All of sanyasi's Comments + Replies

sanyasi00

It's debatable whether Heisenberg did the former, causing the mistaken experiment results that led the Nazi atomic program to conclude that a bomb wasn't viable. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_(play) for scientific entertainment (there's a good BBC movie about this starring Daniel Craig as Werner Heisenberg)

sanyasi20

I read it as Snape being happy that Voldemort offered Lily an out: his deal with Voldemort must have been "please let Lily live and I'll do anything". The memory confirms the story that Voldemort gave Lily an option out ("stand aside"). So he considers Voldemort to have held up his side of the bargain.

This interpretation does not bode well for the Dumbledore-Snape alliance (which already seemed to be in bad shape in MoR)

1buybuydandavis
That's how I read it as well. Snape saw that Voldemort had kept his word, and only killed Lily when she attacked him first. It seemed to me that Harry hadn't learned his lesson about his talks with Snape. He even noted that Snape's allegiance was wavering, and yet he shows him that Voldie given Lily her chance.
sanyasi20

Harry should just threaten to destroy Azkaban, and say that Dumbledore can testify that he has the power to do it.

2wedrifid
I rather suspect Dumbledore would testify that Harry doesn't have the power to do it. Not while he is in a room full of hostile aurors. He would need a seriously impressive (and magic workaround enhanced) dead-man's switch if he was going to pull this kind of terrorism off effectively.
gwern100

The easier solution there is to do something to Harry, not let off a filthy mud-blood murderer to satisfy a childish terrorist's demands...

2gwern
Is he really? I've read Schneier for years and I don't get any vibes off Moody. For example, Moody espouses all sorts of complicated theories which are the sort of 'movie plots' that Schneier derides. If anyone, I think Mad Eye is James Jesus Angleton, or possibly Moody is an 'anti-Schneier'. (Personally, I think Eliezer is simply exaggerating Moody in the spirit of I'll-show-you-true-constant-vigilance!)
sanyasi130

Chapter 61: 'There was another pause, and then Madam Bones's voice said, "I have information which I learned four hours into the future, Albus. Do you still want it?"'

This seems like a useless question. A bit of information was already conveyed representing the fact that Amelia Bones was 4 hours into the future & found some information that would be useful to Dumbledore. Is this not sufficient information transfer in and of itself to prevent Dumbledore traveling backwards?

Sorry if I'm confused, but reasoning about time is hard, and my diagrams are not as helpful as Snape's and Dumbledore's.

2Normal_Anomaly
I think the info was sent to Bones rather than her finding it and going back, but your point may still stand. Perhaps "somebody sent something back to Amelia Bones" is vague enough to slip past the filter. There must be some nonzero cutoff, because otherwise the info would affect the whole future (from the point of receiving the info) light come of anyone who got time-traveled info, and the whole earth would be interdicted whenever somebody went back. If I'm wrong about that, it's possible that either Bones or Dumbledore wasn't thinking, or Dumbledore realized that he was already blocked and that's part of why he decided he wanted the info.

"Is this not sufficient information transfer in and of itself to prevent Dumbledore traveling backwards?"

Obviously it is not. I'm sure that Harry would find it ludicrous that such a rule exists permitting the transfer of this one bit of information but not the rest of it... but neither Amelia nor Dumbledore think in terms of "bits".

Btw this "6-hours" window? Though I don't expect it, it'd be hilarious if in-story this had anything to do with the infamous "TimeCube" ramblings. Something like "Gene Ray was once an Unspeakable that went insane trying to figure out the mysteries underpinning the 6-hours rule.".

0Desrtopa
I imagine there are many ways in which it can be inconvenient to have information about things that have, from your own perspective, not happened yet. Your own actions could become constrained on pain of paradox when previously they had not been.
sanyasi10

I think a fossilized hominid might have worse than average chance of having no living descendants too: To be fossilized they have to undergo a fossilization event, which is probably correlated with disaster: and given that ancient human did not stray far from their genetic siblings (and progeny) this probably indicates a high chance of that disaster affecting their progeny. I certainly wouldn't rely on it.

Nevertheless, given my cultural heuristic for what counts as most important, it would probably be father (in terms of how much various cultures put a value on either the father or the mother), or most recognized powerful ancestor (Salazar Slytherin in this case).

sanyasi10

I think Voldemort would have been staggeringly stupid NOT to have kept a remnant of his father's body given how much blood magic requires these types of ingredients.

sanyasi00

This is unrelated to the current plot, but rather a more general thought: We know Severus is the most accomplished occlumens in the world. Might he also be the most accomplished legilimens as well? It seems that Severus, being Voldemort's spy who spends inordinate amounts of time under Dumbledore's command, would natually come under the Dark Lord's suspicions, prompting plenty of sessions of eye-staring where Voldemort verifies his allegience. Severus, of course, passes all these checks, but could he not also be legilimensing Voldemort at the same time? If... (read more)

3Desrtopa
I don't recall Snape being said to be the most accomplished occlumens in the world. He's good enough to prevent Voldemort from reading his mind, but unless there's some indication otherwise that I've forgotten about, I think there's supposed to be a number of perfect occlumens, who are good enough that nobody is capable of performing leglimency on them. I highly doubt that Snape is capable of performing leglimency on Voldemort. Not only does Voldemort have tremendous incentive to become a perfect occlumens, but if Snape could read his mind and not have his mind read in turn, he could probably have ended the war himself.
sanyasi80

While I agree that this might be the case, there is a logical defense for the case where Harry is non-Voldemort. Consider, if you were Voldemort hiding horcruxes. Where would you put them?

Now if you are not very smart, you would probably put up some protections, and you will expect the hero to try to break them. If you were smarter, there would be some feints and double feints and deceptions involved in the process. But if you were very smart, you would go for the hardest locations, as Harry named. These might represent a kind of "fixed point" of... (read more)

6Eliezer Yudkowsky
If a horcrux of Type 1 is found, that greatly increases the chance another horcrux of Type 1 is findable. You actually do want to use as many different modes as possible, not randomize across modes, because the probabilities are not independent.
2wedrifid
I would normally suggest throwing the horcrux across a horizon (black hole or outside the future light cone). But in a world with time travel and apparition that doesn't seem quite so safe. I would weight the distribution more in the direction of space, leaving the 'air' ones out altogether. If possible I would make the acceleration factor on the space bound item vary based on quantum effects at regular intervals, leaving it thoroughly distributed across an ever expanding part of the universe. It matters somewhat just what the device being hidden is made of and whether it can, say, resist insane tidal forces, supernovae and the like. The flying item may need to be programmed to avoid such things or perhaps dive right in, depending on the specifics. The other thing to consider is that obscurity isn't the only way to make something inaccessible. Even if the direction is guessable, spending sufficient effort in making the item accelerate into space could make it extremely hard to find. If you can charm the item to accelerate at 10g away from the earth forever and also manage to prevent anyone from chasing after it for 10 years then you have made your horcrux damn hard to catch. Before I did any of these things, well, at least before I did it with the >=3rd horcruxes I would thoroughly research just how the horcruxes manage to make you unkillable. I would need to confirm that wherever I hid a horcrux enabled the horcrux to do its thing in a way that is useful. ie. I don't want to respawn inside black holes, outside the light cone of everything I hold dear or even inside any volcanoes.