I was thinking that as of this chapter, Harry now had enough evidence to promote to attention the hypothesis that Quirrell is actually Voldemort. He has reason to believe that Voldemort has access to a mechanism which allows him to take control of people and give them a portion of his power, and Quirrell's apparent backstory entails his having undergone a conspicuous increase in apparent competence, much like that which Moody and Dumbledore suspect of having happened to Lockheart. And he has the assurances of the Order of the Pheonix that Voldemort was really smart, no, seriously smart, trust us, you're still underestimating him. And he knows Quirrell is heavily misanthropic and cavalier with people's lives, and also he went out of his way to remove Voldemort's premier servant from Azkaban, who might be useful to other enterprising wizards if she was taught some of the lore of Salazar Slytherin, but also, as Harry has been told, is a key component in restoring Voldemort to power.
But then it occurred to me that given the fact that Quirrell's sudden spike in competence in his backstory occurred while Voldemort was still around, not after his death, he would have to draw the conclusi...
Primary piece of evidence against: Voldemort tried to kill Harry,
I don't think we know that.
I've always thought it would have made more sense in the original series to have Voldemort purposely make Harry into a Horcrux.
If making someone else a horcrux transfers some of your power to them, that makes them stronger, and better able to defend your horcrux.
It starts to look like a mutual immortality defense league. A bunch of people get together making each other their horcruxes, so that they all can't die without all the others being killed first, they all have an interest in protecting each other, and they conserve the power that they'd otherwise lose to the creation of the horcrux by contributing it to another member of the defense league.
Professor McGonagall looked like she was in pain. "Alastor - but - will you teach the classes, if -" "Ha!" said Moody. "If I ever say yes to that question, check me for Polyjuice, because it's not me."
Did anyone else laugh out loud at that line? :-)
Another subtle point that was full of win:
"I cannot believe that guy's reaction time," Harry said, brushing off his Cloak as he stood up from where he'd been lying invisible on the floor, unseen by his previous self. "I can't believe his movement speed either. I'm going to have to figure out some way to zap him without speaking an incantation that gives it away..."
The "I can't believe it" is because it's not true - this is the moment he figures out Moody can see him when invisible.
This chapter, and the update to Chapter 85, are both fantastic. I hadn't noticed until now that Moody is the avatar of being pessimistic enough that your expectations overshoot and undershoot reality appropriately often (in the same way that Fred and George are the avatar of Aumann's agreement theorem), and I'm wondering what other avatars I'm missing.
This won't exactly be a new observation, but one thing I really like about reading MoR is that some of the most important events involve characters updating their beliefs, and in pretty much any other story the only way this happens is when characters announce themselves or other characters doing this, e.g. "Aha! So it was you who killed Prince So-and-so! You traitor!" and instead MoR characters update their beliefs inside their heads like sensible people and the reader has to figure out the nature of the update for themselves. I don't think I've seen this happen in any other story I've read, it is a great rationality exercise, and I more or less completely missed it the first time I read through. (That is, I noticed Harry doing a lot of updating because it's text instead of subtext, but it didn't occur to me that I would understand the story better if I kept track of updates going on in minds other than Harry's.)
Moody is the avatar of being pessimistic enough that your expectations overshoot and undershoot reality appropriately often
It's funny that Quirrel ought to be that too, because he's hyperrational and reliably cynical about people, and yet his backstory is that he failed to conquer England because he wasn't cynical enough and thought people would follow a Light Lord instead of backstab him.
Actually, I see a significant (at least 10%) chance that the person currently known as Quirrel was both the 'Light Lord' and the Dark Lord of the last war. His "Voldemort' persona wasn't actually trying to win, you see, he was just trying to create a situation where people would welcome a savior...
This would neatly explain the confusion Harry noted over how a rational, inventive wizard could have failed to take over England. It leaves open some questions about why he continued his reign of terror after that ploy failed, but there are several obvious possibilities there. The big question would be what actually happened to either A) stop him, or B) make him decide to fake his death and vanish for a decade.
Actually, I see a significant (at least 10%) chance that the person currently known as Quirrel was both the 'Light Lord' and the Dark Lord of the last war. His "Voldemort' persona wasn't actually trying to win, you see, he was just trying to create a situation where people would welcome a savior...
This is exactly how I read chapter 85, and now 86 confirmed it. My estimate is way over 10%, probably ~60%.
And why hasn't he tried to become a Light Lord with a Light Mark on an army of personally loyal Aurors? Maybe he more enjoys the thrill of the chase than rationally plots how to rid the world of Dark Lords.
Maybe because he has enough experience to know how much attempting to make himself any kind of Lord would increase his chances of getting killed.
I suppose this is where I need to make the obvious quotation:
If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.
I don't think an avatar of undiscriminating cynicism spends more than a decade pining for his crush that got away.
Harry is slowly updating on the evidence that the wizarding community is not as grossly incompetent as he originally believed.
I agree and it is extremely fun to watch happen to a character. All Harry's private scenarios of how to take over magical Britain in five minutes are a perfect example of his main character flaw: arrogance, or, his dismissiveness of the realities of politics as superfluous, "people stuff." It should be clear to the reader, anyway, that liberal use of Imperius would NOT be sufficient to take over the government, at least not for any meaningful length of time. Harry is making the same type of error that led to Voldermort's original failure, that is, modeling people as being simpler and dumber than they are, likely due to his own sense of superiority.
Totally unrelated, but I wanted to mention somewhere (and didn't think it worth making a new comment) that I laughed harder at "I once arrested a young Japanese who tried a similar trick. He found out the hard way that his shadow replica technique was no match for this eye of mine." than I have at anything in recent memory. (It is a Naruto reference.)
Edit: New thread posted here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 86. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: