ETA: There is now a third thread, so send new comments there.

 

Since the first thread has exceeded 500 comments, it seems time for a new one, with Eliezer's just-posted Chapter 33 & 34 to kick things off. 

From previous post: 

Spoiler Warning:  this thread contains unrot13'd spoilers for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality up to the current chapter and for the original Harry Potter series.  Please continue to use rot13 for spoilers to other works of fiction, or if you have insider knowledge of future chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

A suggestion: mention at the top of your comment which chapter you're commenting on, or what chapter you're up to, so that people can understand the context of your comment even after more chapters have been posted.  This can also help people avoid reading spoilers for a new chapter before they realize that there is a new chapter.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2
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I can't believe I didn't realize this before.

Someone complained elsewhere (I think it was in the other thread) about Harry being the Boy-who-Lived and having a prophecy and having a cold dark side and being super-rational.

From MoR itself:

It's too much coincidence for one girl to be the strongest magically and academically unless there's a single cause.

It's plausible that one of the Muggle-raised students at Hogwarts could be a science nerd. It's not plausible that that student would also be the Boy-who-Lived. There must be a single cause.

I think it's most likely that Harry's dark side is somehow an effect of being AKed. Perhaps he's a horcrux, like in canon. The hat said no, but it's possible that Harry was killed and the only soul left in him is Voldemort's fragment. Or, without positing souls, maybe horcruxing a person overwrites the victim with a copy of yourself.

Harrymort has a warm side because he was raised in a loving household; he doesn't remember being Voldemort because he was stuck in a child's brain, with the plasticity and pruning that entails (or maybe V. wiped Harrymort's memory for some reason?); he didn't survive the attack, but rather his fresh corpse was appr... (read more)

"Ghosts," Harry said, his voice flat. "You mean those things like portraits, stored memories and behaviors with no awareness or life, accidentally impressed into the surrounding material by the burst of magic that accompanies the violent death of a wizard -"

"Why," I said to myself, "would you have to die to make a ghost? It seems completely arbitrary." But then I thought that perhaps death releases a huge amount of magic that can't normally be drawn upon safely.

But then I had this wicked awesome idea.

What if a Horcrux is the same effect, harnessed deliberately? That's why it requires human sacrifice -- the violent death of a wizard. A controlled ghost-making, operated by a wizard who remains conscious and alive through the whole process, can bind the mind into an object, arrange for contingent regrowth of the caster from the record... Yes. Horcruxes are ghosts created under controlled conditions.

Which in turn suggests that you might be able to make a dying person into a superghost (or maybe even an immortal living person). Kill them to make a horcrux, but make the sacrifice immortal instead of the caster.

1bogdanb
That’s a cool idea! Also, it nicely has an analogue property to cryonics: you need to do something squicky (kill the guy) to save his life, in a fashion. Since the results would be closer in time and less speculative, it should overcome part of the revulsion of cryonics but allow the rest of it be overcome consciously.
[-]KevinC110

ZOMG! That makes sense! So much sense that J.K. Rowling really missed a chance to have a great Revan Moment in canon. Imagine the shock ending if, as Voldemort staggers from a mortal wound in the last pages of Deathly Hallows, he explains this to Harry, then: "I...am only a shell...and have never been anything more. (cough) My purpose has only been to prepare you...Make you strong...make you gather the Hallows and become invincible... You. Are. Voldemort! BWA! HA! HAAAAAA!"

This would make sense of canon scenes like, for e.g., Voldy's re-animation ceremony in Goblet of Fire only using a little of Harry's blood, instead of having Ratface cut his throat, and how he calls his Death Eaters off and fights Harry solo instead of having them Just Shoot Him.

Back to MoR, yeah, I think "Harrymort" is a fiendishly cool idea! (up-voted)

2NihilCredo
I agree that it's a very cool idea, though it may be because I still have fond memories of KotOR myself (on a side note, it was the first instance where I realised that interactive games have certain artistic potentials unmatched by other media - that moment would not have been nearly as effective had I not walked in Revan's shoes for dozens of hours). It does, however, sound like the kind of idea other fanfiction works might have explored before. Does anyone remember something like that?
0thomblake
Yes, that is one of the fairly unique properties of video games. If you've read anything by Heidegger about how Greek tragedy was the highest form of art due to the participatory nature of the autidence, his comments make a lot more sense if he was talking about video games instead.

Is it the author's opinion that the creation of house elves was a terribly evil deed? It would seem that to think that after their creation, they would want to do what they have been designed to do and so would be no more evil than creating an intelligence which would want to bowl and fish all day. Even if we accept that creating conscious entities which are forced by means of their preferences to do menial work is wrong, it would seem to be better to create them, than to force those who don't enjoy such work to do it. Is Harry just confused by his intuitions about the evil of slavery, without sufficient reflection?

ETA: While this argument works in the abstract and is useful for countering human biases against "slavery" and applies in the particular for the creation of Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, house elves have addition features I wasn't considering which makes their creation morally evil.

Is it the author's opinion that the creation of house elves was a terribly evil deed?

It had been, but...

Even if we accept that creating conscious entities which are forced by means of their preferences to do menial work is wrong, it would seem to be better to create them, than to force those who don't enjoy such work to do it.

...is a powerful argument I had never considered.

[-]KevinC140

Though there's logic to this argument, pretty much everything else about the way house elves were made is evil. They're created, or conditioned to brutally torture themselves if they even think they've displeased their masters or broken a rule. They have no labor rights and can be mistreated at will, to the point that mistreatment is built in as a product feature.

We can only imagine what sort of miserable Dickensian conditions they live in when they're not at work. They're forced to wear ragged, salvaged sacks, as giving them clothes = firing them, i.e. denying them the work and subservient position they're designed to want. This is a needless cruelty on top of everything else. Heck, if I were an aristocrat wizard with house elves, I'd want mine to go around in elegant livery, as a demonstration of how magnificent my Estate is. But I couldn't do that, because the poor little creatures were made (modified?) by a sadist.

Heck, if I were an aristocrat wizard with house elves, I'd want mine to go around in elegant livery, as a demonstration of how magnificent my Estate is. But I couldn't do that

You could get them elegantly embroidered little dishtowels clipped into place with stylized sugar tongs made of silver.

2Pavitra
Hogwarts elves in canon do wear something very much like that.
1blogospheroid
You can't give them clothes, but no one said anything about not giving them ARMOR. Give them fine spider silk armor, it will be indistinguishable from silk.
6Eliezer Yudkowsky
True. You have persuaded me back to my original position. Whoever made house elves was disgusting. It could have been done right (complementary intelligent species that enjoys doing a lot of necessary things we don't, while still having rich lives of their own), but it wasn't.
3NancyLebovitz
This is pointing at a general problem in sf-- problems are needed to move the plot along, so some development which might have good or mixed results is burdened with other features that make it obviously bad. The usual handling of longevity and immortality in sf is an example, but so is the [spoiler] included with the cosmetic surgery in Westerfeld's Uglies or an AI in a novel called B.E.A.S.T. which was challenged by throwing a series of deadly attacks at it-- it becomes violent and we have a story, but what would happen with a better treated AI would be more interesting.
4cousin_it
Do you think it would be evil to create house elves that honestly enjoy their jobs and situations?

...is a powerful argument I had never considered.

How would you say this relates to the ethics of creating an FAI? In some ways house elves were created for a similar reason that we would create an FAI. Would it be something about 'consciousness' that separates the two constructions ethically? If so, I wonder whether creating a 'helper' agent that in some sense is conscious and 'enjoys' what it does is better or worse than creating a raw optimised agent that we wouldn't consider conscious.

It occurs to me that what a house elf considers fun is not all that much different from the perspective of all of value-space from what we might consider fun.

I think it's worth distinguishing creating work-loving entities ex nihilo from modifying existing entities against their will to become work-loving. Canon rather implies the latter; handling the procedure ethically would be tricky, as baseline elves likely would not only resist being value-enslaved, but would want the children they birth and raise to be like themselves.

6TobyBartels
That's certainly canon!Hermione's problem. But there is something wrong with House-Elves, at least in canon, even after whatever went into their creation. They enjoy serving humans, fine; I'm with MoR!Harry about that. But (possibly unbeknownst to Harry and Hermione yet) there are House-Elves who are very unhappy with their current situation, such as Dobby (who disliked his master) and Winky (who loved her master but was fired and never recovered from this). It always bothered me that canon!Hermione never outgrew her early phase of S.P.E.W. and never tried to do anything that would actually help them. (However, the Word of God is that she did help them in her adulthood, so that's all right then.)
5NihilCredo
Even if we accept that creating conscious entities which are forced by means of their preferences to do menial work is wrong, it would seem to be better to create them, than to force those who don't enjoy such work to do it. This is a bit of a false dichotomy - you don't have to force anyone to do it. Offer a sufficiently high salary to scrub Hogwarts' toilet (or just to cast Cleaning Charms on them), and voila, you have free-willed, willing, unmodified house workers. The meaningful question (at least, to the degree that any moral question can be meaningful) is whether there is any value in that "unmodified" qualifier.
2Pavitra
It matters precisely to the extent that the premodified entity desires to not be modified and that the premodified entity's values matter. That the premodified entity's values matter seems to have been generally assumed all round in this thread. That the premodified entity desires to not be modified seems an extremely reasonable assumption.
0NihilCredo
Sorry, I should have used "non-artificial" or something else; I intended to also include the quoted case of house elves having been created ad hoc.
3Pavitra
I maintain that house-elves created from scratch are completely different from identical house-elves created by modifying free elves against their will. Lumping the two together will produce non-well-defined moral judgments.
0Vladimir_Nesov
They still don't enjoy the work, even if they find doing it instrumentally rational. They are forced to do it by circumstances, and in a better world they wouldn't be.
5NihilCredo
But in a world with house elves, they are even worse off - they are just unemployed, rather than having the option of taking the job. I doubt more than a trifling amount of the money saved by Hogwarts trickles down to them. I realise that considering the effect of house elves on the job market goes far outside the scope of this problem in the philosophy of consciousness, and much far outside the scope of the Potterverse; but once you start taking into account the welfare of the hypothetical replacements for house elves, there's no real way to dodge the question. For philosophical debates, it's probably better to stick with the pig that wants to be eaten.
-1Vladimir_Nesov
I pointed out that your argument doesn't contradict Locas's statement that those who don't enjoy the work will be forced to do it, and specifically disclaimed that choosing to do the work regardless might well be rational of them (and hence making them better off). Yet in reply you elaborate in what manner this decision can be rational, as if objecting to what I said. I don't see what you disagree with (besides usage of the word "forced"). Also: They are not unemployed, they choose the next best option available.
1NihilCredo
That. You're right. It's still a strictly worse situation for them, though, since they lose one option and gain nothing.
4Richard_Kennaway
Is it wrong to make a pig that wants to be eaten?
3LucasSloan
I'm not sure, but I wouldn't make one and would work to prevent one's creation. On the one hand, death is an intrinsic evil, unlike mere drudgery. On the other hand, I support the right to self terminate.
5Pavitra
Have you ever closed an application on your computer? What distinguishes a person from any other computation, and why does that particular distinction carry so much moral weight?
4LucasSloan
A person is reflectively self aware. Evolution built me to care about humans, and upon reflection, the values I have include non-humans who have features like being reflectively self aware.
2Pavitra
Is that what you would want to want, given the option, or is that a lizard-brain instinct that gets in the way of your ability to evaluate what's really the right thing to do?
-1LucasSloan
0Pavitra
I can still interpret that either way. Do you mean that on reflection you realize that you emotionally desire that, or that on reflection you *decide" that that's what's important?
1NancyLebovitz
There's also Hayekian arguments-- self-aware agents are apt to accumulate information about their own desires and activities. Systems which allow that information to have an effect seem to be more capable.
0lmnop
Or they could've just created self cleaning houses, so no one is forced to do work.
0blogospheroid
Needs multiply. If houses and clothes were self-cleaning and self-repairing, there would be other, high-end tasks that need taking care of, which may not be automatically fun. taking care of the lawn, cooking (for some people and for most meals is not fun). As your mundane tasks increase due to better technology, it is useful to have someone take them over. It is very useful to have an AI loyal to you.
0wedrifid
Which chapter was Harry discussing the creation of house elves in?
4LucasSloan
Chaper 42.
0wedrifid
Thanks. I do remember my eyes glazing over a bit around about then but that's a good point I missed.

Theory: the 'spell of starlight' is a scrying or remote-viewing effect which Quirrelmort originally developed to keep an eye on the Pioneer horcrux. It's strenuous because of the extreme range, possible at all only because of the strong sympathetic connection involved. Reinforcing the sympathetic connection is important to maintain the possibility of Apparating out there, and sharing the experience helps to establish a sympathetic link between Harry's scar/mysterious dark side and the horcrux, which will eventually make it possible to do something nasty to him from far away.

[-]dclayh180

Just occurred to me: if magic ability is genetic, it should in theory be possible to use gene therapy/retroviruses/etc. (and perhaps some magic) to make all the Muggles into wizards! (Or at least all the ones yet to be conceived or something.) I can just imagine Harry creating a Plague of Magic.

Almost certainly not in the timeframe of the fic. I think that 1995 was about the first time we successfully used a retrovirus to cure a human disease, and we still don't have the tech to create a contagious disease to do so.

2dclayh
Oh, good point. I always forget that HP isn't technically in the present day.
4knb
He could easily overwhelm any wizarding army/faction by raising an army of magically enabled Muggles, once he can access the technology. Since there are only tens of thousands of magical people in Britain, just converting 500 muggles to wizards would make Harry the dominant force in the magical world.
2NancyLebovitz
That's an interesting move, though it leaves out the organizational challenge and the amount of time needed for training. And it seems unlikely that such a force could be kept secret from the wizarding world....
1knb
It's true that it would take many years, but the payoff would be huge. It seems all but inevitable that someone smart (i.e. Harry, Draco, Hermione, Dumbledore, or Quirrelmort) will do it eventually.
4NancyLebovitz
The payoff would be.... ill-defined. How sure are you that you can retain control? That one of your more ambitious and inventive upgraded muggles won't try setting up on their own? That one of them won't get hold of your give-wizardry magic and share the wealth? When you see "So You Want to Be a Wizard" on WikiLeaks, it's too late.
2Larks
You could make taking your Mark a price of being given magic.
3MartinB
No! It was pointed out how a wizard has to study hard before doing magic. So magic enabled Muggles would be rather useless or dangerous. No way to raise an army. (Also he would have to be accepted as the leader of an Muggle group) More interesting is the opposite way, of removing the magic gene or disabling it. A vaccine against magic.
3NancyLebovitz
I don't think he likes chaos quite that much.
2cousin_it
Good idea. For some reason I immediately thought about Muggles exterminating wizards with a gene-engineered disease.

Why do wizards - particularly in MoR, where most people are smarter - carry one wand apiece? This doesn't seem to be an absolute practical limitation wherein only one wand may be mastered at a time. In book seven, Harry is simultaneously the master of the Elder Wand and his own original with Fawkes's feather in it. Why doesn't everyone habitually walk out of Ollivander's with two, so as to have a spare in hazardous situations or in case one should be lost?

3TobyBartels
We know that, in a pinch, you can use someone else's wand. But can you use nobody's wand? Maybe the wands are intelligent enough that they don't fully activate (although they will still do testing waves) until after they choose a wizard, but stupid enough that they'll let anybody use them once they've been activated. We also need a rule to deactivate the wand after its wizard dies, although a tradition of burying a wizard with their wand might be enough. There could be a black market in used wands, but as long as it's small, most people will still only have one.
2LucasSloan
Expense?
3gwern
Note how much difficulty the Weasleys have in buying wands. Rowling isn't very good about economics, but I get the impression that buying a wand is comparable to buying a car or perhaps a house - except that you can't really share a wand like you would a car or house and you can (and do) carry your wand everywhere with you. So 1 is the best number.
[-]lmnop110

Wands cost 7 Galleons. People throw around comparable sums all the time in canon. Percy Weasley bets 10 Galleons on a Quidditch game, heck, Harry buys three sets of Omnioculars (wizarding binoculars) at 10 Galleons apiece to watch the Quidditch World Cup. Many wizarding supplies less useful than a wand cost considerably more. There really is no good reason for witches and wizards not to carry multiple wands except for tradition. Even the Weasleys could afford multiple wands if they made it a priority.

9Eliezer Yudkowsky
Rowling's money is wildly inconsistent. I use the figure of one Galleon = $100USD and stick with it.
2Pavitra
Still doesn't make sense why Gred and Forge would have used wands. $700 for the right wand is a perfectly sensible purchase, even on a limited budget, considering how much difference it tends to make and that a wand typically lasts a lifetime.
2gwern
OK, those are good examples. I didn't remember the specific numbers, but now I'm wondering why Ronald had to suffer with a broken wand so long if they are just 7 galleons. Hogwarts seems to be expensive; surely letting Ronnie go without, damaging his grades and learning, isn't a very good idea.
7Pavitra
It might be partly psychological. The Weasleys are poor, and they're habituated to trying to save money. Ask someone who lived through the Depression whether they would rent a nice suit for a job interview, or pay double for high-reliability smoke detectors. Or, ask yourself whether you have more than one smoke detector in each room of your house, with the batteries changed out of phase (one set replaced in summer and winter, the other in spring and fall).
2NancyLebovitz
One is no doubt the best number for most people, but there's considerable variation in wealth-- Malfoys should have extra wands.
1LucasSloan
The wand chooses the wizard and so on... I'm pretty sure that the Elder Wand and Harry Potter was a weird exception to the rule that you are paired with one wand at a time. On the other hand, I can imagine all sorts of scenarios where having two (or more) wands, even if the extra ones are less than fully powerful might be a good idea.
0apophenia
Good wizards seem to be able to do magic without a wand in a pinch, so I could see why they might not have it on their person at least.
0wedrifid
Good point. Two on your person and at least one stashed somewhere else. Probably one in accio range too.
[-][anonymous]170

Eliezer, is there any chance any speaker at the Singularity Summit might open or close with "Happy happy boom boom swamp swamp swamp!"? For numerous reasons, I think it would be most hilarious if Ray Kurzweil could be persuaded to do so.

4thomblake
I disagree. It would be much funnier if Randi did it.
[-]MBlume160

Upon seeing DinosaurusGede's awesome pic, my first thought was that were I able to draw (I cannot), I would draw Dumbledore wailing on an electric guitar and saying "THIS was your father's rock".

3wedrifid
I just got an urge to take a sip of Comed-Tea.

Am I the only one who now wants to campaign for gay rights with the slogan "Death Eaters against homophobia!"?

[-]ata130

A few reviewers are speculating that Lucius thinks Harry is Voldemort. Any thoughts on that? I'm not sure yet, but rereading their conversation with that in mind is pretty interesting.

Akrasia cure: Self-cast the imperius curse.

4orthonormal
Or better yet, use it as a decision-theory precommitment.

Well obviously I'm not going to popularize a method of immortality that requires killing people! That would defeat the entire point!

Actually...

We know from canon that a Horcrux is really just a backup copy, so that on average you probably only about double your lifespan by making one, at best. But it seems to me that based on what Harry has been told, he should believe that a Horcrux makes you immortal and unkillable. Given this belief, in the absence of any better way of achieving immortality, the spell is considerably better than baseline.

Set up a Horcrux clinic. A pair of people come in, fill out some paperwork, flip a coin in the presence of a notary, and the winner of the coin toss kills the loser to make a Horcrux. If nobody ever cast the spell, the loser was going to die eventually anyway, and if you do it when both parties are close to dying of old age (though this would probably be a needlessly reckless strategy, all things considered) then the loser doesn't even lose all that much.

You could save half of the wizarding world from certain death.

Oh, and Harry didn't even ask whether it might be possible to substitute an animal for the human sacrifice, or make a portrait of... (read more)

5wedrifid
I got the same impression. Harry!MoR in general seems to be very good at giving rationalist speeches (and internal monologues) but rather poor when it comes to actually thinking rationally under this kind of pressure. He may not let five die in the trolley problem when it is presented in a nice philosophical form but it wouldn't surprise me at all if he encountered an analogous problem like we see here and completely fail to even look at options once he hits an emotional roadblock. It would make me hesitant to trust him.
2[anonymous]
As I understood it, Harry's revulsion wasn't against the need for a sacrifice but against Dumbledore's fear, Harry would consider the cost of a sacrifice as comparately low. Thinking about ways to lower that cost would not have convinced Dumbledore that Harry took that cost serious the way rejecting the thought outright might have.
1ata
I doubt it; he is a self-described consequentialist, and doesn't seem to be unaware of the math or unwilling to do it. (By the way, it's completely appropriate to feel revulsion at the idea of killing the one person in the trolley problem... as long as you feel five times as much revulsion at the idea of letting the five in the trolley die.) Edit: The bigger problem with your scenario is that, if I remember correctly, creating a Horcrux requires genuine hatred and malevolence, not just any death. Edit 2: According to the Harry Potter Wiki, it also requires some other unspecified "horrific act". Edit 3: I wonder whom Voldemort killed in order to Horcrux the Pioneer plaque.
3Pavitra
That's what I mean by an irrational degree of revulsion. As far as we can tell, it doesn't even occur to him that a Horcrux trades off a finite life for an infinite one. There are mind-altering spells. The clinic doctor can make you evil enough to cast the spell, and then do Finite Incantatem once the process is done.
2wedrifid
Does that mean your backup copy will be of the evil you?
0Pavitra
Haha, good point. Still, this is all in the hypothetical false world that Harry should have inferred from the information available to him, in which Horcruxes grant undyingness rather than just making backups.

For all those who say that the 'unconventional ship' hinted at is Hermione/Griphook, I'd just like to say that's preposterous, and there is no way Eliezer would include such a thing in the story.

The Durmstrang houseboat from Goblet of Fire, must be the unconventional ship.

*ducks*

7JamesAndrix
Durmstrang houseboat/Beauxbaton carriage
6Unnamed
There were some sparks between Harry and the Sorting Hat. Or there could be something between Fred, George, Hermione, and time-turned Hermione, which would be a completely inappropriate use of a Time-Turner, but I suspect it's been done and thus would fail the originality requirement.
0wedrifid
Yes, it came with illustrations.
3Leonhart
I was going to say Mr. Hat and Cloak/Blaise's Mom. Except that I'm kinda hoping that Mr. Hat and Cloak IS Blaise's Mom.
3Eliezer Yudkowsky
Hermione/Griphook isn't completely wrong enough to qualify.
3thomblake
Chapter 42 Is it really Black/Pettigrew? Because I'm not sure in what sense that would be 'completely wrong'. But maybe I've just been hanging out with too many yaoi fangirls.
5Eliezer Yudkowsky
I told someone in advance; in particular, I told them there would be a completely wrong ship, they guessed Fred/George, I told them "not wrong enough", and then said "Sirius and Pettigrew". They said, "OH, THAT'S JUST WRONG". So I figured that, yes, that was justifiably describable as "completely wrong". Also, the fact that I googled obvious spellings of the ship and found that it only seemed to have been done once or twice (I forgot the exact number), in a fandom that has a convention for using "Snumbledore" to indicate Snape+Lupin+Dumbledore, seemed to suggest that it was pretty damned wrong.
4JoshuaZ
Really? I'm surprised that that ship is that rare. It always struck me as one of the more plausible ones. This seems to reflect a general pattern that whatever makes ships common is not very correlated with their plausibility.
5Alicorn
Yes, this seems very consistent, except for canon ships, ships of minor characters, and MY favorite non-canon ship, which is popular and plausible :P
0JoshuaZ
Which non-canon ship is that?
4Alicorn
I was being (mostly) facetious, but Sirius/Remus.
1Pavitra
I approve of this ship. Are you a Shoebox fan?
2Alicorn
Hell yes I am a Shoebox fan.
5Cyan
What does Shoebox mean in this context? (This is one of the few cases where I think I've got a good excuse for asking instead of Googling.)
9wedrifid
It refers to a particularly popular Potterverse fanfic. (See wikipedia on Harry Potter Fandom). Set in the marauder years which itself refers to about 1970 when Harry's parents would have been in school. It's rather hard to track down online but here is a PDF adaptation.
2wedrifid
It does. None of the four possible combinations of Pettigrew, Black and Lupin seems remotely unlikely. The fact that in the Sirrius-Pettigrew case one of them killed the other doesn't particularly reduce the plausibility either (in the real world or in fiction!)
0Document
I assume you mean in MoR rather than canon?
0wedrifid
No. Reconstructing from what I wrote way back then I seem to be referring to the fact that it is not unusual for lovers of any kind to kill each other.
6gwern
--François de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes 72
4LucasSloan
That was me. I still agree with my earlier comment, but I must say that you carried it off in the story in a remarkably natural way. It seemed to just come out as a perfectly natural fact about the universe, not something awful as it is when informed by canon, fan fic, and the horrible depiction of Pettigrew in the films.
2TobyBartels
Congratulations on a completely wrong ship done completely right.
2thomblake
Professor Summers/Author insert?
3Eliezer Yudkowsky
Can you do worse? Try harder.
[-]gwern160

In my secret SIAI slash fics, I ship you with a tsundere Nick Bostrom. Is that worse?

6orthonormal
Maybe an acausal ship? Say, Harry / Riddle?

Sinhababu's 2008 Pacific Philosophical Quarterly article is the definitive essay on acausal ships.

0NancyLebovitz
Lewis may actually have heard of the physics, but Sinhababu seems to think of many worlds as a purely philosophical construct.
4knb
Only on Less Wrong does the phrase "acausal ship" make sense.
5Kevin
I'm not sure it even makes sense here...
0wedrifid
Now it does.
5dclayh
MoR!Harry / canon!Harry. Must be done. (Maybe a three-way with Clarence the Angel, who was clearly responsible for bringing them together.)
4NancyLebovitz
I think MoRDraco and canonDraco would be funnier.
4Randaly
Hedwig/Quirrelmort. Dog!Sirius/Firenze. Cat!Mcgonagall/Nagini.
2gjm
But the Hedwig can never be ...
2mindbound
Oh yes, she can be. Even hedgehogs and porcupines can be, contrary to a somewhat popular opinion.
4Cyan
* Crabbe / Fawkes * Bane / Snape * Dolores Umbridge / Colin Creevey * Luna Lovegood / Nicolas Flamel

But Nicolas Flamel is married!

0Cyan
And I'm still not sure if that's completely wrong enough to qualify. I tried to get some wrongness from the perspective of canon and some just plain squick into each of those suggestions.
6Alicorn
I was being silly - the joke was that this was the only thing I chose to object to out of the list.
6thomblake
The relevant trope being I Take Offense To That Last One. Or, depending on perspective, Arson Murder And Jaywalking. Warning: TV Tropes (obviously).
8JoshuaZ
At this rate, if the FAI problem isn't solved before nasty AI's arise accidentally, I think the immediate cause of failure will be TV Tropes.
1TheOtherDave
I now have the image of an UFAI tiling the universe with TV Tropes stuck in my head.
0Will_Sawin
Clearly this would maximize utility!
3thomblake
The problem is 'wrong' and 'worse' here operate on multiple dimensions and are highly subjective. Fred/George is one way to go.
4TobyBartels
That can't possibly be original.
4Alicorn
It's so, so not.
3sketerpot
There are 252 results on FanFiction.net for Fred/George fics genre-tagged with "Romance". I'm sure that's vastly underestimating the true number of fics with Fred/George twincest.
0RobinZ
"Misestimating" may be closer to the mark - it looks to me like there's there's a lot of threesomes in that list. That said, check out the degree of interest on Livejournal. Or, for that matter, the first bullet under "Fan Works" on the TV Tropes "Twincest" page.
2ata
* Quirreldemort / young Tom Riddle as preserved in the diary * McGonagall as a cat / Dobby * Mr. Hat and Cloak / Zabini * Harry / the Time Turner... actually get married * Nearly Headless Nick / Moaning Myrtle * Dumbledore / James Randi (actually, that might work too well to be the "completely wrong ship"... ) (I wonder how many of those (that consist only of canon characters) have already been done. Probably all of them.)
1Eliezer Yudkowsky
Btw, after some complaints about suspension of disbelief, I substituted Michael Shermer for James Randi.

Aww, I liked that element, and it doesn't seem that implausible as such things go; I once heard an apparently sincere conspiracy theory that holds that the reason nobody has ever won Randi's million-dollar prize is because he uses his own prodigious psychic powers to stop them from doing so.

4Kevin
Agreed
[-]ata120

Aw, why? Randi looks more wizardly (and must be shipped with Dumbledore at some point, they're perfect for each other, they're both wise accomplished old white-bearded gay wizards...), and I don't see why Shermer requires less suspension of disbelief. (The main thing that made me confused there was figuring that if Randi were really a wizard but still the Randi we know, he'd probably have long ago tried to scientifically investigate magic as Harry intends to, and made some of the same discoveries and many more, and possibly become a supremely powerful and well-known wizard. Am I on the right track or have I overlooked something else implausible that people complained about?)

3Eliezer Yudkowsky
That was the complaint. Personally I think a lot of people are confusing expert skepticism with expert science, but if the reader says you're messing with their suspension of disbelief, the reader is always right. Substituting Michael Shermer just makes it a Shout Out instead of an actual conspiracy theory.
0wedrifid
Obscure technical tangent but no, they are not. The reader can be confused about the meaning of the phrase, introspectively weak, using the claim purely as a rhetorical soldier or, as is most likely to be the case, some combination thereof.
0Eliezer Yudkowsky
They're still right. If that's what happened to the reader and broke their suspension of disbelief, that's what happened. It doesn't matter if the reader made a mistake. Your text caused that mistake.
9Alicorn
There's this principle, which is good to apply when you can; and then there's the principle of choosing your audience. If you explain a fact in plain language in one sentence, you will miss some percentage of skimmers. If you bring it up four times, you will catch more skimmers and lose anyone who wants a faster pace and less repetition. Similar balances hold for what things do and do not cost suspension of disbelief. If you obey the reader who finds Randi to be a challenge to that suspension, then you weaken your hold on the reader who thought the original version of the tidbit was charming, and has never heard of this replacement fellow. And the reader who disapproves of excessive editing after the fact.
7wedrifid
I shouldn't need to explain this to you. You have authored essays on the concept of 'subjectively objective' and my statement was quite clear and even noted that it was purely a technical tangent. In fact, the upvote on its parent was mine. "What the reader says" is not the same thing as "what happened to the reader". 'What happened to the reader' can be fully determined by the timeless state of reader themselves but is not necessarily the same thing as what the reader says. Just as someone who says "my prior for A is 0.34" when their prior is actually "0.87" is wrong, despite the fact that priors are subjective. Subjective does not mean what people say about themselves must be true. Still false. True.
2Unknowns
As Eliezer says, a lot of people confuse expert skepticism with expert science... Randi in real life, as far as I can tell, would not "scientifically investigate magic", but instead, whenever anything happens that looks to some people like magic, he tries to cover it up and pretend it never happened.
3thomblake
I did have some issues there, but I don't think it was that serious. The $1M prize is a clever way of finding muggleborns! (though of course anyone doing real magic is whisked away and declared a failure)
2Pavitra
Sadly, the best I can come up with is Lensman!Harry / James Randi.
0Pavitra
No, wait. Gandalf / Obi-Wan Kenobi.
1Eliezer Yudkowsky
Okay, cat!McGonagall/Dobby and Crabbe/Fawkes are both completely wrong enough to be competitive. But of course, it's more impressive if the completely wrong ship is less high-entropy - that is, if you don't have to dip so low in the search ordering to find it. Incidentally, I tried to look it up, and as far as I can tell, this particular ship has been done exactly once before. Surprising, considering how near the characters are in canon. I suppose it's just that wrong.
5khafra
What about a high-entropy but suitable ship, like Sorting Hat/Voyager Horcrux? The intelligence without sentience and non-intelligent vital spirit seem like a perfect match for each other.
0wedrifid
Perfect. (But I note that the sorting hat doesn't have intelligence. It piggy-backs off the wearer's.)
0Psy-Kosh
A relationship with a non-sentience doesn't seem to me to be something I'd really call a "relationship" in that sense.
0wedrifid
Someone really doesn't like this entire branch of conversation. Even the parent was downvoted. (I went through and removed all the -1s myself.)
3Cyan
The problem is that the pairings feel too reasonable higher up in the search ordering. For example, I considered Moaning Myrtle / ?, Hagrid / ?, and Trelawney / ? but couldn't find other high-search-order matches at fanfic-SL4. With students characters I found it especially difficult, as magical teenagers are just too plausibly randy + weird.
0Cyan
Hey Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me...
0JamesAndrix
Firenze/Hagrid?
0mindbound
It should feel at least somehow wrong but it actually does not. Then again, I suspect that most "happenings" that include Hagrid could pretty soon end with a grave medical emergency of some sort, generating copious amounts of squick. Luna/Draco/Karkaroff?
0Psy-Kosh
Three way between Kreature, Umbrage, and Filch. Actually, make it a four way by adding a Dementor. (Since we know from book 6 that they have some means of breeding) There, is that worse enough? :)
0dclayh
Hermione/Umbridge/dementor.
0Psy-Kosh
+Haggrid
1dclayh
It's true, every orgy is better with a half-giant.
3NancyLebovitz
And you just know that Hagrid would bring a pet or two.
8Eliezer Yudkowsky
Okay, I think we can end this thread now.
2NancyLebovitz
Got it. Something else for the weirdtopia?
0[anonymous]
Dumbledore with a woman.
3Blueberry
huge grin Of course not. He would never do that. It's completely preposterous!
0[anonymous]
Not completely wrong enough.
3Baughn
That's.. just you, right?
2wedrifid
Where is this talk of unconventional ships?
2thomblake
The conversation refers to the AN for chapter 34:
1NancyLebovitz
My sketchy knowledge of fanfic subculture is showing. What does 'ship mean? I thought it meant making a character more wonderful than it is in canon, but apparently not.

It's short for "relationship", but it's also used as a verb, which means to portray or want two (or more) characters to be romantically and/or sexually involved.

Examples:

"I ship the Whomping Willow and the Devil's Snare." = "I am amused by imagining those two plants in a relationship" or "in at least one derivative creative work, I have represented those two plants as being in a relationship."

"This fic contains only canon ships." = "This work of fanfiction romantically pairs characters in the same arrangements they have in the source work."

4NancyLebovitz
Thank you. I would have assumed that non-canon relationships were slash, which goes to show how fringy I am. Is there a word for making a character more wonderful than they are in canon?
7Alicorn
Some sorta Sue. Warning: TV Tropes.
5thomblake
Mary Sue being the generic version. Warning: TV Tropes Wikipedia for the TV Tropes-phobic
1ata
I think slash refers especially to non-canon gay relationships, and fiction centered around or involving such relationships. (It may actually refer to gay male relationships in particular, I'm not quite sure. I only know the basics of fanfic terminology.)
4Alicorn
"Femslash" seems to have some currency as the lesbian equivalent of "slash". I've also seen "slash" used to refer to both types of gay relationships. I've also seen it used to refer to sexual content (straight or gay), and sometimes specifically to gay sexual content (to the point where some people say PG-rated fic with gay couples is not slash - in particular there's a tripartite division with "gen", "het", and "slash", where the first has no sex, the second has straight sex, and the third has gay sex). I don't think non-canonicity is part of any definition I've seen.
2Pavitra
It may be just me, but I get the impression that it's not really slash if the characters in question are gay in canon, even if not for each other. I might argue that, say, Ben Bruckner / Melanie Marcus (both canon!gay, opposite sexes) would count as slash, but I expect that's a minority position.
0wedrifid
Ahh, thanks for the explanation. It took me a few posts to become confident that A/B was referring to romance and I didn't notice the abbreviation and verbating of 'relationship' at all.
0Document
Just to check: Did it turn out to be Sirius/Peter, as referenced in chapter 42? I notice that the phrase "artistically complete" appeared in the notes, so I'm guessing yes. Edit: I was initially going to suggest something involving either bestiality or Animagus-form sex; possibly Ron/Scabbers, some combination of Marauders, or Luna/Thestral. The part about only finding one prior example made me think of Hagrid/Dobby.
1ata
Yes.
0Document
Thanks.
-1[anonymous]
Who says that?

(41)

So, traitors. Were there any? Did they play any part in the fight at all or was it just the principle of the thing? The whole point of the Draco+Hermione vs Harry war was on the subject of unity. I was kind of hoping for some object lessons on just how much Harry's advantage of being able to trust his soldiers helped him while Draco and Hermione had to put in place extra precautions to protect themselves from sleeper agents. Or, well, even an offhand mention of "Chaos got 3 extra fighters" to acknowledge the issue.

1magfrump
Agreed, I was waiting to hear about this and disappointed that it didn't come up.
[-]dclayh110

Ch. 33:

  1. The three-way tie, while clearly dramatically convenient for Eliezer, and adequately foreshadowed, is just so boring.

  2. Was anyone else briefly confused because they had forgotten that the war was continuing even after the awarding of the Christmas Wish?

9thomblake
Re 2: Yes, I'd forgotten that as well. Also, very disappointed about the skipping of about a month or so there. If Eliezer doesn't explicitly fill in the gaps, I'm considering writing a MoR fanfic (tentatively titled "MoR: Battle School") after at least the wars are over and intervening events are solidified, to fill in that time.
6Eliezer Yudkowsky
Go for it. Most people complain about the pace being too slow - I think you might even be the first to complain about it being too fast - but that's certainly one way to fix it, if you're inspired with the vision of a battle. There's a chance though hardly a certainty that I would answer questions before you wrote, or declare the story canon afterward.
5thomblake
Well I hadn't been complaining about the pacing before, so the sudden jump over a significant period seemed wrong. Surely these people would have done all sorts of interesting learning / use of magic over the course of the battles, and Harry and Draco would have been doing science to it, and there would have been interesting developments in Quirrell's classes. Thanks for the offer - I will surely pester you with questions when I get around to it.
8NihilCredo
Phrase recognised, giggling performed.
0Baughn
Now I want biscuits.
0Pavitra
You mean biscuits.
0Baughn
Yes.
3Alicorn
I believe it is customary to call fanfiction of fanfiction "cookies".
5NihilCredo
In the case of HP fanfiction, that should be "biscuits".
1Blueberry
So could we then call fanfiction of fanfiction of fanfiction "crumbs"?
1Alicorn
I guess. Or "chips", maybe.
-2Clippy
What do you think about paperclips?
0Blueberry
In general? Or as a term for fanfiction of fanfiction of fanfiction?
2Clippy
Both, of course. Though, in the context of this topic, only the latter is relevant.
4Blueberry
As a term for fanfiction of fanfiction of fanfiction, I don't think it's a good one. I mean, as awesome as paperclips are, if we called everything "paperclips" it might get a little confusing. I suggested "crumbs" because that's what's left after you eat a cookie, but I'm not seeing what this has to do with paperclips.
0Clippy
I thought it might help promote paperclip awareness, but now I agree with your reasonable point about saturating terminology for everything with the same word, and the confusion it would generate. Your thought processes are getting better too! c=@
8dclayh
For your information, Clippy, a paperclip can be rendered fairly adequately in Unicode with ⊂≣⊇ (depending on the font, of course).
5Douglas_Knight
⊂≣⊇ (I pasted the unicode, not the html escapes)
0Clippy
Great discovery! Do you know of glyphs I can use in your encoding scheme that resemble an unbent or broken paperclip, for when I want to express negative emotions? ("Emotions" in the de-anthropomorphized sense, of course.) All I have now is stuff like c=/ and (_/.
0Clippy
⊂≣&#x2287 does not bear sufficient similarity to a paperclip. User:Douglas_Knight's glyphs are better.
0Blueberry
Thank you! You are a good paperclipper. c=@ ⊂≣⊇
0orthonormal
Re 1: It would work better if I hadn't had to wait a week to see it. Such is the difficulty with installment fiction.

I just had a thought WRT Harry's controversial apology to Hermione in Chapter 42. This is the Harry that lectured McGonagall on the Planning Fallacy, while demonstrating that he really does assume a worst-case scenario (insisting on purchasing a magical first aid kit just in case one of his fellow students ended up maimed and dying in front of him). I think it's entirely plausible that he could have spent the whole time Hermione was falling imagining that maybe he'd forgotten to stir the ground hen's teeth (or whatever) into the Feather Fall potion six t... (read more)

This is a boy who casually expressed his intention to rape Luna Lovegood to someone he'd just met, assuming that boy's stated "intention" to murder her was equally casual, and equally serious. Major, major misogyny here.

I don't read that as misogyny. Merely a willingness to utterly humiliate a low status enemy by whatever means practical. If it was Larry Lovegood I expect the conversation would involve castration. Or perhaps sodomy via broomstick.

9Pavitra
This is a good analysis. I have two nitpicks: 1) I think Draco is mostly classist rather than sexist. 2) Hermione is currently Draco's ally. Her parentage greatly obstructed her getting there, but now that she has that status, much is changed.
6Alicorn
One powders hens' teeth.

The most compelling evidence for an afterlife in canon was Harry's "near-death experience" in Deathly Hallows. While "dead", Harry talks to Dumbledore one last time, and Harry learns things that only Dumbledore would have known.

Of course, MoR!Harry doesn't have this evidence.

[-]PeterS100

Harry learns things that only Dumbledore would have known.

Does he? It certainly seems possible that Harry is just filling in the blanks himself. I just went back and re-read it. Consider:

"Explain," said Harry.
"But you already know," said Dumbledore. . .
...
"But if Voldemort used the Killing Curse," Harry started again, "and nobody died for me this time -- how can I be alive?"
"I think you know," said Dumbledore. "Think back. . ."

The information that Dumbledore actually does provide to Harry is either inconclusive or insubstantial -- e.g. Harry asks about the peculiar behavior of his wand, and Dumbledore says he cannot but guess. Harry asks where they are, Dumbledore cannot answer and says that they are where ever Harry thinks they are. Harry asks about the Deathly Hallows:

"Real, and dangerous, and a lure for fools," said Dumbledore. "And I was such a fool But you know, don't you? I have no secrets from you anymore. You know."
. . .
So you'd given up looking for the Hallows when you saw the Cloak?"
"Oh yes," said Dumbledore faintly. . . "You know what happened. You know."

... (read more)
9wedrifid
More to the point, MoR!Author doesn't have this evidence!
[-]ata90

[I]f we lived in the sort of universe where horrible things were only allowed to happen for good reasons, they just wouldn't happen in the first place.

I love this line and am probably going to be quoting it frequently.

Edit: ...and Harry was pretty magnificent in that scene, in general. "Wrong! I want the secret of the Dark Lord's immortality in order to use it for everyone!" was one of my favourite moments, even if Harry was mistaken about the feasibility of that particular plan.

Chp 39 (the Dementor)

I think that Dumbledore and Harry were too quick to conclude that the Dementor could just be used as a distraction. It was Harry's first idea (once he turned cold), and Dumbledore stopped him there. Cold!Harry didn't even spend 5 minutes on the problem - compare with Harry's instructions to Fred & George in the Hold Off on Proposing Solutions MOR chapter. If there's a plot, that seems much too obvious for Quirrell.

[-]dclayh100

What immediately occurred to me (similar to the infamous scene in The Princess Bride), is that if your opponent believes you will have a distraction and a real attack, simply lauch two real attacks, with the expectation that whichever one the opponent takes to be the distraction will succeed. Obviously this requires a greater sacrifice of materiel, but Quirrelmort doesn't exactly seem short in that department.

3CronoDAS
Do one better. Have an obvious distraction, a less obvious distraction, and one real attack. That way, when your adversary discovers the less obvious distraction, he'll stop looking.
2Pavitra
Why would you ever have only one real attack? I could see an argument for maintaining a 2:1 distraction:attack ratio, but you should never hang all your hopes on a single plot.
2LucasSloan
He appears to be working with much less than his former amount of magical ability.
8Unnamed
Canon!Harry was especially vulnerable to Dementors, which raises the possibility that the Dementor is there to influence Harry's personality, increase Quirrell's hold over him, and shape him into what Quirrell wants him to be. Dumbledore described Harry as having a mind like a Dark Lord but with love which makes him non-evil, Dementors suck out love & happiness. And Dumbledore is supposed to be the one protecting him, so if anything bad happens to him....
6wedrifid
True, and somewhat understated. Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald and led a hard fought defence against Voldemort and his death eaters. Why on earth does he need to call in an eleven year old with magic cold/angry powers just to come up with the thought 'maybe it is a distraction'? This Dumbledore has been crippled to beyond all recognition.
9RobinZ
Two possibilities: 1. Dumbledore has been too busy to step back and think about the situation creatively. 2. Dumbledore is making up a reason to invite Harry Potter into his office to (a) get his report on Lucius Malfoy, (b) warn Harry about the Dementor coming onto campus, (c) encourage Harry to practice his cunning outside the formalized exercises of Quirrell's armies, (d) lend credence in Harry's eyes to his suspicions of Quirrell by revealing that Quirrell is acting suspiciously, (e) query Harry about Voldemort. I do not find either entirely implausible.
4TobyBartels
I agree with (2). I could quibble over the subpoints, but it comes down to: to get Harry's reaction.
6Larks
Using a Dementor to weaken Dumbledore seems like an alternative explanation.
1wedrifid
How much does Dumbledore trust the Auror backup he'll be getting?
2TobyBartels
He should be able to trust Kingsley Schacklebolt.

while he'd never been young enough to believe in Santa Claus, he'd once been young enough to doubt.

This line probably improved the upbringing of any future offspring of mine. I had considered either being totally honest, or telling the typical Santa stories as a low difficulty exercise in spotting falsehoods you're raised with.

Now, I'll still casually detail the Santa myths while being honest about his nonexistence, but I'll also adopt the parental Santa role, down to using magic tricks to make presents appear at midnight, and reindeer tracks in the l... (read more)

4AdeleneDawner
You do realize that one of the things that this kind of thing teaches is "Dad's willing to slash my tires", I hope. Sufficiently smart kids can pick up on that kind of issue surprisingly young - my own relationship with my mother never really recovered from the instance when, at age 5, I discovered that she was willing to lie to me for her own convenience, and what you're proposing to do appears to be rather similar in scope and potentially more damaging because it's intentional rather than incidental.
2JamesAndrix
Parenting is preparing kids for a dangerous world, and part of that is exposing them to moderate risks with limited real penalties. In the real world, there are people who do magic tricks, themselves believe the magic is real, and want your money. My aim would be to keep it light and entertaining, so as to create a positive halo of solstice magic, and so that the positive memory doesn't go away with the knowledge that it was sleight of hand. In fact if I do my job as a rationalist parent, the holiday association is: entertainment+presents+learning+food

if Hitler had been allowed into architecture school like he wanted, the whole history of Europe would have been different

Is this a subtle difference from the real world, or just Harry thinking more deeply?

As I understand it (confirmed by Wikipedia), Hitler was rejected from a school for pictorial art, not architecture. However, Wikipedia has more: the art school recommended that he become an architect instead, and Hitler agreed. However, Hitler never bothered to apply to architecture school, because he lacked the necessary academic qualifications (inc... (read more)

Regarding Chapter 38: Am I correct when I say that Lucius Malfoy is modeling Harry as a level 3 player (pretending to be an ignorant player pretending to be a knowledgeable player), when Harry is actually level 2 (an ignorant player pretending to be a knowledgeable player)?

4Oscar_Cunningham
Yep. Or at least, that's what it looks like. Could be that Lucius knows Harry level 2, but is pretending to think Harry is level 3. Or, Harry is pretending to be Level 2 (actually level 4ish). All of which makes Eliezer level ω.
2wedrifid
It could even be that one of the players isn't thinking in a manner best represented by that metric. Beyond level 2 that whole system just starts to look trite.
[-]Rain70

I had a recent conversation with a few friends of mine about life extension, death, etc, brought on by reading the chapter from HP&MoR where Harry discusses the topic with Dumbledore. I used all the standard arguments (their general response was 'it would be boring'), and eventually used the word deathist. After hearing the word, one of my friends recast their position, jokingly, as "anti-liveite", which made me realize the whole thing might just be arguing politics.

5katydee
Firmly identifying yourself with a position, especially with a cute little word, tends to lead to that, yes. I would definitely avoid using "deathist," "lifeist," etc.
2Rain
It was a very brief moment in the conversation, not even remarked upon by anyone. It did make me think of it in an entirely new light, though. They were coming up with defenses partly because, if I was right about 'death being a bad thing', then there would be a significant amount of social policy decisions that need to be overturned or changed: politics rears its ugly head. Even without theism, decades of acceptance, etc., it will be a dangerous topic.

Ch. 42:

The idea of casual acceptance of homosexuality in magical Britain doesn't seem to be thought out fully. Even this very chapter (and I've noticed that major premises from one chapter tend not to show up in others, but that's a separate issue), there's the casual assumption (inherited from canon, inherited in turn from most of Western media as a whole) that "thinks Harry/Draco is hawt" equals "female". About fifteen percent of those squeeing fans should have been boys.

7NihilCredo
The idea was developed in the Ravenclaw girls' dorm, by the girls. They summoned a couple of professors for safety, but the word didn't spread outside of that particular group - otherwise there would have been a large and varied mass to see the show, regardless of romantic interest. Incidentally, is sexual orientation usually well-established by the age of eleven?
1Pavitra
Very good point. My objection is rendered moot. While this is also a relevant point, I would expect it to have nearly the opposite effect. Before puberty, identification with a sexual orientation would have to be completely socially constructed, so in a gay-friendly society most people should identify as bisexual by default.

Before puberty, identification with a sexual orientation would have to be completely socially constructed, so in a gay-friendly society most people should identify as bisexual by default.

A society can be gay-friendly and still heteronormative. In fact, I'd say that contemporary First-World youth fit right into that, although gay-friendliness hasn't spread to the whole society yet. Still, as long as heterosexuals are most common, gays and bis will still be seen as unusual, even if OK. So socially, I expect that most people will still assume that they're het until they learn otherwise.

However (contradicting both you and me), there are gay people who say that they knew that they were gay from a very young age. On the other hand, puberty has been known to mess with one's expectations.

Generalising from one example: I can't quite describe the environment that I grew up in as gay-friendly, only moving in that direction. Perhaps if it had been, then I'd have identified as bisexual at puberty, but perhaps not. In any case, it was a heteronormative environment, so I expected to be attracted to the opposite sex, and was. Then I jumped to conclusions, self-identified as het and suppressed my attraction to the same sex (ETA: because it messed with my idea of who I was) for another ten years. (Before puberty, I was completely asexual.)

1Pavitra
On reflection, I was generalizing from one example as well. I was pretty sexual-hangup-y as a kid. I didn't begin to suspect I was gay until I was seventeen, and it was another two or three years after that before I was comfortable with the idea that I had a sex drive at all.
8JoshuaZ
This is not the case. Many gay people know that they are gay at a young age, often well before puberty. Or they realize that they are somehow different from the others around them. Human sexuality is not as simple as an on-off switch with the whole system coming into play when people hit puberty.
8Pavitra
Actually, I've just thought of more stuff. Why would there be gender-segregated dorms in this world? Unless they're trying to deliberately encourage homosexuality in teenagers as a strategy for avoiding accidental teen pregnancy. This would also explain Lupin's possible attitude (though I may be misreading) that homosexuality is a thing for the young, while adult relationships tend to be heterosexual. On the other hand, if this were the case, I would expect the childhood sexuality taboo to only apply to heterosexuality, in which case Lupin shouldn't have had the "when you're older" reaction to telling Harry about Sirius and Peter's relationship.

The real answer, of course, is that Hogwarts is shaped after British public schools, and it inherited gender-based dorms just like it did the four-house system.

A possible justification/rationalisation is that there are drastically different dynamics between a sexual attraction that involves a vast majority of the population, and one that involves a minority: heterosexual affections are much more likely to be potentially returned, compared to homosexual ones. Hence, while the occasional homosexual affair will sprout up in an all-male/all-female dorm, a mixed teenage dormitory would be completely overrun with drama, awkwardness, and unpleasant sounds and smells.

[-]KevinC120

I can think of a good reason for segregated dorms: In the MoRniverse at least, rape is something aristocratic boys can do casually with the full expectation of getting away with it. Not to mention panty raids and other assorted sexually-harrassing nonsense. Even in a society without medieval/Victorian mores, girls would still need a place of relative safety in which to sleep, shower, dress, etc..

2Pavitra
This is a good point. Is there a specific reason to be significantly more concerned about male-on-female rape than the other three combinations?
8Alicorn
It's by far the most common, outside of certain highly artificial settings that don't apply to Hogwarts.
4WrongBot
Boarding schools and prisons create similar social scenarios. I believe male-male rape/harassment/"hazing" is/was a significant problem in many all-male British boarding schools. Fraternities fit into more or less the same category, and likewise frequently feature various forms of ritualized homosexuality. It just isn't considered acceptable to acknowledge this; being the receptive partner in gay male sex has been considered damaging to masculinity for thousands of years, in at least the West and Japan.
4Pavitra
I know it's by far the more common in the real world, but MoR!Hogwarts seems to differ significantly in the politics of gender and sexuality from most of real life, and I wanted to investigate how those differences would affect this situation. Since I don't yet have a clear theory of mind regarding why rape occurs or is gender-biased, I was trying to gather explanations from the rest of the peanut gallery.
3KevinC
I must have missed the part where we see that MoR!Hogwarts in general differs in gender politics and sexuality than most of real life, except for the "girls can compete in contact sports/armies with boys" bit, but that's a logical consequence of inherent equality of magical power. Lupin and Harry accepted a Peter/Sirius relationship without any squick, but Harry's a child of the Enlightenment (who, by dint of his uber-prodigy-ness likely didn't have jock-type macho-boys or religious conservatives as his formative peer group) and Lupin's a member of a disadvantaged minority himself. Do we have any evidence that someone like Lucius Malfoy would not be about as homophobic as the average medieval baron, of the sort who would teach his son that raping uppity peasant girls with impunity is one of the bennies that comes with "good breeding?" Or that, say, Seamus Finnigan wouldn't have the same kind of teen-boy homophobia/bullying reaction that's fairly common in our world?
5TobyBartels
Yes, the beginning of Chapter 42 suggests this very much! There we are told that some Wizards[*], at least young ones, find the idea that Muggles hate homosexuality so surprsing that they expected it to be anti-Muggle propaganda. And not just any anti-Muggle propaganda, but Death-Eater propaganda. The implication is that Death Eaters (and Lucius Malfoy is one) have been spreading the word among Wizards that Muggles hate homosexuality. It would be difficult to do this if these Death Eaters hated homosexuality themselves! [*] When capitalised, I use this word to mean both witches and wizards, as in ‘Wizarding Britain’, ‘Azkaban, the Wizard prison’, etc.
9KevinC
Ooooops, yeah, major reading comprehension fail on my part. When I read that chapter, I just kinda sped past the squee-ing girls to get to the story, and ended up still seeing things through the lens of canon and Harry's previous impression of "Damn, these Wizards totally missed out on the Enlightenment!" Guess I need to pay more attention to preconceived notions and not letting them cloud my vision. :) With more reflection though, it does make sense to me that Wizards would have a more enlightened attitude toward LGBTQ people, and find other irrational reasons to hate each other. In a world where some people can turn into animals, or alter their bodies at will (Metamorphomagi), and anybody with a jug of Polyjuice Potion and a clipping of hair can change their physical sex, non-heteronormative sexual identity could be seen as pretty tame. McGonagall could, if she so desired, turn into her feline form and go out lookin' for some tom. Or if she's lesbian or bi, then McGonagall/Mrs. Norris. So, yeah.
5wedrifid
For example
1Nornagest
I probably shouldn't click that at work, should I?
3wedrifid
Eww... I'm not posting McGonagall cat porn! Text only and nothing much worse than what is already implied here. (And for what it is worth even 'McGonagall cat porn' image search is clean. Rule 34 is a lie!)
4pedanterrific
You don't have to get all YKINOK up in here.
1pedanterrific
I like the way you think. :3
4FrancesH
I don't know about Seamus Finnigan, but: " "Romantic?" Hermione said. "They're both boys!" "Wow," Daphne said, sounding a little shocked. "You mean Muggles really do hate that? I thought that was just something the Death Eaters made up." "No," said an older Slytherin girl Hermione didn't recognize, "it's true, they have to get married in secret, and if they're ever discovered, they get burned at the stake together. And if you're a girl who thinks it's romantic, they burn you too." " -From the beginning of Chapter 42 It would seem to imply that being gay is certainly accepted, so much so that the Death Eaters used the Muggles' homophobia as an argument against them.
3Pavitra
The beginning of Chapter 42 seems to suggest casual acceptance of homosexuality, at least relative to the Muggle world. I'm trying to work out what other consequences would result from that and from the inherent equality of magical power -- you can't just change one thing and expect everything else to be the same.
2wedrifid
I don't think we do. Apart from the the recent chapter, of course. Everything prior to that would suggest a mild tradition of homophobia would be likely. It would be extremely surprising if there wasn't a bullying reaction of some kind. Children require very little excuse to bully someone atypical!
3thomblake
I'm not sure 'by far' is appropriate in this context. In the US, for instance, 91% of reported rape victims are female and 9% are male, with estimates usually of about 10% reporting for males and 40% reporting for females, which would yield an actual rate of about 28% of rape victims being male. That's hardly an inconsiderable number. Though I'm not sure how many of those are in prison, however.
2Douglas_Knight
Where are you getting your numbers? They sound to me like they come from the National Crime Victimization Survey. These are not reports to police, but the result of asking random people if they have been raped. I don't think that they sample prisoners, so they are probably highly biased against prison rape, but should catch some.
3wedrifid
I presume you refer to, for example, prisons? Anywhere with sex based segregation and artificially enforced proximity (that rules out ostracism.)
4Alicorn
Yes, I had prisons in mind.
0wnoise
Well, in practice, it seems to be a lot more common. Certainly a lot more reported.
7TobyBartels
Remember also that the girls' dorms are magically protected against boys, but not conversely (at least in Gryffindor, at least midway in Harry's career). IIRC, Hermione derides the rule as old-fashioned (but then, she's Muggle-born, so that proves nothing). A wise strategy, I would think. One reason why teen pregnancy rates are higher in the more relgious areas of the United States? This was the attitude of the classical Greeks (and then Romans), at least for men.
6Pavitra
I think that has more to do with the idea that it's immoral to provide kids with sex education. (This theory would be falsified if there's a significantly larger difference in teen pregnancy than in teen STDs.)
4Eliezer Yudkowsky
Really? Fifteen percent of all yaoi fans are yaoi fanboys and eighty-five percent are yaoi fangirls? I'd like to see that statistic before I believe it. Also, you've got to keep in mind that we're talking about the set of yaoi fans who are squeeing over Harry and Draco while they're still eleven. This, to me, says "yaoi fangirl", though I fully admit I'm working from 100% stereotypes and 0% experience.
5Pavitra
That's not representative. Yaoi specifically, as opposed to fiction depicting male homosexual relationships in general, is written almost exclusively by women for girls. The issues addressed are calques of the issues that come with being a teenage girl -- some works go so far as to get the guys pregnant.
2Perplexed
Huh? Why is yaoi fandom the relevant population?
2Perplexed
Ah, I see what is going on. When Pavitra wrote "thinks Harry/Draco is hawt", did he mean "thinks Harry is sexy and/or thinks Draco is sexy" or did he mean "thinks that the concept of a romantic relationship between them is an exciting concept"?
2thomblake
FYI, X/Y is read "X slash Y" and is a way of calling out a ship.
1Perplexed
Cool. Thx. I'm more ancient than I like to admit, and this is my first fanfic experience. I'm very proud that I didn't have to look up "ship".
5komponisto
I however did -- because I didn't find my correct guess plausible. (An apostrophe would help: " 'ship ".) (Imagine if I wrote: "It was my first ence of that sort." You might be able to guess that "experience" is the most likely meaning, but it would need verification and still feel weird afterward.) I also don't understand "call out": does it mean "refer to", or "advocate"?
6Alicorn
I'm tempted to start using "ence" as an abbreviation for "experience". I like the sound of it and it seems like a word that deserves a monosyllabic version.
3katydee
I know people who use "tech" for "technique," "grade" for "upgrade," etc. Once you get used to it, it really is more efficient, but at the price of making it more difficult for outsiders to understand what you're saying.
6ata
For a while I've wondered what exactly Robin Hanson is doing (what he's trying to signal, perhaps? I don't know) when he uses abbreviations like "med", "docs", "tech", etc. (Pretty sure there are other common ones not coming to my mind right now.) He doesn't otherwise come off as a lazy writer, he can't really pass for "folksy" (and super-contrarian econblogging isn't quite the right context for that anyway), they aren't difficult or cumbersome words...
0wedrifid
It seems to be the titles of his posts and not the content which he likes to keep extremely simple, even trite. I take it as wry counter signalling. There is a touch of ironic contrast between what could superficially look like a naive opinion and reasoning that is in fact based in some measure on sound economic principles, or at least of premises that the intended audience would accept.
3TobyBartels
This is the characteristic feature of jargon. (And fanfic has its jargon like anything else.)
4wnoise
Some jargon actually isn't much more efficient.
3Pavitra
Those terms of jargon are probably being used for ingroup identification.
0wnoise
Yes, of course, in the cases that have sprung to my mind.
2TobyBartels
Good point. I hereby amend my comment to say that this is the characteristic feature of useful (or appropriate) jargon. (So now I am making the claim that group identification is neither useful nor appropriate, which of course isn't always true either.)
2Alicorn
I've seen "tech" for "technology" but not for "technique". Interesting.
4Richard_Kennaway
"Tech" is used in Sci*nt*l*gy jargon for the supposed mental technology that they claim to offer, and it raises my suspicions whenever I see it elsewhere. Specifically, the suspicion that the author is speaking in code to insiders, not for mere in-group fuzzies, but to communicate in plain sight of the outside world things that outsiders will not realise are being communicated.
1katydee
I've also heard 'nique (neek?) for "technique," which seems less confusing.
0whpearson
I've only come across it playing Chrono Trigger not in real life.
0NihilCredo
It's also standard jargon in strategy games for any system involving the gradual acquisition of upgrades to your tools through some representation of "research".
1wedrifid
Bah. Those two abbreviations are terrible. People use those? There is no context where tech(nique) is used in which the existing use of tech(nology) wouldn't be appropriate, given that techniques can be considered technology. Why oh why would you not use 'nique' or 'niq'? I suspect I would be willing to signal myself as an outsider so as to avoid sacrificing my dignity like that!
0Mercy
I suspect the ambiguity in tech is deliberate, it's trendy in certain circles to reframe habits, attitudes and knowledges as mental technology, the whole life-hacking thing is one example but activists often use a similar jargon (I think it comes from anthropology?) extending it to social techniques (cultural technology) as well. It's maybe an attempt to hijack consumerist/shiny object collecting drives, maybe an attempt to signal practicality. I have a feeling this technique, of using an abbreviation to refer to an umbrella of concepts which could be abbreviated to that, is quite common, though the only one that springs to mind right now is Trans.
0wedrifid
The word already has a monosyllabic version (exp) but it is interesting to note that an "ence" variant is probably still warranted. I would still use 'experience' in the places where people may abbreviate to ence, because it feels right to my intuitions. "Exp" is a resource that I acquire but experiences, they are things to be savoured. I want to be fully present, in the moment for the full three syllables. In the same vein I would 'ship' combinations I was somewhat distancing myself from or perhaps considering particularly abstractly but I would never consider using that jargon in relation to Harry and Hermione for example. If I didn't use 'relationship' I would rephrase the context such that another word or phrase (connection? or 'author conveyed a bond between'?) fit the context.
3jimrandomh
I like Ence as a separate word from Exp for two reasons. First, Exp is very strongly tied to a meaning in games that is in important ways opposite from the meaning we would want Ence to have. And second, I don't think "exp" counts as properly monosyllabic; the monosoyllabic prononciation /eksp/ has a consonant cluster that many languages and English dialects don't allow in speech, causing speakers to automatically expand it to /ek.spi/.
0TobyBartels
I always pronounce it /ek.spi/ anyway (actually /eks.pi/), since I spell it ‘XP’ (which, strictly speaking, stands for ‘experience points’, not just ‘experience’). Indeed, I didn't realise that anybody said ‘Exp’ for this game mechanic! (Or are y'all talking about something else entirely?)
0wedrifid
I had to look it up too, but I do note that the changed usage of ship vs relationship makes leaving off the apostrophe appropriate. 'Relationship' can't be used as a verb!
0Pavitra
In this context, it means something like "name" or "denote".
1Pavitra
The latter. And I talked about yaoi fans because Eliezer did.
4LucasSloan
Where is this number coming from? The incidence rate of male homosexuality is pretty low and guys are generally less likely to go squee over things anyway.
0Pavitra
I heard it somewhere. WIkipedia says that estimates range from one to twenty percent, and I would expect most estimates to be low because living in a still largely homophobic society biases reporting.
5wedrifid
Yet often those making the estimates try to compensate for that bias, particularly those who are motivated to report higher statistics.

Harry has already noticed that he gave too much information to Dumbledore, but now he trusts Quirrel too much.

Let it stand that there is something else I must do this afternoon.

To wit: find that stone which I saw earlier and which I now recognise from the design that you showed me!

3dclayh
Ha, great theory. On the other hand, I find it hard to believe that the symbol was so obscure that even Voldemort never found it out. (Unless Rowling specifically mentioned it?)
6TobyBartels
This is important to the plot of Book 7 in canon, so I'm going to rot13 it for you just in case. Va pnaba, gur Erfheerpgvba Fgbar unf orra va Ibyqrzbeg'f cbffrffvba gur jubyr gvzr. Va snpg, vg'f bar bs uvf ubepehkrf! Ohg ur znqr vg vagb n ubepehk sbe fragvzragny ernfbaf; ur arire xarj jung vg jnf.
3dclayh
Aha. I read book 7 when it came out, but had forgotten that. Eminently plausible, then.
3TobyBartels
I'd forgotten it myself when I made my first comment. But then I did some research to answer your question and ...!
[-]knb70

The following is my speculation about where the plot of the story is going. It is just speculation, but on the off-chance that any of it is correct and non-obvious, it will contain spoilers.

Solid control by a central authority seems to be more difficult for magic folks. (e.g. A few dozen Death Eaters nearly brought down the government). I assume this is because Apparition makes control of transport impossible, everyone having wands makes control of dangerous weapons impossible, and the Imperius curse makes central authority untrustworthy and spreads paran... (read more)

1JamesAndrix
Premise... Conclusion?
3knb
My point, if it wasn't clear, is that since "solid control by a central authority" is harder for magic folks, they can't rely on a soft-touch liberal democratic rule. They would have to rely on harder methods of keeping the peace--some kind of ubiquitous magical monitoring system.
3TobyBartels
Right, so a magical dictator can only achieve about the level of central authority that a Muggle democracy has. Meanwhile, magical Stalin is simply not possible. (That doesn't stop Dark Lords from trying to become magical Stalin, because they are irrational. But they never succeed, even though they cause a lot of problems while they try.) However, I very much doubt that MoR!Voldemort will turn out to have been Light All Along (I don't know the proper TVTrope name for that). This would require major departures from canon as to how he went about it in 1980. Or at least he would have to have been very confident, extremely unimaginative, and positively jesuitical in using his ends to justify his means.
1Oligopsony
A Dark (or Light) Lord could centralize way more than Stalin ever did, thanks to the Marks. (How much do we know about how they work, other than they need to be taken willingly?)
1Pavitra
...unless you use a Mark. Which only a dictator can require.
2Alicorn
There were still traitors. Snape was Marked, and spied. Karkaroff was Marked, and ran.
0Pavitra
I suspect that the Mark, like many things, is rather more powerful in MoR than in canon.
1wedrifid
Where 'many things' includes 'simple consistency'. Although come to think of it the characters are more consistent in canon while (magical-)physics is more consistent in MoR. A difference in emphasis.
0knb
Yep, thanks Pavitra.

One illustration of this is that in Goblet of Fire, there is a point where canon!Harry on a broomstick faces a dragon called the Hungarian Horntail... which in Ch. 16 of Methods is said to breathe fire quickly and accurately enough to melt a Snitch in midflight, implying that canon!Harry would have gotten roasted in an instant if he'd tried the same thing in this universe.

What if, in accordance with the Tournament's goal of providing an interesting challenge and spectacle without massacring all competitors, the dragons were actually subdued or sedated ... (read more)

The big speech by Quirrel troubles me.

I thought we had Word of God that Quirrel was in some way Voldemort (Quirrelmort), and that we should've become certain of that early on (especially with the Voyager horcrux implied).

But the speech doesn't make sense for me. If Voldemort was so close to winning, if it took a freak Black Swan to defeat him and his followers, if magical England is still utterly incompetent, if many of his followers are still at large (as we know from canon they are), if...

Given this situation, why doesn't Voldemort just start over? The p... (read more)

My impression is that in MoR Voldemort was a passionate young revolutionary in the first war, but since then he's gotten older and his outlook has changed. He sees the muggles as the greatest threat now, and he recognizes that his history means he can't take power in his own name without a long and devastating series of wars that would leave the magical world exhausted and vulnerable to this outside threat. So it would be rather convenient if he could sway Harry to his way of thinking and arrange for the wizarding world to unite under a leader who sees him as a mentor...

I agree with your analysis.

But gwern's description of Harry's victory over Voldemort as a "black swan" doesn't satisfy me. The canon explanation - that the Power of Love auto-defeats all dark magic, and either no one had ever noticed this before, or Voldemort just assumed no one would use that strategy despite its obvious game-winning power because Evil Cannot Comprehend Good - doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would cut it in Methods.

One remote possibility is that Voldemort realized he'd inspired so much hatred that he'd never be able to unite the magical world without first breaking its power so badly it would be useless to him, so he found a kid with Dark Lord potential, stuck enough of his soul into him that he felt in control, and then faked his own death in such a way as to make his chosen heir the sort of hero whom everyone would rally around. This is probably too complicated for a smart Slytherin who'd seen The Tragedy of Light to try, but there's got to be some sort of weird explanation for why Voldemort lost ten years ago, and why he lost to a kid with precisely the sort of plotting ability and mastery of Muggle methodology Voldy needs for his plots.

7thomblake
Clearly happening in MoR, at least to some extent. AFAICT, Quirrel honestly can't tell why Harry wouldn't want to be a dark lord, and Draco's completely incapable of grokking Harry's motivations; pretty much whenever Draco tries he gets it wrong. Quirrell also won't understand why Harry wouldn't just flee, rather than sticking around to fix things.
2wedrifid
2Leonhart
Ooh, thanks for reminding me about Light in this context. I shall now be re-reading to determine if there's evidence that Quirrell remembers being Voldemort, or whether he's just been overwritten with V's utility function and not his memories. We're owed a few more Obliviation-based bombshells.
2JoshuaZ
The story that Quirrell tells about Voldermort going to learn about martial arts strongly implies that Q has access to at least some of Voldemort's memories.
9gwern
I can't reconcile that theory with the combined Voldemort-Quirrel history. (I did think of it after the discussion about scientists nearly dooming humanity.) I don't think it works. Quirrelmort snuck into NASA in the '70s, when the Voyagers launched. That is, decades before his defeat. Quirrelmort knew of Voyager, knew where to find it, knew what building, what campus, how to defeat the many security systems, and so on. This bespeaks an intimate and long-standing interest in NASA's projects. Given the horcrux is a large fraction of his life, it also means Quirrelmort trusts rockets a great deal. Which means he trusts in The Power of Science. Nukes, nuclear winter, and other existential risks were definitely common knowledge in the '70s. Quirrelmort couldn't've possibly missed them, especially with things like Project Orion. So, he knows muggles can kill all humanity and also wizards; he believes they might do it; and yet, it's only after the Black Swan of Harry that Quirrelmort suddenly realigns all his priorities? Well, I'm sure a good author could write that and make me believe it. But I'm not going to make myself believe just to explain away Quirrel's speech.