New chapter!

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 102.

There is 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.) 

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:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102
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I may be pointing out the obvious, but...

Professor Quirrell closed his eyes. His head leaned back into the pillow. "You were lucky," the Defense Professor said in a soft voice, "that a unicorn in Transfigured form... did not set off the Hogwarts wards, as a strange creature... I shall have to... take this outside the grounds, to make use of it... but that can be managed. I shall tell them that I wish to look upon the lake... I will ask you to sustain the Transfiguration before you go, and it should last long enough, after that... and with my last strength, dispel whatever death-alarms were placed to watch over the herd... which, the unicorn being not yet dead, but only Transfigured, will not yet have triggered... you were very lucky, Mr. Potter."

This is how the troll was smuggled into Hogwarts without the wards going off. In all likelihood, Quirrell had the transfigured troll on his person when Dumbledore identified to the Hogwarts wards "The Defense Professor stands within this circle". Trolls self-transfigure as a form of regeneration, so the transfiguration would not kill the troll or be detectable.

This suggests that the troll was known to Hogwarts as "The Defense Professor", and so explains what the wards reported:

"... The wards of Hogwarts record that no foreign creature has entered, and that it was the Defense Professor who killed Hermione Granger."

0[anonymous]
Ok. In that case, Quirrell can be hiding on his person or in some magical 'all-holding invisible pocket' an army of trolls, or anything he thinks would be better suited for attack (transfigured wizards?), and Dumbledore is ultimately doomed.
4solipsist
So, people did not think this was obvious? Screw that. I am willing to bet $50 US (1:1) that Mr. Hat & Cloak is Baba Yaga.

I would take you up on that, but in my memory palace one of the walls is occupied by a large chalkboard covered with lines of "I will not underestimate Eliezer Yudkowsky".

7lmm
I'm interested in taking you up on this. Could you give a more explicit definition? How will the bet be resolved?
4solipsist
I'm not picky on definitions. "The entity Hermione called 'Mister Incredibly Suspicious Person' has Baba Yaga's memories." That definition is looser than it needs to be, but I'm giving you generous odds. Resolution would be informal, with us PMing payment instructions to each other. The payment information I would send you would be cheap, non-sketchy, and anonymous for me. We might agree to call the bet off by February 28th 2014 if the bet is not resolved by then. If there's somehow a definitional dispute, we work it out, possibly with someone else on the forum arbitrating. Default option is to cancel the bet. If I lose the bet I will laugh it off. You probably should not accept unless you would do the same.
4lmm
I think the most likely scenario is that we'll hear no more about either of them. So I want to win that case; if the two are unrelated then I doubt we'll hear anything explicit to that effect. Rather than worry about what's "cheap" let's just say the loser pays $50 gross, any payment fees or the like can come out of the winnings. And I'll stipulate that anything bitcoiny qualifies as sketchy. And yeah, $50 is an amount that I can comfortably toss for online entertainment without checking my bank balance.
4solipsist
How about this stipulation: if the name Baba Yaga does not appear in the book again, and Eliezer Yudkowsky does not Word of God that Mr. Hat & Cloak is Baba Yaga, you win. I'm expecting Baba Yaga to be important, and if she's not mentioned again or only mentioned offhandedly I will likely concede. We are on the same page about payments.
[-]lmm130

Sounds fair enough. So we have a bet?

We have a bet. It's on!

9Eliezer Yudkowsky
By request, I declare solipsist to have lost this bet.
1solipsist
The latest progress report suggests that chapters will resume in February, so the story might not finish until March. Extend the bet's expiration date to March 31st, 2015?
1lmm
Sure. Happy to push it out a bit longer actually, as I'm not confident there won't be further slippage; how about extending until June 30th?
1solipsist
Sure.
0[anonymous]
The latest progress report suggest that chapters will resume in February, so the story might not finish until March. Extend the bet's expiration date to March 31st, 2015?
0ChristianKl
Are you betting that in a future chapter of HPMOR there will the explicit statement that Mr. Hat & Cloak is Baba Yaga? What happens to the bet if HPMOR ends without it being revealed who Mr.Hat&Cloak happens to be? So you aren't really up for betting?
[-]gwern110

What happens to the bet if HPMOR ends without it being revealed who Mr.Hat&Cloak happens to be?

I think Yudkowsky is enough of a non-asshole that if that's the case, he'll consent to say whether Baba Yaga had anything to do with Hat & Cloak. Remember, he endorses betting on beliefs.

2solipsist
No, I am up for betting. If unforeseen plot developments make the resolution of the bet unclear, I want determining the winner to be casual and non-adversarial. I will not argue technicalities even if they could cause me to win. That really depends. If the identity of Mr. Hat & Cloak remains unclear but Harry finds a black hat in Snape's trunk and a black cloak in Dumbledore's office, I would probably lose. If Harry figures out that Nicholas Flamel is really Baba Yaga and she's been hiding in Hogwarts all year, I would probably win. I'd be happy to let a mutual chosen third party arbitrate.
2Velorien
- - - I believe he(?) means he will laugh off the loss of the money, in the sense of treating it as not a big deal.
0solipsist
Edits: I meant February 28th 2015.
5gwern
How do you go from the old Quirrel troll-in-pocket theory to Hat & Cloak == Baba Yaga? And which Hat & Cloak?
3solipsist
I updated on the probability that something could seem strikingly obvious on a first reading, escape the notice of hundreds of very smart people, have little direct evidence, and still be true. I didn't realize that there were multiple Hat & Cloaks. I meant the ones that appeared to Blaize Zabini and to Hermione, if that limits them.
2hairyfigment
I'll take that bet, if it's still open. Though please see the possible spoiler in my previous comment if you're basing this on your interpretation of Eliezer's motives.
0solipsist
Sorry, I gave lmm priority. Really we should have used your interest to obtain better market odds. It's too late now, but does anybody have a recommendation of practical mechanisms for ad hoc predictions markets?
1[anonymous]
Why Baba Yaga?
7arundelo
She's mentioned in at least three chapters. In chapter 12 Quirrell describes her as the "quote undying unquote Baba Yaga". (To my knowledge she's not mentioned at all by Rowling.) The Law of Conservation of Detail tells us that she is going to be plot-relevant somehow.
6Velorien
I can never see references to her without amusement. Bear in mind that the "canonical" Baba Yaga of Russian folklore is a cantankerous old witch who hobbles around with one leg made of bone, lives in a hut on chicken legs, and uses a giant mortar and pestle as her transport of choice. Such a character would make the likes of Hagrid and Moody seem wholly pedestrian. Eliezer's re-imagining of her as a Dark Lady, meanwhile, just summons the most fantastic mental images.
0[anonymous]
Maybe the author has read some theory on Russian folclore. Курьи ножки might not be chicken's legs; some scholars think курьи means 'made from smoke' and so BY's hut is actually a portal between worlds (between the world of the living, where the hero comes from, and the world where Koschey the Immortal lives - Koschey, incidentally, has something of a Horcrux - a needle hidden very thoroughly, and if you break it, he dies.)
4solipsist
I'll add "The Massacre of Albania in the Fifteenth Century", a book title which triggered my brain's foreshadowing alarm in chapter 26. The "undying" Witch Formerly Known As Baba Yaga has gone by many names, including Nicholas Flamel.
0Algernoq
Also, Harry's Pet Rock was mentioned twice, so I've got a theory: Harry's original Pet Rock, Harry's father's rock, and the Philosopher's Stone are all the same rock. It would be really ironic.
0ThisSpaceAvailable
She appears in the Prisoner of Azkaban video game.
0gwern
As a little info card, according to a wikia entry, no? Not much of an appearance even for a distant licensing spinoff.
6solipsist
I've suspected Baba Yaga would be dramatically revealed since the sentence I read her name. Since then there's been no shortage of evidence which can be somehow contorted to confirm my theory.
0[anonymous]
I have some evidence opposing your theory. EY has made a habit of throwing references to other fanfics in HPMOR. For example, David Monroe is a character in A Black Comedy. Baba Yaga appears in many fanfics, most famously in Turn Me Loose: A Harry Potter Adventure, where she is an immortal Dark Lady.
0Lumifer
Isn't Baba Yaga a folk tale character?
0Velorien
1) Baba Yaga, an existing fictional character, appears in a fanfic as an immortal Dark Lady. 2) Eliezer Yudkowsky makes a reference to the Baba Yaga from that fanfic in his own work.
0gwern
And also a character in MoR. As are various ponies. So by your examples' logic, we should expect Baba Yaga to show up as a character in MoR, possibly not as an immortal Dark Lady but maybe a mortal Dark Lord.
2Velorien
If I understand ikacer's theory correctly, it is that: David Monroe's name may be a reference to a piece of fiction Eliezer likes, but that doesn't mean that his name will be of relevance to the plot. It is entirely credible that this name was included solely as a reference. The existence of immortal Dark Lady Baba Yaga may be a reference to a piece of fiction Eliezer likes, but that doesn't mean that her existence will be of relevance to the plot. It is entirely credible that she was mentioned to exist solely as a reference, and this is more probable than solipsist's theory.
0gwern
My point was that the Monroe example and the ponies show that references play roles in the plot, so even if a character once named 'Baba Yaga' shows up, we wouldn't necessarily expect her/him to act exactly like the Baba Yaga in the other fic, in the same way Monroe doesn't play the same role or the ponies play the same role in MLP, but nevertheless, the character has to do something and at this stage in MoR, there's no room for frivolity or introducing a new character just for a throwaway gag, and all the foreshadowing suggests that the new role/character will be important - in the same way that Monroe was important for Quirrelmort's backstory and current nature.
0Velorien
But why would you not expect Baba Yaga to be like, say, the Elric brothers, mentioned solely as background detail?
0gwern
But now you're expanding the set of examples... My point was mostly that his set of examples did not support his claim like he thought they did. What he should have done is not brought up Monroe etc, but the Elric brothers, Death Note, Shea etc and argued that there were many more allusions which were just allusions than there were foreshadowing of future characters and hence an allusion or two to Baba Yaga still left the probability of a future appearance at a risible 1% or something.
0Velorien
Ah, now I see. I didn't understand that this is what you were driving at in previous posts. Thanks for the clarification.
0solipsist
I agree completely, from an outside point of view. For example, there was a shoutout in the very sentence Baba Yaga was introduced. I claim Baba Yaga is important and Harold Shea is a decoy. Yes, I also think my hypothesis sounds arbitrary and a bit crazy.
2Ben Pace
That is a nice theory.
1Jurily
I'm not sure he'd needed to do that. Until we hear otherwise, he has access to all the knowledge of Salazar, who knew enough to build Hogwarts. Which also means the source code to the wards and the means to change them. Can you even transfigure something that transfigures itself back? Of course Quirrell can do it if it's possible, but is it possible?
2Velorien
This may be an exaggeration. First, it seems improbable that Salazar entrusted all his magical knowledge to the basilisk, if only because that would have been a ridiculous amount of magical knowledge. Salazar wouldn't have known which pieces of knowledge from his time were going to become lost, only that some would based on existing trends, so if he was going to tell the basilisk everything he thought valuable, it would have taken forever. Also, there's no reason to believe that basilisks have perfect memories - unless I'm misremembering, the basilisk as a species was chosen for its snakeness, deadliness and longevity rather than its intellect. Salazar was only responsible for part of Hogwarts. We don't know that he was at all responsible for the wards, only that he had admin access to them (in order to make them ignore the basilisk), which is no surprise since he was one of the four founders. We also don't know that Godric didn't revoke said admin access after Salazar betrayed him and left, in which case that portion of Salazar's knowledge would be useless. In fact, it would be downright weird if Godric hadn't done so. Since I feel the wrathful shade of Professor McGonagall watching over my shoulder, I'm going to say "I don't know". But if I had to guess, a transfigured object takes on all the properties of its new form, including the property of "not having troll regenerative powers". So if you could initially transfigure the troll faster than its regeneration kicked in, you'd have no trouble maintaining it thereafter.
575th
Well, it's not like he had to teach the Basilisk a full Hogwarts curriculum; he only had to teach it what he knew that triggered the Interdict of Merlin, which is only the top whateverth percentile of his repertoire. Sure he could have. All he had to do was write down the most powerful stuff he knew in descending order until he got to the point where someone else started understanding what they were reading. The Basilisk may not have a perfect memory as an animal, but it "would be huge flaw in sscheme" if Salazar's magical Parseltongue knowledge was corruptible by the limitations of any old snake's brain. I think you're extending your computer analogy too far. Salazar didn't have a revocable password to the wards, he knew the magic that created them, and the rest of the Founders certainly did not have the power to revoke spells from the Source of Magic. Don't get me wrong, I think we're meant to understand that Quirrell did smuggle in the troll as a small transfigured object that Dumbledore drew his circle around. But nevertheless, I think we should also assume until further notice that h̶e̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶s̶ whoever got the basilisk's knowledge got the most powerful magic that Slytherin knew. EDIT: Hedged my last sentence, since Chapter 102's horcrux information introduces potential ambiguity as to how Tom Riddle's knowledge has been propagated amongst his alter egos' bodies.
0Velorien
Fair point. I'd forgotten about the Interdict. With that said (and this applies to your second point as well), it seems unlikely that the Interdict of Merlin is the only reason for knowledge to be lost over time. For example, Riddle apparently found the horcrux ritual in a book, and that seems like powerful mostly-lost knowledge. Also, wizard society generally seems much worse at knowledge maximisation than muggle society. (side thought: is there even a single mention in either canon of wizard universities?) True. One has to wonder, generally speaking, just how the whole thing worked, given that Parseltongue seems to blur terms for which it does not have an exact parallel ("schoolmaster", "hourglass to move through time"), and that seems like it would be a problem for advanced spell instructions. We don't know that. The four founders came together to raise Hogwarts in the first place, suggesting that each of them knew only some of the magic necessary. There is no reason to believe that Salazar was the one who knew the magic for the Hogwarts wards, rather than, say, Rowena. Additionally, you don't need to revoke a spell from the Source of Magic to prevent someone else making use of it. Going back to the computer analogy, being a system's original programmer doesn't mean you can automatically hack into any instance of that system. It is worth remembering that once Salazar left, it would have been three magical prodigies against one in the matter of establishing Hogwarts security. Likewise don't get me wrong, I think it's reasonable to assume that whoever got the basilisk's knowledge got at least some very powerful magic from Slytherin; I just don't think we should overestimate how much that was.
0Jurily
Chapter 20: A wizard university seems out of the question.
1solipsist
Speculative: Quirrell couldn't have made the troll sun resistant, since Harry touched the troll and he can't touch Quirrell magic. Explanations include: 1. Quirrell legilimensed (say) Professor Sprout to jinx the troll 2. Hat & Cloak (who is not Quirrell) jinxed and redirected Quirrell's troll towards Hermione. Quirrell had ulterior motives for releasing the troll (e.g. as a distraction so Snape could pull Philosopher stone mischief).
3ChristianKl
Alternatively there are some magic portions that can be used to make the troll sun resistant.
0Velorien
Do we know this, or is it speculation based on our knowledge of potions in general? Also, is it safe to assume that potions work on trolls, given that trolls are constantly transfiguring into themselves (and thus automatically flushing out changes to their physical state)?
2mare-of-night
Hmm... Trolls are rocks (sort-of), the Philosopher's Stone is a rock, can the Philosopher's Stone turn you into a troll? (This is probably a stupid theory, but maybe it's related to something more workable.)
5Velorien
I don't think that Eliezer's trolls are rocks. * Quirrell states that sunlight freezes them in place, rather than that it petrifies them. * Quirrell states that a troll is constantly transfiguring itself into its own body, which means that the (apparently organic) form it's normally in is its true form. * The troll Harry kills doesn't turn to stone.
0mare-of-night
Thanks. I was getting them confused with Middle Earth trolls.

Lets see: Data and implications, assuming Quirrelmort is keeping up his habit of only rarely telling direct lies: Dark and sacrificial magic tends to kill you in the end, and neither the original Voldemort, nor Quirrelmort had a fix for this. The horcrux spell forks your identity, imperfectly, and also carries wholly unacceptable costs to anyone moral. So, you know, nothing voldy cares about.

Theory: Facing his own inevitable demise from accumulated sacrifice damage, Voldy attempted to fix the flaws in the horcrux process - First he attempted to bypass the loss of knowledge by targeting a strong wizard as the possession target - heck, that might have been part of the point of the campaign of terror - to draw out wizards with real power from obscurity. And so he ended up fighting both sides of that war, because he took Monroe's body while still remaining Voldemort full time. The personality divergence from imprinting himself on a mind that strong, however, was more than Voldemort considered acceptable, and thus he targeted Harry. At a guess, he worked out how to remove the carrier object from the spell so that the death of Harry's mother would copy him directly into the mind of baby ... (read more)

9A1987dM
I assumed that babies just didn't store long-term memories in the first place, but I've looked it up on Wikipedia and it sounds like I was mistaken. Huh.
4DanielLC
If the philosopher's stone is nearly as good at healing as you suggest, then it's a source of income because it's good at healing. What else do you need?
5Viliam_Bur
A source of income you can use without attracting attention to your only source of income. (Otherwise, you risk losing it.) Such as, repairing objects when no one else is looking. If you buy a broken or damaged object from one person, fix it, and sell it to another person, no one needs to know you repaired it. But even if they know you repaired it, they don't have to know you repaired it using a magical artifact.
2hairyfigment
I feel extremely confident that the Philosopher's Stone is not Reductionist Reparo, though the idea did help me figure out part of the ending. First, the reductionist extension of transfiguration required a level of scientific knowledge that (I think) very few wizards before now could have possessed. And second, Reparo can't even fix Lupin's robe. You would need something to enhance the spell -- e.g, some artifact known to do so in canon. Fvapr Uneel unf yvxryl hfrq gur Pybnx nyernql gb uryc uvz genafsvther Urezvbar'f obql sbe fnsrxrrcvat, V cerqvpg ur'yy hfr gur Erfheerpgvba Fgbar gb trg nqivpr sebz ure (be sebz fvz!Urezvbar, nf ur jbhyq frr vg) nobhg ubj gb erfheerpg ure hfvat gur Ryqre Jnaq. Gubhtu vg pbhyq or fbzr bgure qrnq crefba jvgu xabjyrqtr bs gur Qrnguyl Unyybjf yrtraq/cebcurpl. I feel much less confident about rejecting the rest. But remember that nobody saw "Voldemort" die. While the Professor could perhaps be lying about V killing the basilisk -- it seems like a useful way to recover one's magical knowledge post-Horcrux -- I think he's still using his original body and just following the rules ("whatever my true vulnerability is, I will fake a different one.")
1Velorien
I don't think rot13 is necessary here, as you're posting speculation. The Resurrection Stone, if Quirrell is to be believed, cannot provide the user with any new information. It is thus useless to Harry unless it has as-yet unrevealed additional special functions when combined with other Deathly Hallows. Also, do you have any evidence for your first sentence?
1hairyfigment
Harry is the one who brought up the Resurrection Stone with the assumption that it behaved like other devices, in the aptly named chapter, "Pretending to be Wise, Pt 2". The Defense Professor is the one who reacted as if shocked to the news that - if his genealogy search went the way Voldemort's did in canon - he already had the artifact:
-1Velorien
This being Quirrell, while his reaction may indicate shock, it is also exactly how he would react if he did not have the artefact and/or believed it to be worthless in any case. There isn't enough information there to make any assumptions either way. Also, in Chapter 90, Quirrell visibly fails to refute Harry's assumption:
0hairyfigment
Are you saying you'd like to bet on something? Before you answer: * The archaic-English saying about the Deathly Hallows looks like a prophecy. And from an out-of-story or Doylist perspective, it could also come true without definitively being one. * "But like all superpowers, long-range life extension can only be acquired by seeing, with a shock, that some way of getting it is perfectly normal." We can rule out an emergent property of the three Hallows in combination. We can mostly rule out someone breaking the established rules of time travel (though I have to qualify that because I don't know how prophecy works). Whereas the Elder Wand increasing the power of Repair Charms seems pretty normal within the story. We've also established that sufficient reductionism can alter spells. * As I said in my sibling comment, I think you're wrong about the meaning of the Professor's actions - but let's make a much narrower assumption. Let's say a "Resurrection Stone" manifestation can give Harry facts he doesn't consciously remember. That would likely suffice to tell him about the Wand's abilities or appearance. He might or might not need the Stone to also hint at a simple deduction, one that at least one dead person known to him could probably have made.
0AnthonyC
"We can rule out an emergent property of the three Hallows in combination. We can mostly rule out someone breaking the established rules of time travel (though I have to qualify that because I don't know how prophecy works)." I'm not so sure. Harry has observed that magic should b e arbitraarily powerful, and was presumably invented to have the rules it does. Rot13 because of spoilers in a story EY referenced in author's notes, Ra: Jr nyfb xabj gung RL ernq dagz.bet/en orsber Whyl 2014, fb znlor ur jnf vafcverq ol gur angher bs zntvp va gung fgbel: 1) gung bevtvanyyl vg nafjrerq qverpg erdhrfgf, "Qb jung V zrna" nsgre fvzhyngvat shgher jbeyq fgngrf gb frr jung fngvfsvrf zl gehr, abg fgngrq, qrfverf, 2) gung guvf yrq gb qvfnfgre naq gur qrfgehpgvba bs gubhfnaqf bs vaunovgrq cynargf, 3) gung gur fheivibef perngrq neovgenel ehyrf gb erfgevpg hfr bs zntvp, naq 4) gung gur fheivibef gurzfryirf cerfreirq n zrnaf gb pvephzirag gubfr yvzvgngvbaf.
0hairyfigment
Can't tell without reading spoilers: are you giving an argument against Harry changing the rules?
0gjm
Naq (5) gung #4 cebirq gb or n fgnttrevatyl onq vqrn.
0Velorien
I 'm not entirely sure what kind of bet you're proposing; I definitely did not mean to propose one. Having reviewed the Elder Wand information from canon, I concur that using it to empower Reparo is plausible. But I don't see how "some way of getting it is perfectly normal" can describe the use of a unique artefact famed for its unmatched power. It is notable that Harry's reductionist powers so far (Patronus 2.0 and partial transfiguration) have relied solely on his mind, rather than on any MacGuffin. It would seem like a downward turn in story quality for that pattern to be broken now. If your assumption about the use of the Resurrection Stone is correct, then yes, the rest works too. I guess that comes down to whether Harry has unconscious memories of being Voldemort, and whether such unconscious memories qualify for being used by the Stone.
0hairyfigment
That's certainly the weakest point in my argument. So - as you're making a purely Doylist claim rather than giving a reason why it wouldn't work - why do you think Eliezer bothered to include the Deathly Hallows, integrating them earlier and more fully into the story? Why did MoR!Harry hear what seems like a prophecy about them? Why does he use his understanding of the Cloak to solve a difficult problem, one touching on the thought behind his Patronus? On a related note, the Patronus 2.0 requires values in addition to reductionism (plus a magic wand), and your category seems highly artificial to me.
-2Velorien
I think you and I are operating on different models of intellectual discussion. According to my model, expressing scepticism of someone's theory does not automatically compel me to enter in some sort of gambling arrangement, nor does it force me to present a theory of my own that answers the same question better. This is not a contest. You have put forth a theory. I am helping you refine and/or test that theory by pointing out its weaknesses, while at the same time making use of its strengths to enhance my own understanding of HPMOR. I do not need to offer an alternative hypothesis to do any of this. It's not a bad theory either. My criticism largely comes down to the fact that it relies on stacking weak evidence (e.g. speculation about as-yet unrevealed spell and artefact mechanics, Doylist arguments with very varied strength, and that Hermione's body thing you have yet to justify) and therefore there is a hard limit to how far I would be prepared to believe it even if it were the best theory out there.
1buybuydandavis
I'd say that it tends to kill your host meat sack. Not a problem if you can hop to a new one. The problem being the lack of continuity, Which would be avoided if your current host body dies in the transfer. I don't think that is necessary: If the burst is channeled into a living person instead of a device, then Merlin's Interdict is avoided. He transfers to a powerful wizard because that's the good place to be. Better than a rat. I think that's true. The war was not about taking over as the Dark Lord, it was about taking over as the Savior from the Dark Lord, as it is planned to be again with Harry. See my top level post for a more fleshed out version of how I think Quirrell is preparing to upload to Harry.
0Velorien
I don't think that's how continuity of self works. Suppose I, Velorien A, cast the horcrux spell. I continue to exist, and now I have created a Velorien B, an imperfect copy in a younger, healthier body. When Velorien A dies, whether instantly or in a number of years, I die. Velorien B will continue to exist. From an external perspective, yes, there was one old/ill Velorien, and now there is one young/healthy Velorien. From the perspective of Velorien B, he is Velorien A but in a younger, healthier body. But from my perspective... well, I don't have a perspective, because I'm dead.
0buybuydandavis
You can see it that way, and I largely do too, but that was not how Harry and Quirrell identified the problem. The issue, the reasons for the issue. If we avoid those reasons, which dying in the transfer does, then the issue is resolved.
2Velorien
I think you've got it the wrong way round. The first part is the problem. The second part is how the problem manifests itself. Let's take the full quote. The problem is continuity of consciousness. What Quirrell is saying is that because there is no continuity of consciousness, when you die, you die, no matter that you made a horcrux first. I certainly don't believe that Quirrell, who has probably spent much of his life considering the problem, would be so naive as to think that destroying the original somehow gives the copy continuity of consciousness with the original.

Harry seems to have forgotten the fact that he rescued Bellatrix from Azkaban. It one of those things he should ask about when asked for unsaid stuff between the two. Given Harry's knowledge of wizard medicine Quirrell could simply die the next week and take all the knowledge about Bellatrix with him to his grave.

This chapter confirms earlier speculations that horcruxes work by making backup copies of brain states (with the caveat that actually using the horcrux will merge its memories and personality with those of its host body, resulting in a hybrid entity). The theory that Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres is an instance of Tom Riddle (or, rather, a hybrid of Tom Riddle and the original Harry Potter) now seems very, very probable. It explains why Harry is as smart as Tom's other instances (the original Riddle/Monroe/Voldemort and the Quirrell/Riddle hybrid), and why the remember-ball glowed like the sun (Harry forgot Riddle's memories because he was too young to remember them).

I learned of the horcrux sspell ssince long ago.

Parseltongue has a word for "horcrux"?

Death iss not truly gainssaid. Real sself is losst, as you ssay. Not to my pressent tasste. Admit I conssidered it, long ago.

Voldemort used horcruxes, obviously (that's what the five hidden items in the elemental pattern are), but between the missing memories and the hybridization Quirrellmort doesn't consider them to be worth the trouble. Keep in mind that there is a nice theory about not being able to lie in pars... (read more)

Also, won't Quirrell die of transfiguration sickness if he drinks the blood of transfigured Rarity?

No, the unicorn will, but by the time Quirrell drinks it blood it won't be transfigured any more, so he will be fine.

0[anonymous]
From chapter 100: Quirrell doesn't have a very large window in which to drink the blood. More to the point, wouldn't particulate matter, other fluids, other bits of the unicorn pollute the blood as a result of the transfiguration? I could see the blood itself fixing that issue, but in the case of another fluid in a similar situation, I could see the drinker getting sick (if not to the degree that the animal did). I may not be understanding how transfiguration sickness works exactly. EDIT: formatting
8NoSuchPlace
According to this he should have plenty of time: * hpmor ch15 From the transfiguration rules: * hpmor ch15 This presumably means don't transfigure anything into food. However it could also be interpreted to mean, don't transfigure food into anything. I am somewhat disappointed in McGonagall for not catching that ambiguity. Also Quirrell is not a recognized transfiguration authority: * hpmor ch15 However since Quirrells past is unknown (as far as Hogwarts is concerned) he could be one of the best transfigures in the world and he wouldn't be recognized as an authority. Also I don't see Quirrell neglecting something as useful and versatile as transfiguration, so I would expect him to know how dangerous eating formerly transfigured food is.
[-]Benquo120

I think McGonagall doubts Quirrell's goodness more than his knowledge.

2ThisSpaceAvailable
That, and "the current Defence Professor" refers to a different person each year. She's giving the students a whitelist of people who are an authority, and drawing a bright line of no one being an authority unless explicitly being on the list.
6Xachariah
Transfiguration sickness isn't because things turn into poison. Your body goes into a transfigured state, minor changes occur, and when you come back from that state things are different. It'd be tiny things. Huge problems would cause you to die instantly, but little transcription errors would kill you in the timeframe described. Eg, your veins wouldn't match up right. The DNA in your cells would be just a little bit off and you'd get spontaneous cancer in your entire body. Some small percent of neurotransmitters and hormones would be transformed into slightly different ones... etc. None of that would be contagious or even harmful to somebody consuming it. But to the animal itself it'd be devastating. Also remember that once the transfiguration reverts and you're back to yourself, you're in a stable state. The only issue is that you're not back together perfectly. Quirrell would only get sick if he drank the blood while it was transfigured and then it changed form while inside of him.

Death iss not truly gainssaid. Real sself is losst, as you ssay. Not to my pressent tasste. Admit I conssidered it, long ago.

It's still not a lie.

He considered it long ago and then he did it. He doesn't want to try it again because he's already got some and/or they wouldn't fix his current situation. Literally truthful but appropriately misleading.

5MathiasZaman
If Salazar Slytherin did indeed created Parseltongue, it's not that unlikely. Slytherin knew various powerful Dark Magics.

Other words you wouldn't expect snakes to use: ritual, schoolmaster, spell, sacrifice, world, meaningless, murder, obscuration, device, continuity, Merlin's freaking Interdict...

yeah.

3MathiasZaman
But most of those you'd expect Salazar Slytherin to use when talking to, say, an ancient snake guarding all his dark secrets.
2Luke_A_Somers
Right. These are further evidence that the language was constructed or at least heavily influenced by humans, and is not snakes' original natural language.
4Velorien
I would hesitate to call this "obviously". Certainly, there's the Pioneer plaque, but as for the elemental pattern, all we actually have is Quirrell remarking on the fact that Harry's ideas have an elemental pattern, and Harry himself failing to realise it. There's nary a hint that Harry's guesses correspond to anything that actually happened.
3DanArmak
What's that theory? And yet, Hogwarts won't take in Muggleborn from outside Britain. And an early chapter mentioned "lands where Muggleborn children received no letters" (quoting from memory).
3jaime2000
These threads. At this point I'm pretty much convinced that the theory is correct.
1ThisSpaceAvailable
There would have to be a very narrow definition of "lie" for this to not qualify: "Correct lessson iss to follow ssteps laid down for you by older and wisser Sslytherin, tame your wild impulssess.” Also, besides doubling the s's, EY denotes Parseltongue with violations of English grammar. This sentence is missing "the" at the beginning, the sentence "Will not sspeak of planss beyond thiss" lacks a subject, etc. If the "no lies" rules depends on precise parsing, it's odd that the grammar is so lax. If this is supposed to represent just a loose translation into English, and the "no lies" rules applies to the precise wording, rather than the general meaning, then we can't really know what's true.
0Benya
Also, Magical Britain keeps Muggles out, going so far as to enforce this by not even allowing Muggles to know that Magical Britain exists. I highly doubt that Muggle Britain would do that to potential illegal immigrants even if it did have the technology...
1DanArmak
That's just selection bias. You wouldn't know about it if they did.
0roystgnr
Did you just spill the secret? You're never going to get Muggle Atlantis citizenship now.
2solipsist
In reference to: If you wondered why the book explicitly calls out that Harry knows the word Horcrux in Parseltongue, here's some background. Harry has not learned the English word for Horcrux. He knows that unnamed Horcrux-like things exist, and he has heard the word "Horcrux" and made a mental note to look it up, but he hasn't connected the concept to the English name. How can you write about Horcruxes in third person limited if Harry does not know the word? If you just use the raw word Horcrux without explanation, persnickety readers will concoct elaborate theories about Harry researching Horcruxes off-camera. Calling out that Harry knows the word Horcrux in parseltongue -- and by implication not in English -- may keep persnickety readers at bay.
1gwern
That doesn't make any sense. If Harry didn't think he knew the word in English, he wouldn't start 'It is called...' and then break off as the Parseltongue word comes to mind and he doesn't have to lapse back into English. He would say something like 'I'm not sure what exactly the ritual is called -' Yes, elaborate theories based on Harry doing what he said he would do in chapter 86: Hardly a stretch that he encountered a few hints in books and went 'oh, the dark ritual which confers immortality and something bad Moody thinks Voldemort made while he was alive are the same thing', even if he'd never read about Koschei the Deathless or D&D's liches.
0[anonymous]
Has Harry read about Koschei the Deathless? He does know about liches. Chapter 94 initially contained the line: which was edited a few hours after posting to:
0solipsist
There are few ways the word Horcrux could come out of Harry's mouth that I would not take as evidence for Harry doing outside research. It would take non-trivial circumlocutions to indicate that Harry doesn't know what the English word Horcrux means. Such circumlocutions appear in the text. The best reason I can think of for those circumlocutions to appear in the text is to prevent people like me from inferring too much from Harry's vocabulary choice. There are alternatives explanations, like hinting that Salazar invented Horcruxes, but they seem less likely to me.
1gwern
And what circumlocutions are those, exactly? Because in the passage quoted, I see a straightforward explanation of the ritual and a naming in English (with the unexpected result that he knew the English word's equivalent in Parseltongue too).
0solipsist
I hope you are right.
-1ThisSpaceAvailable
One interpretation is that his language production module generated the sentence "It is called Horcrux", and his conscious mind, in the midst of him saying this sentence, became aware of the fact that he knows the Parseltongue word.
0banx
This line reminded me that Quirrel's frequent transitions from man to snake and back seemed odd to me when I was reading. I went back to see if any of what he said after transitioning back to a man was a good candidate for a direct lie that he couldn't tell as a snake. But I didn't find anything. Most of what he said was phrased as speculation, rather than direct statements.
0buybuydandavis
I'm not convinced of the theory. Very tenuous and circumstantial, and not part of canon, AFAIK. I expect anything Quirrell says to be a mix of half truths. That much seems true.

I think we're seeing the set up of the end game of the upload of Quirrellmort to Harry.

David Monroe, last descendant of a Noble House, family killed by Voldemort, the great champion to save Magical Britain against Voldemort. But instead of having the mass of Magical Britain rally around him, they generally make his difficult. When that plan of being a savior fails.

He then disappears. Poof.

Where is our champion now?

And poof! Harry Potter, last descendant of a Noble House, family killed by Voldemort, miraculously ends Voldemort rampage.

Years later, Monroe reappears as Quirrell, just in time to be the Defense Professor and mentor for this miraculous Harry Potter, who in fact is miraculous, for his age, or really any age. With a secret Dark Side that gives him great power. With so many similarities to Quirrell in personality and intelligence. With such a natural bond.

Perssonalitiess change, mix with victim'ss. Death iss not truly gainssaid. Real sself is losst, as you ssay. Not to my pressent tasste.

But if the victim is already very similar, perhaps more to his taste?

David Monroe, 2.0. Prepared as a baby to be a host. Prepared with a better history to be Savior of Magical Britain... (read more)

4skeptical_lurker
Quirrell is too smart not to do this. I think he's pretending to be weaker than he really is, in order to manipulate Harry.
3solipsist
This was said by Quirrell in Parseltongue. If you can only tell the truth in Parseltongue, then Quirrell was really forbidding Harry from obtaining the stone himself.
4mjr
Well. Technically the statement only describes the act of speaking itself. There is no explicit information conveyed about Quirrell actually wishing or intending Harry to follow his injunction.
3skeptical_lurker
Harry trying to obtain the stone by himself would be like Harry sneaking into Akazaban by himself. Harry developing a plan, and coming to Quirrel for assistance OTOH...
0solipsist
Indeed, Harry would not search for the stone alone. The twins participated in Hermione's Last Stand to level up for the final arc, and the Lestrange open bracket has yet to be closed.
2buybuydandavis
That's a good possibility I hadn't thought of. Too busy confirming my pet theory. Quirrell's apparent weakness, feigned or actual, serves to manipulate Harry. His actual weakness weakens the Sense of Doom, and thereby may allow their magic to interact. This is why I think actual weakness is still likely, despite the manifest downside. My pet theory is some variation on Quirrell uploading into Harry, and this is supported by a bunch of evidence I won't go into again. But if this is the goal, being able to interact with Harry, magically or physically, would be an important enabling factor.
[-]Shmi180

So this is why this forum is dying, EY casting AK v2.0.

9Viliam_Bur
What exactly is this supposed to mean? (Besides being a joke, obviously.) Is it Eliezer's public duty to keep writing new Sequences for the rest of his life? Or what other specific duties on LW is he neglecting? Eliezer is not a superhuman Friendly AI. He is merely trying to build one. Most of things that Eliezer could do here, someone else could do, too. Or we can all choose to sit and eat popcorn, and complain when we are bored. EDIT: I guess you already heard something about reinforcement. From that perspective, is this a helpful reaction to publishing a new chapter of HP? It's as if someone gives you a cookie, and you spit on him, and then you complain about why he doesn't bring you cookies more often. RETRACTED FOR DERAILING THE THREAD.

Eliezer is not a superhuman Friendly AI. He is merely trying to build one.

A true EY fact!

4Shmi
Uh, this was meant as a half-joke, and apparently it wasn't very successful. Anyway, this is a wrong thread to discuss the health of the forum. And no, I don't think that Eliezer has any public duty to the forum readers, if you were wondering. I was simply commenting on his disengagement, quite likely for very good reasons (like that he has a lot more useful feedback on FB).
2Viliam_Bur
I apologize for my too strong reaction and for derailing the thread.
2ChristianKl
Eliezer recently deleted posts from LW but on the other hand doesn't write very much on LW. That's behavior that's not healthy for this community.
9Viliam_Bur
If this community depends on Eliezer writing, that would be a huge failure. I think we were supposed to become stronger, try harder, and cooperate. We had enough time to do that. If a group of people cannot replace one person, then either we don't care enough, or we failed to learn our lessons. But actually, I think we are doing it quite well. (By "we" I mean the whole community; I specifically haven't contributed an article yet.) When Eliezer was writing the Sequences, he wrote one article per day. We have on average maybe three articles per day. If this is not enough, then how much would be enough? Five? Ten? Twenty? Are we trying to replace Reddit's output? I know I would like to see twenty new articles on LW every day, but that's just my inner procrastinator speaking. If I were more effective in real life and spent less time on internet, I would be barely able to read three articles (and their discussions) every day. Having more content on LW can be a lost purpose. To some degree it reflects the health of the community. For example, if we were doing many cool things, and writing reports about them on LW, there would be many cool articles on LW. I'd like to see us being more awesome. But it doesn't work the other way round: by increasing the number of articles we can't increase our awesomeness in the real life. I didn't mind the deleted article, but I also didn't mind that it was deleted. It was a shiny thing for procrastination, with no other value besides signalling author's smartness and contrarianism -- something this specific author does very frequently. This is a thing we shouldn't reward. I certainly would hate if other people started writing similar stuff. Or if the same author started doing it more often. (And unfortunately, this specific author seems to have some creepy mind-controlling powers he's using to get a lot of upvotes here, so the standard moderation fails. I don't fully understand his strategy, but it includes writing obscure comments whic
1ChristianKl
It was more than one article. There are events that are more recent than the Will_Newsome episode.
6Velorien
I know I'm not the first person to say this, but in case any of the moderators and people generally in charge are listening: as a peripheral member of Less Wrong at best, this is a significant factor in my reluctance to become further involved with the site and its community. When I come here and see extremely typical forum drama like the Will_Newsome debacle, it greatly reduces my confidence that this is a good place to learn rationality and find suitable role models for its practice. I realise that's an irrational judgment in many ways, but that's sort of the point. I come here to learn to think rationally, I see poor behaviour from the people who are supposed to possess the fruits of that learning effort, and my gut instinct is to go away again (rather than learn the skills that would allow me to override that gut instinct and seek maximum benefit from Less Wrong in spite of its flaws).
6NancyLebovitz
This is reminding me of Heinlein's "Gulf", which describes intelligence/rationality training, and then testing it under stress. There are also the teams in HPMOR. However, (aside from that I'm citing fictional evidence) there may be an important difference between maintaining rationality under physical stress vs. maintaining rationality while sitting comfortably at a keyboard under social stress.
2NancyLebovitz
What were the more recent events?

To cite a facebook post from last Wednesday by XiXiDu (LW-name):

Yudkowsky is again going all nuts over Roko's basilisk. All posts pertaining Roko's basilisk have been deleted from the LessWrong Facebook group, and several people who participated in the discussions appear to have been banned .

Also: old posts on LessWrong critical of him or MIRI are now being silently banned. See e.g. the first post here: http://lesswrong.com/user/Dmytry/overview/?count=20&after=t1_6c8z

4Alsadius
1) I think we can hardly criticize him for not writing enough, given that he's about to spend a month writing a book for free for all of us. 2) It'd be pretty sad if having a moderator in place of a member was an active harm to the community.
1ChristianKl
Moderation is about leadership. If you do it from the shadows it's not as effective.
2Alsadius
Leadership is not the essential purpose of moderation. The purpose is to raise the tone of the debate and make the community adhere to norms. If the active membership is pretty good at adhering to norms, and you just need to take out occasional trash, shadowy moderation works fine. LW has a dedicated core with extremely strong norms, and I suspect that even if Eliezer went into a coma for the next year and the site was completely unmoderated that wouldn't change.
0lmm
Sad? I'd say quite the opposite. If the best contribution to the community is that of normal members, and the contribution of moderators is a lesser one, that's well and good.

Any ideas on what the Philosopher's Stone does? My favorite idea so far, seen in the fanfiction.net reviews, is that it's a device for making transfiguration permanent. That would account for both gold and healing powers.

-4[anonymous]
However that wouldn't wrap up the story nicely in a single story arc. It is a wish device. Probably a direct interface to the Source of Magic (itself an UFAI or Nanny AGI created by the Atlantian civilization and which underwent hard takeoff), bypassing the various operating systems, isolation layers, and programs that have been put in place on top of the Source of Magic over the years, e.g. the interdict of Merlin and whatever macro-extensible program runs charms & potions. The philosopher's stone directly links one's mind to the Source of Magic, thereby making whatever physically possible thing you think of come true. Kinda like the device in the book / movie Sphere, for example. It is said to create eternal youth and gold because that is what the creater of the stone wanted. Harry aquires the stone, and uses it to re-write the rules governing the Source of Magic, becoming god in a single step and sets about "optimizing the world."
0cousin_it
I think/hope Eliezer shares my distaste for such overpowered plot devices.
0[anonymous]
Well this isn't a story for the sake of being a story. It's meant to educate, not just entertain. Sometimes the moral is: invent the spells Becomus Godus and Fixus Everthingus and use them. Keeping in mind why Eliezer is spending his presumably valuable time writing Harry Potter fanfiction, it seems inevitable to me that some sort of overpowered ending is required. Eliezer's quest is to reshape the world in a positive way through friendly AGI. Harry's goal is the same (substituting magic = AGI). If the above theory is correct, we're in for a story arc about outcome pumps, wish granting machines, extrapolated morality, and hard takeoffs. Because the point of this is to make readers want (a) to be more rational, and then (b) to help MIRI on its FAI quest, no?

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Oh, I guess I can post this then: V jnf ng n jrqqvat cnegl guvat n srj lrnef onpx jurer Ryvrmre pbasvezrq gung lbh pna'g yvr va Cnefrygbathr; gur engvbanyr tvira jnf gung Fnynmne jvfurq gb sbfgre pbbeqvangvba orgjrra uvf urvef. V'z abg 100% fher V'z erzrzorevat pbeerpgyl ohg V'z cerggl fher.

0Gvaerg
I'm wondering what Salazar would make of Bane's Rule of Two
1Velorien
Kindly refrain from using rot13 for comments that do not fit the rule given in Will's comment above. The rule is there for a reason, and you are reducing its reliability as a tool for avoiding spoilers.
0Gvaerg
Okay, fixed. IMHO it would make more sense to rot13 hereditarily.
1Velorien
Sometimes, certainly. I'm not sure it would work well as a general policy. People may rot13 things incorrectly, or may rot13 a post only some of which constitutes a spoiler. If that gets passed along to all further comments, it'll cut everyone who avoids spoilers out of the discussion. Your comment, for example, is interesting, and led me to look up Bane's Rule of Two, but I would not have done so if I hadn't suspected that yours was an incorrect rot13 to begin with.

Not like certain people living in certain countries, who were, it was said, as human as anyone else; who were said to be sapient beings, worth more than any mere unicorn. But who nonetheless wouldn't be allowed to live in Muggle Britain. On that score, at least, no Muggle had the right to look a wizard in the eye.

Sorry, but I'm not a fan of this part - its not like Britain has immigration policies that ban certain races or religions, so I can only assume EY is arguing in favour of totally unrestricted immigration. But the UK has only a certain amount of room, and there are non-xenophobic economic arguments against unrestricted immigration, e.g. putting too much strain on the NHS. But regardless of the arguments for and against, arguing against immigration is not the same as being indifferent to the lives of everyone who lives in a different country.

I did enjoy the rest of the chapter however. Quirrel's statements about horcruxes were initially surprising - if he is telling the truth, then how is he still alive? If not, then wouldn't he want Harry experimenting with horcruxes in order to turn him to the dark side?

The most plausible possibility is that he wants Harry's help to g... (read more)

[-]knb270

Not like certain people living in certain countries, who were, it was said, as human as anyone else; who were said to be sapient beings, worth more than any mere unicorn. But who nonetheless wouldn't be allowed to live in Muggle Britain. On that score, at least, no Muggle had the right to look a wizard in the eye.

I was surprised by that passage. If anything, it seems magical Britain is more exclusivist. Magical Britain only invited Hermione in because she's a British witch. The 99.9% of people who are born muggle are excluded completely. I also don't get the impression that foreign born wizards/witches are automatically invited to Hogwarts. So they are magic-nationalists as well.

They even forbid beneficial muggle-wizard trade, which probably results in the deaths of millions of muggles.

4buybuydandavis
I found it surprising because magical Britain seems much less utilitarian, in terms of excluding people from their moral concern - being indifferent. That's surely more of the fundamental issue than border control.
2Velorien
Insofar as everyone dies eventually, and thus the purpose of medicine in general may be thought of as life extension rather than death prevention, and magical healing vastly increases wizard lifespans, it may be said that forbidding beneficial muggle-wizard trade results in the deaths of billions of muggles. Every single muggle who dies of old age, magically-treatable illness or non-instantly-fatal injury is a muggle who would have lived significantly longer if not for the ban.
0NancyLebovitz
The wizard population is very small compared to the muggle population, and I don't think there's much in the way of reducing the amount of time wizards need to put into healing magic. (Compare this to the efficiencies gained from vaccination and antibiotics.) The lack of wizard healing makes some difference, but probably more like tens or hundreds of thousands of muggles who don't get healed. On the other hand, if wizards were public about their abilities, a higher proportion of wizards (even low-powered wizards) in the muggle population would be identified and trained, and there would presumably be knowledge of methods for integrating wizard and muggle medicine. The results still wouldn't be all muggles having access to the best of wizard healing magic.
9Velorien
Don't forget potions. You could easily make use of muggle civilisation's amazing mass production ability by having them automate every step but the ones that need magical power. The magic drain from potion creation is minimal, so one or a few wizards could effortlessly power a production line. Muggles also happen to be very good at large-scale farming, which could easily be applied to the production of magical ingredients, even rare ones. Add in wizards' ability to cast permanent enchantments at no cost, and their vast array of utility spells (Vanishing Charms alone would be a godsend for any factory), and you have undreamt-of mass production potential. Small population sizes aren't an issue when you have two worlds' worth of force multipliers.
2MugaSofer
There's no such thing as a "low-powered wizard", and all wizards in Britain are automatically detected magically (at birth?) It is implied that in HPMOR there are - presumably third-world? - countries where they "receive no letters of any kind". So potentially a complete breakdown of the masquerade might allow the least sane Muggle governments to track down and kidnap wizarding children for their own use. (I'm a little confused by this, though, since spontaneous untrained magic should be a serious issue if muggleborns aren't being dealt with.)

Sorry, but I'm not a fan of this part -

I'm not either. It lands with such a clunk. Maybe Magical Britain lets anyone in, but it's clear that muggles have few rights that Wizards feel they need to respect.

And that last line - ugh:

On that score, at least, no Muggle had the right to look a wizard in the eye.

It doesn't even make sense. You "have a right to look someone in the eye" based on the totality of who you are versus what they are. Selecting out one point on which you are in error and they aren't really invalidates the metaphor.

Given all that Harry finds objectionable and even barbaric about Magical Britain, how much indifference they have to the suffering of others, and how his allegiance is more to a scientific culture with rule of law, that last line seems largely just false to Harry's character. Whatever faults he sees in muggle Britain, he sees as many of more in Magical Britain.

And why is universalist Harry all of a sudden in a twist over muggle Britain, especially?

It seems much more like the line is a gratuitous crack of the riding crop to one of the author's favorite hobby horses. All pissed off about UKIP's recent strong showing in elections?

I find open borders consistent with Harry in general, but making that a particular outrage, and particularly aimed at Muggle Britain as compared to Wizards, really doesn't work for the story or for making the moral point.

9skeptical_lurker
Agreed - it's a complete non-sequitur, crowbarred in with a tenuous link. And the wizards are far more intolerant. I doubt Muggle Britain lets everyone in - for one thing, it has approximately the same ethnic composition as muggle Britain, for another, I seem to remember that Hogwarts is one of the best magic schools in the world, in which case parents would move to Britain, increasing class sizes until Hogwarts was approximately the same standard as other schools. Incidentally, do Wizards in third-world countries have the same standard of living as first-world wizards? If so, they see no problem in letting muggles starve on their doorsteps. This may be a slight tangent but I'm amazed (edit: amazed is the wrong word. I'm disappointed) at how the UKIP's performance has made many people lose all sense of proportion, and become thoroughly mindkilled. About half the discussion seems to be 'one UKIP supporter said something rasist/sexist/homophobic'. UKIP has 37 000 members. This isn't just an adhomen attack, its an utterly statistically insignificant adhomen attack. Worse, a friend of mine who is a lecturer in sociology endorsed a plan to send bricks to the UKIP's freepost address, thus wasting their money. But if the UKIP supporters then send bricks to the left-wing parties, then all parties lose money and the postal system slows down. I would have thought a lecturer in sociology would understand about not defecting and keeping the moral high ground, but apparently I was wrong.
7Eliezer Yudkowsky
This should be false(r) in HPMOR, given the number of cameos from readers all around the planet. I worried that I was making Hogwarts seem unrealistically multiethnic, and then decided, hey, wizards have had Apparition and portkeys for centuries, it's a wonder they even still have national cultures.
1skeptical_lurker
HPMOR is more ethnic (and gender) balanced than canon, and IMO does seem to have a realistic ethnic composition given teleportation (as you mentioned) and border controls. But its nowhere near 50% Asian as one might expect if there were no borders. BTW I hope I don't sound too critical. I have hugely enjoyed the rest of HPMOR and I just think that comparing real-world politics to Voldemort's indifference is unnecessary mindkilling.
4Azathoth123
It's interesting, especially given that no one seems to care that the current EU head is a not-quite-repentant former soviet apologist.
2buybuydandavis
I bet the mindkilling predated UKIP's victory, and only afforded an impetus to action for those already mindkilled. Why do you find this surprising? That's the standard attack. It's simply background music. In Western democracies, the Left fights for power and is serious about it. Any means available. When does the opposition to the Left ever respond with a little tit for tat? In the US, there are all sorts of people mouthing off big words about fighting government tyranny, while meekly standing by while their children are sexually assaulted by the TSA purportedly looking for nuclear weapons in their underwear. What he understands that you don't is that his enemies won't fight back. If your enemies are fundamentally pacifists toward your aggression, why ever stop?
5MugaSofer
Ah, I'm no expert in US politics, but I thought that was a Right-supported program? With what little of the Overton Window that covers "this is an absurd overreaction" lying on the metaphorical left-hand side?
2buybuydandavis
Both left and right support the screenings, but it's fair enough that while this made for an instance of government tyranny that people might oppose but don't, it wasn't a good instance of one pushed predominantly by the Left.
2Lumifer
Unfortunately, it was (and is) a universally supported program. A pretty good example of Yvain's Moloch, too -- no serious political group can afford to be tarred with the "leave America defenseless before the terrorists" brush...
1Azathoth123
I'm not sure about that. At least I have a hard time finding anyone on the internet, in either political camp, who supports it.
1Lumifer
Look at it from the other side -- which serious political group loudly opposes TSA?
1Azathoth123
I remember a story about Rick Perry trying to pass a law limiting the kinds of things the TSA could do in Texas airports before relenting after the FAA threatened to ban flights to Texas airports if the law passed.
1Azathoth123
Well the right wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh opposed it from day 1. Also I remember a left wing political cartoon from shortly after 9/11 implying that Republicans were in bed with the corporate sector for not wanting to nationalize airport security (which was then provided by private contractors).
2MugaSofer
Ah, interesting! I didn't know that. Props to Limbaugh et al. (Nationalizing airport security seems orthogonal to the TSA search issue, though.)
2Azathoth123
Private contractors hired by and answerable to the airports (and to a certain extend the airlines) have more incentive to not annoy customers than a national agency with fuzzy accountability.
3hairyfigment
What are you talking about? (I couldn't find the one where a neo-reactionary asks Scott how many people he wants to kill.) Is this meant to imply some self-refuting statement about the LW community?
-1buybuydandavis
I assume few people try to make self refuting statements. I guess we're even, as I have no idea what you're talking about either.
8gjm
I think what he's getting at is: the Right shows at least as much sign of trying to win by any means possible as the Left, and doesn't behave at all like a bunch of fluffy pacifists who never fight back when attacked. [EDITED to fix horrible typo -- "off" for "of" -- which I think was the result of autocomplete on a mobile device.]
3skeptical_lurker
I'd agree, it has at most increased the mindkill. "Amazed" was the wrong word, used in a sloppy rhetorical sense. 'Disappointed' might be better. Well, of course UKIP didn't respond in kind, including when the prank escalated to sending blood and shit. And of course, it's UKIP who are the fascists, so let's hit them with sticks! Thing is, I do understand this, but maybe I've haven't fully internalised the fact an intelligent person can think that they are 'fighting the power' (he argues that UKIP are extremely similar to Nazis) while crushing anyone who dares to utter a contradictory opinion. I would say I can't understand this behaviour, but that would be purely rhetorical, because I do know what compartmentalisation is. And when you have an iron grip on the moral high ground because anyone who disagrees with you is racist, then I suppose you can afford to defect constantly.
[-]gwern190

I did enjoy the rest of the chapter however. Quirrel's statements about horcruxes were initially surprising - if he is telling the truth, then how is he still alive? If not, then wouldn't he want Harry experimenting with horcruxes in order to turn him to the dark side?

Perhaps he is a Horcrux transfer (as long speculated) but a failed one; introspecting about how different he is from his memories of 'himself', he would realize 'he' hadn't survived and all that was left was a weird mishmash of Monroe's personality and Voldemort's memories, and this was entirely worthless as immortality.

What argument could be more convincing to Quirrel than personally embodying the failure of horcruxes as an immortality strategy?

7lfghjkl
I've also been thinking along these lines, anyone remember this part from the opening ceremony? It seems to imply that becoming the second victim of a Horcrux might not necessarily create a mishmash of personalities, but instead have them competing as separate (maybe "partially mixed"?) identities. This would also explain why Harry consider his "dark side" different from himself.
8gwern
Yes, that often came up in past discussions. The problem is that the dual persona part seemed to get dropped early on and it changed to one of energy - Quirrel going into zombie-mode, not shy-Quirinius-mode. Presumably when he was up there on the podium, he was trying to summon up the energy for his speech.
2MugaSofer
... hmm. You know, depending on how separate the personalities are, it's possible the original ("zombie") Quirrel was simply stressed out of his mind from Voldemort essentially holding him prisoner in his own body.
1Ben Pace
This lack of a definite personhood may be related to the answer that Quirrell gave when Harry asked him why he wasn't like the other children. [Emphasis added]