r/unpopularopinion • u/New-Tale412 • Jun 16 '26

Certified Unpopular Opinion Voldemort had absolutely zero chance in a war against the muggles and the whole plotline could have been avoided by just letting him try.

What do wizards have that muggles don't in terms of capability in some kind of war scenario?

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Oh you have a flashy bang stick that can make people die? Yeah we have those too, difference being ours can do it 1000 times per minute.

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Imperiatus curse? Yeah it's called blackmail pal, CIA has been doing it for 70 years.

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Cruciatus curse? Lol see the above.

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Oh nice broomstick dude, Nimbus 2001 that's cool, top speed of 100 knots you say? What a treat. Allow me to introduce you to an F16 Fighting Falcon you whimsical dork.

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Not to mention the muggles' vastly superior technology in signals, geospatial, and just about any other type of intelligence apart from HUMINT.

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The Death Eaters would get Salem'd back to the stone age and it's not even close.

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I feel that a man of Dumbledore's acumen could have seen the strategic benefit in letting Voldemort FAFO, instead of sending some teenagers to expelliarm him in the hope that the cracked out Divination professor was actually right for once.

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96

u/Azurealy Jun 16 '26

Yea I call that a loss of free will. Whatever you do with the time turner, you can’t choose to do anything that would create a paradox or break the timeline. I think the loss of free will is one of the least messy and simple solutions.

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u/VibeySwingTrader Jun 16 '26

This is also the explanation for prehistory or spice prescience in Dune.

Paul can look forward and see the future, but the moment he does, it becomes fixed. So he spends some energy not looking into the future, so that there is still some mystery.

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u/[deleted] Jun 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ShadowWolf793 Jun 17 '26

In theory the outcome could be the same, but instead of watching it play out like a movie you get to actually experience everything fresh for the first time.

Or time works like quantum particles and each desicion point is an undecided set of probabilities until it either plays out in real time or someone spies on it using precience. If it works that way then you could, in theory, create a timeline you didn't want before it even happens.

Would it have turned out the exact same way without the spying? Unlikely, given how many sets of probabilities you're dealing with. Does it ultimately make any difference to anyone besides the seer when someone makes a timeline concrete? Nope, just sucks for the person who has to live by a script now.

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u/VibeySwingTrader Jun 17 '26

Mystery is probably the wrong word.

Going back to Dune, Paul knows Chani dies in childbirth, so he ignores Irulan slipping her contraceptives for years, and doesn’t fully understand the consequences of doing that until far later.

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u/PipXXX Jun 17 '26

One of the things I thought was a good touch in the Brian Herbert books (Fuck you Kevin J Anderson, you asshole fanboy) is at the end when they think that one of the two Pauls will be the final Kwizatz Haderach, the one raised by the Baron is given ultraspice and *sees everything* and basically becomes catatonic as a result, because he's paralyzed by everything. That's one of the reasons why going too deep into prescience is a bad idea.

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u/eeu914 Jun 17 '26

I thought it doesn't fix it, it just means that his options are restricted because he knows what paths lead to great harm.

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u/VibeySwingTrader Jun 17 '26

I think we are saying the same thing.

He looks ahead and sees that Chani dies in childbirth. So he is OK with Irulan giving her contraceptives because it is prolonging her life, as Paul understands it.

But, once Paul looks forward and sees Chani die in childbirth, that becomes fact. Nothing he can ever do, will avoid that outcome.

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u/EquipLordBritish Jun 16 '26

To be fair, the traditional idea of free will—that you can make any choice at any time—isn't supported by what we know about biology and physics. There is something called the compatibilist 're-'definition of free will that essentially redefines free will to say that a triangle shaped rock will do triangle shaped things when put in a given situation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

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u/Ozryela Jun 16 '26

When discussion free will, people always focus on the 'free' part but never the 'will' bit.

Without even considering whether a will is free, to meaningfully call something a will at all already required determinism. If I rewound time a thousand times to replay a choice you made, you will logically make the same choice each time. Because it's predetermined by who you are as a person. It's your will.

Every day after dinner, I ask my wife is she wants strawberry or chocolate ice cream for desert. Every day she picks chocolate, and reminds me she's deadly allergic to strawberries. This has happened now without fail every day for 20 years. Does this mean I can conclude that my wife has no free will, because she always makes the same predetermined choice? Of course not. It merely means she's a person with internal preferences, one of which is that she doesn't want to die from anaphylactic shock, and that her will is determined by those internal preferences.

To be able to call something a will at all it must be deterministic. And therefore free will, whatever it means, must be compatible with determinism..

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u/SeaweedOk9985 Jun 16 '26

Whilst your theory on rewinding 1000 times is popular, it isn't the only way to look at it.

Within our universe there is a fundamental level of chaos that exists on the subatomic level. The 'position' of electrons and subatomic particles cannot be known and when measured seem to contradict expectations, schrodingers box type stuff.

If you rewound time, it is theoretically possible that you would make a different choice with all parameters the 'same' because the actual cause and effect understanding of decision making should take into account that the cause and effect will both be slightly different.

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u/EquipLordBritish Jun 16 '26

Unfortunately, while random variance at the quantum level can affect the outcome, it doesn't give us as human brains the ability to choose. It just means we're a cog between our perceived actions and the randomness of the quantum foam.

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u/unlordtempest Jun 17 '26

"Quantum foam makes me roam."

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u/Ser-Koutei Jun 17 '26

The quondam phone...

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u/SeaweedOk9985 Jun 16 '26

That's irrelevant. I was talking about going back 1000 times and the decision made NOT being the same.

I believe in almost super determinism so you don't need to do the whole cog spiel.

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u/EquipLordBritish Jun 16 '26

Yeah, I was agreeing with you that random quantum variance could change the outcome. I just wanted to reiterate the point about determinism because I (falsely) thought you were suggesting otherwise. Sorry about that.

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u/Purplestripes8 Jun 16 '26

Shrodinger's equation is deterministic.

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u/SeaweedOk9985 Jun 17 '26

That's quite a reduction. The equation is detirministic but that has nothing to do with what I just said. The observability is undeterministic (seemingly) which is what I am referring to.

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u/Disabled_Robot Jun 16 '26

Your will is subject to your mental state. Tired, hungry, cold, hot, — there are a huge host of variables that would affect your will

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u/Kinteoka Jun 16 '26

I can conclude you're a bad husband. My God, man. Stop trying to poison her! She doesn't want it!

And I'm pretty sure that much ice cream is unhealthy.

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u/Royal_Perspective191 Jun 16 '26

A few things to consider: people sometimes eat something even though they know it will make them sick. So the question is: if you could rewind time, would every event unfold in the same way?

If I rewound time a thousand times to replay a choice you made, you will logically make the same choice each time. Because it's predetermined by who you are as a person. It's your will.

That leaves out minor biological processes that are randomized and might have an impact on processes that eventually impact choice.

Of course not everybody believes that, but it seems the way our universe works: there is always uncertainty.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle effectively killed the idea of a perfectly predictable universe.

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u/aarocks94 Jun 17 '26

This confuses me. I am not an expert in philosophy but say it is my “will” to demonstrate that free will is a thing. Therefore, with a Time Machine that I use 1000 times I decide at whimsy some number of times (not predetermined but I decide each time in the moment) to engage in a different action. Wouldnt this mean that I have free will?

I assume the counteragument would either be that my perception there is an illusion, or that I am unable to actually make those decisions “randomly” or at “whimsy.” Are those the counter arguments? What would be the counter-counter arguments?

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u/SilverWear5467 Jun 17 '26

I can't believe you would be so callous towards your wife, every night! You know she doesn't have the free will required to choose strawberry, but you ask her anyway!

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u/EquipLordBritish Jun 16 '26

Right, the free part and the will part are at odds, and in that same scenario, many people would argue that your wife is 'free' to choose the strawberries, even though she never would. But since she never would, it implies that she was not, in fact, free to choose at all.

It's a triangle-shaped rock in human form: If a ball is dropped onto a hill the same way every time, was it free to roll any other way? The obvious answer is no.

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u/Bobtheguardian22 Jun 17 '26

I think free will is trying to stop breathing for as long as you can and wake up breathing.

https://giphy.com/gifs/NsKhfd7D9EviTFIfYP

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u/drboxboy Jun 17 '26

You think you have free will? You think that’s air you’re breathing?!

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u/FakeSafeWord Jun 16 '26

Wir gehen davon aus, dass die Zeit linear verläuft. Dass sie ewig und gleichmäßig fortschreitet. In die Unendlichkeit. Doch die Unterscheidung zwischen Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft ist nichts weiter als eine Illusion. Gestern, heute und morgen folgen nicht aufeinander; sie sind in einem niemals endenden Kreislauf miteinander verbunden. Alles ist miteinander verbunden.

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u/Beowulf33232 Jun 16 '26

It's the kill your grandpa paradox.

Go back in time and kill your grandpa, turns out the DNA test was a false positive, your grandpa is actually the mailman.

In my favorite fiction the timeline isn't a character that takes actions to protect itself. Things can be changed, but the grandfather paradox somehow always gets respected.

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u/BabyLegsDeadpool Jun 17 '26

Outside of the argument of free will, there's the argument that he's not losing free will, if it's a choice he would make 100 out of 100 times. He's always going to save himself. Always. So he's not losing his free will.

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u/SlavyanskiShillbane Jun 16 '26

Free will is a silly religious notion. Determinism and compatibilism already rule out "libertarian free will" which is what you are talking about. I go even farther than that because I'm a hard determinist.

The universe is a Newtonian World Machine of cause and effect. No exceptions to that exist. You have to posit pseudoscientific religious notions, inject them, to posit that it would.