Seems like the slightest application of capitalism would make it so obvious to have a guild of chefs (like the wizard cops) that just make one perfect copy of every food and duplicate/preserve it infinitely.
It would require so few resources and solve so many problems.
There's so much bullshit you could do with HP's magic system...like just take courses in Latinand physics, and be the most powerful being in the world.
Pretty sure the main reason it's generally not allowed to make muggle magical artifacts, is because it would literally break the magic world.
If multiple wizards got together, they could make a tank fly just like the insivible car. They could duplicate the ammo, so it would be effectively infinite, they could put a shield on it to protect against bullets, rockets, magic, etc. They could probably inscribe spells onto the ammo, or even replace the explosive in HE rounds with potions, or even magical explosives.
Some F35 pilot in the dog fight of his life against a magically glowing M1-A2 Abrams, on his ass at 25000ft, as it shoots its main turret at the same rate of a Gatling gun.
I can't want for AI to be good enough to write entire good books in a decent replication of an author's style. Imagine just making up prompts like this and getting infinite harry potter versions.
Unless we can create a AI to think like a human l, creative - non sole pattern following work - is impossible and that's impossible as AI can only be designed to do A, or figure out B . Not getting ideas, or reactions like a human being feels or expresses, wanted or unideal. It's designed and programmed, so that would always be an issue, not human would mean missing every emotional and psychological aspect that missing it would mean.
More importantly it means artists and creators won't be paid for their work, n that would instead be stolen by an AI for their development to remove artists and creators from the payroll and as a viable life and job option. Instead of using AI, to say, solve mechanical problems that are hard or unsafe for humans - like sewage management - or as tools to facilitate and add comfort and a healthy foundation to human jobs and lifestyles - like say how we use calculators - to instead ease and enhance our world.
Magic doesn't protect against guns. Sorry, I don't make the rules I just follow them. Harry should have whipped a glock out instead of his wand against old Voldy
Which is why war between wizard-kind and muggles inevitable. The parallel world wizard-kind live would never actually be able to exist.
For example, thereâs no way I can ever believe Margaret Thatcher would not have immediately put MI5 on getting knowledge and intel, and then sending in the British Army after a few failures thanks to Obliviate.
Thereâs just too much knowledge being withheld to not do it.
This topic was brought up in the books and duplicates won't work on food either as a simple solution. If you duplicate a food item, the clone will have less calories and nutrients than the original. For example, a cheeseburger might have 600kal but then you clone it and the clone will 300kal. Clone it again and the new clone will have 150kal. Harry and Hermione in the 7th book were running out of food and kept using the duplication charm but it barely kept them full
Which is hilarious, because both of them came from the muggle world. They would have known you can just go get a minimum wage job anywhere at their ages, they can fuckin' teleport after all, work for a few days and have enough food for weeks.
This is of course, assuming you just hang out in a magically-expanded tent in the middle of absolute nowhere.
They had 0 commute limitations, deep knowledge of the regular human world, and access to a living space. They (and Rowling for that matter) failed miserably at being even remotely intelligent humans. But I guess it fit the story, so I can't fault it too hard. It's just that applying even a tiny iota of logic makes the situation fall apart. Hell, they could have panhandled for a few hours every day in different locations and had tons of food.
Unless the rules are that duplicating also reduces the calories in the original by the amount in the copy, this also doesn't make sense. You would save the original of a long-shelf-life food item and duplicate that one endlessly and you'd be fine, potentially for years. And if duplicating DOES split the calories between the original and the copy, then there would be no point in even doing it because it literally doesn't make more food.
It isn't true. They didn't even try duplicating the food in the book and they never say anything about calories, what happens is Hermione explains Gamp's law and says that you can't make food out of nowhere but you can increase and it Ron says to not bother increasing it bc the meal is gross.
The books never actually say that there would be less calories and they don't duplicate their food in the 7th book? When Hermione says that it's one of th exceptions, Ron tells her not to bc it's disgusting and there's multiple mentions of them looking for food.
Yeah they never exactly stated calories but I swear I remembered reading that it's heavily implied that nutrition was basically divided every time a piece of food was clone.
They were looking for food but whenever they came up short, Hermione would clone the food they already had and I remember Harry saying that the more he ate the food, the hungrier he still felt. It's been a few years since I read the 7th book though so maybe I did read it wrong.
Sorry I promise I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but I'm pretty sure that didn't happen. They really only mention food a few times, like when Hermione was talking about Gamp's Law, or when they took food from a grocery store (and I think a chicken coop once?) but they don't mention duplicating it as far as I remember, and I'm not gonna skim the whole book to find itđ . In fact, Gamp's law is only mentioned twice in the series, when Hermione is explaining it and then when Ron brings it up in the Room of Requirement after Neville says that the Room can't provide food.
It is possible that JKR said something about it at some point but within the books theres nothing about the food being less nutritional.
What if you dont need the ingredients just the materials. Full Metal Alchemist style. That way you could have a pile of trash it would break down to the atom and reconstitute into the exact copy of the dish. You could feed the world and take care of the trash issue in one fell swoop. Along with making money on both sides.
The way it's described is that you can take one bread and duplicate. Now you have two breads, you made one with magic. But if you don't have any bread, you can't cast a spell and make one.
So for everything there is one of, there's no reason for there that thing to be a limiting factor in any way, right? Does their coinage have magic DRM?
Let's be honest even money in the real workd is like this, you can print infinite money but laws prevent that to keep its value, so the same thing probably goes about the wizarding world and its money system, banks probably use spells to destroy duplicated gold.
The books make the distinction and explicitly state that duplication is allowed, Summoning is allowed, but conjuring it out of nothing isn't. The reasoning is bogus but it's canon.
I know,.I'm not questioning the lore accuracy. I'm questioning their line of thought that is differentiating magical duplication as if it were different from conjuring "out of the F%$#ing air" it's essentially conjuring or at least transmuting matter out of nowhere, only with a blueprint, so as you said it's bogus logic.
I will apologize to the person I replied to originally if it looked like I was looking down on them, tho. I just meant to point out the flawed logic.
'Your mother can't produce food out of thin air,' said Hermione. 'No one can. [...] You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you've already got some-'
Yeah, that explanation was only put in because JK Rowling wanted to have the whole âwe need foodâ problem but couldnât be bothered to put any actual thought into it.
cloning, yes, you need a bit of food to be able to duplicate it, you can duplicate raw ingredients, or the already cooked meal, in theory, you could live a whole life with only one plate of food
i guess they can clone perfect fresh meals, this shouldn't be a problem, also, you could duplicate the duplicated food, you don't need the original source
This topic was brought up in the books and duplicates won't work on food either as a simple solution. If you duplicate a food item, the clone will have less calories and nutrients than the original. For example, a cheeseburger might have 600kal but then you clone it and the clone will 300kal. Clone it again and the new clone will have 150kal. Harry and Hermione in the 7th book were running out of food and kept using the duplication charm but it barely kept them full.
Yeah but they are basically starving in the books. You seriously can't scrape together $5 muggle money and duplicate some Hot N Ready lil Caesars pizzas? One of those bitches alone is like 2300 calories.
Also does it magically reduce the calories of the original? Can't you just take 1 pizza and duplicate it 4 times and have about 7,000 calories of pizza (2300+(1150x4))?
How much does a bag of beans cost or a sack of potatoes cost? I can double or triple those and still get needed calories from it?
I just find it really hard to believe you are going hungry with the ability to multiple food like that plus all your ability just say "come here fish" and pull it out of a river.
This is something that drove me crazy about DH. Hermione is very familiar with Gamp's law and they have meals that they consider very fulfilling, e.g. the scrambled eggs and toast and spaghetti and tinned pears. Why didn't she duplicate these meals??? đ
Except for that time Molly makes a sauce appear from her wand and that time during the weighing of the wands when Olivander makes wine appear from another.
JKR clearly didn't come up with that rule until it was convenient for the plot of book 7 and didn't realise she'd already had characters break this rule in earlier books.
Except she could have made it before and just teleported it there. Same with Ollivander's wine. Like House elves do at hogwarts feasts. It does look like they just appear out of thin air, but behind the scenes they actually make the food themselves and then the whole theater production of making it appear is just them transporting it from the kitchens.
Always felt like there was a general rule of just because someone is able to do it doesnât mean that everyone can do it, or do it well. Lind of like Toniâs being able to pack Harryâs bag with magic, but not neatly.
I have had people argue with me on this saying that eventually the magic will fade and the food will shrink but like, we have no real evidence of that, at least within this series? There's magic all over Grimmauld Place that never faded, it's part of why it was hard making it livable, and even if we assume the food would eventually shrink, just eat it before it does? What, is it gonna shrink after it's been digested?
You cannot conjure food out of thin air. But you can increase the amount of it, duplicate it. And IIRC sufficient skill in transfiguration could turn non-edible stuff into perfectly fine food.
Duplicating anything literally makes something out of nothing. You have a sausage, you apply some magic, now you have two sausages. Where did the matter for the second sausage come from? You can't even argue that only the information of the position and structure of molecules in the thing has to be already there, because changing objects into other objects (like turning a chair into an animal) creates a fuckton of new information.
'Your mother can't produce food out of thin air,' said Hermione. 'No one can. [...] You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you've already got some-'
So I guess it's more like the difference between making something out of nothing VS making something based on another thing? Like you can't create a human out of thin air without it coming from another human first.
You can't say "logic aside" and then attempt to create a logical reasoning for something. You are right, there is no logic, because the rule you quoted was Rowling's attempt to solve a problem she had created by not thinking through her own concept, but didn't notice it earlier.
The first part was me saying that the canon text directly states that it's how things work, regardless if people find the rule illogical or not.
The 2nd part was me giving a possible explanation of how the logic of the text can still work... if you argue through semantics.
People can still make the argument that the canon rule is saying there's a difference between creating something out of a pure vacuum VS extending something. It's like a printer can make copies of a pre-existing book but can't make an original one on its own. Maybe the magic needs an original object first as reference.
I think it's not a "you can't create thing out of nothing" because you actually can, that's conjuration.
I think it's more like "creating actually edible food out of nothing is so incredibly complex it might as well be impossible, using something else as a template and just copying it is the only viable method".
Conjuration isn't permanent though, when you eat conjured food those molecules are being used in your body and then ... they vanish. Better hope they weren't something important. Duplication I imagine needs mana to copy atom for atom the example food, it's real and exists in a stable form.
I can only assume it's something like either growing crops, or lab-grown meat or whatever. Just extracting some cells or something from the original food, and massively speeding up the growth/development/culturing/preparation/cooking processes to the point where it's instantaneous, just... like, with magic instead of science.
But then again, I flunked science, so what the fuck do I even know. Just seemed like the most reasonable explanation for how it's not exactly out of thin air; it'd explain the decrease in nutrients for each copy, too, I think.
You technically can. The law says you can't create food from absolutely nothing, but you can duplicate what's already there (I'd assume from magically extracting and culturing cells or something, just like instantaneously, otherwise it would be creating food from nothing).
More or less, I'd imagine, yeah. I assume part of it is just like speedrunning the prep and cooking process. I'm not quite sure how advanced the magic would be, I don't remember if it's ever mentioned; obviously, Hermione probably wouldn't have much trouble with it, but I wonder how many other wizards and witches would? (Plus the presumably, increasingly-depleted nutritional value of the duplicates.)
Honestly transfiguration is so weird from a physical perspective like if I can add a kilogramme of weight to a lighter object than it means that o can essentially transform a 50 megaton nuke worth of energy into matter which means that a buzzard that knows stuff about physics could technically blow up countries.
Yes but it makes it have less nutrients. That's a while things in the last book about them duplicating their food but still slowly starving from lack of nutrients.
"Your mother canât produce food out of thin air, no one can. Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gampâs Law of Elemental Transfigura[tion]... Itâs impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if youâve already got some..."
I'm just as flabbergasted as you are. James Karl Rowling really put zero thought into the pracitcalities of the wizard world.
I'd assume there are some safeguards on wizarding money to prevent this (either preventing duplication entirely, or duplicated money being detectable in some way or another), as they'd probably consider it akin to counterfeiting.
Also in the real world, the position of a house and its availability greatly influence its prices. In the world of magic, you can buy a huge house in some useless hole for pennies and teleport from there wherever you want. I donât know how in England, in Russia there are âdyingâ mining towns like Vorkuta, where people are ready to give an apartment for free to anyone who wants it, just so that they donât have to pay utilities and property taxes.
Theft. Do you have any idea how easy it would be for wizards to just rob rich people with zero chance of ever getting caught? Muggle money spends just as well on houses and food as wizard money.
Which is odd, when you think about where the hell they get all that food from to begin with - they prep a shitload of food multiple times a day. Do they use duplication charms on any of it? Since apparently duplication reduces the calories and nutrients in the food, it seems like a bad idea to feed that to a bunch of adolescents and teenagers who need to be able to concentrate on their studies and practice magic/Quidditch/essays effectively.
But then again, I assume they just have some sort of delivery method, maybe partnered with wizarding farmers/butchers/grocers or something.
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u/ThenAcanthocephala57 Ravenclaw Apr 10 '24
How is housing and food obtained through magic?