Today I noticed that Harry is dealing with a lot of strikingly rational people compared to canon and it feels wrong. We can understand this because we know that Eliezer's subscribes to the first law of fan fiction ("You can't make Frodo a Jedi without giving Sauron the Death Star") but it seems that in this respect MoR is actually much less plausible than canon unless the "implicit demography" has been changed somehow. Its like the gold/silver exchange rate in canon... except this is brains.
Given a normally distributed trait (like intelligence?) the larger the population, the more spectacular you should expect the maximal outlier to be. And you shouldn't expect lots of similar outliers unless their production was non-linearly explained (like a bunch of students taught by a singularly great teacher or something). The smartest person in a village of 1000 is going to be (literally) "1 in a 1000" compared to the smartest person in China who is going to be (again literally) "1 in a billion". So those sorts of intuitions had me wondering about population sizes.
I googled it and came up with data and speculation. Roughly, it looks like Magical ...
Eliezer:
I just wanted to thank you for this quote
And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star, they won't tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they're old enough to bear it; and when they learn they'll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed!
My grandfather just died and it captured a lot of the outrage and hope for the future I have.
Something about Harry's deductions in Ch.46 smells fishy to me. It could be that he didn't consider that two or more professors could have been present at the revealing of the prophecy. It could be that he automatically assumed the prophecy must have been freshly produced, rather than having been found in an old book as is usually proper. It could be that "It was Snape who told Voldemort about the prophecy (not knowing whom it spoke of)" does not in any way follow from "At some point, Snape begged Voldemort to spare Lily's life".
It could be a number of such things, but they could be explained away somehow: the real problem, I think, is that this looks like one of those magical trains of thought that bad crime fiction writers give their Holmes-ripoff protagonists, wherein the author starts from the solution and then, looking backwards, draws a path that enables the character to figure it out.
But it ends up looking fake, as it does now, because the character runs straight from the minimal facts he has to the hindsight-correct solution. This is not how an intelligent, realistic character thinks: before moving on to the next deduction, you try to take into considera...
When I was a kid, adults would sometimes ask me what kind of animal I would be if I were an animal. I always told them that I would be a human. They never liked that answer.
I'm still waiting for the most obvious way to learn the epistemology of magic to be adopted by Harry. i.e. "Prof. Flitwick, How does one create new charms/spells?", but am having a lot of fun reading this fic, so no complaints, yet.
You know, Harry not even considering asking a non-Quirrell teacher something wouldn't even seem out of character. :)
From the most recent Author's Note:
I bet that if you were to reread MoR and copy everything that looks like a hint into a separate document, and then look through all of the hints at once, you would, like, notice some stuff. Just sayin'.
I reread a few chapters for fun, and then something hit me like a piledriver.
Interesting, no?
Yes!!! Sentience is GREAT! All sentient beings should be protected! Like humans! And AGIs! And paperclips!
How do you reconcile that with being a paperclip maximizer?
If I had to make a guess, I'd posit that this is a purely rhetorical claim in order to gain favor with humans here who do favor protecting sentient life as a major goal.
A thought re Chapter 43...
Hermione is (as established here) rather intelligent. Is she aware of the concept, in some form, of quantum immortality? Because I can't help but wonder if the particular fear she saw, what she experienced with the Dementor (not counting the "message"?) was basically a fear of QI. I mean, assuming via QI you don't incrementally lose your mind and effectively gradually decay, you'd expect to see everyone else die, with you yourself all alone at the end.
So, is quantum immortality effectively what Hermione saw/feared?
Also, re chapter 46.. Harry has nothing to say about involuntary memory charms? (Not to mention the notion that letting them know that dementors can be defeated, even without telling them how, might plant the seeds that would let them later on be ready to learn.)
Remember the bit in Chapter 27 where Harry has the same conversation each time with his Obliviated instructor in Occlumency?
Harry was finding himself very disturbed by how reproducible human thoughts were when you reset people back to the same initial conditions and exposed them to the same stimuli. It was dispelling illusions that a good reductionist wasn't supposed to have in the first place.
Well, it turns out that this is actually the case:
My dad takes sleeping pills every night, and never remembers anything that happens after he takes them. He will never admit this, however. The last three times he has called me at night shortly after taking his pills and we've had the exact same conversation wherein he's asked me the exact same questions. Not "how have you been?" questions but "what is X" or "when does X happen?" type questions that, once answered, don't need to be re-asked.
I answer them the same, and they always lead into the exact same followup questions. It's like we're performing a play. Or, rather, I'm performing a play where I know all the lines and he's performing an improv routine where he doesn't know any.
It's kind of funny.
Also, the parent Reddit thread is simply excellent. Trust me, you should read it. (Thank Yvain for the link.)
Update Scanner reports: Chapter 1 has been edited so that Petunia recounts that she was ugly and Lily's potion improved her skin and curves, but no longer mentions having been fat nor losing weight thanks to the potion. As a secondary change, possibly unrelated, Prof. Verres is also more tender towards his wife, an improvement on his characterisation.
My working hypothesis is that Eliezer is going to set up some rules about what potions can do (possibly just Polyjuice and variants), which could not be reconciled with sudden weight loss.
I'm not all fired up. I don't think that society is really anti-lifeist anymore than people who claim to believe in heaven really believe in it. Telling yourself that death is OK is a way to deal with the inevitability of death, and while this is bad (because you'll tend to ignore ideas, like cryonics and life extension, that hold some promise of defeating death) it won't last. Life extension doesn't get as much attention and effort as I would like, but when it has successes, these are gratefully accepted.
On the other hand, people's freedom is being interfered with, right now, because they want to die and our stringently anti-death society forces them to stay alive. That's what I get riled up about.
All the same, I loved the Humanism chapters. (The war stories were starting to get boring.) And while I don't find death the greatest evil in the world, I still agree with what Harry said about it.
While investigating the theory that wizardry is becoming less powerful because of a decline in the alliterative naming of wizards, I discovered the identity of Harry's nemesis: Barberus Bragge.
In ch47, Harry's list of conditions for his agreement with Draco is broken: he has forgotten an extremely obvious condition. Namely, that Dumbledore did it deliberately. This doesn't seem like a very likely oversight for MoR!Harry; I wonder whether it's deliberate on Eliezer's part.
I wonder whether it's deliberate on Eliezer's part.
I now imagine that it is. Here is my scenario, with so much detail that its probability is extremely small, so that it cannot be a spoiler:
Dumbledore, being cleverer than in canon, discovered the existence of the diary Horcrux. After diligently searching for basilisk venom and researching any other safer means of destroying a Horcrux, he realised that he would have to use Fiendfyre. He broke into Malfoy Manor but found it more difficult than he expected and was badly weakened when he found the diary, so he was unable to overcome additional protective enchantments on the diary itself and remove it. Having good reason to believe that the manor was empty, however, he used Fiendfyre right there and then used his last strength to escape. As it turns out, Narcissa was home, and her valiant efforts saved the manor from destruction but cost her her own life.
Later, Dumbledore spoke to Lucius to apologise. While he did not dare to explain why he had started Fiendfyre in the Malfoys' home, he told Lucius that he never intended to kill anybody and only reluctantly cast the spell that would have destroyed the house. He also told Luciu...
I'm curious, did others find Chapter 45 as deeply moving as I did? I'm was having trouble avoiding crying when Harry tells the Dementor why death shall lose.
DEMENTORS REALLY ONLY REPRESENT AN EXTREMIST FRINGE OF MODERN MORTALIST THOUGHT.
I FEEL LIKE ELIEZER IS FAILING TO ENGAGE WITH MORE SOPHISTICATED PRO-DEATH THINKERS. FRANKLY, HIS IGNORANCE OF THANATOLOGICAL APOLOGETICS IS STAGGERING.
MY DUTY - sorry, my duty is toward living things only. i would prefer to leave your question on paperclips for my friend Oxidation, but he has trouble using computers. it's the wires, you see.
I believe D. is imitating the style of Terry Pratchett, who uses small-caps for his "Death" character. The full-size caps are a bit annoying, I agree.
I'm curious, did others find Chapter 45 as deeply moving as I did?
I'm not sure if I'm alone but I've been moved previously by other writings by Eliezer and others and it's like I've, well, been moved. Death is taken for granted a known enemy to be killed on sight. Putting myself in Harry's shoes the reaction I experience is "Death. F@#$ that! \ Whooosh!"
The other difference I suspect I would have is that I wouldn't expect to have a human patronus. I would expect something like sentient (white) fire elemental or an elf (symbolic of an intelligent creature with humanlike values, not precisely human and the better for the difference). Perhaps I'm not a humanist so much as an intelligent-life-with-my-values-without-the-outright-obnoxious-parts-of-humanity-ist.
I'm was having trouble avoiding crying when Harry tells the Dementor why death shall lose.
That part I shied away from. It wasn't arational emotion; it was irrational. Being passionate about life with a proactive, vigourous intent to see it flourish doesn't mean you must mangle your beliefs such that you are overconfident. "Death shall lose" is a false claim when the correct belief is...
This leads to a question: Would this have worked just as well if a sincerely religious individual who believed in an eventual resurrection of all had cast the patronus? Does it require both belief and the likelyhood of that belief being objectively correct? I doubt that Eliezer intends for this to work with someone thinking about Death be Not Proud and making a patronus in the shape of a man on a cross.
Would this have worked just as well if a sincerely religious individual who believed in an eventual resurrection of all had cast the patronus?
It would require that they cognitively mapped the existence of the Dementor onto the concept of soul-death and that they forcefully rejected this event on an emotional level instead of just having a quiet factual opinion that it never happened. Such a hypothetical individual is simply a non-reductionist isomorph of Harry's reductionist belief. It would just be difficult for a religious individual to get into that state of mind in the first place. It probably would help a lot if they believed that the Dementor's Kiss actually does destroy a soul.
I mention this because I did think about what would happen if someone like a Buddhist acknowledged the existence of true Death, soul-death, and still accepted that without the tiniest bit of sour grapes; and concluded that although that wouldn't make a Dementor-destroying Patronus, they would be able to see the Dementor's true form and cast a perfect shield against its fear.
Incidentally, Harry didn't say at any point that any of what he said was a certainty.
These chapters (43-46) seem to have several pieces of evidence for the "Harrymort" theory. Quirrell's reaction suggests that he recognizes the particular ideas that Harry had, which in turn suggests they're where he hid his horcruxes. That those locations also seemed obvious to Harry could be simply because they are obvious, and Voldemort used them for that same reason, but it could also indicate Harry somehow "remembering" them. That Voldemort might not have actually attempted to kill Harry after having killed Lily also suggests something may have been up there, though Voldemort may have been simply lying. And we also now have a bit of evidence that Harry's "dark side" may actually be real.
I'm still trying to figure out what happened at Godric's Hollow.
Voldemort went in there with the intention to kill Harry (evidence: the prophecy, his seeming willingness to let Lily escape). Lily asked him to spare Harry's life in exchange for her own. It would seem that Voldemort accepted this offer in some way: he verbally agreed to the bargain, he killed Lily despite a previous intention to spare her, and Harry ended up surviving the encounter. But why would Voldemort do that when he could as easily have killed both, when he wanted Harry dead for prophecy-related reasons, and when he wanted Lily alive for Snape's sake?
Theories:
Voldy had always planned to save Harry's life for his own purposes - maybe he interpreted the prophecy as meaning this would be the boy into whom he could upload his personality. He only came to Godric's Hollow to cast the personality-transfer spell onto Harry and maybe get rid of the parents. He accepted Lily's offer because it amused him to have Lily sacrifice her life when he wasn't going to kill Harry anyway.
Voldy came to kill Harry, and never gave up on that intention. He pretended to accept Lily's bargain because he was Evil, and pretending to ac
These chapters (43-46) seem to have several pieces of evidence for the "Harrymort" theory.
I just thought of another from an earlier chapter.
AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL
Equal, as in mathematical equality.
Also, from Ch. 45: "A strange word kept echoing in his mind." Probably 'horcrux'. [ETA: gjm's right. Missed that.]
I thought the strange word was "riddle".
Harry glanced in the Dementor's direction. The word echoed in his mind again. All right, Harry thought to himself, if the Dementor is a riddle, what is the answer?
The Wizards can create dimensionally orthogonal pockets of spacetime (for their bags of holding, mokeskin pouches, and TARDIS trunks). If a Horcrux simply has to be hidden where no one can get at it, and doesn't have to maintain a signaling link to the "rest" of the maker's "soul," perhaps Voldy could have made some dimensionally transcendent space (like a BoH or the Mirror of Erised), put a Horcrux in, then destroyed the connecting interface with our reality. Basically, a magical corollary of multiverse cosmology, where the Horcrux is placed in a new "pocket universe" that is then separated from ours so that it cannot be reached even in principle.
I would guess from MoR canon that relativity-compliant signaling is not necessary for a Horcrux to work, since light-lag between Earth and the Pioneer Horcrux would already be significant.
would guess from MoR canon that relativity-compliant signaling is not necessary for a Horcrux to work
Horcruces: the ultimate "spooky action at a distance"!
Comments cover up to Chapter 46. UN-ROT13'd SPOILERS.
Love the new chapters! Harry's takedown of the Dementor was epic! Yes, I know, that term has been devalued by inflation quite a bit, but in this case its original value and meaning hold. A very nice and emotionally powerful summation of Singularitarian values in Harry's buildup. Also, I didn't stop and try to guess what Harry's Patronus would be, but "the rational animal" is the perfect choice!
One little quibble though. When Dumb-ledore and Harry were trying to guess why Quirrell might want to bring a Dementor to Hogwarts, Dumbles never bothers to mention, "Well, Quirrell did challenge me to a bet, that if any of the First Year students could produce a corporeal Patronus, that I'd let him teach the Killing Curse to anyone who was interested." Naaawwwww, there couldn't possibly be some ulterior motive to Quirrell's desire to teach Dark Magic to the kiddies, could there? Surely not!
And isn't this supposed to be an "Unforgivable" curse, as in, "life in Azkaban" or "the Dementor's Kiss" for using it? Given the existence of such a law in Wizarding society, it doesn't mak...
Not directly related to MoR, but whatever. I recently joined a massive HP roleplay forum and what i noticed among the players was a huge deal of optimisation by proxy. Basically the general sentiment is that being sorted into one house means that you have no traits from the others. This makes some sense, because a wizard employer will probably look at the candidates' house affiliation first. I'll need to reread some of the books, to check if it's canon, but in the fans' minds at least, all of Magical Britain is aligning itself to an arbitrary division. It's a bit disturbing, really.
Does anyone else find the HP idea of sorting children into different houses at age 11 abusive and detrimental? The houses aren't arbitrary labels; they're supposed to define your character. No real person fits into any one of those houses. Sorting students restricts their growth and causes them to develop into a House stereotype. And it's the main cause of tension, hatred, and eventually war, in their world.
Does anyone else find the HP idea of sorting children into different houses at age 11 abusive and detrimental?
My first, knee-jerk reaction to your suggestion was, "yeah!" Then I thought about it for a second and realized just how nice it might've been at that age to be given:
an identity to be proud of, based on something I was being acknowledged to be good at, and
a peer group of (literally) like-minded individuals with whom to share a common goal (winning the cup), camaraderie, and mentorship.
(As an interesting counterpoint, I actually did participate briefly in a house system around the age of 12 or so, but the houses were assigned randomly, and IIRC the point system was purely athletic, so I didn't give a damn about it.)
Does anyone else find the HP idea of sorting children into different houses at age 11 abusive and detrimental?
Quite the reverse. The worst thing about our education systems is that they force a bunch of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws to put up with years upon years of abuse by Slytherins and Griffyndors in an environment that they have no opportunity to escape from. I would absolutely love, even now, to have a sorting hat that can essentially weed out @5@#%s pre-emptively.
It is cruel and abusive to force people in an environment where they can not choose the peers they are willing to have in their immediate proximity. At least a sorting hat would help minimise the damage. "Us" vs "Them" is far, far better than "cruelest most powerful political animal vs most socially vulnerable".
And as well as the reduction of social abuse via the reduced time spent with jackasses it can be a whole lot easier to tolerate social aggression if it comes from outside what you identify as the most local social hierarchy. If a Hufflepuff is insulted by Draco it may be a minor nuisance but if it was a high status Hufflepuff like Neville bullying them it would probably seriously damage their mental health over time.
As explained in some of the other comments, there are some good points about it, but it's got some major flaws. One thing I really don't like is that the teachers are House-identified. They're players in the game, and it's OK for them to arbitrarily punish kids from other Houses and show favoritism to their own. That's like making coaches the referees. Hmmm, maybe that's why the House Cup ends up getting decided by something as random as "Who can catch the golden mosquito first?"
An idea I had: Sort kids into the House that's their greatest weakness/what they're least like/the element they need most to improve. So the Hat would be like, "Well, Draco Malfoy, hrmmmnnnn...better be: HUFFLEPUFF!" "Harry Potter...unfamiliar to the Wizarding World, as like to eat an Exploding Snap as play it properly. If I don't do something you might just cast some random curse labeled 'For an Enemy' on somebody without figuring out what it does first...better be: RAVENCLAW!" "Neville Longbottom...you could go faaaarrrrr, in Slytherin." "Not Slytherin! Anything but Slytherin!" "Ooooh, a wise guy, eh? GRIFFINDOR!"
In each House, kids ...
It might be worth disentangling the effects of Sorting (possibly bad, should probably be moderated by mixed-House projects) and the effects of the House points system (entirely bad as far as I can tell).
The house point system might not be completely bad. It might encourage competitively minded people to work more if they might be lazy otherwise. Empirically in the real world this sometimes works. For a few years (not sure if still active), Yale and Harvard students had competitions about which could reduce energy per a capita more. When I went to highschool there was a fundraiser for raising money for foodbanks and each class competed to see which could raise more. There was also a "neutral box" for people who wanted to give but didn't compete. By the end of the fundraiser the neutral box would generally have about an order of magnitude less money in it than the the grade box with the lowest amount.
Surely you're overlooking Slytherin's positive qualities as defined by MoR. Slytherin are focused on manipulating people, concerned with power, and quite cunning. If you want to keep fooling the muggles, have good PR guys, and keep alive the dangerous, secret lore that other houses would consider too evil (so we can use it to fight aliens), you need Slytherin.
It's the only house that has consistently churned out people who actively work at defeating death!
each evil person came out of Slytherin
Wormtail was Sorted into Gryffindor and turned out to be a bad dude. This seems to have more to do with Rowling's desire to have him plausibly be a Marauder, than anything related to any aspect of his revealed personality. She's very prone to that - the same rationale was likely behind making canon!Hermione a Gryffindor.
The new chapter is spectacular fiction, but I'm not sure it's true that bigots are necessarily low-grade people, though it's possible that they are, on the average. Is there research available?
Henry Ford and Richard Wagner had notable accomplishments, and were also energetic anti-Semites.
Portraying bigotry as low-status is tactically useful, both in the story and in the real world, but has an interesting blow-back-- it means that pointing out someone else's bigotry becomes a threat to lower their status. (This didn't come up in the story because Draco hasn't been in those discussions.)
In the real world, people of all sorts of status levels are active bigots-- that's why prejudicial laws can be passed and enforced.
This doesn't deny the idea that bigoted groups will tend to drive away lively-minded and benevolent people, but there's a difference between a trend and an absolute.
I'm not sure it's true that bigots are necessarily low-grade people
I read the chapter much more narrowly as saying that racist people are low-status. Racism is now reviled in Britain (or at least the U.S., and I'll guess also Britain) to such a degree that anybody openly espousing racist views (at least based on skin colour rather than, say, immigration status) is automatically looked down upon. Other forms of bigotry don't usually have this effect, nor did racism until fairly recently.
However, we are looking more at racism in the 1940s (at least by the standards of the U.S.) than the 1990s. Judging from To Kill a Mockingbird (which is the only documentary evidence that I have onhand, sorry), extreme overt racism along the lines of using words like ‘Nigger’ (analogue of ‘Mudblood') was still looked down upon and associated (rightly or wrongly) with low class. But that's just because moderate and subtle racism was the norm. This is how it works in the Wizarding world too.
I appreciate that Eliezer tries to explain the Death-Eater point of view - they're heroes in their own minds; and they're the only ones trying to solve a terrible problem that the "good guys" are ignoring. He also points out flaws in eg Dumbledore (though that may be dumbing down the character). Overall, his treatment of the conflict is more balanced and nuanced than Rowling's. More the kind of thing that I think I like (though I could be deceiving myself).
But if the book had been written that way, could it have been a bestseller? Is stupid moral oversimplification necessary in a mass-market bestseller? E.g., Tolkien, Narnia, Star Wars.
I'm trying to think of mass-appeal war stories with a balanced or ambiguous or at least non-stupid treatment of good/bad, but the ones I come up with are not exactly blockbusters: Gormenghast, Ender's Game, Grendel, The "Good War".
Some blockbuster movies qualify: Saving Private Ryan, High Noon, Blade Runner, Watchmen, The Searchers, Rashomon, Apocalypse Now, Unforgiven. Odd that movies, which are thought of by intellectuals as more lowbrow than books, may be more successful at communicating non-stupid ideas.
Is stupid moral oversimplification necessary in a mass-market bestseller? E.g., Tolkien, Narnia, Star Wars.
Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked and other books, achieved considerable success turning the morally simplistic world of Oz into something more complex. The Broadway musical was also very popular as such things go. Not quite on the same level of success as your examples, but it shows there’s some market for it. (Maguire also wrote similar retellings of Snow White and Cinderella, which I think sold pretty well, although not as well as Wicked.)
Edited to add: Although if you're only asking about "war stories" strictly defined, it may not be a good example.
Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked and other books, achieved considerable success turning the morally simplistic world of Oz into something more complex.
If the Wizard of Oz had been written that way to start with, could it have achieved its popularity? The fact that so many people know about Oz definitely helps anybody who wants to sell a deconstruction of it.
Chp 47 Author's Notes
Is the hint in chp 45 the Dementor saying to Quirrell "that it knew me, and that it would hunt me down someday, wherever I tried to hide"? I'd assumed that was related to Voldemort cheating death, but I haven't read all the books so I don't know if it's suggesting anything non-canon or just more evidence for Q=V.
I have the answer, people. Have no fear.
Quirrel isn't evil. Evil people like Voldermort only exist in stories. It's just that Eliezer built an FAI, and as a reward got a chance to pretend to be Raistlin.
Hermione is going to found SPEW, and then, to save the house-elves from having to work all the time, will create an Auto-Geomancic Incantation, or AGI, to do the housework. It will recursively self-enmagic and optimise for the first item on it's to-do list: get more paperclips.
The world will end, and the moral is that everything can be destroyed very quickly by things you weren't expecting, because you're not in a story.
I know this to be true for a fact, because Eliezer laughed when I suggested it.
It struck me as odd that Harry was repulsed by the idea of the Sorting Hat losing consciousness, then regaining consciousness (or being "reborn" as a somewhat different entity) repeatedly. Seemed a lot like falling asleep and waking up.
I would have thought that the additional creation of more consciousness, which seemed to be enjoying itself or at least not suffering, would just be added utility to the universe. Then I remembered that Eliezer is an average utilitarian. Which raises the question: Would an average utilitarian average together u...
Here's my Slytherin theory.
Almost all Death-Eaters were Slytherin for the same reason why almost all Mussolini supporters were Italians. People from different houses just tend to stay together, especially when organizing a major conspiracy. If Dark Lord was a Hufflepuff, most Death Eaters would be Hufflepuffs. Dark Wizardry is no more inherent character of Slytherins than fascism is of Italians.
If one Hufflepuff happened to have them, imagine the loyal, hardworking, tight-knit followers, diligently working to acquire the traits deemed necessary...
I could imagine a Hufflepuff developing some spell to merge or link minds so the group can be even more cohesive and cooperative. A Hufflepuff Borganism could be pretty freakin' scary. "We are One. We are Together. We are Loyal. You should join Us. Yes, yes, you really, really should. What's that? Oh. You just don't know what's best for you. Let Us help you."
I'd expect people to develop serious plans of taking over the world at some age older than 11
Erm, not taking over the world per se, but I was certainly thinking in long-range terms. If you look at my grade school graduation yearbook (age 12), my ambition is listed as building the first faster-than-light starship. Ah, the innocence of youth, before I got ambitious, and before I understood the local nature of causality.
I don't agree on this one. Slytherins will do what they need to do to get power.
To get power for themselves, not for other Slytherins, in practice leading to a lot of mutual undermining. A Slytherin has as much chance of out-braving a Gryffindor, out-smarting a Ravenclaw, or out-hardworking a Hufflepuff as any of them out-cunning a Slytherin. It might happen occasionally, but as easily either way.
I'd even say all this taking over the world business was very un-Slytherin. The First Wizarding War was an open Gryffindor style confrontation, and in spite of having the most powerful wizard on their side, Death Eaters were remarkably unsuccessful. As soon as Voldemort was gone, his decades of effort fell apart almost instantaneously. Death Eaters were just ridiculously unsuccessful.
Just compare Voldemort with Horace Slughorn (or MoR's Lucius Malfoy, but I don't think original Lucius Malfoy were as successful as in MoR). Slughorn was a good wizard, but nowhere near Voldemort's level.
Voldemort treated people as disposable pawns, beating them into submission if they resisted, and had no qualms about disposing of even his loyal servants if it suited him. It was parasitic and abusive rela...
If. I don't think they are; it would have been obvious to some scientist at one point or another, not to mention anyone who lives in close contact with them.
It seems more plausible to me that their apparent intelligence is another product of magic; that when you're talking to a snake, you're actually talking to a magic-induced AI of some kind that will, if you asked it to do something, control the snake afterwards to suit your purposes.
The laws of physics here are already AI-complete, so it doesn't seem like a large leap to me.
Please don't allow arguments about definitions be presented as arguments about substance, as objecting to something previously said. Distinguish them by making it clear that your observation is on a separate and unrelated topic of English language, and thus doesn't constitute an irrational argument.
Possibly the important thing is whether Draco thinks of them as being sentient (sapient) as he's casting the charm.
I think that Harry is too dismissive of ‘souls’. He didn't think that magic existed, but it did, and if the people who deal with magic also claim to deal with souls, then there might be something to that. The idea that every human has a soul that goes to an afterlife may be silly (and even Wizards don't act as if they really believe that), but when talking about ghosts, Horcruxes, or the Dementor's Kiss, there might be something real that Wizards mean by ‘soul’, and Harry should investigate that possibility.
Stylistic note to Eliezer: you frame 98% of your dialogue with "X said" or "said X". This is usually inconspicuous when there is action or reflection to break it up, but in chapters like 47-48 that are full of back-and-forth it can suddenly jump to your notice - and once it does you cannot stop looking at it. More attentive/pedantic readers than myself may well have caught on it earlier.
I would encourage you to mix it up a little with the dozens of options available : blurted, replied, retorted, acknowledged, asked, mused, told [him/her...
Reminds me of Tom Swifties. For instance:
Harry placed the hat on his head, as he'd done during the sorting ceremony. "You should remember our earlier conversation," Harry reminded the Sorting Hat.
Well then, I'd be happy to correct you.
It's fairly common writing advice that you should do your best not to use any other verb than 'said' to carry on a conversation.
To put it simply, most people simply ignore the repetitive nature of 'he said', 'she said'. Therefore, conversation flows fairly smoothly and naturally. Constantly injecting synonyms for 'he said', 'she said' is a sign of a new writer.
Naturally this doesn't mean "never ever use anything else besides 'said' to mark the dialogue". However, the alternatives should be used only in places where they fit exceptionally well and not just for variety's sake.
Disclaimer: This should not be taken as a definitive opinion on the subject since there are writers out there who will agree with you. I'd say, however, that the consensus is on the side of "use said as much as possible".
There is also the option of dropping "he verbed" entirely.
This can cause problems. Sometimes when I read a lengthy dialogue in this style, I read a line which seems to me much less likely to by said by character whose turn it is to speak, and I have to go back to the last anchor point where it was made explicit who was talking, and carefully keep track of it. In some cases, after doing this, I have wondered if the author lost track.
Being clearly understood is more important that avoiding the appearance of redundancy.
And it was time and past time to ask Draco Malfoy what the other side of that war had to say about the character of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.
I love the recent (Humanism-era) take on Dumbledore. It's about time MoR stopped portraying him as a fool and showed his real scheming, ruthless side. Portraying Dumbledore as weak or foolish doesn't appeal. But seeing him as a scary, morally ambiguous, overwhelmingly powerful wizard who saved the world from Voldemort with gossip is a development I like. That's a guy who can really bite the bullet (in this case regarding his implications of prophecies) and then shut up and multiply.
From Chapter 45.
..."I don't really know how to say thank you graciously," Harry said quietly, "any more than I know how to apologize. All I can say that if you're wondering whether it was the right thing to do, it was."
The boy and the girl gazed into each other's eyes.
"Sorry," Harry said. "About what happens next. If there's anything I can do -"
"No," Hermione said back. "There isn't. It's all right, though." Then she turned from Harry and walked away, toward the path that led back to the gates of H
Aftermath, Daphne Greengrass in chp 46 starts to show what's next. The story of their kiss spreads unstoppably, Hermione's life as she knew it is over, her attempt to define her public identity separate from Harry has failed...
Maybe Hermione should've gotten Neville to do it.
It would've gotten rid of all the readers who were halfway out the door because of Sirius/Pettigrew.
Maybe Hermione should've gotten Neville to do it.
No, give the quibbler something real to write about - fetch for Draco!
I have a question about TDT's application in 33 of HP:MoR.
I didn't say you should just automatically cooperate. Not on a true Prisoner's Dilemma like this one. What I said was that when you choose, you shouldn't think like you're choosing for just yourself, or like you're choosing for everyone. You should think like you're choosing for all the people who are similar enough to you that they'll probably do the same thing you do for the same reasons.
Should businessmen collude on one-shot pricing? The decision theory I learned in school says "Never!,&...
That's because the passage isn't actually about TDT; Eliezer is trying to avoid throwing anachronisms into a story set in the 1990s. It's instead about the closest thing that existed at the time, Hofstadter's idea of superrationality, which does (IMO) suffer from the flaw you posit.
I don't have any direct citations to current social science, no, but I'll tell a plausible story, and give some indirect citations.
Often? Yes. Always or near always? No. It depends crucially on the complexity of the game, the familiarity of the person playing the game, and the intelligence of the people playing.
Most people playing a game iteratively update their strategies with each game, learning both which moves of theirs worked better, and what their opponents are likely to do.
If both sides constantly do these updates, they are driven towards a Nash equilibrium. (It might be better to say they are driven away from anything that is not a Nash equilibrium.) The definition of a Nash equilibrium is a combination of strategies where neither side can do better by unilaterally altering their own move. If one side can do better by altering their own move, and realizes it, they will.
Complexity makes it harder for people to explore the space and find the Nash equilibrium. The more familiar with the game, the more likely you are to have found that neighborhood and play near it.
The smarter you are the faster this happens -- you can essentially model your opponent to figure out what...
"Dumbledore said he did it, he told Father it was a warning!
A warning about what? Sure, evil Dumbledore sounds cool... but what's Dumbledore getting out of this apart from an infuriated nemesis?
Well, it has now become abundantly clear that the major departure from canon is going to be in attitude toward death. Ravenclaw rationality in place of Griffindor bravery is only one aspect of the central thematic difference.
I just happened upon a link from Robin's "Overcoming Bias" blog to this article asking "Do protagonists of great novels have children?". It occurs to me to ask whether anti-death activists have children. Is it the case that the kinds of people who sign up for cryonics don't tend to want children? Does having a ch...
Chapters 43-46 of MoR are up. Go read them!
The most recent author's notes will be added to the archive shortly. I'm also pondering adding the fanart, as well, but it occurs to me that I should probably get permission from the artists before doing so, and I don't like contacting people I don't know. Therefore, I'll leave it to you all: If anyone else would like to see the fanart archived with the authors' notes (perhaps in a different folder, perhaps in the same note as the relevant chapter's author's notes - suggestions welcome), get permission for that to be done and I'll go ahead and do it.
I have been entirely staying away from HP:MoR, but given some of the recent discussions, I thought I'd share a story idea, "Yowie Potter and the Methods of Pickup-Artistry".
Yowie is a young female genius and manga fan who lives alone in a forest with her robotic creations. But one day her cyborg scouts, who function as her roaming eyes and ears - one should imagine birds and cute forest animals fitted out with sensors - run across a cottage inhabited entirely by high-IQ male nerds, cut off from the outside world somehow. Along with science and f...
Text-based erotic stories in general are mostly the province of girls. Yaoi stories are a subset of that, still largely by and for women. (Of course there's also manga and whatnot; I have less explanation for that.)
Father had told Draco that to fathom a strange plot, one technique was to look at what ended up happening, assume it was the intended result, and ask who benefited.
I take it the Malfoy house is just a stand-in for Hanson?
Schedule theory: Could Eliezer intentionally be updating unpredictably, to minimize audience habituation?
I'm not nagging him, as writing that book is important, and as I would be more pleased than critical of a scheme like this.
Not addressed to Eliezer because he would only answer in the negative or not at all.
Godric hadn't told anyone, nor had Rowena if she'd known; there might have been any number of wizards who'd figured it out and kept their mouths shut.
I'm still can't figure out what's dangerous about sharing that knowledge. My obviously unsatisfying guesses in no particular order:
*Making yet unreachable sour grapes of immortality more sweet.
*Harry's concern for self-awareness of patronus v2.0.
*Outlaws will be better protected from law enforcement.
*Increased chances of Azkaban break out.
*Disclosure of Harry's unique power.
*Extinction of dementors.
Anyone have any guesses as to what Quirrell's game is?
Quirrell is operating on a level that I surely don't understand. The only theory I can think of that's neither preposterous nor disappointing is that Quirrell is protecting Horcrux!Harry.
In light of the recent exchange where Quirrell asks Harry how he would hide something:
...Tell me, Mr. Potter, if you wanted to lose something where no one would ever find it again, where would you put it?"
... "Well," said Harry, "besides trying to get it into the molten core of the planet, you could b
Or ideally you would launch it into space, with a cloak against detection, and a randomly fluctuating acceleration factor that would take it out of the Solar System.
Is this a MoR explanation for the Pioneer anomaly? Because that would be awesome.
Also, I assumed Voldemort was talking about the classical elements, too, and was amused that Harry, a scientist, had come up with those at random.
These two patterns are the same. Recall that the world is composed of four elemental planes, and each element is attracted to its plane. This explains why rocks fall but air rises in water.
Classically, we would expect the plane of fire to lie above the atmosphere, because fire rises in air. But in this case, fire is the lowest plane.
Semi Spoiler for chapter 46 on humanism
If Draco already had an ability to cast a patronus, it may now be another thing harry has taken. This may make him feel obligated to tell the secret.
From the current Author's Note:
And I am equally offended by people who look down on fanfiction because it's fanfiction, who'd take something beautiful like "Always and Always" and turn up their noses at it.
What's "Always and Always"?
I put the link in; thanks for the reminder.
And comments on my top-level posts don't appear in my inbox, only (direct) replies to my comments. Is that different for you?
(48)
Just eat the students, said Hufflepuff. There's no doubt about whether they're sentient.
You know you want to, said Gryffindor. I bet the young ones are the tastiest.
I loved the whole introduction section. I was laughing out loud.
Harry isn't someone I would trust anywhere near absolute power - I'd probably form an alliance with Dumbledore and Voldemort just to crush him before he does something catastrophically naive like implement F(Magical)AI> (or FAI> for that matter). But damn the guy has a sense of humour. :)
I had no idea this would be so good; I'm shaken.
For those who are like me and like to imagine a soundtrack, the final chapters seem to go with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9vv4cPh4BI The subject matter isn't far off either.
I found something interesting today: Dawkins/Hermione
I will be very disappointed if Methods of Rationality doesn't include some kind of explanation for this.
What, exactly, is necessary to cast the Transhumanism Patronus (or something else that destroys Dementors)? If it's just a recognition of the Dementor's nature and a resolve to overcome mortality, haven't there been a few other wizards (e.g. Flamel) who should be able to do the same?
EDIT: Oh, never mind, Eliezer did mention this after all:
Godric hadn't told anyone, nor had Rowena if she'd known; there might have been any number of wizards who'd figured it out and kept their mouths shut.
Dementors = Death -> ("Tell them I ate [the dementor]" -> "Tell them I ate [death]") — reference to "death eaters"?
I doubt this was unintentional, but if it was indeed a hint, then I'm not sure whether it was intentional only on Eliezer's part or also on Quirrell's. If the latter (Quirrellmort made that comment knowingly), then that raises the possibility that he was only pretending to be ignorant of Dementors' true nature... and if so, then Dumbledore's apparent lack of a reaction (compared to Harry's spit-take) suggest...
I'm wondering about the relationship between Quirrel, who is obviously at this time at least being driven by Voldemort, and Voldemort as Voldemort. Quirrel's story about the martial arts monastery, in particular, has a clear dichotomy between Quirrel and Voldemort. Quirrel's actual seeming competence at martial arts lends some support to Quirrel's story that he learned them there, though it is possible that he just picked them up somewhere else either earlier or later. So, a.) did Quirrel(mort) make up at least one of the two incidents out of whole cloth? ...
Chapter 47 is up!
(FanFiction.net seems to be having some technical problems recently, sometimes you can't access the stories, but it works a few minutes afterwards there is a copy in PasteBin for the impatient.)
Update: This post has also been superseded - new comments belong in the latest thread.
The second thread has now also exceeded 500 comments, so after 42 chapters of MoR it's time for a new thread.
From the first thread:
Spoiler Warning: this thread contains unrot13'd spoilers for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality up to the current chapter and for the original Harry Potter series. Please continue to use rot13 for spoilers to other works of fiction, or if you have insider knowledge of future chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
A suggestion: mention at the top of your comment which chapter you're commenting on, or what chapter you're up to, so that people can understand the context of your comment even after more chapters have been posted. This can also help people avoid reading spoilers for a new chapter before they realize that there is a new chapter.
