Harry can tell Voldemort that Harry’s death has an unknown chance of hijacking Voldemort’s horcrux network, and neither of them have enough information to push that probability below 5%. As far as I can tell, that’s simply true. We know that Voldemort hasn’t done any tests of the improved horcrux spell until now, and has been mistaken before about its working. The Voldemort described in this chapter would not accept a 5% risk on this particular plan, so he will carry out some experimental tests before killing Harry. That seems to allow Harry to evade immediate death, which is what Eliezer asked for.
Harry’s death burst will very likely interact with Voldemort’s magic anyway, like the wards Voldemort placed around the spot, or the dark marks on minions’ hands. That changes the whole plan. Now Voldemort must get himself and the minions far away at the moment of Harry’s death, and also lift the wards. That buys some time as well, and is compatible with the previous idea.
Voldemort has just taught Harry how to un-transfigure stuff wandlessly. If Harry’s glasses are some sort of transfigured distraction that could be used to buy a couple seconds, Harry could use it, and immediately fire Flitwick’s swerving hex. I’m pretty sure Voldemort doesn’t know about that one, can’t dodge because the hex was fast enough to drop Moody, and can’t shield because that would count as magic touching. (Moreover, even if Voldemort dodges, the hex might still touch his wards around the graveyard, so maybe Harry can just fire in a random direction.) That could be one way to cause a resonance cascade, what happens next is anyone’s guess.
ETA: I just posted a more fleshed out solution on /r/hpmor. It’s very likely that it can be improved even further.
1) (Harry tells Voldemort his death could hijack the horcrux network) doesn’t seem unlikely at all. Both hints from within the story (the Marauder map) and on the meta level (“Riddles and Answers”) suggest an unprecedent congruence of identity, at least in the sense of magical artifacts (the map) being unable to tell the difference.
I did not post it since strictly speaking Harry should keep quiet about it.Losing the challenge of not dying (learned to lose), but increasing his chances of winning the war. Immediately even: Since the new horcrux system enables ghost travel, Harry could just try and overwrite / take possession of Voldemort body. Either it works and he wins, or it doesn’t and the magic resonance kills … well, kills only Voldemort, since Harry at that point would be the undead spirit.
That solution occurred to me as I was reading the challenge, and I was puzzled that on my (admittedly cursory) reading of a bunch of solutions, I did not find any exactly resembling it. Either the approach is deeply flawed and I don’t see it, or everyone else is taking this as literary as I did and holding off on proposing it (since it may not be precisely the teacher’s password as worded in the challenge), or something else.
I’m not sure that Harry should keep quiet. There are three cases:
1) Horcrux hijacking doesn’t work at all. Speaking up prolongs Harry’s life until Voldemort does an experimental test.
2) Horcrux hijacking works, but Voldemort can devise a workaround. Speaking up gives up an easy win, but also prolongs Harry’s life until Voldemort does an experimental test and devises a workaround.
3) Horcrux hijacking works, and there’s no workaround. It doesn’t matter if Harry speaks up or not.
I feel that case 1 is much more probable than case 2, so speaking up is a good idea. If we had strong arguments for case 2, I’d recommend keeping quiet instead.
Personally, I feel that case 1 (“doesn’t work at all”) is much more probable
I’ve come to the opposite conclusion. Should we drag out quotes to compare evidence? Is your estimate predicated on just one or two strong arguments, and if so could I bother you to state them? The most probability mass to my estimate is contributed by Voldemort’s former reluctance to test the horcrux system and his prior blind spots as a rationalist when designing the system, and the oft-reinforced notion of Harry actually being a version of Tom Riddle, indistinguishable to a ‘powerful’ magical artifact (the Map), acting as an adult as an 11-years-old, “Riddles and Anwers”, the FF.net title, etc.
Speaking up prolongs Harry’s life until Voldemort does an experimental test.
The actual challenge may be to notice that the challenge isn’t well-posed, that the binary variable to be optimized (“live, if only a little longer”) is but a greedy solution probably suboptimal to reaching the actual goal. Transcend the teacher’s challenge, solve the actual problem, you know?
Speaking up gives up an easy win
Kind of important. Winning the test, losing the war.
3) Horcrux hijacking works, and there’s no workaround. It doesn’t matter if Harry speaks up or not.
I disagree, it matters: Voldemort goes back to the mirror, freezes Harry in time. Keeps him unconscious through his death eaters. He outclasses everyone else who’s left by orders of magnitude higher than he does Harry, from what we’ve seen. There are plenty of ways to simply cryonically freeze Harry then keep him on Death Eater guard until he made sure he closed the loopholes. Consider that he only learned he could test the system without danger to himself by using others as a proxy “test units” a few hours prior to current events.
PS: There’s, incidentally, as zen-like beauty to the solution: In order to survive, all you need to do is die.
Yeah, I was trying to help Harry survive the next minute with high probability, not win the war with high probability. The latter is a harder problem, and it’s not enough to have a plan that’s based on horcrux hijacking only. If I felt that horcrux hijacking might give me an actual easy win (as opposed to, say, Voldemort killing himself immediately and fighting me within the horcrux system), then I wouldn’t mention it, and say something else instead.
I amended the grandparent. Suppose for the sake of argument you agreed with my estimate of this being the proverbial “last, best hope”. Then giving away the one potentially game-changing advantage to barter for a globally insignificant “victory” would be the epitome of an overly greedy algorithm. Losing sight of the actual goal because an authority figure told you so, in a way not thinking for yourself beyond the task as stated.
Making that point sounds, on reflection, like exactly the type of thing I’d expect Eliezer to do. Do what I mean, not as I say.
as opposed to, say, Voldemort killing himself immediately and fighting me within the horcrux system
Ocupado. Assuming it was not, even Voldemort would have some sort of reaction latency to such an outside context problem. Assuming he reacted instantly, sounds like better chances than buying a few days of unconsciousness still.
‘If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it.’ —Luke 17:33 (NLT, which seemed the nicest phrasing of those that I found on one list)
But this sort of sentiment is more in line with canon than with MoR. Of course, this particular instance gives it a twist that neither Rowling nor Luke intended.
There is no point in adopting it as a plan because it is what will happen if he does nothing at all. It’s a reason to not do certain things- such as point this possibility out, but not in and of itself any kind of plan.
“No action” is an action, same as any other (for a grokkable reference, see consequentialists and the Trolley experiment). Also, obviously it wouldn’t be “no action” it would be selling Voldemort the idea that there’s nothing left, maybe revealing the secret deemed most insignificant and then begging for that to apply to both parents.
Did you post on fanfiction? I agree mentioning the possibility of entering Voldemort’s Horcrux network is a valid solution, neither of them can prove this won’t happen and Voldemort was surprised in the first place by the fact that the Map identified both of them as Tom Riddle. The Horcrux network might do the same thiing.
In this story, there is no magic death penalty for breaking an Unbreakable Vow, because the vows are literally unbreakable. Harry would cease having to be Harry Potter in order to break the vow, and maybe not even that would work.
I have looked through ever mention of unbreakable vows in the fic and not found anywhere where this is made explicit enough for much confidence.
Of course it’s possible that in-universe everyone knows that Unbreakable Vows survive death—but it’s far from obvious because surviving death is really rare. (And presumably no one has yet survived death using a Horcrux 2.0.)
″...so shall it be,” Harry repeated, and he knew in that moment that the content of the Vow was no longer something he could decide whether or not to do, it was simply the way in which his body and mind would move. It was not a vow he could break even by sacrificing his life in the process. Like water flowing downhill or a calculator summing numbers, it was just a thing-Harry-Potter-would-do.
I don’t think “It was not a vow he could break even by sacrificing his life in the process” means what I think you may think it does.
(I think it means something like “Harry can’t, and won’t, say ‘Oh, screw it, I’ll destroy the world’ at the price of dying. He simply, will not make any choice that in his judgement risks destroying the world”. Note that this leaves entirely open the question of whether anything could release him from this constraint. Of course the word “Unbreakable” in the name is something of a giveaway; but I am not aware of anything in either canon or HPMOR that rules out the possibility that such a vow is somehow tied to the vower’s brain, or ceases to exist on their death for some other reason.)
Antimatter would only temporarily kill Voldemort, but would perminantly kill both Harry and possibly Hermione.
The resonance cascade in Akaziban did not kill Quirrel, it only forced him to throw his want aside and turn into a snake. But still, it might be possible to use that as a distraction, while Harry does something else.
Quantities and locations matter. Atomic-diameter filaments linking nanogram-level concentrations in the brains of Voldemort and the Death Eaters could discorporate them without killing Harry (at least, not killing him before he could reach the Stone of Transfiguration).
(Edited to remove less interesting solutions)
Harry can tell Voldemort that Harry’s death has an unknown chance of hijacking Voldemort’s horcrux network, and neither of them have enough information to push that probability below 5%. As far as I can tell, that’s simply true. We know that Voldemort hasn’t done any tests of the improved horcrux spell until now, and has been mistaken before about its working. The Voldemort described in this chapter would not accept a 5% risk on this particular plan, so he will carry out some experimental tests before killing Harry. That seems to allow Harry to evade immediate death, which is what Eliezer asked for.
Harry’s death burst will very likely interact with Voldemort’s magic anyway, like the wards Voldemort placed around the spot, or the dark marks on minions’ hands. That changes the whole plan. Now Voldemort must get himself and the minions far away at the moment of Harry’s death, and also lift the wards. That buys some time as well, and is compatible with the previous idea.
Voldemort has just taught Harry how to un-transfigure stuff wandlessly. If Harry’s glasses are some sort of transfigured distraction that could be used to buy a couple seconds, Harry could use it, and immediately fire Flitwick’s swerving hex. I’m pretty sure Voldemort doesn’t know about that one, can’t dodge because the hex was fast enough to drop Moody, and can’t shield because that would count as magic touching. (Moreover, even if Voldemort dodges, the hex might still touch his wards around the graveyard, so maybe Harry can just fire in a random direction.) That could be one way to cause a resonance cascade, what happens next is anyone’s guess.
ETA: I just posted a more fleshed out solution on /r/hpmor. It’s very likely that it can be improved even further.
1) (Harry tells Voldemort his death could hijack the horcrux network) doesn’t seem unlikely at all. Both hints from within the story (the Marauder map) and on the meta level (“Riddles and Answers”) suggest an unprecedent congruence of identity, at least in the sense of magical artifacts (the map) being unable to tell the difference.
I did not post it since strictly speaking Harry should keep quiet about it.Losing the challenge of not dying (learned to lose), but increasing his chances of winning the war. Immediately even: Since the new horcrux system enables ghost travel, Harry could just try and overwrite / take possession of Voldemort body. Either it works and he wins, or it doesn’t and the magic resonance kills … well, kills only Voldemort, since Harry at that point would be the undead spirit.
That solution occurred to me as I was reading the challenge, and I was puzzled that on my (admittedly cursory) reading of a bunch of solutions, I did not find any exactly resembling it. Either the approach is deeply flawed and I don’t see it, or everyone else is taking this as literary as I did and holding off on proposing it (since it may not be precisely the teacher’s password as worded in the challenge), or something else.
I’m not sure that Harry should keep quiet. There are three cases:
1) Horcrux hijacking doesn’t work at all. Speaking up prolongs Harry’s life until Voldemort does an experimental test.
2) Horcrux hijacking works, but Voldemort can devise a workaround. Speaking up gives up an easy win, but also prolongs Harry’s life until Voldemort does an experimental test and devises a workaround.
3) Horcrux hijacking works, and there’s no workaround. It doesn’t matter if Harry speaks up or not.
I feel that case 1 is much more probable than case 2, so speaking up is a good idea. If we had strong arguments for case 2, I’d recommend keeping quiet instead.
I’ve come to the opposite conclusion. Should we drag out quotes to compare evidence? Is your estimate predicated on just one or two strong arguments, and if so could I bother you to state them? The most probability mass to my estimate is contributed by Voldemort’s former reluctance to test the horcrux system and his prior blind spots as a rationalist when designing the system, and the oft-reinforced notion of Harry actually being a version of Tom Riddle, indistinguishable to a ‘powerful’ magical artifact (the Map), acting as an adult as an 11-years-old, “Riddles and Anwers”, the FF.net title, etc.
The actual challenge may be to notice that the challenge isn’t well-posed, that the binary variable to be optimized (“live, if only a little longer”) is but a greedy solution probably suboptimal to reaching the actual goal. Transcend the teacher’s challenge, solve the actual problem, you know?
Kind of important. Winning the test, losing the war.
I disagree, it matters: Voldemort goes back to the mirror, freezes Harry in time. Keeps him unconscious through his death eaters. He outclasses everyone else who’s left by orders of magnitude higher than he does Harry, from what we’ve seen. There are plenty of ways to simply cryonically freeze Harry then keep him on Death Eater guard until he made sure he closed the loopholes. Consider that he only learned he could test the system without danger to himself by using others as a proxy “test units” a few hours prior to current events.
PS: There’s, incidentally, as zen-like beauty to the solution: In order to survive, all you need to do is die.
Yeah, I was trying to help Harry survive the next minute with high probability, not win the war with high probability. The latter is a harder problem, and it’s not enough to have a plan that’s based on horcrux hijacking only. If I felt that horcrux hijacking might give me an actual easy win (as opposed to, say, Voldemort killing himself immediately and fighting me within the horcrux system), then I wouldn’t mention it, and say something else instead.
I amended the grandparent. Suppose for the sake of argument you agreed with my estimate of this being the proverbial “last, best hope”. Then giving away the one potentially game-changing advantage to barter for a globally insignificant “victory” would be the epitome of an overly greedy algorithm. Losing sight of the actual goal because an authority figure told you so, in a way not thinking for yourself beyond the task as stated.
Making that point sounds, on reflection, like exactly the type of thing I’d expect Eliezer to do. Do what I mean, not as I say.
Ocupado. Assuming it was not, even Voldemort would have some sort of reaction latency to such an outside context problem. Assuming he reacted instantly, sounds like better chances than buying a few days of unconsciousness still.
‘If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it.’ —Luke 17:33 (NLT, which seemed the nicest phrasing of those that I found on one list)
But this sort of sentiment is more in line with canon than with MoR. Of course, this particular instance gives it a twist that neither Rowling nor Luke intended.
There is no point in adopting it as a plan because it is what will happen if he does nothing at all. It’s a reason to not do certain things- such as point this possibility out, but not in and of itself any kind of plan.
“No action” is an action, same as any other (for a grokkable reference, see consequentialists and the Trolley experiment). Also, obviously it wouldn’t be “no action” it would be selling Voldemort the idea that there’s nothing left, maybe revealing the secret deemed most insignificant and then begging for that to apply to both parents.
Did you post on fanfiction? I agree mentioning the possibility of entering Voldemort’s Horcrux network is a valid solution, neither of them can prove this won’t happen and Voldemort was surprised in the first place by the fact that the Map identified both of them as Tom Riddle. The Horcrux network might do the same thiing.
I would go further with this one.
Teacher, what iss your esstimate of probability that Unbreakable Vow continuess to bind wizard who diess and iss reborn through another’ss horcruxess?
In this story, there is no magic death penalty for breaking an Unbreakable Vow, because the vows are literally unbreakable. Harry would cease having to be Harry Potter in order to break the vow, and maybe not even that would work.
I have looked through ever mention of unbreakable vows in the fic and not found anywhere where this is made explicit enough for much confidence.
Of course it’s possible that in-universe everyone knows that Unbreakable Vows survive death—but it’s far from obvious because surviving death is really rare. (And presumably no one has yet survived death using a Horcrux 2.0.)
I don’t think “It was not a vow he could break even by sacrificing his life in the process” means what I think you may think it does.
(I think it means something like “Harry can’t, and won’t, say ‘Oh, screw it, I’ll destroy the world’ at the price of dying. He simply, will not make any choice that in his judgement risks destroying the world”. Note that this leaves entirely open the question of whether anything could release him from this constraint. Of course the word “Unbreakable” in the name is something of a giveaway; but I am not aware of anything in either canon or HPMOR that rules out the possibility that such a vow is somehow tied to the vower’s brain, or ceases to exist on their death for some other reason.)
Yeah, I posted the first idea on fanfiction.
Antimatter would only temporarily kill Voldemort, but would perminantly kill both Harry and possibly Hermione.
The resonance cascade in Akaziban did not kill Quirrel, it only forced him to throw his want aside and turn into a snake. But still, it might be possible to use that as a distraction, while Harry does something else.
Quantities and locations matter. Atomic-diameter filaments linking nanogram-level concentrations in the brains of Voldemort and the Death Eaters could discorporate them without killing Harry (at least, not killing him before he could reach the Stone of Transfiguration).