All of ajuc's Comments + Replies

And there is leverage, so you can invest 100 $, but get profits or loses like you invested 10000 $. So if theres 100x leverage, and 1% profit to make on currencies each day, you can double your money every day.

So to turn 100 galeons to 100000 galeons Harry would need 10 transactions with 1% profit each.

http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/forexleverage.asp#axzz1qS7tVBFp

0Alsadius
True, but there's no way an 11 year old would have access to 100:1 leverage, even with derivatives. LTCM wasn't much higher than 100:1, and they're just about the all-time kings of leverage. There's things like regulatory limits and credit checks to contend with here. Edit: Silly me, I should actually have read your link. I'm used to limits on equity leverage, apparently forex works damn near an order of magnitude higher. Disregard the above.
2buybuydandavis
In terms of the knowledge that Muggles have culturally accumulated, yes. They're at least 500 years behind the times.
9anotherblackhat
Doing something stupid, or just being an idiot in general isn't the same as holding the idiot ball.

I think that's an inescapable result of the idiot world J. K. Rowling made. There is just so much in cannon that makes so little sense.

7see
There are at least three methods of paying off the debt relatively easily, mentioned earlier in this discussion, that are fundamentally unavailable as ways of making money for the vast majority of wizards on the Wizengamot. One, using the Philosopher's Stone, is explicitly mentioned in the very comment you replied to. So, no, I don't think the people in the story are holding Idiot Balls.

Great point. If Harry is Voldemort, Voldemort will keep Harry money because Lucius have them. If Harry is not Voldemort, Voldemort will earn Harry money, because Lucius have them now.

Win-win once again. Lucius is a competent player, and Harry is underestimating him.

So if Hermione is vassal of Harry, and Harry is temporary vassal of Lucius, then is Hermione vassal of Lucius?

Or do the muggle medieval rule "the vassal of my vassal is not my vassal" works in magical Brittain also?

Being in debt is probably not the same thing as being a vassal, even temporarily.

(Well, maybe... Dumbledore still hasn't told us what rights Lucius now has over Harry.)

Oh, right.

It's funny how we(I) take some things for granted.

Yeah, phrasing it right wouldn't be trivial, but much easier than making wishes for UFAI, because Veritaserum is the equivalent of perfect box for AI, and Draco is human, so most of the definitions and assumptions he shares with the judges.

So maybe: "Tell me the things, you think I would want to know about, according to the best model of me you can construct."

9wedrifid
Except if I'm an AI in a perfect box I can't do as I please and destroy everything but if I'm a free agent drugged with veritaserum I can but I'm completely honest and forthcoming about it. As in: [Harry is under the influence of a truth serum] Samir: Is there anything you'd like to tell me before we start? Harry: Yeah. I'm going to kill you pretty soon. Samir: I see. How, exactly? Harry: First I'm going to use you as a human shield. Then I'm going to kill this guard over here with the Patterson trocar on the table. And then I was thinking about breaking your neck. Samir: And what makes you think you can do all that? Harry: You know my handcuffs? Samir: Mmm-hmm. Harry: [holds up his hands] I picked them. [Samir gasps. Harry springs up from his chair and grabs Samir, using him as a shield while he kills the guard, then breaks Samir's neck] And... Ok, that name collision just completely changed the way I visualize MoR!Harry.
1Alsadius
That's the sort of sentence that'd cause most people who don't post at LW to look at you funny. It's sort of impressive how much we seem to have forked English.

With heavily leveraged trading on forex ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_market ) , he can make 100 galleons into 100 000 galleons in one hour (with leverage of 0.2% you earn profits from trading of X, but you only need to really have 0.002 of X). And you can do this over internet, by a few back and forth trades that lasts for a few minutes.

6see
But you probably can't do it over the Internet in 1991.

We don't have a way to be sure our universe runs on casuality. It's just generalization from our experiences. The same could be true for Dumbledore and his universe.

0TimS
I can't say that Quirrel is more wrong than Harry, but Dumbledore's position ("of course some people should not be powerful wizards") is fatuous in his own universe, much less in the real world. It might turn out to be right, but there's no of course about it. In short, my only assertion is that Dumbledore is not qualified to be our moral ideal in an imperfect universe, even if he is a better choice that Fawkes.

If regular courts had veritaserum, I imagine the first question they'd ask would be "What are the things you don't want to tell us?".

7GeeJo
But that is such a vague question. I could go on for hours about entirely irrelevant observations I wouldn't want to get out in public - how I feel about people at work, how much I enjoy certain bodily functions, sexual kinks. Nothing I'd want to tell them, but stuff I would objectively prefer for them to know than that I'd committed a heinous murder.

Arbitrage trick is overengineering. Just trade on forex and use time turner to go back and choose the deal.

With 40 000 galleons even going back a few minutes could suffice.

3Vaniver
I would be surprised if this did not quickly lead to the revocation of his time turner, but presuming he asks McGonagall and it's deemed responsible that is also an option.

I'm loving the idea that time travel is being proposed here as the simpler, less over-engineered solution to making a bunch of money.

0BlackNoise
You sir, are a genius.

I think there are some laws regarding using magic for gambling. Wizards can't be THAT stupid.

If not - get into leweraged currency trading, use time turner and don't worry about money anymore.

7ShardPhoenix
There are probably laws against busting people out of Azkaban too.

I assign 0.3 probability to my post from 23 March 2012 10:19:07PM.

0.2 to Harry going back in time and rescuing Hermione with time turner.

0.5 to Harry doing something nobody predicted yet :)

I'd say Harry would trade with Lucius - Harry would testify under Veritaserum that Dumbledore confesed to Him, that he burned Narcissa. In exchange Lucius would let Hermione free.

Harry don't know if Dumbledore burned Narcissa, but probably can beat Veritaserum (according to Quirell), and with his evil side enabled he can risk trying it.

Similiar to "make Dumbledore turn himself in", but Dumbledore had chance to do that, and declined, and I don't know if Harry can blackmail Dumbledore serioulsy enough for this. But Harry don't need to blackmail Dumbledore.

0ajuc
I assign 0.3 probability to my post from 23 March 2012 10:19:07PM. 0.2 to Harry going back in time and rescuing Hermione with time turner. 0.5 to Harry doing something nobody predicted yet :)

Harry promises Lucius to speak under Veritaserum, that Dumbledore confesed to Harry, that he burned Narcisa. Harry is occlumens or almost occlumens, so he can beat Veritaserum, but everybody don't know it.

Lucius Malfoy has his revenge, and his son, so he let Hermione free. Dumbledore loses, and maybe everything is lost, but Hermione is free. That's taboo tradeoff.

2Normal_Anomaly
Dumbledore knows Harry is an Occlumens, and he would say as much and have it independently verified.

I doubt PR counted for much among deatheaters, so Dumbledore did not lose anything here, and for the rest of wizarding Brittain - they didn't have a choice other than Dumbledore, so they wouldn't believe deatheaters that DD could do sth like that. And later they would not change their opinions, but would forgot their motivation (because it was unplesant - fear of worse evil).

Very similiar thing happened in real life in WW2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre Nazi Germany announced in 1943 that they have found mass graves of tousands Polish prisone... (read more)

Wow. I like the idea that Dumbledore burned Narcissa, told Lucius and the other Death Eaters and consciously relied on his good reputation to ensure no one else would believe he'd done it. That's creepy. You're right, that does take care of the "how does he have such a positive reputation, then?" objection.

I still think Fawkes would have a problem with it unless he'd tried everything else first. Fawkes is presented as quite the moral absolutist. But maybe Fawkes wasn't around - and possibly he did try lesser measures first.

"Harry had used up all six hours from his Time-Turner, and there were still no clues, and he had to go to sleep now if he wanted to be functional at Hermione's trial the next day."

I assumed this means Harry will be at trial. Probably as a witness?

2DanArmak
He could only be a character witness, at most. Not very relevant to the trial at hand. Maybe Dumbledore will just bring him in as a spectator, and wouldn't have to ask anyone's permission. We don't know what the rules for that are.

Stealth - not only he must transfer cloak to Hermione - he must also get Hermione out of court, and she must be in cloak at all times to prevent tracking magic, and Harry must have the cloak with himself, when Dumbledore will want to see it, when tracking magic will stop working (and there's spell that detects if cloak is nearby).

One way to do this - duplicate cloak using time turner for the moment Dumbledore will want to check it.

Scheme:

  • Harry takes cloak, mokesking pouch, and time turner with himself to the court

  • Harry waits for Hermione to disappear

... (read more)
0DanArmak
How would Harry even get to the trial in the first place? Dumbledore won't let him leave Hogwarts, and if he did, why should the Wizengamot admit him to the proceedings unless e.g. Dumbledore requested it? And why would D. do that unless he expected Harry to succeed in helping Hermione escape? But if D. wanted Hermione to escape illegally (possible but unlikely IMO), he could surely arrange that himself without Harry's help and presence. (Maybe he'd borrow the cloak...)

Did anybody bothered to check previous spells on Hermione, Snape, and Quirrell wands? EDIT: Ok, we''re told Quirrell cast tens of spells since 06:33, still - they should check just to be sure.

Now it seems Harry should just kidnapp Hermione and hide here somewhere(And give her cloak to hide her from tracking spels).

"Professor Quirrell had cast tracking Charms because he had learned of a person with a motive to harm Mr. Malfoy. Professor Quirrell had refused to identify this person." hmm, why hadn't they used veritaserum on Quirrell to ask him who ... (read more)

3MartinB
Quirrells suspect is Dumbledore, as has been clearly stated. He probably did not do it. Quirrell basically acted on a hunch and the Aurors do not really care about that.
4Nominull
Quirrell is, as an Occlumens, immune to veritaserum. Just like Harry.

Lucius knows that his enemies believe muggleborn can be powerful wizards, so he can say that flattery to look like his enemies.

For people that believe blood has nothing to do with magic - they won't state the obvious.

0GeorgieChaos
Hat and Cloak uttered that line by way of drawing attention to the reason that blood-purists have taken her for an enemy (which is relevant because H&C wants to give the appearance of courting Hermione as an ally). As an explanation of that hatred and danger it makes sense say it no matter who H&C turns out to be.

But Harry later tested time loops, and system somehow told him to stop messing with time. EDIT: If the computer MoR runs on is really able to compute infinite loops in one sweep, then there's no reason not to allow Harry to compute his primes. Instead something scarry happened so Harry had to tell himself not to mess with time.

So maybe it is Turing computable after all, it just have watchdogs to stop loops after some iteration.

0wedrifid
More specifically Harry told himself to stop messing with time, Harry being part of the system. Sure, if there isn't something that is more likely to happen given the state of the universe before the loop. That scary thing being Harry telling himself not to mess with time. What we infer from this depends on what we know about Harry and what sort of things are most likely to make him respond in this way. Watchdogs are a possibility. This evidence should increase the probability to this sort of thing being the case. But not by much.
5Incorrect
A simpler explanation is that "DO NOT MESS WITH TIME" was the simplest piece of information that could be generated by time travel that resulted in a stable loop because Harry's precommitment to follow the experimental protocol was weak. Also, it's impossible to prove the universe non-turing-computable.

Jumping in time just 6 hours back indicates to me that in the computer that is simulating MoR universe data is kept with 6-hours long cache.

As to Atlantis - they found a way to get out of the box - one level up, and they've left some cheat-codes for people that are still in this simulation. That also explains why some very important figures (like Dumbledore) think MoR runs on stories - somebody outside of simulation changes the simulation accordingnly. Maybe this simulation purpose is to make the best stories?

Also explains why prophecy works for more than ... (read more)

1Blueberry
You're almost right. The actual explanation is that they're all fictional characters in a Harry Potter fanfic. Dumbledore knows this, or at least knows they're in a story. The purpose is indeed to make a good story, and one that teaches Methods of Rationality. Because it's a Harry Potter fanfic, and in the original Harry Potter series, the spells were in Latinized English, probably because Latin has an ancient mystical aura for readers in fantasy tradition.
5EphemeralNight
It seems possible to me that MoR spells work a bit like the URLs for TvTropes pages. When a new spell is created, it is attached to an arbitrary incantation of the casters choosing. From then on, that incantation recalls that same set of effects no matter who performs it, like entering a URL into TvTropes to retrieve a page that someone else wrote, when just yesterday that URL led to a blank page. What I want to know is whether Atlantis was the origin of the system or merely the last society to have edit privileges. (Maybe they abused the system and destroyed themselves so whatever's running the simulation brought the banhammer down on the inhabitants of the MoR verse, and thus began the decline of magic?)
0anotherblackhat
From chapter 14

Complicated and risky plot (he teach well his future enemies). Sacking Dumbledore doesn't seem worthy such big risk. Quirrell now has the possibility to teach future wizards what he thinks will serve him, is impossible to fire, has influence on Harry, and Dumbledore doesn't seem to get much value out of being head of the Hogward.

I think Quirrell wants to unite wizards using some external enemy, and conquer the world/stop muggles from nuking themselves. Harry has great PR, so he'll be the fuhrer of united magical Brittain, and Quirrell will provide common enemy somehow to make it easier for Harry to rule.

I've thought if you're not Harry Potter, and you have brain, then the only way to survive Avada Kedavra is not to be there?

And when Harry sneaked to Dumbledore last time he (D.) had not cast anything to check if it was Harry. Maybe he can do this quietly.

2pedanterrific
Dumbledore seems to do just fine animating things to move between him and the curse. Maybe DumbleMoR can conjure a steel shield faster than it's possible to say Avadakedavra.

If he is not constrained by ethics, he can also conveniently erase earlier memories of Hermione, if he suspects it would help to persuade her to do what he wants.

Effect - Dark!Hermione or at least different than she was before.

You could't apparate to Hogward in cannon, if I recall correctly?

1sketerpot
Correct! You can't apparate into or out of Hogwarts. The ancient wards on the school have prevented this since its founding. The Floo network, on the other hand, works just fine, as has been demonstrated several times in HP:MoR and in canon. The Hogwarts wards can also be easily bypassed by the vanishing cabinet, phoenix teleportation, or portkeys. In HP:MoR, the use of portkeys can be blocked by wards like the ones on Azkaban (and presumably a handful of other ultra-high-security places, like Nurmengard). While we're on the subject of easily-exploitable security holes, Harry J. P. E. Verres might find these interesting: * House-elf apparition uses a different mechanism that effortlessly bypasses anti-apparition jinxes, such as (canonically) the ones in the Malfoy manor's cellar-cum-dungeon. * If it's possible to make small portable portkeys that can be activated on a whim, as Quirrell and Santa Claus have both shown themselves able to do, then this offers an excellent escape method from areas under anti-apparition jinxes, and Harry should definitely carry one at all times. Having such a panic button available could save his life. Unauthorized portkeys are very illegal, but this does not seem to be effectively enforced. * Easy, secure information transmission is possible by using the protean charm to link small items together. This is apparently a fairly difficult charm, but it may well be just a matter of skill, and therefore something that a sufficiently determined young genius can learn quickly. This is faster than using a Patronus to carry messages, less conspicuous, and can be used to broadcast information. Canonically, this was used by people on both sides of the Second Wizarding War.

For it to be "fair" destruction of General Relativity you'll need the information to be destroyed, not container.

So everybody everywhere in the universe would need to forget it AND you need to destroy every physic book with it, and wikipedia, etc, etc.

Testing which potion we got by such and such stirring pattern would be fun.

You give it to your hero and he is instantly dead. Or you give it to some criminal sentenced to death/Azkaban and he becomes unkillable for a month, or invisible to Dementors :)

Or you give it to rat and nothing happens - you try to kill the rat and he's killed - maybe that was potion that makes you invisible to dementors?

4gwern
That sounds a lot like modern drug testing, actually...

For Quirrell it would be "in character" to kill Dumbledore in such a way, that everybody would think it was natural death. Or at least assasinate him quietly without witnesses, without time for Dumbledore to react.

BTW - what stops Quirrell from polyjuicing as Harry, asking for private audience in Dumbledore apartment, doing quick surprise Avada Kedavra, and flying out of window? Or better yet - put Albus body to magical pouch, polyjuice as Dumbledore and run Hogward ever since. Dumbledore behaves quite strange, and rarely shows publicly, so it wo... (read more)

2Desrtopa
Dumbledore might have other methods of recognizing such a disguise. Perhaps, for instance, he can detect the approximate magical strength of a person regardless of their appearance? In Half-Blood Prince, while seeking out one of Voldemort's horcruxes, he and Harry encounter a device which is supposed to detect when a wizard passes through by registering their power, and Dumbledore notes that next to him, it's not even going to notice Harry. Perhaps while a switch like Barty Crouch Junior for Alastor Moody could slip his notice, a huge disparity like Quirrell for an eleven year old Harry would be an immediate red flag in his senses.
5pedanterrific
"Polyfluis Reverso!" If killing Dumbledore were as simple as yelling "Avada Kedavra" at him when his back is turned, he'd already be dead.
2Joshua Hobbes
Dumbledore's death would probably be not worth the trouble right now, but I think that if it were possible Quirrell would have removed and impersonated him before Harry ever got to Hogwarts. Quirrell probably has more raw talent than Albus, but when someone has an ancient wand that guarantees combat victory talent isn't enough. He's smart enough to know he'll need to plot his way to victory, because he is not beating the Elder Wand.

So if I specified to the Outcome Pump, that I want the outcome, where the person, that is future version of me (by DNA, and by physical continuity of the body), will write "ABRACADABRA, This outcome I good enough and I value it for $X" on the paper and put in on the outcome pump, and the $X is how much I value the outcome. And if this won't happen in one year, I don't want this outcome, either).

Are there any loopholes?

6Qiaochu_Yuan
Genie takes over your body.

If I am simulated the decision I will take is determined by AI not by my - I have no free will - I feel, that I make decision, but it is in reality the AI simulated me for her purposes in such a way, that I decided so and so - I assign probability 0.9999999 to this, but nothing depends on my decision here, so I can as well "try to decide" not to to let the AI out.

If I am not simulated, I can safely not let the AI out - probability 0.000001, but positive outcome.