to predict.

Is this society evil? It is very slightly possible that it is not. I mean, I know some autistic people who on occasion wish to be cut off from their bodies during sensory somatic issues. Ehh, cloning aspies who are afraid of touching is kind of evil if it's just as easy to clone aspies who aren't afraid of touching.

I was referring to the difficulty of growing a brain without a body. Or keeping a brain alive without its natural body.

Meta: You might want to tag this as fiction so it is searchable later.

As often happens, LW discusses theology without realizing it.

To a superintelligence, we are CPUs without agency.

aka "Do you really have free will if God knows everything you will decide?" X-)

Well, I'm not the only person who struggles with anxiety, much less mental illness in general, so while your advice may not apply to me it probably applies to someone else. Focusing all of the discussion of mental illness on the one mentally ill person who started the discussion is... well, not exactly what I started the discussion FOR. So, any advice you have is totally welcome and appreciated.

That's sometimes a very frustrating thing to read- the "get rid of environmental triggers" thing. Speaking solely for myself here, my triggers are either really, really difficult to do anything about (financial difficulties) or a bad idea to try and get rid of (my academics). Sometimes you're just stuck at a point in your life where you can't fix your triggers.

I think there must be more we can do than get rid of triggers, or add more meaningful things. Maybe not as effective, but mental illness is a complex thing. Complex things have weak points. Sometimes I wonder of we're ignoring the trees and just seeing the forest here. Mental self-help advice is so... formulaic.

I can't give you evidence, but I saw lots of posts about freezing the death eater's heads before today.

Great idea! When everyone has inhaled the gas Harry can truthfully say in parseltongue that if he dies, everyone present will die (because that would cancel the transfiguration).

Edit: This work well with all the early foreshadowing about how transfiguration is extremely dangerous. In Ghostbusters we establish early on that you're not supposed to cross the streams because that is extremely dangerous. And then, at the end of the move, when all is lost, what you do is to deliberately cross the streams.

Partial transfigure air at wand tip into Sarin gas (which I'm sure Harry knows the chemical structure of). Heating it will help it diffuse faster. Hold breath. But not before telling Voldemort something true put possibly useless (like the special power is "love" or something). I'm fairly certain that voldemort would feel the need to respond to this, explaining why it is a stupid answer. You have to inhale to talk. After that, make for the time-turner I guess?