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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 20, chapter 90
chrisfarms100

There was an off-the-cuff line back in Ch25:

Back in the old days, whenever magical identical twins were born, it had been the custom to kill one of them after birth.

I wonder if there is something more to a magical twin connection, that may have even caused problems (confusing the source of magic?), or if this was just a comment on how dark/backwards things were in the old days.

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0linkhyrule5
I think it was mostly something along the lines of "there's no point, you're just going to have two of the same person."
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 20, chapter 90
chrisfarms50

I thought it was more that we are just following the story in one of the very lucky universes that has no paradoxes.

Say there are LOTS (not infinite, but unimaginably large number) of universes. One for every configuration, every difference, every spontaneously created particle.

If a paradox is created, the universe ends. (or never was; depending on how you think about it).

We are following a story in one of the universes that did not end due to paradox.

In another one of these universes, harry continued with his experiment. This universe was never meant to b... (read more)

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4DanielLC
That's like saying that we live in one of the very lucky universes that follow the laws of physics. It's not entirely inaccurate. When you talk about stuff in math, it's common to do something along the lines of taking a universe of sets, and narrowing them down to the one you want. We take all possible universes, then ignore the ones that don't start with the big bang, then ignore all the ones where any moment contains a violation of the laws of physics, and we end up with our universe. Those are two very different things. One results in entire universes existing before being destroyed. The other only involves one universe.