Has it occurred to anyone else how good magic would be for psychological experimentation?
To start with, imagine you get the consent of your subjects to be Obliviated. Then, you can try exposing the subjects to differing stimuli while they're in exactly the same starting state, and you can precisely and easily measure the effect of whatever change you've made.
Even better, imagine the marketing opportunities. Think of Mr Hat and Cloak's dictionary attack, but with a focus group, and different advertisements for your new product. Show them the ad, then ask them how much they liked it, then Obliviate them again.
Also, you could try to remove the effect of priming on yourself with self-targeted obliviation.
And you could go on 4chan, knowing that what has been seen actually can be unseen, leaving you with only a note saying "Don't look at SqueeHorse" or something.
I really want magic.
I wonder if there's a different attitude toward spoilers or "great works of art" in the Wizarding World because of memory charms. Hats which could charm endings or plots out of people's minds, people who would only read one book over and over again by repeatedly blasting it out of their heads, or museums/theme parks Obliviating any previous experience there so that every time is fresh.
Would also like to see Eliezer lampshade the Snape kills Dumbledore spoiler by having everyone present self obliviate or something similar.
And you could go on 4chan, knowing that what has been seen actually can be unseen
Is this an actual problem rather than just people making a show of how strongly they are disgusted by expressing the wish to unsee, asking for brain bleach etc?
This is heading straight into mindkiller territory, but there's a style of reading which involves tracking everything that might be offensive in a story. The thing is, sometimes what looks like reasonable deductions of background beliefs is a result, but it's a hell of a way to treat fiction as a matter of habit.
It eliminates variation between focus groups. If people are as deterministic as depicted in MoR chapter 27, the slightest variation in behavior would be a clue about how to refine the ad.
I have an idea for an epic maneuver that a wizard could perform as a last resort in certain emergency situations. A severely wounded wizard could, if there is something of much greater utility then his own life on the line, transfigure himself into a healthy version of himself in order to continue the fight. This would be a death sentence, but still worth it if the stakes were high enough.
Then again Harry can already sustain a small transfigured object even in his sleep. Perhaps the most powerful of wizards could sustain a transfiguration on their own body indefinitely. Or... Professor McGonagall said that it would be possible for a child to transfigure themselves into an adult bodily form. Perhaps if the wizard could not sustain an object the size of their own body indefinitely after the emergency situation has passed they could again transfigure themselves into a adolescent, child, or midget form in order to achieve a body with a volume that they could sustain. Unless doing another transfiguration would cause the consequences of the previous transfiguration to be imposed on the new form. Though I don't see why that would necessarily be the case.
This would be a very fragile sort of existence. They would be much weaker due to the constant drain on their magic and incapacitation or anything that dispels the transfiguration would result in death.
It's also been noted that trolls are constantly transfiguring themselves into themselves, which lays a pretty good precedent for this kind of transfiguration!
Ok. I really don't like the new omake with the ponies.
I understand that Eliezer is trying to criticize overemphasis on peer review. But the bottom line is that peer review is really important: groups of humans who look at something critically are much more likely to notice mistakes and flaws then one will notice by one's self. This is not a trivial point.
I dislike it but not for that reason. There are so many great hooks for rationalist lessons in the actual show, but instead he makes an anvilicious alternate universe to take a cheap shot at a completely unrelated subject. It's such a waste. I am disappointed.
Indeed, when I sat down to make a rationalist MLP fanfic, I realized that the only part of the show that I would change is possibly Feeling Pinkie Keen.
In related news, remember the advice that keeping a diary increases happiness? Guess how I'm writing mine. :3
There's also the world mechanics of raising the sun
(In my planned fanfic, "Friendship is Natural Philosophy," it turns out that heliocentrism is true, and Princess Celestia has just been pretending to raise the sun in order to maintain her grip on power.)
The definition I'd have given for applause lights would have been "A statement so obviously the Right Thing that it provides no useful information".
From Applause Lights: "I think it means that you have said the word "democracy", so the audience is supposed to cheer. It's not so much a propositional statement, as the equivalent of the "Applause" light that tells a studio audience when to clap."
I think that depending on what you mean by "The Right Thing" (whether you mean it mockingly or actually), you're right or wrong in your understanding of what applause lights means. But either way: the point of "applause lights" is that it's more of a signal for mutual self-congratulation than something with actual meaning/content.
e.g. "God bless the United States of America".
So I checked your karma in case it was just a noobish mistake by me, precommited to change my mind if you had a lot more than me, but it turns out you have even less. Thus I'd say you were wrong in correcting me.
Ugh. Seriously? You probably didn't mean this as bad as it sounded, but it effectively looks as you're saying he was wrong in correcting you not because he was actually wrong, but because he shouldn't correct people with higher status (as marked by karma points).
That's a really really bad attitude to have.
It's been awhile since the last update, so here's a scene from the HPMOR in my head.
Hermione offers Harry a Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean, warning him that when they say "every flavour" they mean every flavour. The first one that Harry eats is booger-flavoured, and he gets frustrated about the foolish candy-makers, complaining that of all the flavours that he could've gotten, his first bean tasted like boogers. Hermione reminds him that it says "every flavour", so he shouldn't be surprised if it ended up tasting like something nasty. Harry has Hermione list flavours of Bertie Bott's beans that she has eaten, and then goes on a rant:
Out of all possible flavours, every single flavour that Hermione has mentioned is recognizable as something regularly found on or in the human body, and the majority are types of food. Harry tries to explain the concept of flavourspace - the entire set of all possible flavours - and what a skewed understanding of flavourspace wizards must have if "every flavour" beans only draw from the tiny proportion of flavourspace which they already regularly taste. So, yes, he should be surprised that the first bean he ate, which could have taken on any flavour in the vast universe of flavourspace, tasted like something that normally grows just inches from one's taste buds.
Which MY head continues: The nature of magic turned out to be sensitive to that kind of notion, and the flavours not predetermined, so the very next one tastes like dementor or strangelet.
While I was reading Harry Potter, I kept thinking that the House system was destructive, both in terms of making people impose restrictions on themselves, and creating deep divisions in the wizarding world. Hogwarts is in this sense the primary cause of both the previous and the coming wizard war.
In Eliezer's fiction, it's more apparent that the Hogwarts house system is a mindless, destructive mechanism set in motion hundreds of years ago that no one person can change or escape. Even Dumbledore couldn't abolish the house system; the political pressure would pop him out of Hogwarts like a cork from a champagne bottle.
I don't understand why Dumbledore can't maintain order among the students and protect them from each other, though... it seems to be within the powers of the Hogwarts faculty, if they set their minds to it.
Dumbledore and McGonagall's weaknesses are more apparent in Eliezer's fiction. Which would score realism points with me, except that the deconstruction of the perfect Dumbledore is balanced by the imagination of a perfect Harry.
Dumbledore and McGonagall's weaknesses are more apparent in Eliezer's fiction. Which would score realism points with me, except that the deconstruction of the perfect Dumbledore is balanced by the imagination of a perfect Harry.
Harry is far from perfect. He has his own glaring weaknesses. He's excessively clever (sometimes at the expense of wise or rational), his ego clouds his decisions, he is paranoid, incapable of relating to humans normally and shows disconcerting tendencies towards codependency.
While I was reading Harry Potter, I kept thinking that the House system was destructive, both in terms of making people impose restrictions on themselves, and creating deep divisions in the wizarding world.
It's based to the actual House system used in British boarding schools.
Dumbledore needs to say that Hogwarts has run out of water, and make the houses cooperate to get a new water supply.
MoR Harry did seem like a Marty Stu in the early chapters, but the further I read, the less I thought so. For one thing, his intelligence is balanced out by egotism, insensitivity, and inability to think in the longterm. For another, most of his really impressive feats of intellect and willpower are actually owed to Voldemort's horcrux (his "dark side"), which means Harry doesn't get full credit for them. I think MoR Harry is far from perfect.
Wait... you don't attribute dark side Harry to Harry? Damn. They're the main parts I empathize with!
The sadder thing is that Eliezer doesn't seem particularly bothered with numbers either.
I beg your pardon. Check Ch. 30 and you should see some non-canonical first-year student cameos in Draco's army. For, may I mention, exactly that reason - I was explicitly familiar with the dilemma of the discordant Rowling statements and decided to resolve in favor of Hogwarts having around a thousand students, so that having around half the students sign up for the armies would give you 72 first-year soldiers.
Chapter 14:
Otherwise we shall see you again three months later and you will be two years older and dressed in a loincloth and covered in snow and that's if you stay inside the castle.
If this sort of time-stretching effect could be controlled, it would be incredibly useful. One could research and prepare at leisure for an imminent attack, at a much better speedup than the mere 25% offered by Time-Turners. If it can go the other way as well, Salazar Slytherin might very well still be alive somewhere in Hogwarts.
The problem with encouraging LessWrongians to read your fanfic is that they spot the logical flaws in and/or ways to manipulate everything you describe. It's why I love this website.
Yes, but... just for the sake of argument...
Flamel is an inventor. And when assigning confidence in statements he makes about Philosopher's Stones, you need to bear in mind that he's the only inventor dumb enough to get caught. Anyone who independently invented it before him (or after) managed to keep it secret, that's all.
Or maybe there's more than one way to create a Philosopher's Stone and Flamel discovered the most difficult, so now he has an inflated idea of how hard it would be for someone else to duplicate his feat.
Or possibly Flamel is the Dread Pirate Roberts and there's no such thing as a Philosopher's Stone at all.
I'm not sure which explanation I like more, actually.
Real World Effects of SPHEW
Raemon has written at moderate length about feminist issues in HPMoR. In fact, this post is credited by Eliezer as
High probability this comment had something to do with the surprise creation of SPHEW.
I don't wish to speculate about these issues because I don't feel I have the depth of knowledge needed to contribute meaningfully. However I do have a real life effect of SPHEW to report.
I produce the Methods of Rationality Podcast. For the most part it's a solo project, but after receiving a few requests I've gotten comfortable enough with it that I've decided to integrate other voices as long as it doesn't require much additional work from me. Meaning - just send me the audio file of you reading the lines and I'll incorporate it if I can. I didn't really expect much response from this approach, and for the most part I didn't get one. Seems no one is really interested in doing Gregory Goyle's lines. :)
With a notable exception. The girls of SPHEW. I received a complete reading of all of Daphne's lines before I even announced I was willing to take other voices. It was one of the primary motivators for overturning my previous policy and saying I would acce...
In the previous thread there was some discussion on Ch 76's obliviation powered dictionary attack on Hermione. Most of that discussion seems to have assumed that what we saw between Hat And Cloak (HAC) and Hermione was simple to understand and relatively unskilllful... with Hermione's "tootsie pop" response being inane and HAC's probing appearing ham-handedly ignorant.
My impression was that we didn't see the first or second cycle of relatively normal behavior for either character, but more like the 7th cycle (12 minutes per cycle for 90 minutes?), where HAC was doing something radically different each time to probe Hermione's knowledge, feelings, etc in different ways, probably using legilimency. She was exhausted, like someone "in the box" with the police, except more stressful due to not even knowing she's in the box. And the questions don't have to be subtle, they just have to make her think of useful things while her eyes are visible. I don't think she was the ultimate target either, but rather she is the closest non-occlumens to Harry other than possibly Draco, so mind raping her to learn about Harry is "safer" even if it demonstrates horrifyi...
I would guess that Hat-and-Cloak probably wasn't using leglimency, or it wouldn't have needed Hermione to say that she found the mysterious getup suspicious.
I'm not sure how it worked in canon (and would expect semi-random behavior given Rowling's tendency to fudge world building details that a more mechanistic thinker might nail down) but in MoR it appears that legilimency allows the reader to perceive the "conscious surface thoughts" of the readee, plus the feeling of active reading (used by an occlumens to race ahead and put fake conscious surface thoughts in the way), plus the traces of past reading.
When Albus read Harry early in the story to look for traces he asked Harry what Harry had recently eaten so as to prevent himself from reading anything private in Harry's mind. If words can be used to redirect attention to banal issues so that it is impossible for even Albus to see more deeply, it stands to reason (to me anyway) that visibility is relatively shallow and that words could also be used to redirect attention towards the sensitive issues. So, HAC using legilimency probably couldn't get a verbal reason for lack of trust without a probe to raise "trust of HAC" in Hermione's mind, but once raised he would have been able to tell if she lied or detect any reasons that jumped into her mind that she didn't say...
Even assuming those are the limits of leglimency, I think that "this guy seems really suspicious" would be pretty near the surface of Hermione's thoughts without any additional prompting.
the occlumency trainer harry hires is able to read deeply within harry's mind without a lot of trouble. I think thoughts are probably easier or harder to read based on how surface they are. Dumbledore made them think of something else so he wouldn't accidentally read anything private because of how EASY it is to read surface memories, not because thinking of something else prevents being read entirely.
There seem to be two forms of leglimency, one that requires an explicit spell and a wand, and can be performed by most wizards. That's what Mr. Best in MoR uses, and what canon!Snape uses while trying to each Harry Occlumency. The victim knows what's going on, but usually can't do anything against it.
The second one is the form that Dumbledore (and canon!Voldemort), which just requires looking into the eyes of the victim, and lots of training. This is the "stealth mode", and most victims don't notice the intrusion at all.
It was always my intuitive understanding that the first form allows you to dig deep into one's memory, wheres the second form only shows you what the victim is thinking right now.
Does that make any sense?
Chapter 24: Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis: Act 2 ... The line of reasoning continued: Atlantis had been an isolated civilization that had somehow brought into being the Source of Magic, and told it to serve only people with the Atlantean genetic marker, the blood of Atlantis.
And by similar logic: The words a wizard spoke, the wand movements, those weren't complicated enough of themselves to build up the spell effects from scratch - not the way that the three billion base pairs of human DNA actually were complicated enough to build a human body from scratch, not the way that computer programs took up thousands of bytes of data.
So the words and wand movements were just triggers, levers pulled on some hidden and more complex machine. Buttons, not blueprints.
And just like a computer program wouldn't compile if you made a single spelling error, the Source of Magic wouldn't respond to you unless you cast your spells in exactly the right way.
The chain of logic was inexorable.
Under that hypothesis, accidental magic by wizarding children — otherwise without appreciable magic power, could be a Source of Magic initiated emergency "Help" spell.
I wonder whether the Tootsie Pop reference was a Leaning on the Fourth Wall hint to the readers or if we're meant to take that as Hermione subconsciously remembering what was going on? ("One hundred and eighty-seven. I tried it once." is kind of chilling, in that context.)
Or it could've been just a meaningless flippant remark, that too.
And 12 minutes per cycle? For the script given in the chapter, I'd peg it at more like 2 to 4.
Edit: Actually, I just though of a way to get an upper bound - the amount of adrenaline the human body can produce in 2-4 minutes is probably pretty sharply limited, right? Mr H&C presumably had to startle Hermione at the end of every cycle, so the physiological reaction would match up to the initial surprise and smooth over any discrepancies. I find it hard to imagine that "a rush of shock and fear hit her like a Stunning Hex over her whole body" more than five or so times without just leaving her burned out completely. (Not that she didn't seem pretty burned out by the end.)
And she can't be dead. For she is the bearer of a most marvelous destiny-
Actually I looked up in Wikipedia how many licks it takes to get the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop, and picked a number that seemed commensurate with the human-licker experiments.
The Chilling Implications you point out (how many licks does it take to get to the center of Hermione?) were totally lost on my consciousness until now. I wonder if that subconscious imagery had anything to do with why my brain produced that response from Hermione?
But still, probably not 187.
how many licks does it take to get to the center of Hermione?
I'm sure there are other authors on fanfiction.net who could answer this for us.
Missed opportunity:
"I've been sent to help you, so please don't be afraid. I am your servant in all things; for you, my Lady, are the last magical descendant of Merlin-"
"That's ridiculous."
(fleeting disorientation)
"For you, my Lady, are the last magical descendant of Ravenclaw-"
"I don't believe you."
(fleeting disorientation)
"For you, my Lady, are the bearer of a most marvelous destiny-"
Edit: (Personally, I prefer " - she felt a momentary sense of disorientation - "; it seems a little more subtle, but I guess that's not the effect he's going for.)
It is more subtle and I do prefer it. The problem is that a substantial fraction of reviewers are still saying they've got no idea what's happening during the ellipses, and I care about that.
Your version is a little too unsubtle, but the fact that people were buying the "last descendant of Merlin thing" had me wondering what it would've taken to actually trigger their skepticism.
"For you, my Lady, are the last descendant of Cthulhu -"
"For you alone must stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness -"
"Only you can prevent forest fires -"
No, I get why you changed it, and I certainly wasn't offering that as any kind of serious suggestion, but... well, maybe it's elitist of me, but frankly I don't understand what benefit there is to catering to the lowest common denominator of ffnet readers. I mean, the lowest common denominator of ffnet readers is pretty low. (Boy-Who-Lived Gets Draco Malfoy Pregnant! sorry i suk at sumries lol, dont liek dont read)
On another note:
"For you, my Princess, are of the blood of the dragons -"
"You have the ability to overcome great fear -"
"By your powers combined, I am -"
"Yer a wizard, Hermione -"
(In hindsight, Giles felt it was a little embarrassing, how obvious the solution was.
After all, what teenage girl doesn't want to feel special?)
Euurghh the more I think about this the worse it gets
Re Chp 35
I searched all the threads, and didn't find any mention of this. There's a hint in the conversation between Hat&Cloak and Zabini: namely, the fact that there is a conversation at all. Why does H&C need to talk to Zabini if he's just going to obliviate him anyway? Here's one possible answer: he needs some information from Zabini.
I don't think he needs Zabini's report on the conversation — partly because he keeps talking afterwards, and partly because there are independent reasons to think that H&C is either Quirrel or an agent of Quirrel's. (For instance, the "keyed into the wards" comment, as well as the fact that H&C exactly predicts Quirrel's reaction to Zabini's statement, and the fact that this statement ended up benefiting Quirrel.)
So what information does H&C need? Note that he tells Zabini, "The reward I promised you is already on its way to your mother, by owl." In other words, Zabini was clever enough to insist that his reward go to a third party, leaving someone around to remember that he's owed an award in case he's obliviated. H&C seems to me to be turning the conversation at every step towards Zabini's mother. Eventu...
An idle bit of speculation, which has probably been brought up before, but it occurred to me that MoR Voldemort, being more intelligent than his canonical counterpart, may not have seen fit to stop at a mere 7 horcruxes. Why not simply make as many as (in)humanly possible, rather than adhering to some superstitious wishy-washy stuff about "7 is a powerfully magic number"? It is almost certain that the mechanics of horcrux-construction in MoR are different from those in canon (e.g. mind-upload rather than soul-splitting), so perhaps the limit that Canon!Voldemort faced (unstable soul-fragments) is not something that would be encountered in quite the same form as MoR!Voldemort.
To provide the merest scrap of substance to my speculation, I noticed that in Chapter 53 (TSPE, Part III), Quirrell states:
“Yess,” hissed the snake, “but do not underesstimate her, sshe wass the deadliesst of warriorss.” The green head dipped in warning. “One would be wisse to fear me, boy, even were I sstarved and nine-tenthss dead..."
The bolded interests me, partly because of something Dumbledore states in Chapter 61 (TSPE, Part XI):
..."...Voldemort’s final avenue is to seduce a victim
Blocking the Unblockable Curse.
This is mostly related to canon, but also a bit to HPMoR.
I've always wondered why the killing curse counts as "unblockable". In "Order of the Phoenix", Dumbledore blocks it by moving a statue in its path. Seems to work nicely. There is other evidence that solids stop the killing curse -- if it went through it, you could accidentally kill somebody behind a wall when missing your target. Prof. Moody would surely have mentioned that danger when talking about the killing curse, if that was the case. So you could carry around a steel plate strong enough to block the curse, and quickly move it into its path. Not easy, but possible.
There are also several instances where simple spells conjure animals (I remember bats and small birds). I wonder if you could simply conjure an animal into the way of the killing curse. It might need to have a minimal size to work, but a powerful wizards should be able to do that.
I also wonder if there are ways to combine charms: one detection charm that triggers another one. For example one that detects killing curses, and enables apparation or a portkey.
So, one proven way to block a killing curse, one conjectural, and another conjectural way to escape it. I can't believe the wizards still call it "unblockable" :-)
Chapter 76: "And that's why I can destroy Dementors and you can't," said the boy. "Because I believe that the darkness can be broken."
This is interesting, because it touches upon a thought I had about the Dementors back in Chapter 45. In canon, Dementors are manifestations not of death or even fear, but of despair. (I believe Rowling has said she drew upon her own experiences of depression.) That's why chocolate helps, why they generate feelings of hopelessness, why they take away happy memories and leave unhappy ones, and why their ultimate power is to put people into a coma rather than to kill them. None of this makes sense for a manifestation of death.
But Harry's response would work either way. A happy memory, a pleasant thought, can shield against despair, but it can't destroy it. Hope, on the other hand, true grim hope – the belief that things can be made better and, crucially, the unshakeable determination to make them so, not by thinking 'wouldn't it be nice if…' but by knuckling down and solving the insoluble problem – is the only true cure for despair. And that sort of hope, which Harry shows, is actually pretty hard to hold truly, which would explain w...
I think what Harry says is heartfelt, but it's also a decent false trail to prevent Dumbledore from accidentally working out the secret and losing his ability to cast a Patronus.
Not that Dumbledore necessarily needs that. He's in a great position for doublethink: he can presumably use the Pensieve, label the memory "the secret of dementors and the Patronus charm," then Obliviate himself. Locking the basilisk away in a secret chamber, if you will.
Erm, I'd guess what gave my brain the idea originally was the fact that in canon they are flying corpses in grave shrouds.
Well I am in HMPOR withdrawal so I will post an idea that I have about the origin of the "unverbalizable fear" that Harry has while under the sorting hat about going to Hufflepuff where he will be happy. This idea is based on the few descriptions of the relationship between harry and his father in the early chapters
I was going to post the excerpts in this comment, but it is quite a bit of content so I will abstain for now. If someone wants me to post the excerpts I will. For now suffice it to say that Harry does not feel respected by his father and the only positive feeling that his father is said to display towards Harry is pride.
His eyes glanced over to his father Michael Verres-Evans, who was looking stereotypically stern-but-proud
You might say that his father dropping everything for a last minute book buying spree was a very kind thing to do. Indeed Harry himself says that his dad is "awesome" because he buys him books, and uses the memory later when trying to cast the patronius charm. However, considering the lack of respect and affection that Harry's father shows I have to ask if the book buying spree was really for Harry. It seems more likely to be a...
I've been searching a bit, but didn't find any "process" for translation of HP:MoR. Being a native french, I can offer a bit of my time to translate part of it, but :
I would like to know what's the standard process, since a translation can at some points alter the meaning, is there any review or agreement from Eliezer required ?
There seems to be two french translations already started. I don't want to conflict with other persons. Are the current translators still active ? If so, do they require help, or do they prefer to work alone ?
Do you think it would be a good idea to setup a discussion on LW or a wiki page about translation in general, with the process, the status of the current translations (if the translator(s) are still active or not, ...) ?
I find myself wondering about the supposed safety of Hogwarts. The wards are given as an explanation for this but if students are able to constantly hex each other in the halls, Quirrel is able to cast extremely powerful spells, and an unnamed 6th year replicated the Sectumsempra incident from cannon without any apparent interference from the wards I cant imagine what it is exactly that the wards are supposed to do to insure the safety of the students.
Consider that the school is full of 11-18 year olds with access to weapons of mass destruction and it seems to me that the apparent safety of the place for the past 50 years is due to luck rather then anything inherent in system.
Consider that the school is full of 11-18 year olds with access to weapons of mass destruction and it seems to me that the apparent safety of the place for the past 50 years is due to luck rather then anything inherent in system.
Perhaps luck is inherent in the system. The canon storyline does include a literal luck potion, so similar things are plausible. They also have and use a seer, and short-range time travel. The latter two could be used in ways that prevent deaths without a corresponding reduction in close calls.
It doesn't take a genius on the level of Voldemort to transfigure a hundred pounds of bleach (or name your poison) into air and release it inconspicuously in Diagon Alley.
It kind of does.
It really doesn't. They teach transfiguration to the children from about 8 years old and some of them do not completely fail. They tell the students a bunch of things that are really dangerous to do. There are many people below the level of Voldemort who have both the knowledge and skill to kill people effectively with transfiguration if they so desire. It really isn't that much of a genius feat of creativity.
In how many fanfics is anything like this suggested?
Relatively few fan-fictions are based around the crude exploitation of basic magic for the purpose of terrorism. This says a lot more about what makes a good story than about how hard it is for average wizards to play terrorist. Significant plot arcs about magical terrorists sound cooler if they use fancy dramatic magic that sounds mysterious and hard to acquire rather than the simplest thing that would work.
I've been reading a chapter of MoR to my girlfriend every time we go to a park, and we just got up to Chapter 39. Two thoughts:
It's fun to try to imitate a long series of random noises with your mouth alone in a public place.
Sarah's immediate reaction to the first part was "Why doesn't he just ask Harry for a Pensieve memory of his conversation with Lucius? Dumbledore doesn't use notes." I can't see why not either. My first reaction was that Pensieves haven't been referenced in MoR yet and might work differently, but I was wrong; Draco's going to use his memory of Harry's first date to blackmail him.
The exact details of memories are malleable. It may very well be that pensieves in this setting can only recover what the person remembers not what they actually experienced. It may be that this could still be useful for interrogating less disciplined minds who can remember details but not realize they do, but Dumbledore may think that if there were any specific details that were important enough Harry would in fact remember them.
Also, do we know if more than one person's memories can be put into a single pensieve? Maybe different people's memories can't be mixed.
In canon, they can--Harry spends much of the sixth book exploring memories from many different people, all in the same pensieve. In MoR, Draco says "we" have a pensieve, implying there's a Malfoy Pensieve, where an "I" would imply that his and his dad's are separate.
I was just wondering: does anyone else hope Eliezer fleshes out Magical History? I find it a pity that we don't get to see how Magical Britain became what it is now. I mean, so far he's reflected (very broadly) on the current political situation through Draco, but he's continued to keep us in the dark about Voldemort's rise to power, the situation that led to that, the circumstances surrounding the beginning of magic (as a technology, since Harry has confirmed that the rules for spells aren't natural laws), the founding of Hogwarts ...
So, which do you all think are most important for Eliezer to touch upon? Can you think of any others you want to see?
Also: I know that wizards generally ignore muggles, but they are another entire civilization, with documentation of their history, living in secret right next to the Muggle society. Wizarding history could provide a lot of insight into Muggle history because of how the two are so closely related.
I'm interested in discussing the world Eliezer has created. Its alternate in obvious and subtle ways. Obviously, in this world both Harry and Quirrelmort are rationalists, but lots of other elements have changed.
-Dumbledore seems more changed by war than his book incarnation, to the point where he is making some obviously bad choices that have impacts on the school -The school is a more dangerous place than it was in the books. By this, I mean that in books 1-4, despite some hijinks, the actual danger was pretty darn low- in first year Harry had to actively try to get into mortal danger (ignoring some deeply unsubtle assasination attempts by Quirrel). In particular other students are never a danger to each other, yet theres a strong implication that here fights really can escalate- or at least that was the attempt with the Heromione arc. This is probably due in part to Dumbledore's approach (I don't believe that the 'Dore of the books would have tolerated such an escalation at all), and the beefing up of Slytherin house, and the Malfoy's in particular. While Lucius Malfoy was clearly a powerful individual in the books, his manipulations were fairly clunky, and nowhere near as subtle as portrayed here.
I think I need to have it in my head that many of the characters are subtly different here, because sometimes I read their portrayal as mocking the attitude in the books, and while sometimes that IS whats happening, sometimes its just because the characters aren't quite the same.
While Lucius Malfoy was clearly a powerful individual in the books, his manipulations were fairly clunky, and nowhere near as subtle as portrayed here.
We assume he's competent because Dumbledore keeps referring to him as competent, but Dumbledore does have a motive to exaggerate his enemy's power. He constantly uses Lucius as an excuse to not do something, and he flat out tells Harry early on that weakening Dumbledore strengthens Malfoy.
But Malfoy is in over his head. Every time we see or hear from him, he's getting something wrong, being ineffectual, or being publicly humiliated. By contrast, he seems pretty darn effective in the books. His scheme in Chamber of Secrets was simple and robust enough to work, and even with Harry repeatedly being in the right place at the right time it still ends with the Weasleys discredited and the Malfoys untouched. (Edit: Sorry, misremembered. He goes after Dumbledore prematurely and loses. Good scheme apart from that, though.)
His main obvious difference from canon is the way he's raised his son.
Hm. Quoted in the linked post is the fact that Dumbledore's suggested revision to the Potion of Eagle's Splendor (the one that would end up making the imbiber sick for weeks, as happened to Petunia) was, specifically, replacing blueberries with Thestral blood. Now where else has that come up recently?
And Harry knew, now, that the concealment of the Cloak was more than the mere transparency of Disillusionment, that the Cloak kept you hidden and not just invisible, as unseeable as were Thestrals to the unknowing. And Harry also knew that it was Thestral blood which painted the symbol of the Deathly Hallows on the inside of the Cloak, binding into the Cloak that portion of Death's power, enabling the Cloak to confront the Dementors on their own level and block them. It had felt like guessing, and yet a certain guess, the knowledge coming to him in the instant of solving the riddle.
Considering that by the time he annotated Lily's book, Dumbledore had certainly had around thirty years to study the Elder Wand (which canonically has a Thestral tail-hair core), and may or may not have already examined the Cloak of Invisibility as well, this certainly seems suggestive of something. I've no idea what, though. ("Charming as death" doesn't seem like much of a compliment.)
I think that the new information 78 would give us to discuss ought to balance out the cliffhanger, no matter how large.
Also, I wonder if Harry might use the Headmasters conclusions about the return of the Dark Lord to request private lessons. Most likely not Horcrux-related lessons, but similiar to what Ron and Hermione expected Dumbledore to teach him in Canon. In this universe Love is certainly not Harry's Deus ex Machina, so Dumbledore ought to want him to be more competent in Battle Magic.
Are time-turners really not turing computable? Is Harry ever going to figure out what allows magic to (seem to?) break the laws of physics? Is "we're living in a simulation" eliminated as a possibility?
Just reread chapter 40.
"Which is why the Resurrection Stone is not the most valuable magical artifact in the world," said Harry.
"Precisely," said Professor Quirrell, "though I wouldn't say no to a chance to try it." There was a dry, thin smile on his lips; and something colder, more distant, in his eyes. "You spoke to Dumbledore of that as well, I take it."
Sounds to me like Quirrell had never heard of the resurrection stone before this conversation. Later in the chapter, it becomes apparent that he has never hear...
Cross posting what I wrote on TV Tropes
'm pretty sure i've figured out quirrelmorts plan for harry and magical britian. To TLDR it for you guys, hes going to train harry as a caesar, and use harry as a figurehead/puppet to force magical britian into a war of conquest with the rest of the magical world, probably selling it as a world wide war on dark wizards. Then once england owns the wizard world, they own the entire world since you can't fight invisible mind rapers.
Viewed in this context all of his actions start making sense. Harry is a very well known f...
Chp 78 ---
Eliezer, given all the waiting, and that Chp 78 is 17K words, can we have a NY gift of Chp 78 in 3 parts? 5K each spaced about a week apart? That should take us till the third week of Jan :)
From an addict's perspective, drip helps :)
Eliezer is now recommending specific readings for the "Know everything Harry does!" quest instead of handwaving it with "eh, just study every single thing I wrote after 2005 and you'll be a much bigger threat than Harry."
I've gotta say I appreciate this, all the more because it's probably tedious work.
In short, エリエザー様万歳！
And as long as we're trying to find magical exploits, I wonder what Harry would do if he got his hands on some Felix Felicis.
For instance, if he locked himself in a room with only a weegie board (or scrabble tiles), would it be forced to spell out whatever information he needed to know? Would it only answer his direct questions, or could it just start warning him about all of Quirrell and Dumbledore and Lucius' plans and how to beat them?
Does anyone else wonder why Sirus hasn't shown up in this story yet? I get the whole
Peter Pettigrew x Sirus Black = tragedy lovers keeps them from being central to the story up to this point
But is it still an accepted fact in MoR verse that Pettigrew is innocent?
It's easily possible that Hermione has seen at least one picture of Sirius (she mentions him by name as the Potters' betrayer in Chapter 8), and given her memory it would be plausible for her to recognize him, even months afterward. Additionally, Sirius is one of the few people who would cause an immediate reaction of terror at first sight.
Another one might be - bear with me here - Lucius Malfoy. This idea is a little shakier, as it's less plausible that Hermione is familiar with his appearance, but the advantage is that it neatly accounts for the otherwise-strange
The black mist darkened and lightened, like a shake of the head. "I am frightened of Harry Potter," it whispered. "Of the coldness in his eyes, of the darkness that grows behind them. Harry Potter is a killer, and anyone who is an obstacle to him will die. Even you, Hermione Granger, if you dare truly oppose him, the darkness behind his eyes will reach out and destroy you. This I know."
since Lucius seems to be convinced Harry is possessed by Voldemort. (Though it casts a certain odd light on Mr H&C's warning to Hermione about Lucius, I think it's at least possible that he could bite his tongue ...
I've already posted this in the reviews as well as on TvTropes, but I figure it can't hurt to share it here as well. (As well as pose it somewhat more formally.)
Harry's freak-out in the beginning over the animagus transformation got me thinking. Between the two possiblities: a) the laws of physics Harry believes are wrong and b) the animagus transformation only appears to violate Conservation but doesn't actually do so, it seems fallacious to skip to possibility-a without ruling out possibility-b.
After some thought, I was able to generate a hypothesis for ...
A hypothesis I'm currently toying with: Quirrell and HJPEV are different versions of the same individual, in some sense, and the Quirrell version is using some form of magic (probably involving breaking the 6-hour-limit on sending information backwards through time, possibly involving possession of a real Quirrell) to carry out a process of recursive self-improvement on himself. The story we're currently reading takes place in one iteration of the loop.
Has anyone posted this idea before on the net?
There are some serious problems with this hypothesis:
Sorry if this has been asked before, my meagre google-fu skills fail to reveal it.
Chapter 55. When Harry cast his Patronus in Azkaban, he lost some of his "life" to sustain it:
...Slowly the light died back down.
Part of Harry's life flowed back into him.
Part had been lost as radiation.
[...]
So Harry walked on, leaving a piece of himself behind. It would dwell in this place and time forever, he knew. Even after Harry came back someday with a company of other True Patronus casters and they destroyed all the Dementors here. Even if he melted the trian
J.K. Rowling is releasing some character bios on Pottermore, and showing a flagrant disregard for MoR!canon. In particular, McGonagall's father was a Muggle Presbyterian minister. Even though, in MoR:
Minerva stared at Severus, feeling sick to her stomach. She had studied Muggle religion - it was the most common reason for needing to Memory-Charm the parents of Muggleborns - and she knew enough to understand what Severus had just said.
Furthermore, per the bio McGonagall was ten years old and still living in the Muggle world when atomic bombs were drop...
I think Eliezer shouldn't fuss too much making the MoR! universe consistent with any new information, especially not chapters already posted. Too much cost in time, too little benefit.
And a half-blood McGonnagal would need be drastically rewritten, it's not just those few passages, it's her entire attitude towards the Muggle world.
It seems to me that Minerva serves a useful narrative purpose primarily because she is a not-particularly-well-informed pureblood in Dumbledore's inner circle. Making her a half-blood alongside Snape... well, it reduces the opportunities for culture shock rather a lot. Who could be brought in to showcase the viewpoint of Light-sided purebloods, the Weasleys?
Not to mention I feel like Minerva would be a lot less sympathetic as a character if she weren't so consistently off-balance.
I had been assuming that the third-floor corridor was just a way to keep young Gryffindors distracted. Surely even Dumbledore wouldn't be daft enough to entice the Dark Lord into a school. But Quirrell seems to think it's of interest. Confusing...
Random, low-confidence but possibly amusing prediction: in MoR the final obstacle of the third-floor corridor is called the Mirror of Vec, because it's inscribed Noiti lovde talopart xet nere hocru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.
It's much more thematic, at least.
The problem is, Dumbledore's not going to tell Harry what the condition is for getting the stone. Why would he? He didn't tell canon Quirrell, who was standing there trying to figure out why he couldn't get it. He didn't even tell canon Harry until after the fact. The mirror as a screening process works even better if the person being screened doesn't know what it's testing for, and thus can't fake it.
And Harry would want to use the stone, make no mistake. The first thing he'd do with it is make himself immortal, to make sure no accident or fluke could stop him from having time to mass produce the immortality elixir. And he'd be using it for study anyways. But the most important part is that even if he is capable of precommitting and one-boxing, and even if that kind of trick fools the mirror, he'd first need to know that that was the condition necessary to obtain the stone. And you can probably count the number of people Dumbledore trusts with that information on one hand.
Voldemort isn't clever enough to just kill him by non-magical means.
Well, you know how it would actually play out, given Canon!Voldemort
"Okay, my wand didn't work against Harry, and a borrowed wand didn't work against Harry. What I need to do is get the ultimate wand!"
"Master, it may be impertinent of me, but why don't we just get you an AK-47 and let you shoot him? Or maybe a grenade launcher or something?"
"But then I won't have defeated him with magic! My magic must be the mightiest!"
"Um, wait, if you need the boost of the ultimate wand, isn't that already proof your magic on its own—"
"Avada kedavra! All right, anyone else have helpful suggestions?"
One thing that I found interesting but that I haven't noticed anyone else mention.
In chapter 76, we have:
...But, as Hermione had explained to Millicent, prophesying wasn't controllable, there was no way to ask for a prophecy about anything in particular. Instead (the books had said) there was a sort of pressure that built up in Time, when some huge event was trying to happen, or stop itself from happening. And seers were like weak points that let out the pressure, when the right listener was nearby. So prophecies were only about big, important things, becau
During Hermione's description, my brain immediately pointed out that no one could possibly know whether or not Seers can give prophesies with no one around to hear them, because the Seers don't remember doing it and, well, there's no one else around to notice.
Maybe Seers are just constantly prophesying when they're alone and no one has any idea.
I don't think that would really settle the matter, though. All you would then know is whether seers prophesied when only in the presence of recording devices. (If a seer prophesied in the forest and no one was there to hear, would it constrain the future?) I wonder what you would call that, actually- the Cassandra Uncertainty Principle?
(This sort of goes along with all the other responses to the grandparent, but Donny's is the best fit):
I'm having a hard time believing that the girl who said this-
Instead (the books had said) there was a sort of pressure that built up in Time, when some huge event was trying to happen, or stop itself from happening. And seers were like weak points that let out the pressure, when the right listener was nearby. So prophecies were only about big, important things, because only that generated enough pressure; and you almost never got more than one seer saying the same thing, because afterward the pressure was gone.
Is the same girl who said this-
Hermione turned back to face Dumbledore again, took a deep breath, and said, "Well, maybe people who are going to be heroes, will be heroes no matter what. But I don't see how anyone could really know that, aside from just saying it afterward. And when I told you that I wanted to be a hero, you weren't very encouraging."
Okay, say that prophecies are caused by 'pressure in Time' from great events that are 'trying' to happen. How could anyone know that? What's worse, though, is that she did this research with Harry, who apparently let her walk away believing this nonsense.
Edit: (And if Eliezer pops in to say the Department of Mysteries has a room full of Temporal Barometers I will be very unhappy.)
You won't think of it. You just won't discover you're in a fanfic! The laws of physics are running on an author, and that author doesn't want you to discover you're in a fanfic. I expect you will have trouble thinking thoughts physics itself does not want you to think.
I... guess...
You know, it occurs to me that out of such renowned experts as Dumbledore, Trelawney, that unnamed Bavarian seer, the Unspeakables, and the centaurs...
I kinda want to know what Luna Lovegood thinks about prophecy before I decide what to believe.
We haven't seen anything of Madam Pince in MOR, have we? You'd think Harry would make a point to talk to the magical librarian. Come to think of it, she might be Hat and Cloak. Although not if H&C = Santa Clause.
"Oh, the little fiddly things?" said Dumbledore. "They came with the Headmaster's office and I have absolutely no idea what most of them do. Although this dial with the eight hands counts the number of, let's call them sneezes, by left-handed witches within the borders of France, you would not believe how much work it took to nail that down."
I know it's supposed to be a joke, but.... How? Is Dumbledore monitoring every wizard and witch's sex life? And how did he manage to crunch that data? Do wizards have calculating machi...
Eh, it was probably a given from the start that it was counting something.
Then immediately after the French Ministry of Magic authorizes/legalizes a new "Give yourself multiple orgasms" charm, or even just a new magical Viagra, the device's count jumps up. At that point Dumbledore knows it's counting something that correlates strongly with sexual satisfaction, but the count is a bit too low to be counting the orgasms of the entire French female magical population. Turns out the inventor was a jealous French wizard who tried to keep tabs on his left-handed wife, but keyed in the criteria too weakly, so that any left-handed witch within the borders of France would do.
"Status update, Jan 19 2012: Now working on Ch. 81. I think I'd really better finish at least Ch. 81 before posting Ch. 78, due to the number of backward edits I've been making, and the extent to which they form a dramatic unity that should be posted regularly/predictably after the first chapter hits."
Well, it's nice that we didn't need to ask for a progress update. About how long might 81 turn out to be?
Something I just noticed from Ch. 55:
Amelia Bones: "Someone would burn for this."
Did Amelia Bones burn Narcissa Malfoy?
Actually, I just had a chilling realization in regards to that. From chapter 62:
'"No," said the old wizard's voice. "I do not think so. The Death Eaters learned, toward the end of the war, not to attack the Order's families. And if Voldemort is now acting without his former companions, he still knows that it is I who make the decisions for now, and he knows that I would give him nothing for any threat to your family. I have taught him that I do not give in to blackmail, and so he will not try."
Harry turned back then, and saw a coldness on the old wizard's face to match the shift in his voice, Dumbledore's blue eyes grown hard as steel behind the glasses, it didn't match the person but it matched the formal black robes.'
I strongly suspect that Dumbledore burned Narcissa Malfoy so that the death eaters would stop targeting the families of Order members. Judging by his tone of voice and body language in this excerpt, this is probably the one action during the war that Dumbledore most regrets having had to do.
If I'm right, Harry will be in a difficult moral situation when he learns the truth. Was what Dumbledore did justified? On the one hand, torturing a mostly innocent person to death is deplorable no matter how you slice it. On the other, if that was the only way to stop many other innocents from being tortured to death...
It occurs to me that a Pensieve would be a powerful tool for dealing with any of the Newcomblike problems that have come up so far or are likely to come up in the future -- getting past the magic mirror, for example. Just extract any memories relating to debiasing that you might have, put them in a jar labeled do not open until Christmas, and go talk to whatever the Omega of the moment is.
Might not work like that in practice -- I wouldn't expect it to IRL, at least, since scrubbing a memory probably wouldn't get rid of the weightings that have grown aroun...
For whatever reason, I didn't make this connection until now.
Prediction about Quidditch and the House Cup:
Dhveery znavchyngrf Enirapynj naq Fylgureva gb fpber whfg gur evtug ahzore bs cbvagf va gur svany tnzr gb znxr gur Ubhfr Phc n gvr. Guvf vf znqr cbffvoyr ol gur tnzr raqvat ng n cerqrsvarq gvzr.
Caveat:
Gur Ubhfr Phc vf njneqrq ng gur raq bs gur fpubby lrne, juvpu vf cebonoyl abg vzzrqvngryl nsgre gur ynfg Dhvqqvgpu tnzr. Nf jryy, vs Fylgureva naq Enirapynj unir hardhny fpberf orsber tbvat vagb gur tnzr, boivbhfyl n gvr vf gur jebat erfhyg.
I tried putting the HTML for MoR on an eReader, and the paragraph breaks disappeared, making the story seem like the hectic ravings of a madman on speed.
Some of the paragraph breaks are rendered by the Kobo eReader as paragraph breaks. But looking at the HTML, I can't figure out what the rule is. Does anyone know?
(P.S. - Do not buy a Kobo eReader.)
Something I've been trying to puzzle out for the past day, and failing. From Chapter 39, as Harry is talking to Dumbledore:
..."The obvious test to see if the Resurrection Stone is really calling back the dead, or just projecting an image from the user's mind, is to ask a question whose answer you don't know, but the dead person would, and that can be definitely verified in this world. For example, call back -"
Then Harry paused, because this time he'd managed to think it through one step ahead of his tongue, fast enough to not say the first name an
Eliezer,
Could we have an update every 10 days telling us where you are? Makes the waiting much easier, knowing we're getting more.
One like last time with #of words, chapter would be great.
The super awesomeness of HPMOR so far is what makes all the anticipation fun...
Blame not the users for doing what the site was intended to enable. Blame the suckiness of the interface.
If you are creeped out, you are probably taking it out of context.
Sure, if you describe it as "he molested a minor and made her forget about it", it sounds quite creepy. But if you think of it as a lonely, inexperienced and deeply troubled boy thanking a girl fawning over him for her help in a tricky situation the best way he can, then maybe you will see that the difference in physical age does not automatically translate in this case into any kind of a power difference.
Who here is a little creeped out by Snape agreeing to kiss her in the latest chapter?
Not even remotely. It's a shame they couldn't do more.
There is a good reason to have laws that prohibit this kind of liaison - the potential for abuse is enormous. But this isn't a case that the rules are necessary for.
From chapter 76:
"I asked Professor Quirrell why he'd laughed," the boy said evenly, "after he awarded Hermione those hundred points. And Professor Quirrell said, these aren't his exact words, but it's pretty much what he said, that he'd found it tremendously amusing that the great and good Albus Dumbledore had been sitting there doing nothing as this poor innocent girl begged for help, while he had been the one to defend her. And he told me then that by the time good and moral people were done tying themselves up in knots, what they usually ...
Quirrell is saying, Don't try to optimize; just be free, amoral, and chaotic, and do whatsoever you will.
I don't think that is what Quirrell is saying. He is criticising a real failure mode in in 'good' people.
Isn't this equivalent to renouncing Harry's entire rational approach of weighing costs vs. benefits?
Yes. Which is why the very next thing Harry said was
"Don't worry, Headmaster," said the boy. "I haven't gotten my wires crossed. I know that I'm supposed to learn goodness from Hermione and Fawkes, not from Professor Quirrell and you."
According to you:
Quirrell is saying, Don't try to optimize; just be free, amoral, and chaotic, and do whatsoever you will.
The relevant quote would be from Chapter 20:
"What makes something right, if not your wanting it?"
"Ah," Harry said, "preference utilitarianism."
"Pardon me?" said Professor Quirrell.
"It's the ethical theory that the good is what satisfies the preferences of the most people -"
"No," Professor Quirrell said. His fingers rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I don't think that's quite what I was trying to say. Mr. Potter, in the end people all do what they want to do. Sometimes people give names like 'right' to things they want to do, but how could we possibly act on anything but our own desires?"
Yay, ethical egoism!
One thing that I've wondered about-and note that I'm not entirely sure if this is the right venue for asking- is what Eliezer thinks about the Visual Novel format a storyline structure (obviously not for MOR, that increases the entry barrier way too much for a cute and pop introduction to Rationality. ) I know that he decided to use the Normal/True ending for the Three Worlds Collide story, but what does he think about, let's say, the relatively long common route into different story branches format, the three "distinct" story format (Fate/Stay N...
I seem to recall there was some playing around with Suzumiya-style Anachronic Order in earlier MoR chapters, but it was pretty self-contained and easy to follow. Plus there's some just downright confusing parts- chapter opening quotes that are never referenced again, Aftermaths that don't seem to have anything to do with the previous chapter, stuff like that.
And there's definitely some real potential for an omake chapter of Bad Ends: Harry accidentally destroying Dumbledore's ability to cast the Patronus Charm, Harry insulting his mother to Snape just a little more, Harry saying the wrong thing to Lucius in King's Cross, Harry realizing aloud to Quirrel what the ritual to summon Death really was...
Harry successfully transfiguring nanotech.
I had actually been tossing around the idea of a fic where each chapter is a bad end for MoR, possibly one for each chapter. Working title: 'Everyone dies'.
When I'm done with the Hermione Granger route, I'm going to write the Luna Lovegood route, then the Bellatrix Black route, then the Draco Malfoy route, and then the harem ending!
April now, is it? Then the next thing that's going to happen is that everyone except Harry goes home for Easter (Easter Sunday was 19 April in 1992, and they'll probably take most of the holiday before it rather than after it since it's so late that year) and Harry's parents come to visit him. That should be interesting. I hope he's told them he's not allowed to leave Hogwarts.
It's mentioned, just not dwelled on. It's mentioned once in passing in each of the first two books:
Sorceror's Stone:
They piled so much homework on them that the Easter holidays weren't nearly as much fun as the Christmas ones.
Chamber of Secrets:
The second years were given something new to think about during the Easter holidays.
And so on. It's just that I don't think anything interesting ever happens during them.
"The world around us redunds with opportunities, explodes with opportunities, which nearly all folk ignore because it would require them to violate a habit of thought"
Is this a typo? If not, I don't think it flows very well.
What do we know of the second Hat-and-Cloak:
=> not Quirrell or Snape
=> not anyone unknown
=>...
I don't understand Draco's exchange with Lucius at the end of Chapter 7. Anyone know what's going on?
Here are my thoughts, which of course may easily be completely wrong.
Facts: 1) Harry states, "So during the Incident at the Potions Shop, while Professor McGonagall was busy talking to the shopkeeper and trying to get everything under control, I grabbed one of the customers and asked them about Lucius."
2) Harry states, "So you really are his one weak point. Huh."
3) Draco's letter to his father asks about Harry's "weak point" co...
No secret information is required for Harry to come to his conclusion of "So you really are his one weak point. Huh."
Available evidence:
From this evidence it can be reasonably concluded that Lucius loves his son.
For a hard man like Lucius, this makes Draco his likely weakest point.
Lucius is simply underestimating Harry's ability to make good use of the available information (and possibly also underestimating how much Draco has given away while trying to cultivate Harry).
EDIT: 25 Jan 2012 - I just noticed that a previous incomplete revision of this comment appeared below by accident. It is now retracted...
There's a very subtle bit that I just realized that's worth mentioning as a possibility. Rot13 for spoilers:
Va puncgre 46, Uneel yvfgf uvf boivbhf jnlf bs uvqvat na bowrpg. Gur pbagrkg gurer urnivyl vzcyvrf gung uvf yvfg vf n fhofrg bs Ibyqrzbeg'f npghny ubepehk yvfg. Va gung yvfg Uneel fnlf
Be vqrnyyl lbh jbhyq ynhapu vg vagb fcnpr, jvgu n pybnx ntnvafg qrgrpgvba, naq n enaqbzyl syhpghngvat nppryrengvba snpgbe gung jbhyq gnxr vg bhg bs gur Fbyne Flfgrz. Naq nsgrejneq, bs pbhefr, lbh'q Boyvivngr lbhefrys, fb rira lbh qvqa'g xabj rknpgyl jurer vg jnf.
Fv...
Harry has said that Hermione is his moral center. Is she? Should she be?
I have mixed feelings. She's hardly a paragon, and if she's going to continue to develop into her own character instead of a satellite of Harry, Eliezer's going to outline her faults in more detail. We've seen this with Harry. Every time he undergoes a trial, readers learn more and more how fallible he is, and why.
Thoughts?
I actually looked that up on my last reread. It turns out there are several known pentagon tilings, some of which are quite attractive, although of course none use regular pentagons.
I don't think that actually works. At most, you've reduced the measure increase by the inverse-exponential length of the shortest program that rewrites in a way that undoes the impossibility. What kind of serial fiction extrapolating simulator lacks that as a builtin feature, but still works?
From 2/7 to 2/10 Eliezer wrote 10,000 words, while working on the Rationality Institute. If he continued at that pace, he'd be at 10,000 words by now. Realistically, I'd estimate that he's had even less time to write, and is at around 7,000. So, new chapter in March?
Eh, Aberforth is dead?
Dumbledore leaned back in his padded throne. His eyes were as cold as anything Minerva had seen from him since the day his brother died.
Hadn't noticed this before. Interesting...
I have a hypothesis about the origin of magic.
Obviously it was a long time ago, presumably prehistoric. Could the creaters have been neanderthals? They died out comparatively recently, the soonest possible time being 30,000 years ago. Is this long enough for all traces of their civiliation to disappear? There is also strong evidence that many humans have some remains of neaderthal DNA (to fit with the Atlantis DNA hypothesis). They were physically dominant to Homo sapiens, which would make it easier for them to dominate technically as well. (In real life, ...
Whoever it was, somebody apparently reprogrammed the AI with pseudo-latin commands.
Or the Latin language was partially based on a the AI's command language.
So. Ch76, the part about how prophecies work. Has anyone else seen the connection to Amputation of Destiny?
There seems to be a slight contradiction.
On the one hand, Harry and Hermione find out that one needs to know what a spell does in order to cast ist successfully (Ch 22, "If you didn’t tell her at all what the spell was supposed to do, it would stop working.").
And then in 26, about the 6th years Griffindor (canon!Harry) who hexes canon!Draco: "He is in his sixth year at Hogwarts and he cast a high-level Dark curse without knowing what it did.”
Shouln't that be impossible? Or if the knowledge from Harry and Hermione's experiment wasn't very general, Harry should have noted at least. (Though honestly I didn't notice during my first read, being amused about the reference to canon).
The next line after "If you didn't tell her at all what the spell was supposed to do, it would stop working." says
If she knew in very vague terms what the spell was supposed to do, or she was only partially wrong, then the spell would work as originally described in the book, not the way she'd been told it should.
Knowing that the spell is 'For enemies' apparently counts as knowing in very vague terms what it will do.
Dumbledore tells Harry that Voldemort has used Dark Magic to save his own 'soul' at the cost of Myrtle's life. So Harry knows of at least one Dark Ritual which needs a death as sacrifice, ie making a Horcrux.
Quirrell tells Harry that the darkest ritual he knows requires only a sword that has slain a woman, and a rope that has hanged a man - to summon death.
Since Harry knows Quirrell knows every Dark Ritual there is worth knowing, and one of the rules of Evil Overlords is to get immortality, Harry knows that Quirrell is not telling him about the Horcrux rit...
It seems to be a common POV here that Quirrell is/harbors Voldemort in MoR, like he does in canon. I see no reasons to assume that's true, and even the goal of the Azkaban break does not seem as straightforward as Dumbledore appears to think.
Am I missing some clear indications to the contrary?
What Lucius thinks Harry is plotting during their conversation in chapter 38: Whose interest is served by Harry's refusal of Quirrell's plan to strengthen magical Britain, by uniting it under a strong wizard? Lucius vf n oybbq chevfg; gb uvz, gur rarzl bs zntvpny Oevgnva, jub jbhyq orarsvg sebz guvf jrnxarff, vf Zhttyrf. Ur guvaxf Uneel vf n Zhttyr fhcerznpvfg, is the theory I propose.
Apparently, according to canon Tracy David is a half-blood in Slytherin. Is she a half-blood in HPMR? Given that she's a much more important character here, it would seem likely to come up.
Edit: This may be wrong. Claim that this is canon seems uncited.
There seems to be only one way this story can end.
(The HPMOR discussion thread after this one is here.)
The previous thread is over the 500-comment threshold, so let's start a new Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread. This is the place to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic and anything related to it. The latest chapter as of 09/09/2011 is Ch. 77.
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. The fanfiction.net author page is the central location for information about updates and links to HPMOR-related goodies, and AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.
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.