This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. With two chapters recently the previous thread has very quickly reached 500 comments. The latest chapter as of 17th March 2012 is Ch. 79.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:
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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.
A few not particularly relevant concerns.
Transfiguration is dangerous in MOR, But the type of danger McGonagall discusses is basically the same as any toxin. It's literally only dangerous if you eat it or breath it. A bubble head charm and enough self control not to eat anything that looks tasty and transfiguration reversion is no danger. So why is Mcgonagall so surprised that Dumbledoor used transfiguration in battle, and is still alive?
That being said, I think transfiguration is second only to time-travel in magics that are dangerous in the hands of creative people. For instance, what about transfiguring antimatter? There's no way Harry didn't think of that. I thought of that when I was near his age and reading canon. Obviously this is incredibly dangerous, but if he wants to level Azkaban, that's the easiest option. There's plenty of other fun things. For instance he could make an ionizing radiation death ray with a chunk of low half life material eg sodium-24 in a lead chamber with a small exit. Set it up as near Malfoy manor as possible and wait a little.
Yeah but antimatter would probably kill the Aurors and the prisoners. Also Harry would probably realize that while subjecting people to dementors is evil, having a prison for people who commit crimes is not.
My guess would be that the danger comes from the battle as much as from the transfiguration. Transfiguration seems to take time and concentration, far moreso than the charms and curses that seem to be the mainstays of battle magic, so odds are it's not generally used in active combat for the same reason that you don't generally dig a foxhole in the middle of a firefight. In support of this, Dragon and Chaos Armies, and SPHEW, have all used Transfiguration onscreen during battles -- but not, to the best of my recollection, in battle.
Combat stress might also tend to disrupt concentration in ways which are dangerous, but that's more speculative.
2pedanterrific
Counterpoint: sulfuric acid to bathwater. You've been soaking in the tub for half an hour when the transfiguration wears off.
EDIT: New discussion thread here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. With two chapters recently the previous thread has very quickly reached 500 comments. The latest chapter as of 17th March 2012 is Ch. 79.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: