8 ms·

On the topic of how wondrous technologies become mundane, I find it amazing how we surpassed some of the magic from Harry Potter, and no one is impressed. The

On the topic of how wondrous technologies become mundane, I find it amazing how we surpassed some of the magic from Harry Potter, and no one is impressed. The first book was published in 1997. The characters have very handy magic wands, which among other things can be used as flashlights. They can send magical letters (howlers) that can yell at someone in the sender's voice. Fast forward to 2021, and suddenly everyone is walking around with a fancy tool in their pocket that can be a flashlight, instantly video chat with people, and answer questions on nearly any topic. Even the offensive spells seem inferior to modern weapons. The wizards have to recite an incantation for every shot, while assault rifles can spray 900 rounds per minute.

ampdepolymerase 6y ago
The fidelius charm violates every known law of information theory and machine learning heuristics, not to mention the philosophical implications.
- mrfusion 6y ago
  Can you explain?
  - serf 6y ago
    "The Fidelius Charm (incantation unknown) is an extremely difficult, multifaceted and potent charm that can be used to conceal a secret inside an individual's soul; the witch or wizard who houses the secret is known as the Secret Keeper.[1] A dwelling whose location has been protected by this spell is then invisible, intangible, unplottable and soundproof. This is an extremely old spell, one of the most ancient of all."[0] it's sort of like an in-world deus ex machina device, much like many of the spells and artifacts in the HP franchise. [0] : https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Fidelius_Charm https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Fidelius_Charm
    - ampdepolymerase 6y ago
      The most important crux of the matter is that it can hide both a posteriori and a priori knowledge. An existing piece of information in the world can literally be rendered unavailable except to a select group of people. In the book: > As long as the Secret-Keeper refused to speak, You-Know-Who could search the village where Lily and James were staying for years and never find them, not even if he had his nose pressed against their sitting room window! This raises a lot of uncomfortable metaphysical and epistemological questions. Is this a purely psychological effect? Or does this operate on the information itself? If it operates on information itself, how big can you scale the effect? Ignoring magic, if such an effect truly exists, what are its implications for information theory? (Especially since the information is clearly not destroyed as the spell can be undone.) Information itself could become weaponized. Can a RAM bit flip be triggered though the application of such an effect? Or is this effect purely mental? What about second and third order effects? Does the effect propagate? Assume a machine learning system with the following knowledge/word vectors: Food + Italy = Pasta. If Italy is placed under the fidelius, are the vectors and weights going to magically re-arrange themselves? How will people talk about the dish pasta? Of all the spells in J.K. Rowling's world this is probably the most creative/disturbing. The whole gimmick with the seven horcruxes is merely distributed systems theory applied to a lich's phylactery, a concept that can be traced back millennia to various ancient civilizations. Splitting and and anchoring soul has nothing on arbitrarily erasing, manipulating, and restoring information itself on an infinitely large scale.
      - tuatoru 6y ago
        We just need to get the Antimimetics Division[1] involved. "An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it." 1. http://www.scpwiki.com/antimemetics-division-hub http://www.scpwiki.com/antimemetics-division-hub
- ycombinete 6y ago
  Which isn’t much compared to the amount of space-time that gets manipulated during the series. Literal time travel, giving items more space inside, than that take up externally etc.
  - ampdepolymerase 6y ago
    Most of the spacetime manipulation are still within the realms of physics, or at least can be reasonably described as long as you change a few assumptions e.g. the existence of negative mass, an infinite energy source etc. Only the time turning and fidelius have actual philosophical implications and former has been thoroughly studied and debated in both normal philosophy and natural philosophy.
WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
Even Star Trek with it's PADD was susperseeded but it's just normal for people...
Ajedi32 6y ago
See also: Why Harry Potter should have carried an M1911 [1] [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/gwl0v/why_harry_potter_should_have_carried_an_m1911/ https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/gwl0v/why_harry_potte...
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I get that this is not entirely serious, but it's easy to build a case for why muggle weaponry would not pose a serious threat to witches/wizards in the harry potter universe. the series makes several references to passive defensive enchantments. if the entire campus of hogwarts can be made almost impenetrable to hostile magical forces, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to imagine that robes could be enchanted to be bulletproof. a skilled enchanter might be able to create passive defenses against most/all conventional weapons.
  - powersnail 6y ago
    If Bellatrix Lestrange could go for throwing knives, I feel that guns, and especially snipers, would be pretty effective at assassinating witches/wizards. Most of them doesn't seem to be putting up a shield all the time. Reminds me of a light novel, where the MC used witches' magics to bootstrap his industrial process, instead of fighting directly with magic.
    - waste_monk 6y ago
      >eminds me of a light novel, where the MC used witches' magics to bootstrap his industrial process, instead of fighting directly with magic. Out of curiosity, do you recall the title / author?
      - bfuclusion 6y ago
        If I had to guess: Release that Witch
        waste_monk 6y ago
cogman10 6y ago
I graduated high school in 2004. It constantly amazes me how far we've come. Back in the 90s, CDs were the height of getting music. 1 disk would carry around 24 songs. That's it. The internet was accessible, but limited to around 56kbps on a desktop. Mobile data wasn't a thing. Texting wasn't a thing. Cell phones were barely a thing, but coverage was practically non-existent. Most people got their media only from broadcast stations. You had radio, television, and the newspaper and that was pretty much it. The fact that data is available pretty much everywhere is incredible. Even in the last 10 years, we've went from data being only available in the cities to being able to stream video in all but the most remote parts of the US. On top of that, something not really appreciated by the general public is just how good codecs have gotten. It is INCREDIBLE what can be done with the same amount of bandwidth we had in the 90s. AV1 + Opus can very nearly stream SD content at 56kbps! 1Mbps wasn't enough for SD content with MPEG2 and MP3 audio. Now, 1Mbps is enough for 1080p HD content.
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  I'm not from the US, at what age do people typically graduate highschool?
  - cogman10 6y ago
    18
- gerdesj 6y ago
  I'm 50. We had cassettes and vinyl. I didn't have a Sony Walkman but my first personal cassette player was similar. It was too big to go in a pocket and was generally worn clipped to a belt or on a shoulder lanyard under your coat. By the time I went to Plymouth Poly (UK) in 1989 your cassette player was small enough to fit in the breast pocket of your sleeveless denim over jacket (over the leather jacket that is!) My first home PC was a ZX80 with 1Kb of RAM - not all of the 1Kb was available. Later I had a C64 which nowadays has a USB interface - I re capped it, sorted out a few other details and got it going again. The first game I played on it in 2018 when it sparked up was "attack of the mutant camels" - a Jeff Minter classic.
p1mrx 6y ago
Flashlights, cell phones, and assault rifles all existed in 1997. There was no portable internet access, but Harry Potter didn't have that either.
- nearbuy 6y ago
  Assault rifles, certainly, were already superior to offensive spells in 1997. Cell phones existed, but they were just phones and few people had them. Now everyone walks around with this multi-tool that's of comparable utility to a magic wand. Phones now have a flashlight, camera, calling, video chat, maps and navigation, Google, real-time language translation, etc. The Harry Potter series doesn't have magic versions of all of these abilities specifically, but they all seem like things that could have seemed magical in 1997. In 1997, you might think having a map that updates your position live, or can automatically find the nearest burger restaurant is really cool and magical. If you've ever fantasized about what it would be like to live in a world with magic, here's one perspective: we do live with magic, and you get used to it.

ampdepolymerase 6y ago

The fidelius charm violates every known law of information theory and machine learning heuristics, not to mention the philosophical implications.

mrfusion 6y ago
Can you explain?
- serf 6y ago
  "The Fidelius Charm (incantation unknown) is an extremely difficult, multifaceted and potent charm that can be used to conceal a secret inside an individual's soul; the witch or wizard who houses the secret is known as the Secret Keeper.[1] A dwelling whose location has been protected by this spell is then invisible, intangible, unplottable and soundproof. This is an extremely old spell, one of the most ancient of all."[0] it's sort of like an in-world deus ex machina device, much like many of the spells and artifacts in the HP franchise. [0] : https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Fidelius_Charm https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Fidelius_Charm
  - ampdepolymerase 6y ago
    The most important crux of the matter is that it can hide both a posteriori and a priori knowledge. An existing piece of information in the world can literally be rendered unavailable except to a select group of people. In the book: > As long as the Secret-Keeper refused to speak, You-Know-Who could search the village where Lily and James were staying for years and never find them, not even if he had his nose pressed against their sitting room window! This raises a lot of uncomfortable metaphysical and epistemological questions. Is this a purely psychological effect? Or does this operate on the information itself? If it operates on information itself, how big can you scale the effect? Ignoring magic, if such an effect truly exists, what are its implications for information theory? (Especially since the information is clearly not destroyed as the spell can be undone.) Information itself could become weaponized. Can a RAM bit flip be triggered though the application of such an effect? Or is this effect purely mental? What about second and third order effects? Does the effect propagate? Assume a machine learning system with the following knowledge/word vectors: Food + Italy = Pasta. If Italy is placed under the fidelius, are the vectors and weights going to magically re-arrange themselves? How will people talk about the dish pasta? Of all the spells in J.K. Rowling's world this is probably the most creative/disturbing. The whole gimmick with the seven horcruxes is merely distributed systems theory applied to a lich's phylactery, a concept that can be traced back millennia to various ancient civilizations. Splitting and and anchoring soul has nothing on arbitrarily erasing, manipulating, and restoring information itself on an infinitely large scale.
    - tuatoru 6y ago
      We just need to get the Antimimetics Division[1] involved. "An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it." 1. http://www.scpwiki.com/antimemetics-division-hub http://www.scpwiki.com/antimemetics-division-hub
ycombinete 6y ago
Which isn’t much compared to the amount of space-time that gets manipulated during the series. Literal time travel, giving items more space inside, than that take up externally etc.
- ampdepolymerase 6y ago
  Most of the spacetime manipulation are still within the realms of physics, or at least can be reasonably described as long as you change a few assumptions e.g. the existence of negative mass, an infinite energy source etc. Only the time turning and fidelius have actual philosophical implications and former has been thoroughly studied and debated in both normal philosophy and natural philosophy.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago

Even Star Trek with it's PADD was susperseeded but it's just normal for people...

Ajedi32 6y ago

See also: Why Harry Potter should have carried an M1911 [1] [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/gwl0v/why_harry_potter_should_have_carried_an_m1911/ https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/gwl0v/why_harry_potte...

leetcrew 6y ago
I get that this is not entirely serious, but it's easy to build a case for why muggle weaponry would not pose a serious threat to witches/wizards in the harry potter universe. the series makes several references to passive defensive enchantments. if the entire campus of hogwarts can be made almost impenetrable to hostile magical forces, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to imagine that robes could be enchanted to be bulletproof. a skilled enchanter might be able to create passive defenses against most/all conventional weapons.
- powersnail 6y ago
  If Bellatrix Lestrange could go for throwing knives, I feel that guns, and especially snipers, would be pretty effective at assassinating witches/wizards. Most of them doesn't seem to be putting up a shield all the time. Reminds me of a light novel, where the MC used witches' magics to bootstrap his industrial process, instead of fighting directly with magic.
  - waste_monk 6y ago
    >eminds me of a light novel, where the MC used witches' magics to bootstrap his industrial process, instead of fighting directly with magic. Out of curiosity, do you recall the title / author?
    - bfuclusion 6y ago
      If I had to guess: Release that Witch
      - waste_monk 6y ago

cogman10 6y ago

I graduated high school in 2004. It constantly amazes me how far we've come. Back in the 90s, CDs were the height of getting music. 1 disk would carry around 24 songs. That's it. The internet was accessible, but limited to around 56kbps on a desktop. Mobile data wasn't a thing. Texting wasn't a thing. Cell phones were barely a thing, but coverage was practically non-existent. Most people got their media only from broadcast stations. You had radio, television, and the newspaper and that was pretty much it. The fact that data is available pretty much everywhere is incredible. Even in the last 10 years, we've went from data being only available in the cities to being able to stream video in all but the most remote parts of the US. On top of that, something not really appreciated by the general public is just how good codecs have gotten. It is INCREDIBLE what can be done with the same amount of bandwidth we had in the 90s. AV1 + Opus can very nearly stream SD content at 56kbps! 1Mbps wasn't enough for SD content with MPEG2 and MP3 audio. Now, 1Mbps is enough for 1080p HD content.

dividedbyzero 6y ago
I'm not from the US, at what age do people typically graduate highschool?
- cogman10 6y ago
  18
gerdesj 6y ago
I'm 50. We had cassettes and vinyl. I didn't have a Sony Walkman but my first personal cassette player was similar. It was too big to go in a pocket and was generally worn clipped to a belt or on a shoulder lanyard under your coat. By the time I went to Plymouth Poly (UK) in 1989 your cassette player was small enough to fit in the breast pocket of your sleeveless denim over jacket (over the leather jacket that is!) My first home PC was a ZX80 with 1Kb of RAM - not all of the 1Kb was available. Later I had a C64 which nowadays has a USB interface - I re capped it, sorted out a few other details and got it going again. The first game I played on it in 2018 when it sparked up was "attack of the mutant camels" - a Jeff Minter classic.

p1mrx 6y ago

Flashlights, cell phones, and assault rifles all existed in 1997. There was no portable internet access, but Harry Potter didn't have that either.

nearbuy 6y ago
Assault rifles, certainly, were already superior to offensive spells in 1997. Cell phones existed, but they were just phones and few people had them. Now everyone walks around with this multi-tool that's of comparable utility to a magic wand. Phones now have a flashlight, camera, calling, video chat, maps and navigation, Google, real-time language translation, etc. The Harry Potter series doesn't have magic versions of all of these abilities specifically, but they all seem like things that could have seemed magical in 1997. In 1997, you might think having a map that updates your position live, or can automatically find the nearest burger restaurant is really cool and magical. If you've ever fantasized about what it would be like to live in a world with magic, here's one perspective: we do live with magic, and you get used to it.