To the Extreme

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 164905

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "va32h" <va32h at ...> wrote:
>
> 
> va32h here:
> 
> Well on one level, I would argue that Polyjuice Potion has now been 
> used three times, Animagi have been used twice, and the Imperius 
> Curse has been used twice so those guns are hardly being left 
> unfired. 
> 

Ken:

Yes, they have been fired, they have been extremely effective, and
they are still loaded. Try to imagine a World War 1 where both 
sides fired three belts of machine gun ammunition, three artillery
shells, three clips of rifle ammunition, and then resorted to 
fist fighting for the duration of the war. Effective techniques are 
not used three times and then dropped, They are used 
continuously until they become ineffective and they they continue
in use until something is developed that can take their place.
Polyjuice isn't overused, it is way, way underused. People who
try to solve every problem with polyjuice are doing exactly what
humans would do in these circumstances. It is the author who is
being artificial and unrealistic.

Think about it. Rita fooled everyone except Hermione. Dumbledore
did not catch fake Moody until most of the damage had been done.
Nobody caught Rosemerta, Draco confessed. Such powerful 
techniques fool the best minds in the wizarding world and compromise
the security of one of the highest security places in England and 
they are only "fired" once, twice, three times? Uh, uh, that just isn't
realistic. Polyjuice would be used in every circumstance where it 
could lend an advantage and so far we have not seen it fail.

> My objection is not to the speculation that either of those elements 
> is ever used again, but at the methodology. 
> 
> Rather that looking at the text and seeing where it leads, "to the 
> extreme" theorists seem to want to start with their fantastical 
> premise and work backward. 
> 

Ken:

And that is exactly how many real world problems are solved. It is 
a very powerful technique in science, technology, and analysis. 
Did you know that the electronics industry that produced the 
computer you are typing on is based on such a fiction? Negative
numbers have no square root, it is undefined. On day some
mathematicians decided for argument's sake to define the 
square root of -1 as i, the imaginary number. Working backwards
from that fantastical premise what do you get? You get an 
entire new branch of mathematics that has extremely
powerful applications in science and engineering. Modern 
electrical engineering as we know it is founded on this fiction.

I don't put much stock in this particular theory for the reason
that there seems no means for Merope to have transferred 
anything to Lily. But some aspects of the theory might have
application elsewhere, the notion is an interesting one. Working
backwards from a result, real or assumed, is a valid technique.
And if the author is not going to show us more appllications 
of the techniques you say are overused, she owes us reasons
why not. There is a saying among dog trainers that dogs only
do what works. The same is true of people, if these techniques
work so well in the Potterverse then why aren't people using
them more?

Ken