Luaancz

Nah, you're reading a book, not in-universe reality. Harry clearly wasn't right about most things. He just happened to be wrong in ways that worked out for him sometimes. He is testing reality - but not all that well; and he's not supposed to be good at it. A major theme of the story is the folly of the overconfident, and the difference between having a good argument for something to be true, and something actually being true.

He needed to get to timeless physics to get his transfiguration trick to work. Does it mean the world runs on timeless physics? No, the world runs on magic! He just kept trying different approaches... (read 777 more words →)

And of course, de La Mettrie was himself extending what Descartes argued a century before him about animals. So the serious doubt was there even in the 17th century, though still with a careful "But maybe humans are special (wink wink nudge nudge at the Catholic church)".

Both also handily take care of the notion that "In the 19th century, everyone knew that life was on a different order than mere matter"; yeah, it was the mainstream view of the British science establishment, Lord Kelvin being a prominent figure... but serious mechanistic view of life predates his offense by at least two centuries. That was still a time when it wasn't considered particularly... (read more)

And of course, most of those interpretations are also pretty classical cached thoughts, including this one. It's a great example, though!

The fact that we have a limited amount of movements in our life doesn't prevent people from watching random videos on YouTube, even if those people don't believe in some infinite afterlife (and those who do believe don't tend to avoid potentially hurting that afterlife nearly as much as they should - whether that's belief in cryogenics, brain uploading or some pearly gates somewhere). I can do so many things that I don't do, even excluding limits of time and even excluding things I have little interest in. If anything, I expect... (read 584 more words →)