Point, I wasn’t carefully distinguishing between legal / clinical death and information-theoretic death. But I think there is reason (namely the magical echo) to believe that Hermione is currently information-theoretically dead, or at the very least has lost her magic.
No. I mention that as an alternative hypothesis about what happened, but my dominant hypothesis is still that Hermione has lost her soul or whatever and so her body as it stands is information-theoretically dead. If Harry wants to bring her back to her life, he needs to track down her soul.
But for your reasoning upthread to work, Harry has to be so sure that the outpouring of magic carried all the information about Hermione that it’s not worth it to him to try and protect her brain, and with (a) his protestations that brain damage means that the information must be in the brain and (b) there not being a shred of evidence that I can remember off the top of my head that Muggles require any magic to run (in which case witches/wizards’ brains/souls would presumably have to work completely differently from Muggles), I don’t think Harry is at a point where he can conclude that the chance of reviving her by saving the body is so low that he should concentrate his efforts on chasing her souly-looking emanation of magic.
Harry currently thinks that Atlantis is some form of system that locks onto human bodies with the Blood Of Atlantis gene and detects their commands (spells, odd potion-making actions, etc).
A simple explanation for Horcrux is that it is basically a form of uploading. Although that would make it seem overly simple for Sufficiently Creative Harry to find a way to make horcruxes without human sacrifice.
Alternatively, a wizard’s soul has read-only access to their brain.
I’m not claiming that recoverable info-containing souls are a completely crazy outlandish hypothesis; I merely claim that Harry is nowhere near having enough support for this hypothesis to stake Hermione’s life on it being true.
I find it somewhat unlikely that this magical echo is supposed to equate to information-theoretic death if it occurred within a span of seconds after Hermione was still capable of talking.
What about all the people who signed up to get frozen after they die?
Point, I wasn’t carefully distinguishing between legal / clinical death and information-theoretic death. But I think there is reason (namely the magical echo) to believe that Hermione is currently information-theoretically dead, or at the very least has lost her magic.
Do you think Harry would care even the tiniest bit about her losing her magic if she came back to life?
I mean… yes, but not enough to not bring her back to life.
No. I mention that as an alternative hypothesis about what happened, but my dominant hypothesis is still that Hermione has lost her soul or whatever and so her body as it stands is information-theoretically dead. If Harry wants to bring her back to her life, he needs to track down her soul.
But for your reasoning upthread to work, Harry has to be so sure that the outpouring of magic carried all the information about Hermione that it’s not worth it to him to try and protect her brain, and with (a) his protestations that brain damage means that the information must be in the brain and (b) there not being a shred of evidence that I can remember off the top of my head that Muggles require any magic to run (in which case witches/wizards’ brains/souls would presumably have to work completely differently from Muggles), I don’t think Harry is at a point where he can conclude that the chance of reviving her by saving the body is so low that he should concentrate his efforts on chasing her souly-looking emanation of magic.
Fair point.
Harry currently thinks that Atlantis is some form of system that locks onto human bodies with the Blood Of Atlantis gene and detects their commands (spells, odd potion-making actions, etc).
A simple explanation for Horcrux is that it is basically a form of uploading. Although that would make it seem overly simple for Sufficiently Creative Harry to find a way to make horcruxes without human sacrifice.
Alternatively, a wizard’s soul has read-only access to their brain.
I’m not claiming that recoverable info-containing souls are a completely crazy outlandish hypothesis; I merely claim that Harry is nowhere near having enough support for this hypothesis to stake Hermione’s life on it being true.
I find it somewhat unlikely that this magical echo is supposed to equate to information-theoretic death if it occurred within a span of seconds after Hermione was still capable of talking.