The universe makes it rather obvious that you can’t. How do we know that? Because the economics of Time-Turners is such that they are only valuable if you have exactly one and any additional time-turners are irrelevant. If time-turners worked that way then...
… You would want as many as you could get. And Hogwarts wouldn’t be able to loan them out. If each person can only use 1 time-turner (as I say), then the economic demand is at most the population who’s aware of time-turners. If you can use infinitely many time turners, then demand is without limit. The price for them would increase, and Hogwarts wouldn’t be free to hand them out like they relatively were inexpensive.
They would have a very high price, and powerful or rich wizards would use them as much as they want. People as rich as Lucius Malfoy would be wearing twenty five time-turners like they were the rapper flava-flav. Upon hearing about Azkaban being attacked, you’d immediately go back six hours instead of one because there would be no reason to not do it. Harry, upon exiting the Azkaban wards, would have run into a patrol of a thousand disillusioned Dumbledores patrolling the sky. Hermione would have gotten arrested, and McGonagall would temporarily recall all the time-turners so that Harry or Dumbledore could have a week of turned time to come up with a defense.
No, the universe does not appear as it would if time turners could be stacked. Indeed if they could, things would look drastically different.
I don’t think there’s a strong economic argument against multiple Time-Turners—I can think of a number of reasons why the demand for additional loops might run into diminishing returns pretty quickly. Starting with self-consistency problems—if the simplest solution to a factoring problem that leverages Time-Turning is “DO NOT MESS WITH TIME”, then it wouldn’t surprise me too much if the simplest self-consistent solution to more complicated and dangerous tasks that involve self-reference is a mysterious death or incapacity on the first iteration. This would be noticed, and Time-Turner abuse would be avoided. Then there’s jet lag, synchronization issues, and any number of other things. More than one Time-Turner would definitely be useful (and desired), but the twenty-fifth wouldn’t be anywhere close to as useful as the first.
That being said, I think you present pretty solid behavioral reasons why we can probably assume it’s impossible.
Very true. Only defense is that people are generally dumb and unimaginative. But that’s a pretty good defense in a fictional universe, even if it is a fully general response to some things.
The universe makes it rather obvious that you can’t. How do we know that? Because the economics of Time-Turners is such that they are only valuable if you have exactly one and any additional time-turners are irrelevant. If time-turners worked that way then...
… You would want as many as you could get. And Hogwarts wouldn’t be able to loan them out. If each person can only use 1 time-turner (as I say), then the economic demand is at most the population who’s aware of time-turners. If you can use infinitely many time turners, then demand is without limit. The price for them would increase, and Hogwarts wouldn’t be free to hand them out like they relatively were inexpensive.
They would have a very high price, and powerful or rich wizards would use them as much as they want. People as rich as Lucius Malfoy would be wearing twenty five time-turners like they were the rapper flava-flav. Upon hearing about Azkaban being attacked, you’d immediately go back six hours instead of one because there would be no reason to not do it. Harry, upon exiting the Azkaban wards, would have run into a patrol of a thousand disillusioned Dumbledores patrolling the sky. Hermione would have gotten arrested, and McGonagall would temporarily recall all the time-turners so that Harry or Dumbledore could have a week of turned time to come up with a defense.
No, the universe does not appear as it would if time turners could be stacked. Indeed if they could, things would look drastically different.
I don’t think there’s a strong economic argument against multiple Time-Turners—I can think of a number of reasons why the demand for additional loops might run into diminishing returns pretty quickly. Starting with self-consistency problems—if the simplest solution to a factoring problem that leverages Time-Turning is “DO NOT MESS WITH TIME”, then it wouldn’t surprise me too much if the simplest self-consistent solution to more complicated and dangerous tasks that involve self-reference is a mysterious death or incapacity on the first iteration. This would be noticed, and Time-Turner abuse would be avoided. Then there’s jet lag, synchronization issues, and any number of other things. More than one Time-Turner would definitely be useful (and desired), but the twenty-fifth wouldn’t be anywhere close to as useful as the first.
That being said, I think you present pretty solid behavioral reasons why we can probably assume it’s impossible.
For some reason I found this image irresistibly hilarious. The sky is filled with two thousand twinkling stars!
Very true. Only defense is that people are generally dumb and unimaginative. But that’s a pretty good defense in a fictional universe, even if it is a fully general response to some things.