How can LV win the war in three weeks

nkafkafi nkafkafi at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 16 00:34:46 UTC 2004


No: HPFGUIDX 93063

> Carol wrote:
> I doubt that LV owns (owned) a photocopier and besides, he died 
(will
> die) in June 1998 (the end of Book Seven). Either that or the WW has
> been destroyed and we Muggles are next. <wicked grin>
> 

Neri:
Carol, just for the record, I'm quite certain that nothing like my 
evil plan to take over the WW with a self-replicating "Imperius 
virus" will actually happen in Book 6 or 7. JKR just doesn't think in 
such terms, and consequently LV doesn't either. I devised this plan 
as a purely hypothetical exercise, just for fun (I know, some 
people's idea of fun is rather twisted:-)). Saying that, it still 
seems to me that the idea is sound. The principle works quite well in 
the real world (unfortunately). IMHO a bit of standard programming 
should solve all the specific objections I've heard until now. For 
example, regarding "be a good servant of the Dark Lord" being too 
vogue, we could replace it with a list of specific directions, such 
as "obey any instruction of the Dark Lord and his servants", "Do not 
harm the Dark Lord and his servants in any way", etc.  Regarding the 
need to periodically reinforce the Imperius curse, this is actually 
built into the idea: since I haven't included a specific direction 
*not* to imperio wizards that are already imperio'ed, these wizards 
will be constantly imperio'ing each other, reinforcing the curse. And 
they will be doing it so many times that they are bound to get better 
at it with time. At least, I see no reason why they won't perform as 
well as Viktor crucio'ing Cedric, and I believe Viktor is a nice guy 
(if a bit grouchy) who would never crucio another person of his own 
free will. 

BTW I'm also sure that the magical equivalent of photocopying exists. 
It would be something similar to the Proteus charm, but probably 
simpler because it doesn't need to work at a distance and the copy 
does not need to change with the original. It should probably be OWL 
standard.

I don't seriously claim that the Imperius virus is the ultimate, 
invincible device of Evil. Like any other device it may be foiled, 
but the means of foiling it are also likely to be inspired by 
principles of biological and computerized systems.

In general, one of the reasons I like the Potterverse is because I 
think the rules of magic, as JKR describes them, lend themselves 
beautifully to ideas from modern biology and computer science. 
Personally I'm convinced that the first muggle-born computer wiz kid 
to be accepted to Hogwarts will be revolutionizing several fields of 
magic and be the youngest wizard ever admitted into the chocolate 
frog cards. That is, if he is on the side of Good. If he is on the 
side of Evil, then the Imperius virus is just a sample of what's in 
store for the WW.    

Neri 






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