I see also that the theories about Santa Claus's identity are equally as varied as the ones about Mr. Hat & Cloak. My take on this is similar to my take on H&C: we're meant to understand that Santa Claus is simply Dumbledore.
The only person we know for whom all the above facts are true is Dumbledore.
However, the "S" who left notes for Hermione is not Santa Claus. It's Severus Snape, who we know for a fact was the mysterious person helping SPHEW in its mission. The two signatures happen ...
Nothing says the Portkey goes where it says it does. It could be a reasonably good test of "Harry Potter is desperately seeking a way out" if one just monitored his arrival in the destination.
Ch 78 You know, of all the things in the chapter, the law of Potion-Making seems the most important, by far - if I understand it correctly, it has staggering implications.
It's clear that you can extract more than purely physical processes from ingredients - since we have potions that bestow even entirely abstract concepts like luck(and canon!Snape claimed to be capable of brewing fame and glory, I'm unsure if MoR!Snape claimed the same).
So, could you, say, take a CD with some software on it and use it as a Potions ingredient in order to extract the mental work that went into programming that software, creating a Potion of Excellent Programming or something? Or, even better - could you take a copy of some brilliant scientific research paper, extract the brilliant scientific genius out of it and use the resulting Potion in order to create an even more brilliant scientific breakthrough? That's godhood in one shot right there.
I also have to wonder how Potion-Making interacts with the Mind Projection Fallacy. If you use a video game as an ingredient, can you create a Potion of Fun out of the video game or no? Fun isn't an inherent property of video games, it's in the minds of the players.
Might explain all those Nazi book-burnings. Grindelwald's human allies weren't just providing human sacrifices.
My intuition, my sense of fairness, says that you can't get back the work required to create information without sacrificing an appreciable fraction of the number of extant copies of that information.
I would guess that Magic and the Mind Projection Fallacy are sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
You can make copies of books and of software CDs very cheaply. Given a law of conservation, it can't be the case that destroying (sacrificing) a cheap copy would gain you powerful results, or else you could generate infinite resources very quickly (and wizards would realize this).
Maybe destroying the last extant copy of a software would achieve the effect. One wonders what great magic was fueled by the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
If this were the case, could Hermione sacrifice the paper marked 42 for a Potion of Humanism?
Or if Harry wrote down his thesis on Partial Transfiguration, Hermione could make a potion from that (without reading it), and write down whatever discovery she made under the influence of the Breaking the Laws of Magic Potion, which Harry could then use to make a potion...
Another thought: write down a description of a complex magical principle that you understand, but that the interdict of merlin would prevent someone else who was reading it from understanding. Use the parchment you wrote on as an ingredient in a potion to make a potion with the mental work needed to discover/comprehend that principle.
Poof, Interdict of Merlin loses its teeth entirely. :)
Another thought that occurred to me: Felix Felicis. No wonder it's hard to brew. Only way you could brew it is if you literally got lucky in the process of brewing it, by chance, so that you can take that "chance" and put it into the potion.
(hrm... might be able to automate the process of making Felix: Have a machine that keeps mixing the ingredients many times in parallel, ie, many "potential potions", and in the process does something like for each potential potion, has a coin (or some random bit source which can then be physically placed in the potion) which it flips a 100 times. It also tracks the results, and when one of the coins comes up all heads, it drops it into the candidate potion then calls up the wizard to complete the potion.)
Oh, and MoR!Snape did claim you could b...
Hee hee. But no, I didn't mean a "potion of cleverness", I simply mean "be clever and invent a potion. Then use that potion as an ingredient to place the quality of the mental work of inventing a potion into a potion... then use that potion as an ingredient, etc.."
And actually, we know Harry meant to investigate mental magic, but we're not sure if he ever got around to it. (And, of course, there is Rowena's Diadem, which would seem to be an intelligence augmentation device. If that's in MoR, Harry's got to do something with it at some point. (But then, harry hasn't yet really jumped onto the existence of the Philosopher's Stone, so... well, I guess everyone here's already waiting for when he notices that and Epic Rages at the wizarding world along the lines of "you mean you already know how... you... ARGH!")
This thread is a little silly, even by local standards. First of all, the fact that a potion can be no stronger than its ingredients doesn't imply that a potion will always be as strong as its ingredients -- there are probably all kinds of other restrictions on what can be effectively brewed. By way of analogy, most Volvo engines don't run at Carnot efficiencies and most split pea soups don't run at more than 0.01 efficiency.
Second, all of the canon/fanon magical ingredients are non-copiable...a feather or a squished animal is not like a CD or a video game or a piece of parchment. Perhaps you could use the original of a piece of parchment if you didn't keep a spare copy, but EV drops lots of clues -- potion conservation was apparently designed by someone who thought the universe was fair, potion brewing is a substitute for a small, safe sacrifice, etc. -- everyone who's trying to figure out how to make a potion out of costless intellectual property is playing a different game than the one Harry's playing.
Third, advanced electronics tend to malfunction in proximity to strong magical auras -- so far the most advanced Muggle artifact that's been successfully used to interact with wiza...
Just because every potion in the two textbooks Harry looked at involved magical ingredients doesn't mean all potions require a magical ingredient. As I read it, Harry found the potion he used in a more obscure book suggested by Prof. McGonnagal or Flitwick, probably something like a wilderness survival guide. Converting acorns into a beacon would be pretty helpful for getting found by search parties.
Quirrell.
It's not just about him not bothering to check whether he had a visa to Fuyuki city.
It's about him always having claimed to be a Slytherin.
Despite actually being... a Ravenclaw?
That doesn't sound like the kind of claim you could get away with it, and Quirrell should know that, but he still makes it, and... gets away with it?
Doesn't any current Hogwarts student have parents/relatives/family friends who knew Quirrell from his time back at school?
And it's blindingly, blitheringly obvious by this point that Quirrell is H&C. Too obvious.
Why would Quirrell orchestrate this in a way that ends in him being interrogated by the DMLE? Compare with his attempted Dementation of Harry.
In fact, the same thing would apply even if he weren't H&C. I'd expect him to have come up with a better way of handling it. One with more plausible deniability.
Conclusion: Quirrell planned to be interrogated by the DMLE. Quirrell planned to have his cover blown. Why? I haven't the slightest idea.
I still don't know what to make of the Ravenclaw thing, though.
Edit: Just checked to see if Quirrell had actually claimed to be in Slytherin instead of just implying it. Yes, he had.
...Yes, I was in Slyth
Speculation on the Slytherin/Ravenclaw issue: Quirrell is a double impostor. He's Voldemort possessing a Slytherin (name unknown) and pretending to be that Slytherin pretending to be a Ravenclaw named Quirinus Quirrell. Dumbledore knows about one level of the masquerade, and accepts the explanation that the Slytherin of unknown name is a private person. Quirinus Quirrell may be an entirely constructed identity, although that would make it less likely for him to have failed to remember some of the details of it under interrogation.
Voldemort himself seems like a pretty artificial persona. I think it's better to think of both Voldemort and Quirrell as Riddle's inventions, not directly related to one another.
Minor typo at the end of 78, repeated at the beginning of 79:
The Aurors swept toward him with swift strides, Auror Goryanof approaching from the other side of the Ravenclaw as though to block any escape...
Actual speculation: what did Dumbledore know or suspect when he hired Quirrell?
"If you consult Headmaster Dumbledore," said the Defense Professor, "you will find that he is well aware of this matter, and that I agreed to teach his Defense class on the explicit condition that no inquiry be made into my -"
What exactly was Dumbledore aware of? Merely that 'Quirrell' may have travelled without a visa (I guess this is illegal), or that he was an impostor? If the latter, why would Dumbledore hire him?
But if Dumbledore wasn't aware that Quirrell is an impostor, then Quirrell has made at least one foolish slip. During the interrogation, Scrimgeour says
"Born the 26th of September, 1955, to Quondia Quirrell, of an acknowledged tryst with Lirinus Lumblung..." intoned the Auror. "Sorted into Ravenclaw...
But way back in Chapter 16, Quirrell says
Yes, I was in Slytherin and I am offering to formulate a cunning plot on your behalf, if that is what it takes to accomplish your desire.
My reading of the visa thing was that the Auror made it up on the spot to confirm that Quirrell had no idea of what trips he had taken in the past, and is therefore an impostor. Although I don't understand why Quirrell, if impersonating someone, would fail to look up these simple facts.
I believe Dumbledore would have been a professor of the real Quirrell, so he must know it's an imposter he's hired. I suspect Quirrell fed him some convincing lie or another about his true identity.
I figure being referenced in the author's notes is enough to justify cross posting. I guess I'll find out if that's the case. (In the choice between not posting and posting without updating speculation, I decided to rationalize my sloth with a false dichotomy, maybe.)
pervenit pasta
Chapter 14: The Unknown and the Unknowable
HJPEV tells McGonagall about the message for Slytherin's Heir, refuses point-based reward, receives Time Turner, freaks the fuck out about receiving a time machine to treat his sleep disorder, has another 'you turned into a cat' moment, receives invisibility cloak from unknown person, learns what getting lost in Hogwarts entails, pranks himself, learns "There was something wrong with Harry Potter."
Chapter 21: Rationalization
Hermione deludes herself about why she likes beating HJPEV, chooses love, displays knowledge of Planning Fallacy, claims her prize; HJPEV creeps it up with Draco, claims Hermione as his own, traps Draco with promises of power, mentions that Draco should test the strength of muggleborn magic personally, agrees that human sacrifice is easier than changing his mind, establishes tradition of secrecy in the magical sciences, establishes ...
Update March 12: He's reading HPMoR, thanks presumably to the 7+ fan reviews from LWers, tvtropers, and whatever you call an xkcd fan. Still no fan reviews for Luminosity or Hamlet and the Philosopher's Stone.
Damien Walter reviews sci-fi and fantasy for The Guardian. He's looking for weird, self-published online fiction to read over the next month, and he'll review the best ones he finds. He's just asked people to recommend stories in the comments to his latest article. If you want to see Methods of Rationality, Luminosity, or my Hamlet and the Philosopher's Stone reviewed in a respected newspaper (there is precedent!), please consider heading over there and posting a short review (one link per comment, you can comment more than once). Each of the three is a hard sell even by online fantasy standards, and I imagine it would help if a disinterested party vouched for them.
Jumping in time just 6 hours back indicates to me that in the computer that is simulating MoR universe data is kept with 6-hours long cache.
As to Atlantis - they found a way to get out of the box - one level up, and they've left some cheat-codes for people that are still in this simulation. That also explains why some very important figures (like Dumbledore) think MoR runs on stories - somebody outside of simulation changes the simulation accordingnly. Maybe this simulation purpose is to make the best stories?
Also explains why prophecy works for more than 6 hours into the future - because simulation has some invariants, that make for best stories, and seers can well, "see" them, but only for very important events, and only guess ral meaning of these predictions. Hence mysterious prophecies.
What it doesn't explain - why cheat codes are in latinised English.
A simpler explanation is that "DO NOT MESS WITH TIME" was the simplest piece of information that could be generated by time travel that resulted in a stable loop because Harry's precommitment to follow the experimental protocol was weak.
Simplest isn't quite as important as easiest (or most probable in terms of how reality fluid flows in a loop until it forms a stable equilibrium). The latter of course encompasses the former. In this case not only is it simple (not requiring many ontological loops) it is utterly trivial given the psychology of Harry. It only has to amplify Harry's paranoia only slightly to make him pull a reaction like that. And, in fact, given that Harry hadn't put any effort into even considering risks before doing something so extreme some reaction from him that is not the brute-forced-decryption result isn't unreasonable - so could have even happened without much consistency pressure beyond a single iteration required.
If Harry were a bit more stable and had better judgement in assessing safety he would probably have taken his time when replying and written something like "Don't be a reckless fool! Forcing black swans much?" As it happens t...
(EDIT: This theory was disproven in Chap. 79)
I think Hat and Cloak is Lucius Malfoy. First piece of evidence: timing of his first appearance.
Chapter 34: Harry says "Maybe I'll just do what Draco tried with Zabini, and write a letter to Lucius Malfoy and see what he thinks about that."
Chapter 35: Hat and Cloak appears on-screen for the first time, to talk to Zabini.
Second piece of evidence: He says "Lucius Malfoy has taken notice of you, Hermione."
The new Update Notifications features (http://hpmor.com/notify/) is pretty awesome but I have a feature request. Could we get some sort of privacy policy for that feature?
Like, maybe just a sentence at the bottom saying "we promise to only use your email address to send you HPMOR notifications, and we promise never to share your email address with a third party"?
It's not that I don't trust you guys (and in fact I have already signed up) but I like to check on these things.
Hat-and-Cloak is Voldemort but not Quirrell. When in Quirrell, Voldemort has a whole (probably quite powerful!) brain to run his computation on. Outside of Quirrell, he relies only on what computation he can do purely as a 'ghost', or as magic, or whatever. Hat-and-Cloak is thusly disguised because Voldemort lacks a body. Or maybe Voldemort possesses someone else, who isn't as smart as Quirrell, and is proportionally dumber and more prone to mistakes. Quirrell is zombie while Voldemort's away because Voldemort set it up that way. Don't want your robot walking away without you.
Part of the groundhog-day attack involved setting up a trigger in Hermione, that when she can attack Malfoy, she should try to kill him. This explains her behaviour in the battle, and her apparent behaviour in the duel.
Hat-and-Cloak is a player in this story. Players in this story are clever and powerful. A sensible way of resolving this apparent contradiction is to postulate some form of disability or restriction applying to Hat-and-Cloak. Then all you need is Conservation of Characters.
It would simply be bad writing to set up a mysterious and malevolent figure like Hat and Cloak and then reveal him as one of the story's established villains. It's redundant, a wasted move, to reveal that the villain was secretly a villain. It drains tension from the story to reveal that the heroes were only facing one opponent, not two. I would rule out the possibility just by assuming a competent author.
A point in favor of Hat and Cloak being Grindelwald: the playing card he chose to represent Dumbledore was the King of Hearts. ♥
If Harry does not manage to find the real culprit, then how does he save Hermione from having her wand broken?
Breakout/Direct Attack on the Wizengamot / Malfoy Manor
Transfigure a one-atom line of antimatter through the earth's crust all the way to the Wizengamot or Malfoy Manor, and then a small bubble there. His wand is then touching the item to be transformed, and it will work.
Go to Azkaban and round up a few hundred dementors.
Stealth
Bringing Hermione under the aegis of a noble house
Transfigure a one-atom line of antimatter through the earth's crust all the way to the Wizengamot or Malfoy Manor, and then a small bubble there. His wand is then touching the item to be transformed, and it will work.
Ten points to Slytherin for creativity. Minus ten bajillion points for holy shit, are you suicidal?!
As much as I'd love it, there's no chance of a trial by combat. "If we did it your way, Kingslayer, you'd win. We're not doing it your way."
Eliezer suggests re-reading 14, 21, 26, 35, 43-47, 56-57, 63, 66, 73-77, chapters
What're the possible clues embedded in these chapters?
It seems that the popular opinion around here is that Mr. Hat & Cloak is someone, anyone, other than Quirrellmort. I think this is a case of the same kind of thinking that led people to wonder whether Quirrell was Voldemort a lot longer than Eliezer intended.
I think Eliezer probably meant us to know that Quirrell was H&C the very first time he appeared. Quirrell follows after Zabini when he leaves Harry; Zabini says that Quirrell reacted exactly as H&C told him he would. He knew how Quirrell would react because he is Quirrell, and he told Zabini to do what he did specifically so Harry, who Quirrell knew would be around after the ceremony, could hear it and have another reason to distrust Dumbledore.
Eliezer has already dealt with this once. Everyone suppressed their own knowledge of canon and faculties of logic even in the face of nigh-incontrovertible evidence that Quirrell was Voldemort. He expressed his confusion at this in the author's notes, and I believe he vowed to make his blatant hints more blatant in the future.
I think Quirrell being H&C is even more blatant than Quirrellmort was, and here we are doing the exact same thing. We do it because we love the stor...
Ha! Or maybe Eliezer has been rolling his eyes at us (or, rather, y'all), and gave us a blatant hint with the contrast of competent Quirrell interrogating sneaky Snape and less experienced H&C working on naive Hermione. I think you're just clinging to your one beautiful idea, instead of examining other possibilities - like, say, H&C is taking instructions from Quirrell, maybe?
See? Two can play that game.
Somewhere in the old threads I think, but I'm in a rush and can't look it up right now. Quick points:
All plausibly deniable, and exactly Quirrell's style.
Am I the only one that's worried about Trelawney's prophecy? My vague recollection is that she's a joke of a diviner, but when you get right down to it, the fact that she predicted the same thing for each student in the class isn't such a huge likelihood burden if you consider that they are not necessarily independent events. That is to say, she may well be predicting the death of someone all the students know. Which would suggest a tragic ending to this story, probably, unless it's someone all the students Know-Who.
If that's not true, then all I can say is "I am confused".
The strongest evidence that H&C is not Quirrell seems to me to be how much more amateurish he is at manipulating people than Quirrell is. I don't believe it would have taken Quirrell dozens of iterations to realize he ought to change his appearance. It probably wouldn't have taken him one.
So, possible Wild Guess, but has enough reinforcement that I'm going to throw it out there.
Right now, it seems like Eliezer is pushing to the trial. The chapter implies that Harry has done nothing else of note before Hermione's trial, meaning he will have limited ability to defend her. Without any sort of evidence to raise reasonable doubt, he'd basically have to manipulate the Wizengamot.
... Which, while beyond Harry's ability, is not beyond others. In particular: Quirrellmort.
If Quirrell manages to get Hermione acquitted...
1) Quirrell earns lots of Harry points. Regains trust after the Azkaban semi-fiasco.
2) Quirrell emphasizes his role as Harry's mentor and protector when even Dumbledore is helpless.
3) Meanwhile, this whole fiasco has convinced Harry even more that the wizarding society has issues.
4) Hermione is reinstated as an ally of Harry. If Quirrellmort's goal is to strengthen Harry, this is also a plus.
5) Draco is now a victim of a plan, and earns pity, not respect, destabilizing Lucius' power base.
If, simultaneously, Quirrell were to keep Lucius from undoing Harry's turning...
1) Again, adds another ally, Harry points, etc.
And if both... then we have two heroes of Slytherin and of Ravenclaw who survived an evil plot, and may well garner sympathy for that plot. And remember, Quirrell promised to make Slytherin and Ravenclaw simultaneously win the House Cup...
Chapter 25, Fred and George talking about the Marauder's Map, which is supposed to show all people in Hogwarts by name:
“Still on the fritz,” said George.
“Both, or—”
“Intermittent one fixed itself again. Other one’s same as ever.”
The intermittent one is probably Quirrell, going in and out of zombie mode. But what could be visibly wrong with the other one? My theory is that, unlike all the other dots on the Marauder's Map, one of them doesn't have a name. Who could that be?
I hypothesize that this is Mr. Hat and Cloak. That would mean it's not Quirrell and not anyone the Weasleys would pay much attention to, either. The map must get the names it displays from somewhere, and its reliability in doing so suggests that it gets them from people's minds. My hypothesis is that to appear on the map without a name, you'd have to (a) not be known by name and present appearance to anyone whose mind the map can read, and (b) be an occlumens.
Everyone seems to be holding the idiot ball with regards sending Snape to check Hermoine's room - this makes me suspect Dumbledore was behind the escalation.
Is Harry's guess at the twins' prank on Rita the correct one, and by corollary, are we supposed to believe that Quirrelmort couldn't come up with a hypothesis that basic, and/or that it had been that easy for the twins to successfully brainwash an adult witch? (And on a meta level: was it worth it to make such a hubbub with such a supremely, well, boring answer?)
An important hint: "Obliviation cannot be detected by any known means, but only a Professor could have cast that spell upon a student without alarm from the Hogwarts wards."
This means no Lucius, no Sirius, no Lupin, etc.
Presuming this all does lead up to a trial, I look forward to Harry's reaction to the Magical Justice System.
"Hasn't it ever occurred to anyone to have a suspect's guilt decided by an unbiased panel of judges?!"
Oh, and I suspect that the Sorting Hat Summoning is going to happen during the trial
Either that or Eliezer anticipated this train of thought (not unlikely) and is playing at the second level (slightly unlikely). Multiplying that out, the probability is miniscule.
If Eliezer updates on the eve of the SAT, I'm going to track him down and read Vogon Poetry at him.
I'm a reader who would not be directly affected by the timing relative to the SAT, and I say, please don't stick to the earlier date on my account. I would feel bad suspecting that other readers, who are taking the SAT, were harmed for my pleasure.
Don't know if I am a representative reader, though.
Harry and co. have one untapped potential ally: Lucius Malfoy. If they gave him all their clues, he may be convinced, just as they have been. And he has a powerful motive to find out who really tried to kill his son, even if he goes through with the trial against Hermione to avoid losing face.
The problem is how to approach him. He would not trust Dumbledore (his political enemy), Harry (he believes he is Voldemort and will soon hate him for 'turning' Draco), or Snape or Minerva (Dumbledore's agents).
I nominate Quirrel (to be sent by Harry) - known (or at least publicly displaying himself to be) free of Dumbledore's influence, a powerful Slytherin, and the one who actually saved Draco's life. Lucius would listen to him. Whether Quirrel would want to cooperate is another matter, but he should have some difficulty saying no to Harry and Dumbledore at once.
For Lucius to trust them, some of them might have to volunteer to testify in front of him under Veritaserum that they really believe the theory that Hermione didn't do it. Dumbledore is a known Occlumens, Snape and Quirrel would at least be suspected of being such, Harry told Draco he is so now Lucius knows as well. A weaker character like Minerva would be useless because Lucius could easily believe Dumbledore misled her. This is a problem...
Harry already has (he would think) an ultimate lever: The breakout from Azkaban. If he so wished, he could inform Dumbledore and the DMLE and bring all the wrath of Britain down on Quirrell. It would mean incredible costs for Harry, but he could do it. Although, my mental model of Harry says that he would never actually do that.
Even as an occlumens, Harry could prove he and Quirrell did it. Harry has knowledge of Azkaban that no 10 year old should know. He can communicate with dementors to identify himself. He could recreate the rocket he used. Dumbledore can identify his patronus, etc. He's also got a good chance of getting off without many repercussions due to being a minor under someone else's influence and being the boy-who-lived.
Now, Harry doesn't seem like the trust authority like that, but he could pull it off. Heck, even if Quirrell wouldn't agree to help Harry, Harry could probably just lie and say Quirrell planned this against Hermoine and get this crime pinned on Quirrel if he really wanted to. I don't think Harry would actually do this, but it's a possibility. Harry has an untapped resource to save her that nobody knows about (Knowledge of the Azkaban heist), but he either wouldn't think of it or he'd consider it not worth it.
(The HPMOR discussion thread after this one is here.)
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. There haven't been any chapters recently, but it looks like there are a bunch in the pipeline and the old thread is nearing 700 comments. The latest chapter as of 7th March 2012 is Ch. 77.
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.
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.
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: