Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 7

[Unnamed]

Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.

The load more comments links are getting annoying (at least if you’re not logged in), so it’s time for a new Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread. We’re also approaching the traditional 500-comment mark, but I think that hidden comments provide more appropriate joints to carve these threads at. So as of chapter 67, this is the place to share your thoughts about Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter fanfic.

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. The fanfiction.net author page is the central author-controlled HPMOR clearinghouse with links to the RSS feed, pdf version, TV Tropes pages, fan art, and more, 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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Today I met a relative of mine named Eliezer Yudkowsky. First words out of his mouth: “Oh, it’s you! You’re the one who ruined my life!”

I also met Avi, who (I was told) used to come over to babysit me, and I would do his math homework for him.

And I was told that at one point during my distant youth, I was holding a camera and kept tilting it, and Uncle David kept telling me “Hold it steady!” without effect, and then Dad said “Hold it in a plane perpendicular to the floor” and that worked.

Just in case anyone was still claiming that my eleven-year-olds are unrealistic.

[TobyBartels]

Just in case anyone was still claiming that my eleven-year-olds are unrealistic.

People still won’t buy your character, because reality is unrealistic (TVTropes). Orson Scott Card got the same reactions to Ender (although I can’t find the reference now).

[see]

It’s in the introduction to (later printings of) Ender’s Game, starting on page XIX:

For some people, however, the loathing for Ender’s Game transcended mere artistic argument. I recall a letter to the editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, in which a woman who worked as a guidance counselor for gifted children reported that she had only picked up Ender’s Game to read because her son had kept telling her it was a wonderful book. She read it and loathed it. Of course, I wondered what kind of guidance counselor would hold her son’s tastes up to public ridicule, but the criticism that left me most flabbergasted was her assertion that my depiction of gifted children was hopelessly unrealistic. They just don’t talk like that, she said. They don’t think like that.

And it wasn’t just her. There have been others with that criticism. Thus I began to realize that, as it is, Ender’s Game disturbs some people because it challenges their assumptions about reality. In fact, the novel’s very clarity may make it more challenging, simply because the story’s vision of the world is so unrelentlessly plain. It was important to her, and to others, to believe that children don’t actually think or speak the way the children in Ender’s Game think and speak.

Yet I knew—I knew—that this was one of the truest things about Ender’s Game. In fact, I realized in retrospect that this may indeed be part of the reason why it was so important to me, there on the lawn in front of the Salt Palace, to write a story in which gifted children are trained to fight in adult wars. Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along—the same person that I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires. And in writing Ender’s Game, I forced the audience to experience the lives of these children from that perspective—the perspective in which their feelings and decisions are just as real and important as any adult’s.

The nasty side of myself wanted to answer that guidance counselor by saying, The only reason you don’t think gifted children talk this way is because they know better than to talk this way in front of you. But the truer answer is that Ender’s Game asserts the personhood of children, and those who are used to thinking of children in another way—especially those whose whole career is based on that—are going to find Ender’s Game a very unpleasant place to live. Children are a perpetual, self-renewing underclass, helpless to escape from the decisions of adults until they become adults themselves. And Ender’s Game, seen in that context, might even be a sort of revolutionary text.

Because the book does ring true with the children who read it. The highest praise I ever received for a book of mine was when the school librarian at Farrer Junior High in Provo, Utah, told me, “You know, Ender’s Game is our most-lost book.”

[TobyBartels]

Thanks!

[CarlShulman]

Today I met a relative of mine named Eliezer Yudkowsky. First words out of his mouth: “Oh, it’s you! You’re the one who ruined my life!”

Which particular effects were annoying him?

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Google shadow, of course.

[Nominull]

Some eleven-year-olds might be that way, but if your sample consists mostly of relatives of geniuses, it’s going to be pretty skewed, I would think.

There’s no causal link between Harry and Draco and Hermione and Blaise and… I dunno who else people are claiming is unrealistic. Still, four unrelated genius-level children out of the, I don’t know, one hundred first year Hogwarts students? It’s not entirely unfair to see that as statistically unlikely, even if theoretically possible.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Keep in mind that Blaise’s plan was Dumbledore’s.

[Desrtopa]

I don’t get the impression that Draco is especially brilliant (for a real eleven year old, he would be, but Eliezer’s characters don’t act eleven in general,) but rather that he’s especially well trained. He might be a one-in-a-hundred intellect, but he’s had an education that not one muggle in millions gets.

Blaise is clever, but likewise learned from an exceptionally duplicitous mother, and had Dumbledore passing him notes.

[hairyfigment]

Hermione of course has great scholarly talents in canon. Harry—I’ve seen people argue that he would have been a genius in canon if the abuse didn’t warp him, and here he obviously had an excellent environment for developing mental abilities. But Harry does see himself as an anomaly. Some people here (apparently not believing nurture can explain that much) have a theory to account for him. As for Draco and Blaise, we know for a fact the former had extensive training. On a meta level, increasing Harry’s intelligence required a smarter Voldemort and thus a smarter Dumbledore. Lucius Malfoy then needed smarts in order to produce a more-or-less canonical starting point for the story. And his erstwhile (?) Lord would not pick an idiot as a servant (not if he could find a way to control a smart minion.) Notice this means that, if MoR!Voldemort affected Harry’s intelligence, three out of the four names you mention would have an indirect causal link in-story as well as in reality.

[Vladimir_Nesov]

They have magic, and they are physically sturdier than Muggles. Maybe they are also on average smarter than Muggles.

Which constitutes evidence for Terry Tao being a wizard.

[Desrtopa]

Their being smarter on average than Muggles doesn’t seem particularly well supported by the story so far, except insofar as the average intelligence of characters in the story is raised by virtue of being written by Eliezer.

[[deleted]]

Ch. 68 I thought was particularly strong. I find I really enjoy parts of the story that dip into Hermione or Draco’s POV, so I’m glad to see more of that.

Ch. 68 also mitigated a negative reaction I’d had to the previous chapter—watching Harry and Neville wipe out all of Sunshine by themselves, my reaction was a reader was an exasperated “Okay, must we really be bludgeoned with evidence of Harry’s manifest superiority to all the other canon characters? It’s getting to be a bit much.” So for the next chapter to dip into Hermione’s head when she’s having the exact same thoughts—it helps a lot to counter my objection, because it shows a self-awareness in the text. It seems to promise we’re going somewhere with all this.

I also think it’s kind of interesting to contrast MoR!Hermione with the canon character. Canon Hermione was pretty much totally okay with her part as a supporting player in Harry’s quest. There’s this exchange in the first book:

‘Harry — you’re a great wizard, you know.’ ‘I’m not as good as you,’ said Harry, very embarrassed, as she let go of him. ‘Me! Books! And cleverness! There are more important things – friendship and bravery and – oh Harry – be careful!’

And in the fifth book:

‘Harry, you’re the best in the year at Defense Against the Dark Arts,’ said Hermione. ‘Me?’ said Harry, now grinning more broadly than ever. ‘No I’m not, you’ve beaten me in every test—’ ‘Actually, I haven’t,’ said Hermione cooly. ‘You beat me in our third year—the only year we both sat the test and had a teacher who actually knew the subject. But I’m not talking about test results, Harry. Look what you’ve done!’

Of course, canon Hermione handily beats canon Harry in every other aspect of their studies, which probably makes it a bit easier for her to be gracious about Harry’s own magical talent—but the areas that she cedes to his expertise are also the areas that she herself judges to be most important. Canon Hermione actively prods Harry into a leadership role, suggesting that he organize and teach the other students.

MoR!Harry, by contrast, sets out to compete with Hermione precisely in the area of books and cleverness. And instead of being affably modest about it, he’s...well, he’s an aggravating little shit. So it’s believable to me that the same Hermione would find it much harder to yield gracefully to MoR Harry than to canon Harry.

And at the same time, she fears that MoR Harry is losing touch with the “more important things”—the Gryffindor things—and instead she’s being called to step up on that front. Which is a much more daunting prospect for her, because these aren’t her own natural strengths (or at least she doesn’t think they are). I like that reversal for Hermione, and I hope the story continues to delve into her character arc.

[Raemon]

Good comment. Upvoted.

I’ve been wary of the way Hermione was presented so far. A month ago I was involved in a feminist discussion of literature, and more than one person expressed an explicit lack of interest in stories about “white dudes being responsible for saving the world.” Upon reading it I thought back to MoR. I know there are constraints on the story that Eliezer doesn’t control, except for choosing to have written the story in the first place. Harry’s already a white dude responsible for saving the world, and adding SuperRationalist to his resume is going to inherently blow Hermione out of the water in her own sphere of influence.

At the time of the conversation about feminist literature (or lackthereof) we were at chapter 63. Hermione had yet to do anything significant. There were enough hints that Eliezer was aware of the issues facing her, both as a character in general and as “the Girl™” in particular, but those issues had merely been mentioned, not addressed. She had attempted to regain her personhood by becoming the general, and then lost everything she gained when she kissed Harry.

I had a vague faith that Eliezer would eventually address it somehow, and hoped that she would be a stronger character in Act II. But wasn’t sure how that would work out. The last two chapters certainly didn’t help, without the context of 68. But 68 turned things around in a good way. I don’t know how much of this Eliezer thinks of in terms of feminist issues and how much is just making sure all the characters are compelling. Either way I’m glad things are playing out this way.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

High probability this comment had something to do with the surprise creation of SPHEW.

[Raemon]

Heh. As I noted elsewhere, whatever your exact motivations were, I thought it was pretty awesome.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Oh, it’s a critique all right, but it’s not a feminist critique. One free karma point if you can guess what it’s a critique of.

[[deleted]]

I have no idea if this was intended, but reading the chapter reminded me strongly of these two posts.

On the one hand, it is possible that Harry has simply gone on to a level where Hermione cannot follow. This suspicion, naturally, is devastating to her ego, but it’s part of what she’s grappling with now. And that moment is completely part of the archetypal Nerd Journey—for a lot of us it happens in college. All our lives we’ve always been the smartest kid at school, but suddenly we go to a much bigger school and we’re confronted for the first time with the reality that we are maybe not the colossal geniuses our high school teachers and our parents always told us we were. We realize there is a level above our own. That moment can be very difficult.

But at the same time, as Hermione grapples with this realization, she’s wondering if she can go any higher, and she’s being told: No, because you don’t have the aura of destiny.

Of course this is a fantasy story, a world with magic, and there is a special prophecy that names Harry and does not name Hermione. But I think she’s right to object when Dumbledore and McGonagall refuse to give her the kind of help they’re giving Harry, merely because it’s not her name on the title of the story.

[[deleted]]

The hero archetype?

[NancyLebovitz]

I think it’s something like that—it’s a critique of the idea that a hero accretes followers, and the followers didn’t have anything else they wanted to do with their lives.

It may also be a critique of the idea of wanting to be an individual in a fairly loose context when sometimes it’s necessary to get more involved to do what’s important.

[David_Gerard]

Humans accumulate followers. It’s disconcerting to realise just how easy it is to accumulate followers—even from those who’d make quite good leaders themselves—just by telling people to do things and looking vaguely like you know where you’re going. This is some sort of human universal.

[NancyLebovitz]

Fair point. On the other hand, Sam Gamgee following Frodo is probably an oversimplification of the process, and Hermione:MOR is a good counterbalancing image.

[Raemon]

Ha. I have no idea what’s intended to be critiqued here, but Society for the Promotion of Heroic Equality for Witches is hilarious. Perfectly works alongside Canon Hermione (It even spells out S.P.H.E.W, I assume intentionally).

And whatever your intentions, I think it does a decent job of accomplishing the actual goals of feminism while lampooning some of the more ridiculous efforts.

Props to Dumbledore.

[Raemon]

I’m assuming that “bad writing” is too broad an answer, whether or not the more precise answer happens to fall within it. The obvious answer is a tendency (both in writing and among humanity in general) to latch onto figureheads/​heroes and give them disproportionate amounts of praise and expectations. But that seems too obvious.

For the record, I’m defining feminism in a fairly broad “women should generally be treated equally to men, for the same reason that people should generally be treated as equal” sort of way. Not that men and women are completely identical or any other specific policies that you might or might not agree with. I know you have some concerns about gender politics, although I don’t know what they are. (If the answer was a critique against “objectification of people in general”, I’d consider feminism a subsidiary of that)

[benelliott]

My guess, its about the other side of the Tsuyoku Naritai coin. An obvious implication of “run your fastest, you shouldn’t have to feel bad if get ahead of other people” is “if other people run their fastest and get ahead of you, don’t resent them for it”. The same point is also made briefly by Draco’s internal narration in Ch67.

[ArisKatsaris]

A meritocratic critique of egalitarianism?

[Barry_Cotter]

Agency; the idea that one person really can make a massive difference, whether that be all by their lonesome, or by setting things in motion or leadershio.

[ArisKatsaris]

Eliezer’s stories are full of people who make a massive difference. That’d be a weird thing for Eliezer to criticize.

[Eneasz]

I think it’s more a critique that EVERYONE can be that one person. Obviously they can’t.

Not necessarily just because the aren’t the best either. Support staff is critical. Logistically it’s impossible for everyone to be the hero because a hero without a support staff is just a dude waving a lightsaber around on his uncle’s moisture farm.

[LucasSloan]

The concept of the “chosen one.”

[tondwalkar]

A satirization of the mahou shoujo genre? Complete with costumes!

An aside, they way you used “feminist critique” isn’t the standard meaning of the phrase. A feminist critique would be a critique from a feminist framework, not a critique of feminism, much like a Bayesian critique of something would argue that it’s fallaciously reasoning about probabilities.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

That is what I mean; HPMOR’s Hermione represents a critique of something, but not a “critique from a feminist framework” of that thing.

[Quirinus_Quirrell]

The idea that heroism is intrinsic, rather than something that people can be prodded into or pushed out of?

[loqi]

One dollar.

[wedrifid]

MoR!Harry, by contrast, sets out to compete with Hermione precisely in the area of books and cleverness. And instead of being affably modest about it, he’s...well, he’s an aggravating little shit.

Jumping in from the future… it looks like Harry has grown out of this! It kind of freaked Hermione out. :S

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Canon!Hermione is so much stronger than canon!Harry that she has to encourage him, yes. Calling this “yielding gracefully” strikes me as exaggeration.

[major]

If you want to figure out the James’ Rock thing yourself, you should probably stop reading now.

I read this in ch58

Luckily—well, not luckily, luck had nothing to do with it—conscientiously, Harry had practiced Transfiguration for an extra hour every day, to the point where he was ahead of even Hermione in that one class; he’d practiced partial Transfiguration to the point where his thoughts had begun taking the true universe for granted, so that it required only slightly more effort to keep its timeless quantum nature in mind, even as he kept a firm mental separation between the concept of Form and the concept of substance.

And the problem with that art having become so routine...

...was that Harry could think about other things while he was doing it.

and (putting my contrarian nature to good use) thought, the other reason he was good at it was, he concentrated on maintaining his transfigured ring stone all the time. Then I realized that’s all thanks to Dumbledore and I started to wonder if it was intentional. In search of clues I reread ch17, specifically the part where Harry got the rock, and then went on to read the Lily’s potion book part because it seemed related. That’s when I realized I fell for some deliberate obfuscation, as I came away with the impression that Lily was asking questions and mysteriously receiving answers in her potion book. Realizing it was not the case, most of the rest was seen in a flash.

Just as Dumbledore challenged Lily with strange potion-related questions in order to get her to do extra research, possibly directing her to books and topics where she learned something extra about stuff, thus becoming exceptional at potions (which is canon fact), so too did he present Harry with a challenge, expecting him to find the obvious solution of maintained transfiguration in order to follow the advice of a wise old wizard.

Why would he do that? In Ch28 McGonagall seems to think this feat of Dumbledore impressive:

He had used Transfiguration in combat and he was still alive.

Now, how would you do this? Why, by having the ability to concentrate on transfiguration while paying attention to something else (such as the back and forth of a duel). Sounds familiar? To do this, being able to concentrate on transfiguration without conscious attention is indispensable. Dumbledore simply started building up his pet hero early, since, you understand,

Transfiguration must be learned and practiced at a young age in order to maximize your adult ability.

(McGonagall, Ch15)

I mention all this now because Ch67 gave me the impression it will come to light soon. Could be wrong about that.

[rdb]

If there is a training effect in increasing magical strength, and or improving concentration, keeping the rock transfigured works that way too, without being Transfiguration specific. Quirrel’s armies help too—would normal classroom activity exhaust magic that much?

Harry could try a controlled experiment over the Easter holiday if he thinks about it. With McGonagall’s permission, ask his classmates to keep a loop of cord transfigured into an unobtrusive platinum toe ring (or more than one) over the holiday when they’re not otherwise allowed to use magic. Then compare deltas in transfiguration scores on the next test between those who did & didn’t attempt it.

Is Harry getting letters back from his parents? He doesn’t yet seem to be thinking about measuring magical strength, but a tool to compare would permit some kind of scale—if it could use embodied magic in magic items as markers. That could argue for faster access to later year charms. Similarly of pre-electronic tech that may be useful, that his parents may remember. (Slide rules, Curta calcs, Microfiche & hand held readers, …)

[bigjeff5]

The toe ring test probably wouldn’t fly, the Ministry detects underage magic outside of the vicinity of Hogwarts and responds harshly.

[wnoise]

In canon, the detection spells can’t even tell the difference between Dobby’s use of magic and Harry’s. Telling the difference between a kid’s magic and his parents’ would appear to be even harder. For the wizarding kids, if their use of magic can’t be told apart from their parents, there would be no way to sanction them. At that point the detection spells are only effective for muggle-borns. I’m not aware of any in-canon detection of children living with magical parents. (This would also let the wizarding families train their kids even when not at school, as a convenient way to bolster their status).

[TobyBartels]

I’m pretty sure that I read somewhere that Wizarding families themselves are expected to keep an eye on their children when at home.

[orthonormal]

Plausible, but that can’t be the only reason for the rock; too big a deal was made of it at the time.

[bigjeff5]

You do have to bear in mind that Dumbledore is quite crazy (in a purposeful sort of way). It wouldn’t surprise me if he simply found a rock that James Potter had kicked around for a while, and on that basis claimed it was “James’s Favorite Rock”. Then the rock became a way to force Harry to improve his Transfiguration skills in a huge way.

Also, as rdb notes below, that kind of concentration simply must have bleed over into other types of magic.

[thomblake]

Yes, several people I know in-person had the same take-away from the rock transfiguration exercise when it was first introduced.

[major]

Good, I’m probably no crazier then them, than. Did they also guess Quirrellmort’s endgame plans before the hiatus? (Well, in retrospect, it was guessable way before that.)

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

As of 4:17am PDT, HPMOR is the #1 most-reviewed Harry Potter fanfiction on the entire Internet.

[cultureulterior]

How did the pair writing go? I’d be interested in trying something like that myself.

[Psy-Kosh]

Congratulations!

(Now, you must aspire to make it the fanfic for which the reviews themselves are most reviewed!)

[wedrifid]

Congrats! How far to go until it is the most reviewed fanfiction on the entire internet?

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

There was a Twilight fanfiction with 55,000 reviews but it seems to have disappeared off FF.net; I don’t know what was #2.

[LauralH]

...and that Fanfic is now 50 Shades of Gray.

[Nisan]

Hooray!

[ShardPhoenix]

Hi Eliezer, one minor issue I have with this (awesome) story is the punctuation. In particular, you often use commas when other punctuation might read better. Here are a few examples from chapter 68:

1.

Hermione wasn’t feeling very nice right now, or Good either, there was a hot ball of anger...

Would read better as:

Hermione wasn’t feeling very nice right now, or Good either. There was a hot ball of anger...

---

2.

Hermione began speaking, despite her newfound resolution her voice still stumbled a little with nervousness, as...

Would read better as:

Hermione began speaking. Despite her newfound resolution, her voice still stumbled a little with nervousness as...

---

3.

“That—” Harry’s voice said urgently, she wasn’t looking at him but his voice sounded like he had his head turned toward her. “That was...

Would read better as:

“That—” Harry’s voice said urgently—she wasn’t looking at him but his voice sounded like he had turned toward her—“that was...

---

I get the impression that you often do this in order to create a sense of rushing/​urgency, and it mostly works, but other times it reads awkwardly. It’s particularly noticeable at the beginnings of chapters.

Caveat: I’m not a grammarian so I’m not sure if my edits here are actually more correct, but they read better to me.

[TobyBartels]

I’m no expert, but I’m confident in my own knowledge here; your edits are more correct by the prescriptive standards of English. They also read better to me too, although may I suggest some semicolons sometimes?

[Manfred]

I agree that semicolons are awesome, and one would probably be the best choice for sentence two.

[free_rip]

Both colons and semi-colons are known to break the flow of writing. Dashes generally flow better than semi-colons. This is something I’ve found after writing many pieces (often with lots of semi-colons, which my natural style has a lot of) on a peer review writing-site and having reviewers tell me - ‘x sentence doesn’t flow well’ for basically every sentence with a semi-colon.

They work better in non-fic writing, where the flow can be more formal.

[syllogism]

A substantial disadvantage of semi-colons is simply that they’re rare. If a small but significant portion of your readers don’t read them as you intend you’re better off finding another way.

It’s a pity though, because if I were writing for perfect clones of me, they’d often be the best choice.

[TobyBartels]

I use semicolons a lot more when writing on Less Wrong (and other places where intelligence is high) than on many other places.

[dclayh]

Ch. 68:

Hermione wears makeup? On a regular basis?! Has this been mentioned before, in MoR or canon? Seems somewhat-to-very out of character to me.

ETA: Eliezer has now removed the reference.

[Sheaman3773]

I was also surprised when I read this line. I wouldn’t have thought it typical of her at all.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, I blinked a bit at that too. In canon she can’t be bothered to use hair product (even though she likes the effect on her frizzy hair) because it takes too much time to put on, so it seems probable that makeup is in the same category. I could maybe see a light lip gloss, if Hogwarts is dry and her lips tend to chap.

On the other hand, Emma Watson obviously wears makeup, so perhaps this is movieverse Hermione.

Lastly, I know this opinion makes me, like, ninety years old and Amish to boot, but twelve is too young for make-up.

[free_rip]

I’m 16, female, atheist and don’t wear make-up. There’s nothing old-fashioned about it—it’s just practical for the school years.

[[deleted]]

It’s the notion that twelve is too young that I suspect is out-of-date, not the notion that makeup is generally impractical—lots of women of all ages don’t wear any. I don’t in my everyday routine, although I do if I’m dressing up.

[Eneasz]

I agree. Isn’t the primary purpose of make-up the attraction of a mate? I know many kids start experimenting around that age, but that kinda weirds me out.

[David_Gerard]

We have teenagers who’ve worn makeup since 14, but that’s because they had the Kevyn Aucoin books and learnt it as a form of dressing up well. Aucoin’s books are the books on how to do makeup well and should be regarded as standard texts on the subject.

[Unnamed]

She’s already kissed a boy and gone on a date.

[bogdanb]

It’s the “primary purpose” in the sense that it’s also the primary purpose of jewelry and pretty clothes. Which I kind of doubt in general, although of course it could be true in particular cases.

[ArisKatsaris]

Yeah, that was weird for me too. Seems both uncanonical and out-of-character.

[Raemon]

Add me to this list of reactions.

[GeeJo]

Given the number of people struggling with the “Azkaban Saturday” timeline, I thought I’d have a go at mapping it out and uploading the result to Google Documents. If anyone’s got any corrections, feel free to say so.

[Raemon]

Something I’ve mentioned before, but usually as part of a reply to something else: I strongly believe that the work would benefit from being officially divided into different books. Chapter 63 was incredibly cathartic to read, partly because it was a very intense chapter that resolved a lot of stuff, but partly because at the time, we knew a hiatus was coming and that it was the End™ of a particular section. That, in combination with the fact it touched upon every single plot thread, made it feel more potent. And the PDF version, at that time, was a little over 1000 pages, which is about right for a Harry Potter book.

It’s also a daunting to get new people to read something when there’s a bajillion chapters. I don’t know if you’re planning for two parts or three, but presumably there will be at least 120 chapters when this is done, if not 180+. I had better luck getting new people to read it when I specifically said “book 1 just finished, I can give you the PDF of that,” and I think that’s in part because “one book” is a friendlier way of measuring length than some large number of pages.

Fanfiction.net might have specific rules, or you might want to just keep things consistent there. But I’d like it if when the next section is finished, you do a PDF that gets treated as its own separate book.

(I also feel like Part I could benefit from being divided into subsections. For instance, the first 20ish chapters end with Harry sending the letter to his parents, which felt like a good stopping point, as did the Christmas break which gives us a pause before the events leading to Azkaban kick into overdrive. I’m less concerned about that, but I do feel like having discrete chunks to show to people makes it less daunting to begin reading).

[benelliott]

It’s also a daunting to get new people to read something when there’s a bajillion chapters.

Funny, I have the exact opposite reaction. I quite enjoy getting into a story by reading through a long archive and I’m often put off by small page-counts, since I know that even if I like it I’ll just hit a frustrating stop in the near future.

[Raemon]

My personal criteria is “likelihood of being finished” regardless of how long it is. Part of what I like about book 1 being a separate PDF is that no matter how long it is till the next part is done, you have one section that you can point to and say “finished.”

[benelliott]

I also try to judge by that, although its not always easy to do so. I also like the idea of Book 1 being separate, for many of the other reasons you gave.

[humpolec]

To go with the TV series analogy proposed by Eliezer, maybe it could be an end of Season 1?

[Raemon]

Yeah, that’s exactly how I’d think about it.

I actually think that usually, books should be turned into TV shows, not movies. A thousand pages of book translates into approximately a thousand minutes, so making a movie requires you to gut the book down to the equivalent of 200-300 pages, whereas making a tv series would allow you to actually flesh things out further, giving the director time to actually do something interesting with the material. I firmly believe Harry Potter should have been a TV show, not a movie. At least from an artistic, if not economic standpoint.

[hairyfigment]

Back when the story ended with the “Humanism” arc, I told someone that a hypothetical publisher could reasonably treat it as the end of Volume One. If we can actually agree on possible ending points, then it makes sense to at least note these at the end of the chapter (somewhat like the sub-books within The Fellowship of the Ring etc.)

[TobyBartels]

Ch 69

“Excuse (gasp) me,” she said, “can you (gasp) Unjellyfy my legs?”

I can’t believe I couldn’t figure out the countercurse was just “Unjellify!” (ETA: Act I, Part 4, 9:07, if anybody cares). (Edit June 17: link changed to be more precise; it used to be this.)

[trlkly]

And what does some people eating donuts on a string have to do with anything you said? Is YouTube reusing hashes from removed videos or something?

[TobyBartels]

I believe that I was intending to link to a playlist, whereas I actually linked to the YouTube user who posted that playlist, and this user is now featuring an unrelated video. Here’s a link to the playlist: https://​​www.youtube.com/​​playlist?list=PLC76BE906C9D83A3A

[Manfred]

If only I could vote this up twice.

[TheOtherDave]

Well, you certainly can… just create another account. I don’t recommend it, though.

[Alicorn]

May interest HP:MoR fans (oneshot, not mine):

http://​​www.fanfiction.net/​​s/​​6606864/​​1/​​The_Search_for_Supernatural_Life

[NihilCredo]

Ch. 69:

Currently she was being referred to as the Sparkly Unicorn Princess of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Sparklypoo.

Reference.

[HonoreDB]

Animate armor.

As Dumbledore demonstrates in Order of the Phoenix, any spell, even Avada Kadavra, can be blocked by a temporarily animate statue (the spell “kills” the statue instead). Which actually annoyed me when I read it, since that implies wizards could imbue each layer of their clothing with intelligence before a battle, and gain a bunch of extra lives.

(Having your breastplate shout taunts at your enemy also frees you up to focus on fighting.)

[ArisKatsaris]

It wasn’t the animatedness of the statue that made it block Avada Kedavra, it was that it was a huge block of solid stuff. Voldemort in the same sequence crafted a physical shield for himself, though he didn’t need to block any Avada Kedavras (as Dumbledore didn’t cast any).

[benelliott]

Of course, imbuing your clothing with intelligence so it will absorb killing curses has some truly horrifying moral implications.

[sketerpot]

Does Avada Kedavra require that its victim be intelligent, or just alive? If it’s the latter, then a wizard could presumably turn a leather jacket into a flesh golem or something. It’s gruesome enough that there would probably be an old book giving detailed instructions, with horrible illustrations.

[FAWS]

I believe Bartemius Crouch Jr. demonstrates the curse by casting it on a spider so intelligence is not required in the books, but this seems like something that might be changed in the fanfic.

[Sheaman3773]

Quirrell distinguished himself early on in the fic as saying that the Killing Curse was a spell that solved many problems. He also said (ch 16):

The Killing Curse is unblockable, unstoppable, and works every single time on anything with a brain.

[benelliott]

Didn’t think of that. I suspect that the exact requirement amounts to having a ‘soul’, whatever that means.

[DanielLC]

Only if you’re death-averse. I figure intelligence for a little bit is better than no intelligence at all.

Besides, you cease to be intelligent every time you fall asleep. People never seem to worry about the moral implications of that.

I admit Harry is death-averse. I suppose he just never thought about sleep.

[Dreaded_Anomaly]

Comparing sleep to death for intelligence is like comparing a screensaver to dismantling for a computer. The brain is still very active during sleep, external stimuli can still be recognized, and sleep isn’t a permanent condition. I don’t see how such a comparison is meaningful for discussing intelligence.

[DanielLC]

All those things except permanence are true of animals, or for that matter, a computer.

Permanence causes a lot of paradoxes. For example, if you “kill” someone in their sleep, they never wake up, so it was permanent. That is, unless you start using counterfactuals, and talk about if they could have been woken up. In that case, they still can. It’s not completely impossible, just really unlikely. But if you were dead set on killing them once they went to sleep, it would be really unlikely for them to wake up from that.

Also, if they stop being intelligent, it becomes impossible to follow what “them” is. Intelligence stops. Intelligence starts. Who’s to say it’s the same one?

[Vaniver]

hides face behind hands

reveals

PEEKABOO!

[Dreaded_Anomaly]

That’s a weak use of permanence. Nothing about the process of sleep requires that it be permanent, so sleep does not have the inherent property of permanence. Sometimes, people incidentally never wake from sleep, but that’s not permanence in the way that death is inherently permanent.

I don’t agree that we stop being intelligent when we sleep. You continue to assert this, but without supporting it. Again:

The brain is still very active during sleep, external stimuli can still be recognized

Also, if intelligence “stops” and “starts” from the same physical generator, i.e. the brain, (which isn’t what happens with sleep) then it is the same one.

(Edited to add article link.)

[DanielLC]

Nothing about the process of sleep requires that it be permanent, so sleep does not have the inherent property of permanence.

What makes it inherently permanent? The only difference between sleep, cryostasis, and being shot in the head is how likely you are to be revived. It’s never certain, and it’s never impossible. Death is permanent by definition, but that just means we’re never quite certain anybody is dead.

Also, if intelligence “stops” and “starts” from the same physical generator, i.e. the brain, (which isn’t what happens with sleep) then it is the same one.

Pretty much everyone’s brain is made of the same quarks and leptons, so the same physical generator doesn’t exactly narrow it down any. I would explain what I mean by that, but the link you have already does it.

[Dreaded_Anomaly]

Yes, it does. The link says, actually:

You will even be able to see, I hope, that if your brain were non-destructively frozen (e.g. by vitrification in liquid nitrogen); and a computer model of the synapses, neural states, and other brain behaviors were constructed a hundred years later; then it would preserve exactly everything about you that was preserved by going to sleep one night and waking up the next morning.

The physical generator includes the configuration of those quarks and leptons, which is what gives rise to the specific intelligence.

[DanielLC]

The configuration isn’t the same when you wake up. It’s similar, but how do you know how similar it has to be?

Again, there’s nothing prevent a given configuration from ever occuring again, so you can’t tell if someone dies. Also, the configuration I had when I was little no longer exists. Wouldn’t that mean that as I live, each earlier instance of me is slowly dying?

[Dreaded_Anomaly]

When the butterfly emerges, is the caterpillar dead? I don’t think so. Life still exists, and though its form changes, there is continuity from one moment to the next. The same is true for intelligence. To say otherwise is to stretch the meaning of “death” beyond relevance.

[benelliott]

If they have the same memories and the same personality then its still them.

[DanielLC]

But then you’re not the same person “you” were a year ago, and it’s possible for you to be two people at once.

Also, that means that it’s impossible to ever tell if you’re dead. Even without some way of working out who you were, another you could start by complete coincidence.

[bigjeff5]

The Sorting Hat disagreed. It seemed pretty pissed at Harry for accidentally making it sentient, which then meant Harry would be forced to kill it by removing the source if the hat’s sentience.

[TobyBartels]

You could imbue an item with intelligence and the desire to die gloriously in battle.

In response, DanielLC seems to take it for granted that the rule of morality is “Do to others what you would have them do to you.”, which is not bad as a rule of thumb, but leads to irreconcilable conflict when applied by people with different preferences (such as intelligence, even for a brief period, vs continuing to survive, once intelligence exists). The real rule should be “Do to others what they would have you do to them.”.

Since your clothing has no preferences before imbuing it with intelligence, anything that you do to it is (directly) morally neutral. As for the indirect effect that it’s liable to be horribly killed, the morality of that depends entirely on what its preferences are after it is imbued with intelligence.

All that said, I didn’t read the statues in OotP as having intelligence at all.

Edit: I forgot to state the correction to the Golden Rule above! Fixed. (Also minor grammar fix and removing the false reference to Dreaded Anomaly.)

[David_Gerard]

And noting, of course, that this precise issue comes up when Harry has accidentally made the Sorting Hat sentient.

[JamesAndrix]

Would it also be moral to genetically engineer a human so that it becomes suicidal as a teenager?

[TobyBartels]

It would be immoral to genetically engineer suicidal depression, and it would be immoral to engineer the desire to die in this society, where it cannot easily be fulfilled.

But imagine that puberty, instead of leading people to want to have sex, led us (or some of us) to want to die. While this might be as bad as puberty currently is, with new hormones and great confusion, hopefully a competent genetic engineer would actually make it better. No depression here, but looking forward to becoming an adult, with all that this entails. Presumably the engineer even has some purpose in mind, but even if not, I’m sure that society is more than capable of making one up.

There must already be a science fiction story out there with this premise, but I don’t know one.

[David_Allen]

It would be immoral to genetically engineer suicidal depression, and it would be immoral to engineer the desire to die in this society, where it cannot easily be fulfilled.

It would be immoral to engineer the desire to die in this society, where it is considered immoral to make people want to kill themselves.

[Dreaded_Anomaly]

I haven’t commented on the morality of the issue at all, just the comparison of death to sleep.

[TobyBartels]

Sorry, the opposing moral viewpoint against which Daniel argues is actually Daniel’s interpretation of Harry, not you. I’ve edited my comment.

[TobyBartels]

Ch 68

feeling a lot like a sad little bug that had just been squished

Trust me, Hermione, you’re still much better off than her.

[[deleted]]

I just figured out a possible bit of twisty logic while listening to the podcast that I didn’t notice on first read through.

I’ve spoilered this entire thing even though I probably don’t need to, just so that you can can figure it out yourself If you want. I think it explains Dumbledore’s otherwise incomprehensible behavior in chapter 17.

Cebsrffbe Qhzoyrqber frg hc gur ragver guvat jvgu Uneel’f Nhag, naq ur ncbybtvmrq sbe znavchyngvat guvatf va gung snfuvba. Naq Uneel qvqa’g haqrefgnaq vg orpnhfr Qhzoyrqber vf n ovg qvfgenpgvat.

Puncgre 1: “Naljnl,” Crghavn fnvq, ure ibvpr fznyy, “fur tnir va. Fur gbyq zr vg jnf qnatrebhf, naq V fnvq V qvqa’g pner nal zber, naq V qenax guvf cbgvba naq V jnf fvpx sbe jrrxf, ohg jura V tbg orggre zl fxva pyrnerq hc naq V svanyyl svyyrq bhg naq… V jnf ornhgvshy, crbcyr jrer avpr gb zr,” ure ibvpr oebxr, “naq nsgre gung V pbhyqa’g ungr zl fvfgre nal zber, rfcrpvnyyl jura V yrnearq jung ure zntvp oebhtug ure va gur raq—”

Cbvag 1: Uneel’f Nhag Crghavn qenax n cbgvba sebz Yvyl Cbggre gung znqr ure fvpx sbe jrrxf, naq gura zber punevfzngvp.

Puncgre 17: “Juvpu ubyqf n greevoyr frperg. N frperg jubfr eriryngvba pbhyq cebir fb qvfnfgebhf gung V zhfg nfx lbh gb fjrne—naq V qb erdhver lbh gb fjrne vg frevbhfyl, Uneel, jungrire lbh znl guvax bs nyy guvf—arire gb gryy nalbar be nalguvat ryfr.”

Uneel pbafvqrerq uvf zbgure’f svsgu-lrne Cbgvbaf grkgobbx, juvpu, nccneragyl, uryq n greevoyr frperg.

Gur ceboyrz jnf gung Uneel qvq gnxr gung bnguf yvxr gung irel frevbhfyl. Nal ibj jnf na Haoernxnoyr Ibj vs znqr ol gur evtug fbeg bs crefba.

“Qb lbh frr gurfr abgrf,” Qhzoyrqber fnvq va n ibvpr fb ybj vg jnf nyzbfg n juvfcre, “jevggra va gur znetvaf bs gur obbx?”

Uneel fdhvagrq fyvtugyl. Gur lryybjvat cntrf frrzrq gb or qrfpevovat fbzrguvat pnyyrq n cbgvba bs rntyr’f fcyraqbe, znal bs gur vaterqvragf orvat vgrzf gung Uneel qvqa’g erpbtavmr ng nyy naq jubfr anzrf qvqa’g nccrne gb qrevir sebz Ratyvfu. Fpenjyrq va gur znetva jnf n unaqjevggra naabgngvba fnlvat, V jbaqre jung jbhyq unccra vs lbh hfrq Gurfgeny oybbq urer vafgrnq bs oyhroreevrf? naq vzzrqvngryl orarngu jnf n ercyl va qvssrerag unaqjevgvat, Lbh’q trg fvpx sbe jrrxf naq znlor qvr.

“V frr gurz,” fnvq Uneel. “Jung nobhg gurz?”

Qhzoyrqber cbvagrq gb gur frpbaq fpenjy. “Gur barf va guvf unaqjevgvat,” ur fnvq, fgvyy va gung ybj ibvpr, “jrer jevggra ol lbhe zbgure. Naq gur barf va guvf unaqjevgvat,” zbivat uvf svatre gb vaqvpngr gur svefg fpenjy, “jrer jevggra ol zr. V jbhyq ghea zlfrys vaivfvoyr naq farnx vagb ure qbez ebbz juvyr fur jnf fyrrcvat. Yvyl gubhtug bar bs ure sevraqf jnf jevgvat gurz naq gurl unq gur zbfg nznmvat svtugf.”

Cbvag 2: Ba svefg ernqvat, V gubhtug “Bu ybbx, n Q&Q ersrerapr naq Qhzoyrqber vf whfg orvat enaqbz.”

Ohg npghnyyl, Rntyr’f fcyraqbe vf n fcryy juvpu obbfgf punevfzn. Naq vg’f vzcyvrq gung Gurfgeny oybbq jbhyq punatr vg gb znxr lbh fvpx sbe jrrxf.

Naq...

Puncgre 17: Nu, lrf. V’z fbeel gb fnl, Uneel, gung V nz erfcbafvoyr sbe iveghnyyl rirelguvat onq gung unf rire unccrarq gb lbh. V xabj gung guvf jvyy cebonoyl znxr lbh irel natel.”

“Lrf, V’z irel natel!” fnvq Uneel. “Teee!”

Uneel’f Vagreany Pevgvp cebzcgyl njneqrq uvz gur Nyy-Gvzr Njneq sbe gur Jbefg Npgvat va gur Uvfgbel bs Rire.

“Naq V whfg jnagrq lbh gb xabj,” Qhzoyrqber fnvq, “V jnagrq gb gryy lbh nf rneyl nf cbffvoyr, va pnfr fbzrguvat unccraf gb bar bs hf yngre, gung V nz gehyl, gehyl fbeel. Sbe rirelguvat gung unf nyernql unccrarq, naq rirelguvat gung jvyy.”

Zbvfgher tyvfgrarq va gur byq jvmneq’f rlrf.

Cbvag 3: Cebsrffbe Qhzoyrqber grnef urer vaqvpngr ur srryf crefbanyyl erfcbafvoyr sbe Uneel’f ragver fvghngvba. Gung qbrfa’g znxr nal frafr, hayrff ur npghnyyl unq qbar fbzrguvat .

[Alexandros]

So, I was curious to see how each chapter was getting reviewed. Here are some numbers as of a few minutes ago:

The reviews cover a total of 856,252 words, more than double the size of the fic itself.

Some charts: reviews per chapter total review words per chapter avg. words per review per chapter

The 10 most reviewed chapters are:

• chapter 05: 758 reviews

• chapter 01: 411 reviews

• chapter 10: 387 reviews

• chapter 09: 358 reviews

• chapter 06: 342 reviews

• chapter 07: 306 reviews

• chapter 47: 305 reviews

• chapter 17: 299 reviews

• chapter 08: 294 reviews

• chapter 70: 282 reviews

In terms of average words per review, the top 10 are:

• chapter 39, words per review: 158

• chapter 27, words per review: 110

• chapter 20, words per review: 106

• chapter 63, words per review: 105

• chapter 55, words per review: 103

• chapter 54, words per review: 96

• chapter 40, words per review: 95

• chapter 35, words per review: 94

• chapter 36, words per review: 94

• chapter 49, words per review: 94

Top 10 for total review wordage produced per chapter:

• chapter 09, words: 32684

• chapter 05, words: 29331

• chapter 63, words: 28956

• chapter 01, words: 28198

• chapter 20, words: 27191

• chapter 47, words: 25956

• chapter 27, words: 25288

• chapter 70, words: 23945

• chapter 06, words: 23936

• chapter 07, words: 22852

So overall, the first chapters are the best reviewed, and while the latter ones tend to attract longer reviews, the earlier ones still attract higher word volume overall.

The data is updated on a daily basis and you can explore it yourself here.

If you want to see the scraper’s code, have a look here.

Consider this (and this) as fancode.

[Acrinoe]

ch68:

Hermione is very much correct. If she wants to play the hero, she needs to level up.

Hermione Skills- photographic memory, high intelligence, fast learner, high level of spell casting ability. No Patronus capability (although her minions might) Minions—several capable Sunshine luitenents, Ms. McGonigal (not very forthcoming with aid) Magic items—magic bag of holding

Harry Skills—high intelligence. Natural Occlumens. Patronus 2.0 capability. Partial Transfiguration capability. Rational thinking and scientific methods. Highly intuitive with lateral thinking. Knowledge of various Muggle technologies. Parseltongue language Minions/​Allies—Chaos Lieutenant Longbottom, Lesath Lestrange, Bella Lestrange, Prof. Quirrell, Prof. Dumbeldor (not very forthcoming with aid), Prof. McGonagal (somewhat forthcoming with aid), Fawkes (?), Santa (?) Magic /​ Items—Deathly Hallow Cloak, Time Turner, Wealth (limited access), Chest of holding, Bag of holding, various Muggle tech artifacts (batteries, arc welder, …)

Draco Skills – high intelligence. Patronus. Learning rational thinking and scientific methods. Trained manipulator.
Minions /​ Allies – Lucius Malfoy, Prof. Snape, Prof. Quirrell, Dragon Lieutenant Crab and Goyle (martial artist and skilled flyer), Slytherin network, Magic /​ Items – Wealth

Hermione should focus on improving her skill set. Researching into higher level spells and using her current spells in novel ways. Maybe she should read Harry’s note to try and gain Patronus 2.0 capability.

She should acquire more allies and minions. Acquire a familiar (the bigger and badder the better...like a Fawkes or Naga equivalent). Get more effort out of her Luitenants and use thier resources. Maybe go the canon route and develop the House Elfs as allies. She should lobby for advanced classes and befriend higher year students as well.

She should actively seek to aquire or enchant some magic items to enhance her combat capabilities. Lieutenant Wesley should really be brought to task with acquiring some Zonko product from his brothers for the war effort.

[dclayh]

For Draco, you forgot Knowledge: wizard society and Status: Noble and Most Ancient House.

ETA: And Status: Boy-Who-Lived for Harry, of course.

[wedrifid]

I like this strategizing. I’d actually like to see a Hermione and the Methods of Rationality spinoff. Like the HP one only with less of Harry confusing clever and arrogant with rational (unless Harry has changed his personality in the last 20 or so chapters since I tired of him).

Of course, with all Hermione’s leveling up she still will not have a:

Chaos Lieutenant Longbottom,

Neville is badass.

[[deleted]]

Neville is badass.

Very true. But hey, you know who Hermione does have, in her Allies column?

Harry Potter.

She should get Harry’s help with her heroine project. He certainly wouldn’t try to hold her back like Dumbledore and McGonagall. The only difficulty would be explaining her problem to him in a way that he could understand—but once he did understand it, he’d want to help and he’d probably be good at it, too.

[endoself]

Harry doesn’t exactly strike me as psychologically prepared for this particular revelation.

[derefr]

He’s quite prepared in a Hero’s Journey sense, though. In Harry’s own mind, he has lost his mentor. Thus, he is now free to be a mentor. And what better way to grow, as a Hero and über-rationalist, than to teach others to do what you do?

Of course, Harry would say that he’s already doing that with Draco—but in the same way that he usually holds back his near-mode instrumental-rationalist dark side, he’s holding back the kind of insights that Draco would need to think the way Harry thinks; Harry is training Draco to be a scientist, but not an instrumental rationalist, and therefore, in the context of the story, not a Hero. (To put it another way: Draco will never one-box. He’s a virtue-ethicist who is more concerned with “rationality” as just another virtue than with winning per se.)

Mentoring Hermione would be an entirely different matter: he would basically have to instill a dark side into her. Quirrel taught Harry how to lose—Harry would have to teach Hermione how to win.

If Eliezer has planned MoR as a five-act heroic fantasy, it will probably go like this; usually, in a five-act form, acts 4 and 5 mirror the character developments of the Hero in 2 and 3 in another character, for the purposes of re-examining the (developed, and now mostly stagnant) Hero’s growth and revealing by juxtaposition what using that particular character as Hero brought to the journey.

It seems more likely to be a three-act form at this point, though, with Azkaban as the central, act 2 ordeal. That’s not to say the story is more than half-over already, though; Harry has just found his motivation for acting instead of reacting (to change the magical world such that Azkaban is no longer a part of it.)

[gjm]

That must be the first time anyone has ever called Draco Malfoy a virtue ethicist. Probably the last, too.

[TobyBartels]

Just because his values don’t match yours doesn’t mean that he’s not ethical.

Whether for good or evil, evarybody in canon is a virtue ethicist. (Presumably because Rowling knows no other ethics.)

[gjm]

For the avoidance of doubt, I wasn’t disagreeing that one could categorize Draco that way. I just thought the incongruity of it was striking.

(To me, canon!Voldemort doesn’t seem like much of a virtue ethicist even in the relevantly expanded sense. More of a consequentialist.)

[wedrifid]

To me, canon!Voldemort doesn’t seem like much of a virtue ethicist even in the relevantly expanded sense. More of a consequentialist.

I had the same impression. I think it was Eliezer’s-characaturization-of-canon!Voldemort that was the virtue ethicist. Voldemort harnessed, encouraged and exploited a form of virtue ethics in others to reinforce his own power. Tom Riddle was perhaps more of a virtue ethicist. As they say, power corrupts—it even corrupts away virtue systems that were fairly abominable to begin with.

I did upvote the grandparent despite this possible exception.

[Desrtopa]

(To me, canon!Voldemort doesn’t seem like much of a virtue ethicist even in the relevantly expanded sense. More of a consequentialist.)

How so?

[Desrtopa]

Mentoring Hermione would be an entirely different matter: he would basically have to instill a dark side into her. Quirrel taught Harry how to lose—Harry would have to teach Hermione how to win.

Hermione knows how to win. She won the first mock battle quite resoundingly. She doesn’t necessarily know how to hurt people for the greater good though.

[Normal_Anomaly]

He’s quite prepared in a Hero’s Journey sense, though. In Harry’s own mind, he has lost his mentor. Thus, he is now free to be a mentor. And what better way to grow, as a Hero and über-rationalist, than to teach others to do what you do?

I hope it plays out like this, at least in part. The bits early in the book with Harry teaching Draco were fun.

Harry would say that he’s already doing that with Draco—but in the same way that he usually holds back his near-mode instrumental-rationalist dark side, he’s holding back the kind of insights that Draco would need to think the way Harry thinks; Harry is training Draco to be a scientist, but not an instrumental rationalist, and therefore, in the context of the story, not a Hero. (To put it another way: Draco will never two-box. He’s a virtue-ethicist who is more concerned with “rationality” as just another virtue than with winning per se.)

Draco may have already had the instrumental rationality part; certainly he was on a higher level instrumentally than epistemically. He had already had tutors in influencing people, he didn’t have an akrasia problem, and he grew up in a culture of “find out what you want and go get it”. Also, did you mean “Draco will never one-box?”

[derefr]

Er, yes, edited.

[TobyBartels]

less of Harry confusing clever and arrogant with rational (unless Harry has changed his personality in the last 20 or so chapters since I tired of him)

Well, he’s had some lessons to clarify the difference between clever arrogance and rationality within some of those chapters.

[DanArmak]

Hermoine right now doesn’t have a goal. In a story, the strength of a protagonist is proportional to the importance of their goal or the power of their enemies.

Tsuikou Naritai won’t work if all she wants is not to be weaker than Harry.

[cousin_it]

Why would she do all this? Just to compete with Harry? She has no sacred quest, remember.

[Sheaman3773]

To be herself in the only way she can?

To get out from under Harry’s shadow?

To not belong to him?

She has expressed a desire for all of these.

[Acrinoe]

I just thought of a potential tactical trick for any of the three acting Generals.

• bringing some bludgers jinxed to target enemy Generals/​Officers/​fodder

Also, too bad neither of the Weasley twins could have been recruited. (I’m not sure if the existence of the map is known to anyone besides the twins) The Marauder’s Map would have been an ideal tool for any Army to outflank, deny ambush, and execute precisely timed manuevers.

[CronoDAS]

Lieutenant Wesley

Freudian slip? ;)

[Desrtopa]

She should actively seek to aquire or enchant some magic items to enhance her combat capabilities.

Acquire, perhaps, but she has fewer funds available to her than Draco or Harry, and anything she’s capable of enchanting as a first year wouldn’t be especially worthwhile on the scale of magical items.

[Sheaman3773]

She should actively seek to aquire or enchant some magic items to enhance her combat capabilities. Lieutenant Wesley should really be brought to task with acquiring some Zonko product from his brothers for the war effort.

If you are speaking strictly of the Battle Magic armies, have you forgotten:

“no magical items except the ones I give you”

from chapter thirty-one?

[Acrinoe]

Hmmm, I did forget about that.

Still, magic items would be useful for any other hero quests that might come her way. Harry has certainly made full use of all the tools at his disposal outside of the battlegrounds.

[Unnamed]

through chp 70

I’m surprised that Harry hasn’t tried to learn everything he can about wizarding history, wizarding society, and everyone who’s important in the wizarding world. Since before he got to Hogwarts he’s thought that he would have a major role in the wizarding world, possibly very soon. He needs to learn about how the wizarding world works, what problems it has that need solving, what good things need protecting, what obstacles could get in his way, what resources there are to draw on, what traps to avoid, who his potential enemies are and how they can be dealt with, and who his potential allies are and how he can win them over.

He’s destined by prophecy to fight the Dark Lord (as he learned in chp 6), so you might think that Harry would be using every method available to learn as much as possible about Voldemort, but as far as we know he hasn’t been doing that. Dumbledore is one of the most important people in Magical Britain and one of the main people shaping Harry’s life, but we know that Harry didn’t make much of an effort to learn about Dumbledore (chp 46). He ought to be learning what he can about Grindelwald’s war, the Ministry of Magic, Quirrell, Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Black, the other Death Eaters, Aurors, Snape, his parents, Sirius Black, the Longbottoms, and so on. But apparently he hasn’t been, as it’s not mentioned in the story and there are hints of his ignorance (like not knowing that L. Malfoy is behind the Daily Prophet, chp 25).

Hermione would’ve read all the books (and has been when she’s recognized their relevance), but she’s been crippled by her lack of knowledge of Voldemort’s survival. I would’ve thought that this Harry would have done it too. Are there good within-story reasons why he hasn’t?

[Nominull]

Harry canonically disdains “people stuff”, and while some of that may be an act for Draco, it does seem in character for him to be more interested in the sciences than the humanities, more interested in learning the rules by which magic operates than facts about the past actions of people who have operated it. As I recall, the only reason he knows so much about the historical decline of Slytherin House is that it came up in the course of his research into the Patronus Charm.

[Raemon]

Anyways, one post someone made someone made there was kinda interesting: with the Transfiguration rules being as strict as they are, deliberately breaking those rules seems like a pretty broken combat technique if you were to use them to create biological weapon-ish things. Do wizards simply anticipate that and set up appropriate charms for defense, or what? Given how strict the rules are, it’s clear that Harry would NOT be the first person to think of that sort of thing.

This chapter was fun. I’d have liked somewhat better foreshadowing in regards to “what exactly is capable of blocking a magic spell?” though.

[DanielLC]

I’ve wondered if it would be a good idea to transfigure some antimatter (Or about 50 kg of uranium if you can transfigure that much) if you ever end up near Voldemort and a bunch of death eaters.

Come to think of it, use Imperious to make other people become your suicide bombers.

That reminds me of wondering why nobody ever made an Imperius virus where they just have each person cast it again.

[drethelin]

As far as antimatter goes, considering how hard it was to partially transfigure, I Imagine it would be impossible to craft something foreign to most people’s understanding without a lot of practice, and anyone who tried to practice would explode the first time they succeeded.

I can’t recall If there’s a canon limitation on Imperius curses, but I imagine they are strictly limited in MORverse simply because if they weren’t the entire wizarding world would constantly be suffering from constant control of everyone by everyone.

[Raemon]

Oh god I love your Imperius idea. Although the sense I get is that Imperius is very hard to cast and powerful wizards can resist, so a) it wouldn’t necessarily be an effective virus, b) it might be pretty easy to notice and then counter, if you were too obvious about it.

[Sheaman3773]

Not to mention, if you lost one person, then everyone they infected, and those they infected, ad nauseum, would be released.

You could try to mitigate that by having overlapping vectors of infection, but I’m not sure how someone would react to having multiple Imperiuses cast on them.

[Raemon]

Granted, the way this was accomplished in the actual story was by Imperiusing people who were poor wizards but politically powerful, to effectively gain control of large swaths of the population with minimal effort. Which is probably a better idea in the first place.

Still, cool concept.

[benelliott]

I’m surprised Quirrel hasn’t mentioned something like that in his arguments against democracy. It’s possible that rule by the strong really would be safer for wizards.

[Raemon]

He actually did make this point to Harry.

[[deleted]]

The Imperius virus is a brilliant idea, although the caster of the curse has to spend at least some mental energy giving directions to the victim, so there might be a limit to how many victims could be chained from the initial casting. A direct line seems to work just fine—there are canonical instances of Imperiused characters going on to place others under the curse—but I think a tree with many branches would not work.

[Normal_Anomaly]

with the Transfiguration rules being as strict as they are, deliberately breaking those rules seems like a pretty broken combat technique if you were to use them to create biological weapon-ish things. Do wizards simply anticipate that and set up appropriate charms for defense, or what?

I think the main problem is that you’d probably take yourself out too.

[Manfred]

Bubble-head charm.

[Raemon]

Was my post moderated? A chunk is gone that I don’t recall editing. If so, I’d appreciate at least a notification, let alone explanation why.

[Pavitra]

Is it possible there was a bug, or that you misremembered? Edit it back in and see if it re-disappears.

[Raemon]

At this point I think I just deleted a section by accident when I edited, but by now I don’t care about it that much.

[ShardPhoenix]

Chapter 67 was a lot of fun, but why was everyone just standing around long enough to have big speeches, watch individual duels, etc? Haven’t they read their TVTropes? ;)

edit: Also, I’m not sure how it was meant, but Daphne seemed more like she was under a literal spell than a figurative one, given that her crush reached sanity-compromising levels so quickly. Or was it supposed to be a long-running thing?

[Unnamed]

From Harry’s POV,

1. becoming more serious has made him less serious about battles, so he’s willing to slightly hurt their chances of winning in order to make the battle more awesome and fun

2. he’s especially willing to let Neville be awesome, since Neville’s development is one of his projects

3. Harry & Neville don’t really have to defeat the entire Sunshine army, they just need to stall them while the rest of Chaos defeats Dragon (this is conveyed through Draco’s thoughts), so pausing for a dramatic duel might actually help Chaos’s chances

Sunshine was probably glad to have a chance to defeat half of the army that they were facing while only putting one soldier at risk.

[ShardPhoenix]

I would have assumed that the bulk of the Sunshines as whole would have at least kept trying stuff (and maybe hit one of them in the face with Somnium) rather than become passive so quickly.

[Sheaman3773]

The Knights of Chaos are covered from head to toe in the gray cloth, while the rest of the officers in Chaos are only wearing breastplates. It’s probable that their faces are not protected, but Sunshine lacks the visual clues that Dragon Army has to make that leap.

Besides, they’re wee ickle firsties. Their magical reserves are tiny, it could be that many of them aren’t attacking in hopes that someone will figure out the trick and then they wouldn’t be useless because they blew all of their magic. Or they’re currently scared sheep terrified of the invincible Knights of Chaos. Who knows?

[knb]

I assumed it was because none of them knew how to hit Harry, and Potter just wanted to watch a lightsaber duel. If any individual Sunny had tried to hit him with a Somnium, they knew it would probably fail, and Harry would probably curse them.

Also, I’m not sure how it was meant, but Daphne seemed more like she was under a literal spell than a figurative one, given that her crush reached sanity-compromising levels so quickly.

Sanity-compromising? Because she cast a complicated spell during a play-fight?

[Dufaer]

Also, everyone seems to be shouting their incantations, which seems just dumb.

Harry could have also just Somniumed Daphne, after she has reflected his first Stunner and was currently cumbersomely battling Neville – it would cost him just the magical cost of a Sleep Hex itself. Instead he risks Neville getting heavily fatigued or even stunned and chats on.

[Sheaman3773]

Also, everyone seems to be shouting their incantations, which seems just dumb.

Agreed, but they’re first years. Plus, I got the impression that the dueling incantations were shouted for effect, and that Stupefy was such a large spell for them that they couldn’t spare the concentration not to shout, that in fact they needed to shout in order to generate the required amount of magic (I forget what it’s called, but there’s a concept in some martial arts that making a sharp noise as you strike increases the strength of the blow. A similar concept could apply here).

Yes, he could have, and in some ways he should have. But would it have had the same effect as everyone saying that he defeated almost every Sunshine soldier by himself? Harry has already shown that he’ll do what he needs to to boost his legend.

[TheOtherDave]

The term you are looking for is probably kiai.

[benelliott]

I’m not sure of the details of the spell she and Neville were using (I don’t think it appears in cannon) but I had assumed that is protected both of them from everyone else for the duration, which would make sense if its purpose is to allow two aristocratic wizards to have their own private duel.

[Dufaer]

Once again Harry’s voice shrieked “Stupefy!”, and later on, when she was remembering this, she could never quite believe she’d managed to do it, but she slashed out with her blade of light like it was a Beater’s bat, and hit the stunbolt back at Harry who just barely managed to twist out of the way.

Seems more like just a further Star Wars reference to me.

Well, even if she was somehow protected, note that she was not passively protected (not like a shield spell) - she still had to move to deflect and:

They were both moving slowly, and Hermione guessed that the spell was taking a lot of strength out of them.

So she probably did not have the agility to deflect another shot—especially in the middle of a block or similarly.

Also: A reflected or friendly-fired Somnium could harm neither Harry nor Neville, so there was really little harm in trying—even if Harry came to your hypothesis, he still should have tried it – right after he made sure that she wouldn’t be cut in half subsequently.

As for the other Sunshine soldiers blocking it—I confess that I do not remember how exactly the first-year Contego shields work and what their limitations are (I do not think this has been elaborated upon), but Daphne seems to be out of the main Sunshine cluster here (if there still is one), wielding a sword, as is Neville (so other would tend to distance themselves—they already have, before). She should be quite hard to protect. Of course, there might not be any Sunshine cluster anymore, if Sunshine rushed in-between the enemies, as they planned. But it rather seems to me that that plan failed before it was even initiated. (Their formation is not mentioned in the chapter.)

[bigjeff5]

I confess that I do not remember how exactly the first-year Contego shields work and what their limitations are (I do not think this has been elaborated upon),

They were directional, not particularly large but large enough for one or two people to stand behind, could not be fired through, and had to be maintained with the wand.

The larger versions expand that up to a full sphere that can be fired through and only require concentration to maintain once cast.

It seemed that each hit would drain the shield caster’s magic, so your shield strength depended directly upon the strength of your magic.

[HonoreDB]

I think if he’d tried to Somnium Daphne, the other sunnies would have blocked it.

[Sheaman3773]

And now we have it. Harry Somnium’d her, but waited until the others were distracted to do so.

[Eneasz]

I was a bit sad to see today that the last bit of Chapter 1 had been changed. I really enjoyed the original.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Point 1 - it wasn’t stylistically consistent with later chapters. When I wrote the original Chapter 1 I didn’t realize that this story was going to be funny. The part where Harry bites a math teacher in the original Chapter 2 is the exact part where I realized this story was going to be funny.

Point 2 - I got tripped up by the differences between the published SF I knew and the expectations of fanfiction. If you saw a character talking like that in a published SF novel, you would know that he was an alien or genetically engineered or that the author meant you to know something was funny about him. In fanfiction they assume that it’s either the author’s conceit or, more probable yet, you’re just a terrible author who can’t write realistic eleven-year-olds. I thought it was so blatantly lampshaded that nobody could possibly mistake it for an accident, but no, fanfiction readers just don’t think like that—they don’t look for clues and they do assume lousy authors. So I made Harry’s intellect slightly more subtle in the first chapter and let it dawn slightly more slowly.

[BenLowell]

I think that with the popularity of the fic, most people are making their way to it with recommendations that it is already good, so they will have a different reading strategy than somebody browsing for something worth reading.

[komponisto]

I noticed quite a while ago with considerable disappointment that you had changed

Harry looked up at the sky, and began laughing. He couldn’t seem to help himself. This is the most improbable day of my life.

to

There was a long silence in the backyard. Then a boy’s voice said, calmly and quietly, “What.”

(with annoyance at the inappropriate punctuation on top of it: if you must avoid a question mark here, use an ellipsis, not a period!)

...but until seeing Eneasz’s comment I totally failed to notice that you had deleted that whole paragraph! Shame!

As a regular reader of neither SF nor fanfiction, I don’t really care about the “expectations” of those genres. As far as I’m concerned, Methods of Rationality is its own genre, and that paragraph was very much stylistically consistent with the rest of the story, funny parts and all, and it was particularly consistent with Harry as we have come to know him.

Actually, this part (minus the phrase “unmotivated conspiracies”) sounds like something out of British children’s fiction:

Even if Harry tried to explain the day’s events by sudden insanity or unmotivated conspiracies, that didn’t put everything back to normal. It didn’t make the day’s events expected. It didn’t make him feel not-confused. There was no denying that something very, very, very odd was going on

Anyway, maybe the passage could be tweaked for lightheartedness if that’s what you prefer, but I was really sorry to see the point about noticing confusion disappear.

[wedrifid]

But, but… that was the defining introductory moment! It set the tone for the entire fanfic!

[komponisto]

I’m not sure why this was a reply to my comment, beginning with “but”, since it seems to be an expression of agreement.

[wedrifid]

Conversational emphasized disbelief, not directed at yourself (as implied by the subsequent words).

[komponisto]

That’s what I first thought, but then I worried that I might have misunderstood.

[JoshuaZ]

I agree. I prefer the original form.

[Raemon]

Me as well.

[Kutta]

And me too.

[NancyLebovitz]

What was the change?

[Eneasz]

New:

There was a long silence in the backyard. Then a boy’s voice said, calmly and quietly, “What.”

Previous:

Harry just stood there, stunned. That was… unexpected… The skeptical part of himself noted that he still hadn’t seen anything that violated the known laws of the universe. Surely a little conspiracy was far, far less improbable than the universe really working like that. But it was also a technique of rationality to notice when you were confused. To stop and say: wait a minute, that feels a little off, my understanding of the world didn’t predict for that to happen. Even if Harry tried to explain the day’s events by sudden insanity or unmotivated conspiracies, that didn’t put everything back to normal. It didn’t make the day’s events expected. It didn’t make him feel not-confused. There was no denying that something very, very, very odd was going on. Harry looked up at the sky, and began laughing. He couldn’t seem to help himself. This is the most improbable day of my life.

[Risto_Saarelma]

That looks like a really good change.

[Xachariah]

I can’t help but think that Harry dropped an incredible idiot ball on deciding to go to Azkaban. I don’t mean his deciding to trust his Professor and Mentor. I’m having trouble reconciling Harry’s timeline with either his or (more importantly Quirrel’s) decision making style.

8 AM—“Well, I have a big day of breaking into Azkaban today. So much to set up, I’ve got to be super careful!”

3 PM—“Hmm, it seems that the failsafe Quirrel setup in case anyone believes I was involved in Azkaban was triggered. Better go through with the plan anyways.”

5:55 PM—“Hey Mr Quirrel, our failsafe triggered and McGonagall suspects me of illegal use of my time tuner, indicating something went terribly wrong. Think we should abort the plan?”

6 PM—“Welp, time to go to Azkaban!” . . . “Oh no! It’s going horribly wrong, how could we have ever anticipated this?!?”

I’m aware you can’t use a time tuner to solve problems, but from Harry’s/​Quirrel’s point of view the most logical action would be to abort the mission and send back the note to prevent paradox. I can understand that Harry has already been established as acting irrationally at this point in time. However, it is unimaginable that Quirrel, a planner far more than one level above me, would simply ignore the failsafe being triggered and continue onward.

The only option I can fathom is that Quirrel intentionally planned on failure and had them go forward with the plan anyways. But this doesn’t explain why Harry doesn’t use it as very strong evidence that Quirrel is evil and out to get him. Harry doesn’t even reflect on the fact that, in retrospect, going onward even after they knew the failsafe was triggered was an idiotic move.

This seems be either a glaring plot hole or an idiot ball, but I may be misunderstanding all interactions of time travel or getting the timeline wrong.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Harry got the note from himself at around 3:10pm. He left for lunch with Professor Quirrell in the late morning, went back in time, went to Azkaban, went back in time again to Mary’s Room, and was grabbed by Dumbledore and rescued at around lunchtime. Those two time-loops did not intersect; they are separate time-loops.

[TobyBartels]

So not only did they break into the most heavily guarded prison ever, not only did they break out the[*] most dangerous criminal known to be still alive, not only did they get away with it all to boot, but they did it BEFORE LUNCH!

[*] (assuming that MoR!Voldemort already killed Grindelwald)

(OK, I know, they had plenty of time in their own personal timelines to eat lunch. And they didn’t finish until after lunchtime. But still.)

[Xachariah]

Thank you, that clears up my confusion.

I am afraid that I am too used to intelligent fictional characters having supernatural powers of planning and foresight. I suppose it is much easier to have readers be impressed with intelligence if smart characters are simply omniscient rather than acting rationally at all points. Therefore, if you were to be writing Quirrel with maximum intelligence, he simply MUST have planned it all at the earliest possible moment. It didn’t occur to me that they could just be making the best of a bad situation, since that doesn’t maximize the illusion of cleverness. He’s a very smart human; he’s not L/​Light.

I’ll try not to be so hasty to make assumptions in the future and scan for any unspoken assumptions that are coloring my view when reading MoR. On further reflection, that’s a good general life lesson too.

[Vladimir_Nesov]

8 AM—“Well, I have a big day of breaking into Azkaban today. So much to set up, I’ve got to be super careful!”

He doesn’t know about Azkaban in the morning.

[major]

Harry was tested (via Veritaserum) after the Daily Prophet incident. The fact that he is being tested in regards to Quirrell’s illegal activity is not evidence of it’s failure, it only shows that it’s impossible enough to make someone suspect Harry Potter was involved.

A flashback where Quirrell explains the failsafe to Harry might have helped, though. For example, he would have foresaw the hide-from-dementors nature of Patronus 2.0 as a clue for Dumbledore (which is probably what prompted him to make this particular failsafe in the first place). How much of it did he explain to Harry?

It is not really important, however. The moment Harry recieved the message at 3PM, he was committed. DO NOT MESS WITH TIME!

Still, your question made me notice my (possible) confusion, so… good one.

[Xachariah]

The alarming thing about being tested isn’t that they tested Harry specifically; it is that they were aware that tests needed to be performed at all. Had the plan gone successfully, nobody would have ever have known that Bellatrix was removed. Remember that the entire advantage of Patronus 2.0 (to Quirrell) was the undetectable nature of it. It allowed a person to commit a perfect crime without the guards or dementors being aware that a crime ever occurred.

From the point of view of Harry, sitting with his invisibility cloak in the empty room at 3:00 PM, only a small number of possible futures could exist:

No note—Either the plan will go successfully, Harry shall be captured/​killed in the attempt, or they abort for some other reason.

Do not mess with time note—This also should result in aborting the mission since some terrible paradox occurred and you DO NOT mess with time.

Passcode note—Harry will not be apprehended, but the plan will fail in some way and Harry is a suspect. Or Harry will chose to abort the mission and send back a false passcode preserve a stable time-loop. This is the result that actually occurred and is the only one that confirms a definite partial failure.

I admit it is possible that, once the message was sent back in time, Harry and Quirrell were committed via fate to perform the prison break. The problem is that both Harry and Quirrell act as if No Note was received. In the TPSE chapters, we do not see characters who are aware that their plan will be detected. They do not seem to act as if their plan is definitely going to partially fail. Neither does Harry take heart in nor mention the fact that he has already survived escaping Azkaban. Contrast with the same situation in cannon!PrisonerofAzkaban where it is a major plot point.

Edit: There is the possibility it is related to “Azkaban’s future cannot interact with it’s past”, but then you run into the problem of Harry being able to send the note at all. If they abort or are just more paranoid on their mission, Azkaban’s future is still effecting its the past either way.

[wedrifid]

Do not mess with time note—This also should result in aborting the mission since some terrible paradox occurred and you DO NOT mess with time.

Such loops are stable even without any paradox. The extent to which one can deduce whether bad things happen depends on the psychology of the individual and existing priors.

I admit it is possible that, once the message was sent back in time, Harry and Quirrell were committed via fate to perform the prison break.

But so is this. A message ‘Abort! X, Y and Z bad things will happen if you try!’ can be reproduced and sent back in time perfectly well—and this kind of thing has been observed already in MoR.

[TobyBartels]

Have we had the version with X, Y and Z listed? (I agree that we have had Abort! messages reproduced and sent.)

[wedrifid]

Have we had the version with X, Y and Z listed?

No, haven’t. This seems to indicate a failure of rationality of the part of the time turner users. :)

[TobyBartels]

They may be trying to avoid sending more information than necessary into the past, since there are known limitations on that. (No information can be sent more than 6 hours in the past, even through a sequence of time-turners.) I can’t think of a situation where it would be safe to send the information that something has gone wrong but not the information about how, and maybe they can’t either, but they could just be playing it safe.

[cata]

One obvious option is that Harry might have chosen to commit to sending a note back with opaque instructions to himself either way, even if no test were being performed. In that case, getting the note would mean only that he returned in one piece. Is there an advantage to that?

[Danylo]

Let’s speculate.

Say, Harry Potter tried, failed, and sent a note to the past. What happens to the Harry in the future? He presumably continues to exist, in an alternate universe where he didn’t get a note and went on with the plan.

Thus, we have a scenario where, if the test was planned for, Harry must have both Gone on the mission and Not Gone on the mission, and we’re merely following the one that did in the narrative.

[TobyBartels]

That’s not how time-turners work in canon, nor in this fic (other fics notwithstanding). See TVTropes:Stable Time Loop.

[wedrifid]

Do not mess with time note—This also should result in aborting the mission since some terrible paradox occurred and you DO NOT mess with time.

Such loops are stable even without any paradox. The extent to which one can deduce whether bad things happen depends on the psychology of the individual and existing priors.

[Nominull]

I know Azkaban is warded against time travel, I don’t know in what way that would play havoc with a time loop that passes through Azkaban.

[JoshuaZ]

3 PM—“Hmm, it seems that the failsafe Quirrel setup in case anyone believes I was involved in Azkaban was triggered. Better go through with the plan anyways.”

Isn’t that a Harry version that’s gone back in time again a few hours?

Edit: It actually might be nice if Eliezer could provide a diagram that has everyone’s worldlines to help keep track of this. It isn’t as bad as Primer but it is getting there.

[Vladimir_Nesov]

Harry didn’t go back in time to 3 PM.

[Atelos]

Indeed. Harry’s personal timeline looks like this.

Wakes up, does morning stuff.

Goes to lunch with Professor Quirrell.

Azkaban!

Back in time to be picked up by the Professors at Mary’s Room.

Receives coded note, delivers message to Professor Flitwick.

Reports to McGonagall’s office, receives message to be passed to Flitwick.

Back in time one hour from 9 PM to send coded note through Slytherin mail to Margaret Bulstrode who will/​did bring it the rest of the way back to 3 PM using her own time turner.

Visit to Dumbledore’s office to hear his theory on Bellatrix’s escape, and it turns out, to help Fawkes yell at him.

[Alexandros]

I was curious about the status of the review race, so I wrote a scraper to extract all HP fanfics of all ratings, with more than 40,000 words, and a bunch of data about each from ff.net. That is about 23,952 fanfics.

Here you can see the top 50 sorted by reviews, and if you know sql you can fiddle with the query whichever way you like. For those interested in the scraper itself, it’s here (Click on edit to see the code. Please don’t edit it unless you know what you’re doing)

[edit: the data is updated daily]

[TobyBartels]

Reactions to Chapter 70:

Why, just a few centuries earlier -

What exactly is she talking about here? From the reactions, it appears to be rape (forcible rape of women by men), but unfortunately there’s no reason to go back centuries for that. Even if Sinistra ignorantly assumes that votes for women put an end to rape, she still doesn’t have to go back any farther in her history than she’s already gone.

I think that’s the most overtly evil Defense Professor we’ve ever had.

A good line made great by the follow-up.

she realized that it was Professor Quirrell who was Harry Potter’s mysterious old wizard, and not Dumbledore at all

She finally gets it!

I mean everyone in Gryffindor’s been through it by now -

Well, naturally!

heroines

I would expect Hermione to know that the correct PC thing to do is to use “hero” as a gender-neutral term. (This is probably because “hero” can also be used as a synonym for “protagonist”, so that “heroine” simply means the leading female character, who is usually not a hero[ine] in the sense that Hermione wants to be. Example: The heroine of Super Mario is Princess Peach.)

[Mass_Driver]

Why, just a few centuries earlier—What exactly is she talking about here?

Overt slavery. Prof. Sinestra also has dark skin.

[TobyBartels]

Thanks. That fits the timeline, but I don’t think that it fits the students’ reaction:

“Merlin preserve us,” said Penelope Clearwater in a strangled voice. “You mean that’s how men would treat us if we didn’t have wands to defend ourselves?”

Of course, slavery ties in to rape (my reading of their reactions), but it doesn’t make sense for Penelope to say “us” here. (Penelope has white skin.)

There’s also the sense of slavery in which men were (or are) owners of their wives and unmarried daughters, but that doesn’t seem to be what you mean.

[TheOtherDave]

If I see George being treated badly by Bill, I might conclude that Bill would treat me badly in the same circumstance, even if I know that George has green eyes and I have hazel eyes and Bill has some weird prejudice I don’t entirely understand having to do with eye color.

Someone raised in a culture that considers skin color of no more significance than eye color would presumably react similarly even if they know that George has brown skin and they have pink skin and Bill has a prejudice having to do with skin color.

[TobyBartels]

Yes, but bringing in eye or skin colour distracts from the matter of sex, which is the focus of every other remark in the conversation.

So it’s an interesting hypothesis, and I don’t have a better one, but it still leaves me confused. I’ll provisionally accept it, but I still hope that somebody can think of a better one.

[TheOtherDave]

Professor Sinistra was talking about the unequal role of women in Muggle society, and brought up her mother as an example. “And that wasn’t the worst of it,” she continues. “Why, just a few centuries earlier—”

The writer cuts off at this point, but it seems entirely plausible that Sinestra went on to talk about how women like her mother were treated a few centuries earlier, and slavery is a pretty major component of that narrative.

If they were discussing “the matter of sex,” then I agree it’s a distraction from the discussion.

OTOH, if they were discussing how Muggle society treats its low-status members, with sex simply being an example of that, then it’s a continuation of the discussion.

This sort of situation arises all the time in real-world conversations, where what one person considers a reasonable continuation of the conversation strikes another person as a confusing change of subject. All I can say is, it seems like a reasonable continuation to me.

[TobyBartels]

I agree that discussing slavery would make perfect sense, given the conversation that preceded it. However, this ignores the conversation that followed it, whose participants seemed to be entirely unaware that they had been discussing any examples of discrimination other than on the basis of sex.

Based on Quirrell’s remarks in particular, I’m pretty sure that they’d been discussing rape, in one context or another. As I said in my last comment, I’ll provisionally accept that they were discussing it in the context of slavery, since I can’t think of any better fit. But it’s still not a very good fit.

Another point that I just thought of: Sinistra’s “several centuries earlier” should have been simply “a century earlier”, for this hypothesis to fit. Several centuries earlier than the early 20th century almost predates modern race-based slavery. (By the way, can we assume that Sinistra’s ancestors were enslaved? Her ancestors may well have come from slave-holding British colonies, but are there any likely alternatives?)

[[deleted]]

Chapter 69 was adorable. Thank you for that, EY, it was wonderful from beginning to end. Your Hermione is recognizably the same Hermione that I loved in canon, just reacting to a somewhat different set of circumstances: I think SPHEW is an excellent twist. And I’m starting to feel extremely fond of Daphne as well.

Very small question: I was confused by the line the Hufflepuff boy was sitting up, and groaning and rubbing his skull where he’d been dropped head-first into the floor; it was a good thing he hadn’t been a Muggle, Hermione realized, or he might have snapped his neck.

What is it about wizards that makes their necks less likely to snap? Can somebody explain that reference for me?

[JoshuaZ]

There are some implications in canon that wizards are more durable than Muggles, although canon isn’t completely consistent on this matter. It may be simply due to the unconscious or reflexive use of magic. The two data points that are most relevant in canon off the top of my head are Hagrid’s remark in book one that there’s no way Lilly and James would have died in a car crash, and the fact that the upper limit on the lifespan of wizards is apparently much higher than that of Muggles (Dumbeldore is well over a hundred.)

[Desrtopa]

Of course, it’s possible that James and Lilly would never have died in a car crash because they have no need to drive.

[Raemon]

I thought it was more of a joke about the movies, where people get thrown around in typical hollywood fashion in ways that should kill a human but barely seem to phase the wizards. (Mostly during Quidditch)

[Sheaman3773]

In chapter 36, when Harry’s family goes over to the Granger’s for Christmas,

She got to the front door just as her daughter came clattering frantically down the stairs at a speed that didn’t look safe at all, Hermione had claimed that witches were more resistant to falls but Roberta wasn’t quite sure she believed that -

I’m fairly certain there are other instances as well, but I can’t seem to find any more.

My vote is on reflexive use of magic, rather than a physiological difference.

[[deleted]]

My vote is on reflexive use of magic

Okay, gotcha. I don’t think that’s supposed to be very reliable, though, at least not canonically.

[Sheaman3773]

Applying Fridge Logic, I don’t see how they could play a game where iron balls flew around trying to brain people without it being at least somewhat reliable.

On the other hand, Dobby’s Bludger did break Harry’s arm...

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Yep, see Ch. 17.

[Sheaman3773]

Applying Fridge Logic, I don’t see how they could play a game where iron balls flew around trying to brain people without it being at least somewhat reliable.

On the other hand, Dobby’s Bludger did break Harry’s arm...

[major]

My vote is on reflexive use of magic

Heh. No.

It’s about as relevant as the mokeskin pouch burping after swallowing stuff. Not exacly for the same reasons, though.

[Sheaman3773]

I’m fairly certain that being cryptic or condescending is not really the preferred tone around here, though cryptic would be understandable if you actually have insider information that you’re not free to share.

[Nornagest]

It’s not made particularly clear whether this is due to physical differences or unconscious use of magic, but there are a number of suggestions in canon that wizards tend to be physically tougher than Muggles. IIRC, Rowling’s version of Neville was only discovered to be a wizard when he was dropped from a height and bounced.

[[deleted]]

IIRC, Rowling’s version of Neville was only discovered to be a wizard when he was dropped from a height and bounced.

Ah, see, it never occurred to me to read that as anything other than subconscious use of magic.

[wedrifid]

Ah, see, it never occurred to me to read that as anything other than subconscious use of magic.

That is what Rowling implied. Eliezer seems to have satirised some of the unrealistic parts of canon with respect to human physiology under trauma by making wizards explicitly more durable in MoRverse.

[Normal_Anomaly]

As some other commenters have pointed out, there’s some fanon out there that says wizards are protected from damage by unconscious use of magic. I think it may have started with this essay from 2002.

[David_Gerard]

A question on transfiguration, timeless physics and what HJPEV could have known:

Harry’s first year at Hogwarts is 1991. He transfigurates materials outside the confines of forms by thinking in terms of timeless quantum physics.

What was the state of timeless physics in 1991? Barbour’s book was not published until 1999, for example, though presumably to have a book there was work leading up to it. What knowledge on the subject could Harry have had at that time, in a world without the Web as we know it, without even arXiv?

Edit: Barbour started publishing papers on the subject in 1982. How did Harry find out about these, and understand them sufficiently to think of the universe as really timeless?

[Eneasz]

Let the man have some licence for pedagogy! The story wouldn’t be worth much if it only taught lessons of things learned up to 1991.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Yup. Harry is allowed to know about cognitive psychology from arbitrary time periods, too, and have read anachronistic science books, etcetera. Science is Timeless.

[TobyBartels]

I don’t think that this is a good idea. If Harry talks about, say, ice volcanoes on Titan, that will seem wrong to me.

On the other hand, Harry doesn’t seem to have said anything on physics that requires having read Barbour. Or have I missed it?

[ata]

On the other hand, Harry doesn’t seem to have said anything on physics that requires having read Barbour. Or have I missed it?

Chapter 28:

“Quantum mechanics wasn’t enough,” Harry said. “I had to go all the way down to timeless physics before it took. Had to see the wand as enforcing a relation between separate past and future realities, instead of changing anything over time—but I did it, Hermione, I saw past the illusion of objects, and I bet there’s not a single other wizard in the world who could have. Even if some Muggleborn knew about timeless formulations of quantum mechanics, it would just be a weird belief about strange distant quantum stuff, they wouldn’t see that it was reality, accept that the world they knew was just a hallucination. I Transfigured part of the eraser without changing the whole thing.”

[TobyBartels]

Other than the buzzword “timeless physics”, this doesn’t go beyond anything that I knew about in 1991 (when I was older than Harry but still in high school and had never heard of Julian Barbour). This is implicit in Minkowski’s formulation of special relativity (1908) and Heisenberg’s formulation of quantum mechanics (1925); I don’t know who made it explicit, but I probably read about it in popular science books.

ETA: The buzzword that I knew then (or perhaps learnt later and immediately connected to what I knew then, I’m no longer sure) is “block universe”.

[[deleted]]

Why doesn’t Harry seem to have heard about the Singularity then?

[[deleted]]

What about the Singularity/​FAI/​Yudkowsky stuff that Harry would be allowed to read? Would HJPEV (given his disposition) have been a Singularitarian if he was born in the 90′s?

[DanielVarga]

Slightly offtopic: Is Barbour becoming the “public face of timeless physics”? All right. But let’s not believe it is because of scientific priority. The Wheeler–DeWitt equation is from 1967. Huw Price’s book was published in 1996.

[David_Gerard]

Certainly the LessWrong face of it, per the QM sequence.

[JoshuaZ]

Harry’s universe diverges somewhat from ours in a variety of respects. He’d have a lot of trouble knowing about carbon nanotubes also. It seems that accelerating some specific areas of science is within poetic licence.

[gjm]

Way way way way back in chapter 3, after McGonagall has told Harry about Voldemort’s attack on him and his parents, it says:

(And somewhere in the back of his mind was a small, small note of confusion, a sense of something wrong about that story; and it should have been a part of Harry’s art to notice that tiny note, but he was distracted. For it is a sad rule that whenever you are most in need of your art as a rationalist, that is when you are most likely to forget it.)

Is the “something wrong” simply that if the story is correct then there were no surviving witnesses to report it (it’s far from clear to me whether this should be a fatal objection, given the existence of magic; still less clear, presumably, to Harry), or is there meant to be something else obviously-if-you’re-thinking-clearly wrong about it?

[Sheaman3773]

There are loads of fan-theories as to how they would know specifically; my favorite is, based on how confidently Dumbledore explains exactly what happened that night, that he used Legilimency on the newly orphaned Harry. Another fairly prevalent one is that the scar Harry has is unique for being the result of a Killing Curse, yes, but curse scars in general are not unique at all. They also could have used any number of detection spells—honestly, there are a multitude of options.

What I thought was wrong was that McGonagall explicitly said that the Killing Curse struck directly at the soul, severing it from the body. This is why victims of Avada Kedavra don’t have a mark on them. But Voldemort’s body was a “burnt hulk.” Odd, that...

[gjm]

At this point in the story Harry has never even heard of Avada Kedavra, never mind what someone who’s been AKed would look like.

[EDITED to add: The relevant question isn’t whether there are in the Potterverse or the Methodsverse ways in which wizards might be able to know what happened that night despite there being no survivors other than the infant Harry, but what rational!Harry could reasonably have thought possible and plausible.]

[Sheaman3773]

“The Dark Lord came to Godric’s Hollow,” said McGonagall in a whisper. “You should have been hidden, but you were betrayed. The Dark Lord killed James, and he killed Lily, and he came in the end to you, to your crib. He cast the Killing Curse at you. And that was where it ended. The Killing Curse is formed of pure hate, and strikes directly at the soul, severing it from the body. It cannot be blocked. The only defense is not to be there. But you survived. You are the only person ever to survive. The Killing Curse reflected and rebounded and struck the Dark Lord, leaving only the burnt hulk of his body and a scar on your forehead. That was the end of the terror, and we were free. That, Harry Potter, is why people want to see the scar on your forehead, and why they want to shake your hand.”

Saying that a spell severs the soul from the body comes along with the strong implication of not killing someone via bodily harm.

He hasn’t heard the incantation yet, that’s true. But he just heard plenty about the Killing Curse.

edit: I’m fairly confident that the concept of magic forensics is not beyond him at the moment.

Besides, looking at it narratively, there has been way too long of a wait to find out what that meant for the payoff to be minor.

[[deleted]]

Could the “something wrong” have to do with the concept of the soul?

[cwillu]

That’s my bet: Harry doesn’t believe in souls, but he swallows the explanation without a second thought.

[gjm]

He just heard plenty about the Killing Curse, yes. But that plenty doesn’t include anything about what people who have been struck by it look like. I am not even slightly convinced that “it severs the soul from the body” carries a clear implication that it doesn’t damage the body in the process. (Contrast “it removes the brain from the skull”. If you heard that someone had had his brain removed, would you then be surprised if his head looked a mess?)

[Sheaman3773]

If you heard that someone had had his brain removed, would you then be surprised if his head looked a mess?)

No.

However, the brain is a physical object. The soul is not. This is a rather significant difference.

edit: I’m not certain why I got downvoted. The brain is a solid object. If you remove it, it can be done in a way that leaves the rest of the head intact, especially when you factor in magic, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it resulted in the head looking like a mess.

The soul, on the other hand, does not have a physical component that we’ve found, so removing it would not necessarily result in any physical change (excepting the death of the target). Thus, the difference between the physical and the metaphysical object is relevant.

Furthermore, by way of example, if the Killing Curse killed by turning their targets inside out (or immolating them) I would expect them to say that it kills by making their internal organs external (or burning them to death) rather than specifically and explicitly saying that it strikes the soul directly.

Is this clearer?

[bigjeff5]

The soul, on the other hand, does not have a physical component that we’ve found, so removing it would not necessarily result in any physical change (excepting the death of the target). Thus, the difference between the physical and the metaphysical object is relevant.

I think the reason you were downvoted is the fact that a very large proportion of people on this blog (including Eliezer) believe that if their is a separate component we could refer to as a soul (or consciousness, or any similar concept), that it is entirely contained within the real world—that is, it is going to be some component of the brain instead of any sort of separate metaphysical property.

I don’t think it’s fair to downvote you for that, since the opposite is clearly the prevailing opinion in the HP universe.

However, given Eliezers extensive arguments against any sort of epiphenomena, I think it is highly probable that it was the mention of the soul that should have set off alarm bells for Harry, because SuperRational Harry shouldn’t believe in a soul, at least not without major caveats.

I think the soul question is going to come up in the eventual direct conflict with Voldemort, and that it is going to be a Very Big Deal. It is the source of Voldemort’s immortality, after all. It’s the most important question Harry needs to answer, and he hasn’t even asked it yet.

[Danylo]

However, the brain is a physical object. The soul is not.

Ah, but Harry doesn’t believe in the concept of a “soul” as anything other than the result of a physical brain. Thus, his interpretation should be focused on damaging the brain.

[Sheaman3773]

I think it more likely that Harry would think that it would still appear to kill without physical damage—the witches and wizards would take that as proof that the spell attacked the soul, and Harry would think that does something that we aren’t sure of, but almost certainly it didn’t actually attack a literal “soul.” In my opinion.

[TobyBartels]

Harry would think that does something that we aren’t sure of, but almost certainly it didn’t actually attack a literal “soul.”

And that would be his error.

I still hope to find that the kind of soul that Draco believes in—one that Muggles don’t have—will turn out to be something real (but of course not what Muggles mean by “soul”, nor anything that Wizards really understand).

[ata]

Yes, I recall that one of the books described the Killing Curse as leaving victims in apparently perfect physical health other than being dead.

[cousin_it]

Ch. 67: why does metal stop spells while cloth doesn’t? It’s not as if spells pierced clothes and made holes where they hit. If it’s about tiny holes in fabric, something like permeability to water, would plastic bags work as well as metal? If it’s about thickness, would styrofoam do? And if it’s honestly about metal, how about aluminum foil?

[Mass_Driver]

In canon, the hardness and thickness of materials are described as stopping spells, especially stunning spells. Hagrid, e.g., is able to resist several Aurors’ stunning spells for a few minutes because of his thick, hard, half-giant hide. No form of cloth or wool clothing is ever described as stopping a magical attack, but Harry can hide behind (presumably granite) gravestones for some time while Death Eaters blast away at them. Toilets, which presumably are not quite as thick or hard as gravestones, are shown as stopping one offensive spell but then exploding.

IMHO wearing metal armor is a brilliantly canonic tactic. The least plausible facet of it is that first years in January, average age 11.5, probably cannot build enough muscle mass to wear a full suit of medieval armor at all, let alone in two weeks. I do not think we have seen evidence that wizards are stronger than ordinary folk, as opposed to more resilient. The captains are described as wearing only metal shirts, but they practice by swinging metal objects on their hands and feet—this is odd.

[CronoDAS]

Actual medieval plate mail, of the kind intended to be worn in battle, weighed about as much as the safety equipment that hockey goalies wear today. There was a guy in a History Channel show that did cartwheels while wearing it. So Harry wearing plate mail probably would work, assuming he could get it to fit properly.

Chain mail, however, was indeed heavy and cumbersome, and “armor” designed for merely decorative or ceremonial purposes could indeed have been heavy enough to compromise the wearer’s mobility, but Harry wouldn’t have been wearing something like that.

[TobyBartels]

Then how come plate mail is listed with a higher encumbrance than chain mail in my D&D manual?

ETA: :-)

[wedrifid]

Then how come plate mail is listed with a higher encumbrance than chain mail in my D&D manual?

Perhaps the same reason that the D&D spells Melf’s Minute Meteors and Meteor Swarm have much of their effect in the form of fire damage.

[CronoDAS]

1) Because the D&D designers either didn’t know the truth or didn’t care and 2) because it works better for game balance.

[magfrump]

If you care about this kind of thing I recommend Riddle of Steel.

[JoshuaZ]

D&D arms and armor has very little connection to history. Indeed, many historical fighting styles are either impossible or very difficult under the standard rules. (This is true in both ³⁄₃.5 and 4th. I don’t know how true it is in earlier editions.) Similarly, arrows are aren’t nearly as deadly as they were historically. And then you have ridiculous things like the “dire flail” which seems to be a recipe for getting yourself hurt real fast.

[Randaly]

@ arrows: “I have seen soldiers with up to 21 arrows stuck in their bodies marching no less easily for that.” ~Beha ed-Din Ibn Shedad (an advisor to Saladin)

To be fair, the source I read the quote in (“50 Battles that Changed the World,” page 34) implied that Beha meant that the arrows were mostly absorbed by their cheap quilted armor, not their actual bodies.

[PeterisP]

I’ve worn full-weight chain and plate reconstruction items while running around for a full day, and I’m not physically fit at all—I’d say that a random geeky 12 year old boy would be easily able to wear an armor suit, the main wizard-combat problems being getting winded very, very quickly if running (so they couldn’t rush in the same way as Draco’s troops did), and slightly slowed down arm movement, which might hinder combat spellcasting. It is not said how long the battles are—if they are less than an hour, then there shouldn’t be any serious hindrances; if longer then the boys would probably want to sit down and rest occasionally or use some magic to lighten the load.

[drethelin]

This. I’ve also worn multiple layers of armor, and something that’s heavy to lift with your hands becomes much easier to handle when you’re supporting it with your shoulders/​body. If we extrapolate from harry, they transfigured the armor into existence, so it could be even lighter than average armor in any case.

[bigjeff5]

They wouldn’t have had to get the heaviest stuff either, they were trying to stop first year sleep spells, not Auror stupify’s. Chain mail was probably more than enough, and heavy wool might have had good effect if it were thick enough.

Edit: I should have read down further, apparently chain mail is much heavier than plate. Who knew?

[gwern]

IMHO wearing metal armor is a brilliantly canonic tactic.

My first thought when I finally figured out that the metal was about mundane armor and not something crazy like transfiguring muscles was ‘why don’t Aurors wear impressive clanking armor, then?’

[orthonormal]

As Harry said, this was a tactic that would only work against weak first-year spells; he did have to dodge Hermione’s Stupefy.

[Sheaman3773]

It says early in the chapter, when Harry and Neville are alone, that this didn’t count as giving Voldemort a good idea b/​c the armor would only stop minor jinxes.

[gwern]

But this is for the crappy armor that first years can both build in a short period and also wear. A full grown adult with governmental resources ought to be able to obtain and wear much better armor.

Given the problem Aurors seem to have with surprise attacks, that alone might make them worthwhile!

(In the real world, no one says bulletproof vests can stop only weaker bullets and don’t do anything about explosions or knives, so there’s no point in equipping soldiers or cops with such vests...)

[benelliott]

On the other hand, its not a new idea. Harry mentions that some wizards used to wear armour in the dark ages, and they probably wouldn’t have stopped using it if it was useful.

[gwern]

In Eliezer’s HPverse, that may be a sensible argument. (Given the general irrationality of wizard-dom, not a very strong one, though.) I’m criticizing Eliezer for diverging from canon, which IIRC has no suggestion that armor would be useful or had been tried but abandoned in the past. (The only example I can think of is maybe canon had goblin armor, and I’m not sure how that would apply.)

[Desrtopa]

Canon already suggests spells can be stopped by solid objects, but only if they’re sufficiently solid. And powerful spells have been shown to blast objects, while weak spells haven’t. It’s not much of a leap. In HP canon, historical wizards may or may not have worn armor of some sort, but for an adult wizard, armor is probably more trouble than it’s worth. Considering how versatile a properly trained wizard can be in combat, it shouldn’t be able to do more than force the opponents to slightly revise their tactics, while increasing the wearer’s fatigue.

Remember that these are first years. The difference between the quality of armor they and the government can procure is much smaller than the difference between their combat ability and those of aurors or Death Eaters. If they didn’t have such a demanding teacher, they would probably be incapable of anything resembling proper dueling at this point.

[Sheaman3773]

It could be that in order to get it to the strength that it will stand up to adult hexes, the armor becomes too cumbersome to actually use.

This is true, but in the real world, cops face bullets somewhere around as often as knives (I believe; does anyone know differently?) and far more often than explosions—Dark Wizards, on the other hand, don’t go around offensively using first-year spells...basically ever.

[gwern]

It could be that in order to get it to the strength that it will stand up to adult hexes, the armor becomes too cumbersome to actually use.

Isn’t that a rather convenient outcome, though? Why should we think that?

Dark Wizards, on the other hand, don’t go around offensively using first-year spells...basically ever.

Hence the point that we would expect adults with government resources to be able to wear both heavier armor and much better armor for a net protective effect far beyond what Harry et al managed.

[Desrtopa]

Isn’t that a rather convenient outcome, though? Why should we think that?

Because if that weren’t the case, we might expect aurors to wear armor, and they don’t. A hypothesis that suggests that armor isn’t useful for adult wizards predicts our observations better than one that suggests that it is.

[gwern]

Because if that weren’t the case, we might expect aurors to wear armor, and they don’t.

One man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens; we can use the observed lack in canon to argue for Eliezer conflicting with canon or we can use it to argue canon invisibly agrees with Eliezer.

[benelliott]

General rule of fiction. If there are two possibilities, neither of which is confirmed or denied in text, assume the one that makes sense.

[gwern]

OK. So to use an earlier Yudkowsky example, what possibility about arbitrage should we assume holds true in canon? That there’s some clever witchery which makes it impossible or that Rowling simply made a mistake and didn’t think about the economics?

If we assume perfection on the part of the author, doesn’t that lead to an odd and desperate kind of rabbinical midrash?

[TobyBartels]

I assume both: Rowling never thought of it, but if it were brought to her attention (and she considered it worth bothering about), she would probably declare that the Goblins had some clever witchery (or goblinery) that makes it impossible. So I proactively make that assumption for her, while still doubting that she ever thought of it.

[JoshuaZ]

More plausible explanation if you need a fanboy defense: Nothing in the text ever says the coins are pure gold and silver. They could work just like Muggle money and when people refer to them as silver and gold it isn’t any more meaningful than calling US pennies copper.

The fact that coins are stored in large vaults and apparently aren’t earning interest does indicate that there are aspects of the system that don’t work as the modern muggle system does, but there’s not a strong argument that the coins are pure metal.

[TobyBartels]

Both possibilities (protective spells, not real gold) are suggested at the Wikia.

[benelliott]

One could assume that wizards never thought of it.

I’ll grant that sometimes author’s do just not think of things. However, if there is a perfectly good explanation then I see no reason to throw away my enjoyment of the story by ignoring it.

[gwern]

Ah, but I don’t come to the MoR discussion threads just to enjoy it. That’s what reading it is for. I come to the MoR discussion threads to nitpick and tear it apart!

[buural]

My thought is that wizards are not confined to projectile weapons. Armor would be next to useless if the offensive magic, for example, is fire based or involves water or gravity manipulation. Moreover, an armored helmet significantly constrains both visibility and mobility, which may make the wearer more vulnerable.

[Thausler]

It probably wouldn’t be too hard to create a magical patch for the problem of not being able to carry armor. Wingardium Leviosa is a simple patch to lighten the load, and even if it has limited duration it would be an excellent spell to cast immediately before going into combat.

[Sheaman3773]

Doesn’t Wingardium Leviosa have to be maintained? I don’t think it’s a fire-and-forget spell.

[Desrtopa]

Even if the armor isn’t weighing down on you though, it still has inertia, so you have to exert yourself to move the extra mass. Maintaining a wingardium leviosa on it might be more trouble than it’s worth.

[Eneasz]

Magic’ed stuff may not have inertia. Remember the description of broomstick flight during the escape from Azkaban? Harry was surprised to have to deal with concepts like “inertia” again when using a rocket, as the broomsticks do away with such inconveniences.

[benelliott]

Maybe its the same reason that broomsticks use Aristotelian physics. If magic was intelligently designed by people who didn’t know much science you would expect it to obey the law of “it makes sense so long as you don’t think too hard”.

[cousin_it]

Another idea along these lines is that combat spells work like “counterfactual weapons”—they get through iff a blade would have worked instead. But in any case Harry should have investigated that before trying to level up Str. As per the current version, he probably did check that metal would stop spells (otherwise the whole plan would be mere stupidity); it’s not such a big leap to try styrofoam while you’re at it.

[Vaniver]

it’s not such a big leap to try styrofoam while you’re at it.

Muggle artifact prohibition?

[DanielLC]

He said it was only allowed because people wore it as regular clothing. Unless he could find records of wizards wearing styrofoam, that won’t work.

[jaimeastorga2000]

This is a good question for gaining insight into the way spells work, and it seems like an easy one to investigate—one just needs to shoot several spells at another person through a bunch of shields made of different materials and of varying thicknesses, then check if any patterns emerge. If Harry’s not too busy, he should look into it.

[NihilCredo]

I suspect plastic and refined aluminium are Muggle-only technologies.

[Raw_Power]

I have hesitated before posting this, “is it appropriate”, “is it relevant”, I wondered. But this siteis deeply concerned with morality, and the application of rationality threin. Hence, I submit the following, knowing that I am not alone in the predicament I describe, and that people who are in my current state are among the greatest obstacles we have to overcome in our way to saving humanity from the UFAI. Here is my report:

I have been rereading this fic aas of late. I am dismayed to find out that the distance between me and Rational!Harry has grown immensely. While on one hand this has allowed me to see shades of meaning and interaction which I couldn’t see when I was utterly immersed in Harry’s perspective, including Harry’s less obvious mistakes, on the other, I find myself unable to care about him and his goals as much as he used to. Maybe I’ve been tainted by my disastrous inteactions with some charismatic but ultimately idiotic social manipulators, or maybe I’ve read too much Robert Greene and my “Humans Are Flowed” notions are sliding dangerously towards “Humans Are Bastards AND Idiots AND Hopeless”.

The reason I haven’t embraced this attitude is that I agree with Harry’s humanism on principle, I just dn’t think I could possibly be assed into the hard work and grave perils he faces. Lately all I’ve been caring about was the preservation of my own existance, wealth, mental integrity, and freedoms, specifically freedom of speech. I feel like I’ve been corrupted, and emptied. Some people I know have always been like that, and happy about it, but I’m not. But I don’t care enough to try to leave.

So, tell me, you ragtang bunch of raging humanists, where shall I find a light that will move me to stand up again, and endure the constant wear of disappointment, withouth ever letting it stop me, in my walk towards… what, exactly? Prevention of existential risk? Right now I wouldn’t care if we all died...

[Raemon]

The things that inspire people vary wildly. We (I) can’t answer this without knowing more about you (possibly more than would make sense to share in a public space). Are there particular things that have made you feel like humans are hopeless?

There’s a narrow subset of people who are inspired by the all-encompassing vision of a utopian future that Harry desires. I think most people are inspired by more specific things—addressing issues of racism that they have particular exposure, addressing specific issues of government corruption that they care about, etc.

Are there things you care about that are more specific than “fix the entire world?”

[Raw_Power]

Eh, how can I put this… I used to think I could make huge improvements in that sense through the invention, perfection, production, and distribution of useful machines. Hence why I decided to become an engineer rather than an MD as my parents intended: I thought I might help more people the first way rather than the second. But then I find out about the FAI, the ultimate machine, which, in sixty years or so (the time I thought it would take me to cause any actual change), would make all my efforts as a drop into into the ocean… And I’m cmpletely useless at math higher than Calcuculs II, and hate coding, so I’m also irrelevant in making the AI, so I feel like whatever I’d be doing until the Singularity would be… passing the time, basically.

Plus I thoght I’d eventually need politics, social manipulation, etc. if I wanted to neutralize those on whoe toes I would inevitably step. But the more I learn bout that stuff, the less I feel like people are worth the sacrifice, and ALSO the less worthy and capable I see myself of those tastks, since my ideals hav been tested against real-life situations, and I have failed to reach my own standards, time and again.

I mean, I know I have a very strong Neutral Good inclination, but in practice that usually translates into “fuzzy-maximizing” rather than “utility-maximizing”. I need to feel I’m useful right now, immediate gratification, otherwise… are any of you familiar with the Rage Comic meaning of “Yao Ming”? Yeah, that tends to be my reaction to stuff s simple to “rise in the morning, take a shower, go to class, take notes, work at home, do it again tomorrow”.

Oh, and the “you’re putting too muc wieght on your shoulders” argument does not work for me: if you tell me I’m getting ahead of myslef and nobody needs me and nothing really matters I’ll just go in a basement and dedicate the rest of my life to jerking off or something.

The reason I’m sharing all this here is that, from what I can tell, these traits aren’t so unique, Akrasia seems to be a very typical problem here, and (frustrated) humanism and altruism seem fairly common, so I’m guessing my case is ot so exceptional, except maybe in how dramtic I’m being about it, but I’m a Large Ham, that’s something I just can’t switch off.

[Eneasz]

We’re a HIGHLY specialized society. For several dozen people with just the right skills, capabilities, and motivations to get together and dedicate their efforts to creating FAI requires a support society that numbers in the hundreds of thousands. People to sell them goods, people to build their houses, people to patrol their streets, people to keep their governments running. People to transport their goods to the store, people to have built them in the first place, people to grow their food. People to mine the ore and smelt it into steel and shape it into tractors and harvesters to grow that food in the first place. People working at all levels of all the corporations in between, making sure things keep flowing smoothly—accountants, clerks, managers, salesmen, janitors. And all those people are also supporting each other at the same time. And in between being productive, people need to rest and recharge, which requires entertainers, and maybe inventors to create new devices which make life easier so they can spend less time washing their dishes and more time being productive or enjoying their time.

You are contributing directly even if you are only a cog in this vast machine. It is a wondrous machine of humanity that makes the creation of FAI possible, and just because you are not in the group putting the lines of code together doesn’t mean you are unimportant to the final product.

[Raw_Power]

Thanks ;_; Then this means I should dedicate all of my efforts to be the best engineer I can. I may only play the role of a speechless extra, but like Brad (Glee’s Pianist), I’ll still give it my all! (Also, my life has gotten ″much″ better as of late, and new opportunities for advancement both academic and social have opened up… Germany, here I come!)

[hairyfigment]

Don’t know if this has helped me yet, but I’ll ask anyway: what would you want to do a few subjective years or centuries after the Singularity?

If you find an answer then by your assumptions you have something to live for. This at least gives working for survival some added value.

[[deleted]]

If you only care about reclaiming a superficial feeling of humanism, I find listening to Carl Sagan’s old recordings helps. But somehow I feel that’s not what you’re looking for.

Lately all I’ve been caring about was the preservation of my own [existence], wealth, mental integrity, and freedoms, specifically freedom of speech. I feel like I’ve been corrupted, and emptied. Some people I know have always been like that, and happy about it, but I’m not. But I don’t care enough to try to leave.

To be perfectly honest, I feel like this most of the time, too. Humans are bastards, but only because the bounds on their rationality tend to be rather tight. Humans are idiots, more or less. But I think the crux of the problem is whether or not humans are really hopeless.

We have some evidence, in the litany of heroic spirits, that every once in a while some humans can rise above being bastards and idiots. In my own view, the short-term purpose of humanism is to make that happen more frequently. Who better to start with than oneself...

[TobyBartels]

We’re told that Azkaban cannot interact with its past. I take this to mean that there are no loops of causality within Azkaban, where time A affects time B, which in turn affects time A. More generally, no information from a later time in Azkaban can be sent to an earlier time in Azkaban (since the converse seems always possible). Similarly, it’s implied that, even through a chain of time turners, no information can be sent more than six hours backwards in time anywhere.

By the understanding of modern physics, these cannot be hard-and-fast rules. A slight alteration of air currents has chaotic effects (in the technical sense of chaos) that necessarily impart information around the globe. More generally, in relativistic statistical physics (including, and perhaps most obviously, in quantum versions), one takes it for granted that information flows from one event (a specific time and place) A to another event B if it is possible to travel from A to B (that is, without going faster than light).

Thus, if there are any two overlapping (by more than a few microseconds) time-turner trips on Earth, with a total backwards trip of more than six hours, then microscopic amounts of information must be going back more than six hours in time, regardless of whether these time travellers try to communicate with each other. Similarly, if any one time-turner trip (going back more than a few microseconds) takes place anywhere on Earth while Azkaban exists (with its wards against time travel), then information must go from Azkaban’s future to its past, regardless of whether the time traveller goes anywhere near Azkaban.

We’ve already seen signs that whatever controls the laws of magic is based on a pre-modern understanding of physics. So there’s no contradiction here; only modern physics knows about and recognises these microscopic bits of information. But small bits of information, judiciously applied, can have large effects. Somebody who understands modern physics (like Harry, and quite possibly Quirrell) could get around these restrictions.

This is sort of the converse to Harry’s attempts at partial transfiguration. In this case, Harry effectively had to impose his understanding of modern physics onto the magic in order to make the magic do what was thought to be impossible (but which, according to modern physics, is essentially the same as normal transfiguration). But if Harry wants to send information more than six hours back in time, or any amount back in time within Azkaban, then he has to do this without letting magic catch on that there is actually any information involved.

Alternatively, if there is a central store of intelligence that determines what the laws of magic know, then one might possibly teach it, once and for all, the physics that I’ve mentioned above. Then you wouldn’t be able to turn your time turner back to more than six hours before the time that anybody began going back, if they went back to before you begin (or indeed if there’s any overlapping chain that does this); and you wouldn’t be able to go back at all while Azkaban exists (and maintains its wards).

So if this six-hour limit is as absolute as Wizards seem to think that it is, then time travel is possible at all only due to Atlantean ignorance.

ETA: JoshuaZ reminds me that they wrote about this before. The application to Azkaban is due to me, but even so, I wrote about that before. I don’t know why I didn’t remember this; maybe it hasn’t happened yet in my personal timestream?

[JoshuaZ]

Yes, this point has been made before. In general, magic seems in many ways to operate on a human scale according to human intuitions. See e.g. my remarks here and the subsequent discussion.

[Pavitra]

I wonder if Quirrelmort has been every DADA teacher since the supposed “curse”. If V. was the one who supposedly cast it, it would have been simple enough to remove it, make an exception for himself, or simply not cast it in the first place. He is known to be many people, and to desire the position. Why not make maximum use of it? The constantly changing identities would both enable him to give a highly inconsistent quality of education from year to year without raising eyebrows, and would make his activities harder to track in general.

[Desrtopa]

Why would he want to give a highly inconsistent quality of education from year to year?

Whatever Quirrelmort’s goals, I personally doubt he would accomplish them by way of a plan that involved a four-way with a group of fifth years in a closet.

[Pavitra]

Not terminally, but instrumentally. There’s no obvious reason to constrain himself to give a highly consistent quality of education, so why not make himself some room to move around? It’s not like two consecutive unrelated teachers must provide totally different qualities of education.

He probably wouldn’t actually do that, but he might Memory Charm them into thinking he had, or Crucio or Imperius them into saying he had.

[Armok_GoB]

One theory I’ve had for a while:

Maybe the death needed to make a horocrux is not needed to preserve the mind. it is needed for the minds ability to cast independent magic. One could make a perfectly fine horocrux without killing anyone that had the only problem that you’d be a muggle when you were brought back.

This is the most important consequence of a more general theory: What a wizard means with the word “soul” is their independent magic power source, and that follows some conservation law. Evbidence for this includes wizards not considering mugles to be persons, and paintings appearing to have most of the information needed to completely reconstruct them in an easily readable form even if it can’t be exceuted peroperly.

[Pavitra]

This would make Draco’s statement that muggles don’t have souls accurate. Combined with McGonagall’s statement that AK strikes directly at the soul, it would seem to imply that (1) AK should have no effect on muggles, and (2) AK should be nonlethal, only rendering the wizard nonmagical.

[TobyBartels]

Canonically, AK causes destructive side effects (inanimate objects’ blowing up when hit, etc). It could be that it strikes at the soul, severing a Wizard from their magical power, and additionally causes a blast that would kill an ordinary Muggle (but not a Wizard that remained a Wizard). So it kills Wizards by a two-step process, and Muggles by one. However, modern Muggle technology might be able to defend against it, unbeknownst to the Wizards.

I think that this makes AK a little more complicated than it should be. But the canonical AK (and especially the AK as seen in the movies) already is more complicated than it should be.

[Normal_Anomaly]

I don’t think it would be a “blast” in the sense of blowing up a desk, since people hit by it are left (according to canon) “in seemingly perfect health, except for being dead.”

[TobyBartels]

That’s true; the problem is that this is not how it’s shown in the movies, nor is it consistent with the side effects in the books. Further research is needed.

[Armok_GoB]

McGonagall might simply be WRONG about it striking directly at the soul.

[Pavitra]

Of course. And likewise, wizards in general could be completely rather than partially wrong about the nature of souls.

[Armok_GoB]

um, I think you misunderstood my theory: what wizards mean with the sequence of symbols “soul” is not “that which makes you, you” but “magical power source that can’t be copied”. It’s not about if they’re right or wrong, it’s about what concept the symbol references. Their beliefs ABOUT souls, such that people without souls are of less moral worth, can and is still often wrong.

[Pavitra]

That’s what I thought you meant. Perhaps you misunderstood mine: that the concepts wizards associate with the sequence of symbols “soul” does not even slightly resemble anything in reality.

[Armok_GoB]

Well, it’s possible but it doesn’t seem very likely. The only requirement of reality for that concept to make sense is that magic requires somehting that is in some way scarce, for example such that wizards have it but muggles or spell effects don’t. If this comes in discrete chunks or not, if if’s made of information or some more tangible magic substance, if it can be duplicated with sufficient effort, etc. do not place strict requirements.

[DavidAgain]

If McGonogall is right, then agreed on (1). But not (2): if wizards have integrated a magic source into themselves sufficiently to use it, presumably destroying it could have knock-on effects. If I strap a jetpack to myself, something which strikes directly at the jetpack could still lead to me being left in small, burning fragments when it exploded.

[Pavitra]

That’s a good point. And even if the magic doesn’t explode, the body might have grown dependent on the magic; we know that wizards don’t break easily, and it seems reasonable that there might be other health benefits as well.

[DavidAgain]

Indeed, especially the really old ones who presumably haven’t bothered to use anything else to sustain their bodies. Rather like vampires descending into dust as the supernatural forces holding them together disappear and the entropy catches up with them.

Which is why newly-created 25 year old vampires becoming grave dust in Buffy always distressed me.

[TobyBartels]

Ch 69

she’d never been able to detect the magic involved

That’s because, thanks to Dumbledore’s knowledge of Muggles, there is no magic involved.

[Sheaman3773]

There’s no magic involved in making a tin appear out of nowhere?

So, sleight of hand?

[TobyBartels]

That’s my guess.

ETA: McGonagall could probably detect this easily, once she actually knows what to look for.

[Acrinoe]

Two Questions/​Guesses

1) Prof. Quirrell pointed out that Harry was especially vulnerable to the “Finite Incantatem” spell (to removed his transfigured armor). How does the canon mechanics of this spell work from a tactical standpoint? Is it area of effect or targeted on a per spell basis? Can a weak 1st year dispel a casting done by Headmaster Dumbledor or does caster strength play a role in its effectivity? Depending on the answers, Harry’s vulnerability could be mitigated by pure strength or recursive spell depth or minor covering spells to absorb the dispelling castings. ’Just saying. :)

2) In terms of world building, I wonder if Harry is considering that he’s got good evidence of living in a “matrix style” simulation with the reality glitches that is the existence of magic. It seems to me like just so many reality “cheat codes”, hence Harry’s inability to derive underlying principles in the operation and physics of magic. Indeed, the whole hero/​quest/​prophecy shtick would also count heavily towards a simulation argument.

[taryneast]

I wonder if Harry is considering that he’s got good evidence of living in a “matrix style” simulation

He already tried on “computer simulation”—but discarded it when he found out how the time-turner worked.

I’m personally wondering when Harry figures out that he’s actually a fictional character :)

[jaimeastorga2000]

I’m personally wondering when Harry figures out that he’s actually a fictional character :)

While it might be a bit too mind-screwy for MoR, I can’t help but to think that it would be amazing if, say, Harry confronted Eliezer on allowing Azkaban to exist within his universe just so that the latter could have an interesting and important location to use in his story. Something like Non-Player Character. Omake opportunity, perhaps?

[Broggly]

The obvious response is to include in the trigger warning a statement for any sufficiently advanced intelligence or humans with philosophical reservations about imagining other conscious beings that the story includes suffering, descriptions of suffering, and people reflecting on the suffering of others in detail.

[taryneast]

Awesome idea. :)

[TobyBartels]

He already tried on “computer simulation”—but discarded it when he found out how the time-turner worked.

And discarded it without good reason.

[major]

I think Ch21 (near the end) played with this idea already. How many potential first week has Eliezer thought through before settling on that one, I wonder.

[Sheaman3773]

1) Prof. Quirrell pointed out that Harry was especially vulnerable to the “Finite Incantatem” spell (to removed his transfigured armor). How does the canon mechanics of this spell work from a tactical standpoint? Is it area of effect or targeted on a per spell basis? Can a weak 1st year dispel a casting done by Headmaster Dumbledor or does caster strength play a role in its effectivity? Depending on the answers, Harry’s vulnerability could be mitigated by pure strength or recursive spell depth or minor covering spells to absorb the dispelling castings. ’Just saying. :)

As I understand it, Finite Incantatem is an Area Effect spell, while Finite is targeted.

Additionally, strength definitely factors in—again, as I understand it.

edit: Strength has to factor in somehow. Even ignoring the ridiculous unbalancing effect that would have, they’re in Hogwarts. If it would cancel every spell in the area, regardless of strength, Hogwarts itself would be affected with every cast.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Haven’t really thought about it until now, but I’ll assume that Finite is a brute-force method requiring strength proportional to the original spell to cancel (so a Transfiguration that takes minutes would require a mass casting to cancel, perhaps) and sometimes won’t work at all, while specialized counter-jinx just works if the caster has sufficient strength to cast it.

[Psy-Kosh]

Depends… if the original spell took time/​effort due to it being, well, for lack of a better word “delicate”, then finite should work easily on it, while a simple spell that you can just pump more and more power into should require a really strong finite to cancel.

At least, that’s how I’d imagine it.

[Normal_Anomaly]

I wonder if Harry is considering that he’s got good evidence of living in a “matrix style” simulation with the reality glitches that is the existence of magic.

He’s considered the simulation argument before, in chapter 14 when he gets the time turner. As for magic being “glitches,” I’m not a programmer, but the magic seems too consistent not to be a part of the intended program.

[Nornagest]

Glitches seem like a bad analogy, but cheat codes seem like potentially a pretty good one. Perhaps the developer console of the universe speaks bad Latin.

[Normal_Anomaly]

Could be. Especially since the truth of the matter is that Harry is in a simulation, a story in our world. Whether he finds out is another matter. I doubt it from a literary perspective.

[TheOtherDave]

And, indeed, a story in which past events are occasionally edited.

[Normal_Anomaly]

Heh. Yes. Harry has thought about sending a signal to himself and can see through the illusions of dementors. What would happen if he found out about the edits?

I doubt it’s going to happen, but it would be awesome.

[TheOtherDave]

The kind of simulation that Harry is in (that is, a piece of fiction) is admittedly not one where the initial conditions are established and it is calculated forward from there, such that X2 rather than X1 happening at time T1 necessitates Y2 rather than Y1 happening at time T2.

So, agreed, editing the chapter that describes T1 from X1->X2 doesn’t necessarily cause evidence (e.g., Harry’s memories) of X1 at T2 to change, so in principle he could notice the difference.

Which would in and of itself be a useful piece of information about the nature of the universe, I guess. He’d know that his perceived present is not in fact contingent on his past, but is instead separately created by some sort of external creator, who for whatever reason creates the illusion of such contingency.

As a literary choice, I disagree about its awesomeness… this kind of narrative self-reference is good for a kick-in-the-head, but it’s difficult to maintain any kind of worthwhile narrative thereafter.

Then again, EY has already devoted many many words to the idea that a set of values can be both arbitrary and worthwhile, so perhaps he’d relish the challenge of writing a compelling Harry aware of his own fictional nature and constructing a meta-ethics that can survive that awareness.

Perhaps he’d also become aware of himself as a derivative work from a canon character who is less intelligent, rational, less powerful, and less American.

Anyway, like you, I doubt it’s going to happen. That said, if anyone in that world has that awareness right now, it’s Dumbledore, who is at the very least aware of the power that narrative tropes have in his universe.

I’m reminded of Sophie’s World. The notion of writing SW fanfic in which Sophie, at the end of that book, finds herself in some SW fanfic is itself kind of amusing.

[Normal_Anomaly]

As a literary choice, I disagree about its awesomeness… this kind of narrative self-reference is good for a kick-in-the-head, but it’s difficult to maintain any kind of worthwhile narrative thereafter.

That’s true, and part of why I doubt it will happen. I meant that the idea is awesome and the reactions of the characters would be fun to read, not that it would actually make the book better.

[NihilCredo]

Metafiction.

[DanielVarga]

Indeed, the whole hero/​quest/​prophecy shtick would also count heavily towards a simulation argument.

The fact that the author did not mention the obviously relevant simulation hypothesis in 68 chapters (am I correct?) also suggests that he might have bigger plans with it.

[Zack_M_Davis]

The fact that the author did not mention the obviously relevant simulation hypothesis in 68 chapters (am I correct?)

Mentioned in passing in chapter 14:

You know right up until this moment I had this awful suppressed thought somewhere in the back of my mind that the only remaining answer was that my whole universe was a computer simulation like in the book Simulacron 3 but now even that is ruled out because this little toy ISN’T TURING COMPUTABLE!

Best wishes, the Less Wrong Reference Desk.

[DanielVarga]

Thanks! All right, that rules it out. It is a bit weird, because I think the quote ends with a non sequitur. If we live in a Turing-noncomputable universe, we can build a computing device (hypercomputer) that can run the simulation of another Turing-noncomputable universe. (*) So the non-Turingness of a Universe is orthogonal to its simulatedness.

(*) Not always, but this is irrelevant here.

[TobyBartels]

More directly, making something close enough to a time-turner to fool the residents is certainly Turing-computable.

ETA: Especially if you’re in charge of computing the residents!

[Tesseract]

The Atlantic put up a piece today using HP:MoR as the take-off point for discussing fanfiction and fan communities.

[TobyBartels]

That was nicer than Time magazine’s recent piece fanfic, which focussed on the example of Harry Potter (often stuff) on FanFiction.net) but never mentioned the most reviewed example.

[Circusfacialdisc]

I remember the author’s comments some time ago to the effect that he was surprised that many readers (myself included) weren’t immediately sure that Quirrell is Voldemort. Has anyone considered that this might be a trans-forth-wall version of Bystander Effect?

The (presumably omniscient) narrator isn’t pointing out that Quirrell is Voldemort. The (presumably well informed) Professor Dumbledore has disclosed no such suspicions to the reader. (Presumably cunning and logical) Rationalist!Harry hasn’t made any connections between the sense of doom, harmonic magic interaction, and the constant encouragement to be evil.

Thus, any doubts the reader has about Quirrell’s identity can be easily rationalized away by the apparent lack of concern from the (apparently) intelligent, fictional characters.

[TobyBartels]

The narrator isn’t omniscient; he only tells us things from certain characters’ points of view. I agree that it is suspcious that neither Dumbledore nor Harry think of this. But in fact neither has any reason to suspect that Voldemort is still alive, while we (having read the original series) do. (Also, Dumbledore was really bad about this sort of thing in canon.)

[Duncan]

I am having trouble scanning the HPMoR thread for topics I’m interested in due to both it’s length and the lack of a hierarchical organization by topic. I would appreciate any help with this problem since I do not want to make comments that are simple duplicates of previous comments I failed to notice. With that in mind, is there a discussion forum or some method to scan the HPMoR discussion thread that doesn’t involve a lot of effort? I have not found organizing comments by points to be useful in this respect.

Edit: I’m new and this is my 1st comment. I’ve read a lot of the sequences, but I don’t know my way around yet. It’s quite possible I’m missing a lot about how things work here.

[Unnamed]

You’re right, the MOR discussion threads aren’t very well organized for that. They work well enough for having an ongoing discussion, but not so well as an archive of the discussion that’s already happened.

If you have a particular subject in mind and you want to see what’s been posted about it, the simplest thing is probably to search the thread(s) for relevant keywords, including the chapter number. You could either use ctrl+f on each one of the threads that might contain relevant discussion, or the site’s search function.

Don’t worry so much about duplicating previous comments. It’s worth doing a quick search to try to avoid it, but when it happens it’s not so bad (especially with threads like these ones).

If you don’t have a particular subject in mind and you just want to skim the discussion to see what’s interesting, I don’t have anything better to suggest than sorting by karma points.

[TobyBartels]

I like this line:

“I do not give you, but loan you, my cloak, unto Hermione Jean Granger. Protect her well.”

At first you think that he’s talking to Hermione!

[JoshuaZ]

All the way back in chapter 1, Petunia says:

And Lily would tell me no, and make up the most ridiculous excuses, like the world would end if she were nice to her sister, or a centaur told her not to—the most ridiculous things, and I hated her for it.

The main (although not the only difference) between canon and HPMR is Lily and Petunia’s interaction in this context. In canon, centaurs are creatures which see the future. This makes me very worried that a centaur foresaw that if Lily helped Petunia bad things would result. Since this is the main departure from canon, is this a reason to think that the story is going to have a really downer ending?

[Xachariah]

To comply with the prophesy, her actions need only result in a bad ending for centaurs.

[Sheaman3773]

Perhaps. Or perhaps it meant that the Second War would be much worse this way, though they still are victorious. Or perhaps even just that the possibilities were worse, not necessarily that it could only end in failure.

[HonoreDB]

The end of the world is not necessarily a downer ending.

[jaimeastorga2000]

The only ways I can imagine the end of the world not being a downer ending are:

1) There was an even worse alternative in the cards (since this is LessWrong, let’s say it was 3^^^3 years of agonizing torture for the whole human race) and we managed to dodge it by dying. But the fact that we were even faced with such a choice sounds pretty down-ish already.

2) You’re some kind of negative utilitarian. Or perhaps a Buddhist.

3) From a certain point of view, you could describe the emergence of a new utopia as “the destruction of the old world” or something like that. That’s how they got away with it in Alexander Senki. Or else “the end of the world” refers to something that would have happened anyways, like the end of Sol or the heat death of the universe. Thus, it will happen if Lily is nice to Petunia—it just neglects to mention that it would also happen if she wasn’t nice to her sister, too, thus letting the listener believe there is a causal connection where none exists.

[hairyfigment]

Promethea used a version of #3, saying the end meant the end of our ideas about the world.

Thinking about this, it occurs to me that perhaps the centaurs saw history along this path proceeding up to a certain point in time and then (it seemed to them) stopping. They might have explicitly told Lily that they couldn’t perceive anything after the Event Horizon, and the subtlety got lost along the way to the second repetition.

[Desrtopa]

I figured he was talking about an “end of the world” as in The Sword of Good.

[MinibearRex]

I have a couple of theories about how Fred & George managed the Rita Skeeter prank. We know from Quirrel’s response that Rita Skeeter’s article included evidence from a variety of sources, difficult to fake, and certainly costing more than 40 galleons. The obvious implication is that either they got some covert support (Professor Quirrell/​Tom Riddle?), or they found a simpler method. I can think of two.

1. Modify Rita Skeeter’s memories. Make her remember viewing all the evidence, when in fact she hadn’t seen them. Hiring someone to do that probably wouldn’t have been all that difficult.

2. Impersonate Rita Skeeter with Polyjuice and turn in the completed article to her editor. Maybe some memory modification as well, to make her not deny it.

This passage does perhaps contain a subtle indication that this is the case:

“How very foolish,” the man said dryly. “It would have been wise to memorize the face of the disguised Death Eater training Harry Potter to be the next Dark Lord. After all,” a thin smile, “that certainly sounds like someone you wouldn’t want to run into on the street, especially after doing a hatchet job on him in the newspaper.”

Rita took a moment to place the reference. This was Quirinus Quirrell?

I would expect that if I wrote a newspaper article, even if I didn’t memorize the face of the subject of my article, but I would expect that I would have seen it at some point. Rita Skeeter, however, seems completely ignorant of what Quirrell looks like. It is possible, however, that this would be the case if the memory of writing the article had been implanted.

This seems extremely subtle, even by EY’s standards, and there are some alternate explanations I’m considering as well. However, I still think that these methods are much more plausible than any theory of Imperiusing centaurs.

[orthonormal]

What Hermione really needs is Something to Protect- her own autonomy isn’t big enough.

[rdb]

Perhaps SPHEW will help there. Harry has had knowledge of the nature of the “magical remnant of the Dark Ages” since meeting Draco at the station, reinforced by Azkaban,.

Hermione would know intellectually (quoting Harry) “So the world is broken and flawed and insane and cruel and bloody and dark. This is news? You always knew that, anyway...”, but should lack direct experience, that her fellow students may have.

Will Draco conspire to protect Hermione against the Slytherin bullies?

[David_Gerard]

May I just say that this quote from ch. 65 sums up the Fountain of Irrationality beautifully and succinctly:

No. Just an example. Lies propagate, that’s what I’m saying. You’ve got to tell more lies to cover them up, lie about every fact that’s connected to the first lie. And if you kept on lying, and you kept on trying to cover it up, sooner or later you’d even have to start lying about the general laws of thought. Like, someone is selling you some kind of alternative medicine that doesn’t work, and any double-blind experimental study will confirm that it doesn’t work. So if someone wants to go on defending the lie, they’ve got to get you to disbelieve in the experimental method. Like, the experimental method is just for merely scientific kinds of medicine, not amazing alternative medicine like theirs. Or a good and virtuous person should believe as strongly as they can, no matter what the evidence says. Or truth doesn’t exist and there’s no such thing as objective reality. A lot of common wisdom like that isn’t just mistaken, it’s anti-epistemology, it’s systematically wrong. Every rule of rationality that tells you how to find the truth, there’s someone out there who needs you to believe the opposite. If you once tell a lie, the truth is ever after your enemy; and there’s a lot of people out there telling lies …

I’m currently looking for a good spot to quote it on RationalWiki.

Has EY written something like the above elsewhere as succinctly, or did he first sum it up here?

[Zack_M_Davis]

Has EY written something like the above elsewhere as succinctly, or did he first sum it up here?

Harry’s monologue summarizes ideas discussed in “Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies” and “Dark Side Epistemology”. Best wishes, the Less Wrong Reference Desk.

[ShardPhoenix]

″...it’s not like I’m an imperfect copy of someone else”

Irony alert! Or at least one more piece of evidence in favour of the Harry = Voldemort Copy theory.

[MatthewBaker]

In fact this is a fabulous fic, but it’s kinda like you grabbed a terry pratchet novel stuck it in a blender with a Steven Hawkins essay and a book on the theory of string theory, turned the blender on and then spiked the mixture with LSD. In a good way, i think.

I love this review

[Eneasz]

Holy crap! The audio-book podcast just tipped 1000 downloads! That’s an average of 250 an episode!! I dunno if that’s good or not, but it’s WAY more than I was expecting for 4 weeks as an amateur! :D

[simplicio]

Julia Galef (of Rationally Speaking) recently posted an excellent essay/​review of HPMoR.

[CronoDAS]

What is “Professor Barney” a reference to? (A certain purple dinosaur?)

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Yep, B’harne.

[MichaelHoward]

(sing to On Top of Old Smokey)
On top of a small hill, all covered with mud
I shot Barney’s head off and blew out his blood
I shot him with pleasure, I shot him with pride
I shot Barney’s head off, I watched as he died
I went to his funeral to see Barney dead
He was much less ugly without any head
I saw a Sponge Minion crying by Barney’s grave
I took a machine gun and shot Barney’s slave
—Eliezer Yudkowsky

Barney vs. the Federation: Part One; Part Two; Part Three.

(sing to “Deck the Halls”)
Fill Barney with gasoline!
Na na na na na, na na na na
Light a match and watch it gleam
Now Barney is purple ashes
Aren’t you glad you played with matches?
-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Important note: This is not the same Eliezer Yudkowsky. This Eliezer Yudkowsky is like 13 years old or something.

[CronoDAS]

Thanks. I added it to the list of references on the TvTropes page.

[MichaelHoward]

(sing to On Top of Old Smokey)
On top of a small hill, all covered with mud
I shot Barney’s head off and blew out his blood
I shot him with pleasure, I shot him with pride
I shot Barney’s head off, I watched as he died
I went to his funeral to see Barney dead
He was much less ugly without any head
I saw a Sponge Minion crying by Barney’s grave
I took a machine gun and shot Barney’s slave
—Eliezer Yudkowsky

Barney vs. the Federation: Part One; Part Two; Part Three.

(sing to “Deck the Halls”)
Fill Barney with gasoline!
Na na na na na, na na na na
Light a match and watch it gleam
Now Barney is purple ashes
Aren’t you glad you played with matches?
-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

[MichaelHoward]

(On Top of Old Smokey)
On top of a small hill, all covered with mud
I shot Barney’s head off and blew out his blood
I shot him with pleasure, I shot him with pride
I shot Barney’s head off, I watched as he died
I went to his funeral to see Barney dead
He was much less ugly without any head
I saw a Sponge Minion crying by Barney’s grave
I took a machine gun and shot Barney’s slave
—Eliezer Yudkowsky

Barney vs. the Federation: Part One; Part Two; Part Three.

(sing to “Deck the Halls”)
Fill Barney with gasoline!
Na na na na na, na na na na
Light a match and watch it gleam
Now Barney is purple ashes
Aren’t you glad you played with matches?
-- Eliezer Yudkowsky

[MichaelHoward]

(On Top of Old Smokey)

On top of a small hill, all covered with mud I shot Barney’s head off and blew out his blood I shot him with pleasure, I shot him with pride I shot Barney’s head off, I watched as he died I went to his funeral to see Barney dead He was much less ugly without any head I saw a Sponge Minion crying by Barney’s grave I took a machine gun and shot Barney’s slave —Eliezer Yudkowsky

Barney vs. the Federation: Part One; Part Two; Part Three.

(sing to “Deck the Halls”)

Fill Barney with gasoline! Na na na na na, na na na na Light a match and watch it gleam Now Barney is purple ashes Aren’t you glad you played with matches? —Eliezer Yudkowsky

[MichaelHoward]

(On Top of Old Smokey) On top of a small hill, all covered with mud I shot Barney’s head off and blew out his blood I shot him with pleasure, I shot him with pride I shot Barney’s head off, I watched as he died I went to his funeral to see Barney dead He was much less ugly without any head I saw a Sponge Minion crying by Barney’s grave I took a machine gun and shot Barney’s slave —Eliezer Yudkowsky

Barney vs. the Federation: Part One; Part Two; Part Three.

(sing to “Deck the Halls”) Fill Barney with gasoline! Na na na na na, na na na na Light a match and watch it gleam Now Barney is purple ashes Aren’t you glad you played with matches? —Eliezer Yudkowsky

[ata]

Withdrawal symptoms… starting...

[Vaniver]

This seems amusing enough to post:

http://​​www.malcolmgladwellbookgenerator.com/​​images/​​21.jpg

[orthonormal]

Listening to the Hitchhiker’s Guide today, I noticed another reference in Chapter 13 that the TVTropes page seems to have missed:

Zaphod (after Trillian mentions picking up the hitchhikers): “Okay, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?”

[TobyBartels]

Ch 68

she was trying to count the number of things in the room for the third time and still not getting the same answer, even though her memory insisted that nothing had been added or removed

That’s because the things got added or removed when her attention was not on them, even while they remained in her field of vision, so that she thought that she would have noticed even though she didn’t.

There’s a name for this, but I can’t remember it. Muggle researchers do it on monitors with a camera that tracks your eye movements, I think.

[Nornagest]

Attentional blink?

[TobyBartels]

No, that doesn’t seem to be it. Although an online test seems to suggest that I don’t suffer from this, so that’s nice to know.

What I’m thinking of has several apparently static figures on a screen, and as you look around the picture, things change when you’re not looking at them (even though you think that you’re looking at them, because the entire screen is in your field of vision the entire time). I think that mostly they change colour and stuff, but sometimes they disappear entirely. You can’t just do this online, since there also has to be something to track your focus of attention, so I’ve only read about it.

[Sniffnoy]

I believe this is just known as change blindness.

Edit: Hm, no, looks like you’re describing something more specific. I still think it falls under change blindness, though...

[TobyBartels]

Yes, this seems reasonable, although I don’t recognise the term.

ETA: Following Wikipedia’s links, the stuff here from 8:30 to 10:00 seems most like what I’m thinking of, although still not quite as dramatic as what I remember.

By this point, it’s possible that my memory is just faulty.

[DaveX]

I think I saw a demo, or video a demo, about 15 years ago, of the ERICA gaze-tracking program at UVA where onlookers could see the screen change characters while the person whose gaze was being tracked couldn’t see the changes. If I remember correctly, it was a screen of normal text in MS-Word or something that would mutate into gibberish where the user wasn’t watching.

[TobyBartels]

OK, then somebody else remembers it! (I don’t remember that it was text, but this is close enough.)

[Sniffnoy]

Oh, OK, I misunderstood what you were saying. That’s not change blindness, then, that’s just not being able to see things you’re not looking at...

[TobyBartels]

But which you think that you’re looking at, so that at the end you’re surprised by the change. The change-blindness stuff in Dennett’s video that I cited 4 posts up had the same result, although a different method. (Whether that similarity is enough to make DaveX’s stuff also count as “change blindness”, I have no opinion.)

[[deleted]]

an online test seems to suggest that I don’t suffer from this

A fun thing happend to me. I did the test at http://​​mindbluff.com/​​movblink.htm and I noticed the C but only subconciously, that is I knew that I had seen the C, but I didn’t remember actually seing it.

[bogdanb]

I consciously saw an R, and I consciously saw a C later in the sequence, but I couldn’t tell if they were actually consecutive, nor if there were other R’s and C’s around them. (I didn’t look at the video in slow motion to check.)

Just in case someone’s counting :)

[TobyBartels]

The first time, I noticed the ‘C’ only. The second time, I consciously noticed them both. (ETA: This isn’t the test that I took before.)

To what extent might your feeling that ‘I knew that I had seen the C’ be influenced by their having earlier told you that you would? (For that matter, what are the odds that what I ‘consciously noticed’ was an illusion?) An interesting test might be one where there is no ‘C’, asking people whether they saw it.

[[deleted]]

To what extent might your feeling that ‘I knew that I had seen the C’ be influenced by their having earlier told you that you would?

Without the test it’s impossible to know. I find it quite plausible that some part of my brain noticed the attention blink because it was primed to it and “filled in” the C.

[FAWS]

Chapter 72:

Did whatever Snape was planning for Rianne to do already happen?

There is his weird clap in the great hall, and his smile after chiding Jaime Astorga. Apparently he warned Jaime and others that morning, perhaps he anticipated them reacting in this particular way and be beaten by the girls? Why? And it seems the fight was fairly close run, so he shouldn’t have been able to predict the result unless he just got lucky (or relied on future information). Perhaps he planned for either outcome, but what is he even trying to accomplish?

And how does Rianne fit into everything? Did she do something to influence Jaime or cast the jinx on Hermione (why?), or is her part still to come? And why does she need to be memory-charmed? The stakes don’t seem to be high enough to require something like that, unless this whole plot is part of something greater (if it was just a high cost of his allies (either group) learning about it why should he take such a risk in the first place?).

[Danylo]

Well, Snape himself was bullied, and earlier in the story he asked HP to stop a bully, so I’m guessing he orchestrated the fight to raise the reputation of SPEW and marginalize the bullies. It was mentioned that a first year wouldn’t be able to break the protego spell, so perhaps he helped out?

This would, of course, mean that he delivered the letters and/​or orchestrated the “prophecy” as well.

As a side note—it’s been so long since the last update that it took me maybe 1/​4th of the chapter to fully understand what’s going on. Perhaps I should have skimmed 71 before reading.

Final side note—Eliezer, what do you think of ASOIAF?

FFSN—On the whole ‘forgetting the story’ theme—who was Rianne?

[hairyfigment]

Rianne appeared in the previous chapter when Snape offered her fifty Galleons for something that, much to her dismay, was probably not sex.

As for Snape’s goal, maybe the Head of Slytherin House has his own, in-character plan to restore Slytherin’s reputation?

[rdb]

Is the Half-Blood, Legilimens, Snape sending a message to Quirrell with the SPHEW setup? Harry’s use of Slytherin messaging and Margaret Bulstrode’s Time-turner declare a Slytherin confederate, if Snape has looked. [Snape requested the check of Harry’s time turner after Azkaban (para 62.99)]

“a successful Legilimens was extremely rare, rarer than a perfect Occlumens, because almost no one had enough mental discipline.” (Dumbledore, Snape, Mr Bester, presumably Quirrel)

“Harry noticed that he was confused. And his threat estimate of the Head of House Slytherin shot up astronomically.”

[Rianne being memory-charmed would be required for information security if she was part of the SPHEW setup using Bulstrode’s time-turner, perhaps also in tuning Jaime Astorga’s fall to Daphne’s Most Ancient Blade.

If Hermione or another SPHEW member, (Tracey?) remembers that Quirrel has permission to teach the Killing Curse, the dynamics change.]

[quirrellinvenice]

I have begun blogging an extended discussion of HP:MOR at quirrellinvenice.tumblr.com. Read it!

[gjm]

Those seem to have been a very long “few hours”...

[HonoreDB]

This looks interesting! I’ll be following it.

It seems like a very ambitious project. In particular, approaching a piece of serial fiction as a classically structured work is possibly doable, but seems scary. The shape of the story can vary in the author’s mind from chapter to chapter, so you’ll be picking up contradictory clues, and end up seeing the story as a whole as a superposition of different patterns (or multiple time-displaced instances of a single one; I agree that Harry seems to be starting a second hero’s journey before finishing his first.)

[gwern]

On #lesswrong, br1an mentioned that he wanted “to start an enjyn project to do a high quality professional grade audiobook production of HPMOR”. (Enjyn is a lot like Kickstarter.)

moshez apparently listens to a lot of audio material (‘escapepod, podcastle and with a little help’), and says “when they’re done by a freelance voice actor, they always say how they can be hired”, which suggests that VAs might be pretty cheap. One might only need a single VA, which is how a number of professional audiobooks like the Discworld books are done, and the results are not necessarily bad (drethelin: ‘In my experience a single awesome voice actor for an audiobook is way better than a cast’).

So what are people’s thoughts? Does anyone know what sort of cost estimate we would be looking at? MoR has a lot of reviewers, but I don’t know how many we could expect to kick in $20 or $50.

EDIT: There is actually an existing audiobook on Kickstarter; looks like they did it for $5k, with multiple actors and background voices, but on the other hand, their book seems to be much shorter than MoR is/​will be and at least part of it was funded by a grant.

EDIT’: Eneasz tries doing it himself: http://​​lesswrong.com/​​r/​​discussion/​​lw/​​50h/​​hpmor_audio_book_pilot/​​

[br1an]

Thanks so much Gwern! I was actually planning to just try and do a first chapter or two sample with whatever agreeable actor I could lay hands on and a friend’s home recording studio, but seeing if there’s interest first couldn’t hurt! Glad to introduce myself to some more of the community too!

[drethelin]

The best example for a single VA doing a great job is Stephen Fry doing the actual Harry Potter books.

[br1an]

That’s my dream, that somehow someone who knows him has shown him MoR and he loves it and will somehow become convinced to do this audiobook for us for free, or for whatever we manage to raise :-)

[drethelin]

unfortunately a quick googling gives me a ball park of over 100 thousand SO FAR, based on voices.com’s prices. I don’t know how feasible that would be to kickstart/​​enjyn. We might have to shoot for a level below “professional grade”

[MinibearRex]

In a couple of conversations with Fred and George, references are made to some prank involving “kevin entwhistle’s cat”. Do we know what that refers to?

If anyone’s looking for an example, Chapter 27 has a reference in the fourth paragraph.

[Sheaman3773]

It’s a Noodle Incident.

[orthonormal]

Rather belated (and possibly noted already), but in case there was any lingering doubt as to Mr. Hat-and-Cloak’s identity:

(Chapter 35): Mr. Hat and Cloak gave a whispery chuckle. “Indeed,” said the whisper. “With the murder of one student five decades ago being the exception that proves the rule, since Salazar Slytherin would have keyed his monster into the ancient wards at a higher level than the Headmaster himself.”

(Chapter 49): Professor Quirrell sipped from his own waterglass again. “Well then, Mr. Potter, I shall freely tell you what I know or suspect. [...] Therefore [Myrtle’s] murder was performed either by Headmaster Dippet, which is unlikely, or by some entity which Salazar Slytherin keyed into his wards at a higher level than the Headmaster himself.”

[Sheaman3773]

That has been pointed out before.

[endoself]

No way. That would be too expected,

[TheOtherDave]

(ch67)

and he should be thinking of hypotheses and ways to test them

It’s always delightful to see a potential enemy successfully subverted.

Oh, yeah, the play-fighting was fun too, I suppose.

[Mycroft65536]

Something occurred to me lately about the story. It seems likely that there’s another character in the shadows (if not more then one).

What exactly has been going on with Nicholas Flamel?

He exists within the story, Dumbledore has consulted with him. The philosopher’s stone is still being hidden at Hogwarts, and presumably Voldemort still wants it.

This seems like a decent hypothesis on who/​what Quirrell is if he isn’t Voldemort.

[Desrtopa]

Quirrell is canonically Voldemort, that’s not a secret.

[Sheaman3773]

There is a vast difference between being possessed by Voldemort and actually being Voldemort.

[TheOtherDave]

Re: chapter 70...

A nice capsule summary of the problem with endorsing non-instrumental heroism.

That said, Hermione raises a decent question that gets lost by the end:

“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.”

Dumbledore has a clear opinion on the matter, and he does have some credibility, but he isn’t showing his work. And Hermione’s skepticism seems warranted.

If Hermione is actually interested in finding out, it would seem that some experimentation is called for. I wonder if that will occur to her. (Presumably it will occur to Harry, but it’s unclear that he cares.)

Perhaps, if she learns anything reliable about how to learn heroism, she could dedicate herself to training up the next generation of heroes. Write a book, or something.

Also, while I’m here...

Harry Potter hadn’t smelled the chicken burning. Which meant that it had probably been a pebble or something, Transfigured into a chicken and then enclosed in a Boundary Charm to make sure that no smoke escaped into the air

I’m intrigued by the implications of this line.

On the face of it, while the lack of smoke is reasonable evidence of a Boundary Charm or equivalent, it’s extremely weak (read: negligable) evidence that there was any Transfiguration involved. After all, when I cook chickens, I turn on a ventilator to keep smoke from escaping into the air, entirely for aesthetic reasons; it seems likely to me that even Great Googly Moogly wizards similarly don’t care for getting smoke everywhere.

So… how do Flitwick, et al, get from “no smoke” to “Transfiguration”? What do they know here that I don’t?

[[deleted]]

Well, if it was Transfiguration, it would be really important that none of the particles escape into the air. I think we’re supposed to infer that there wasn’t so much smoke as to be objectionable for its own sake—if there was visibly a lot of smoke, Harry probably would have noticed it behaving oddly, instead of having to rely on smell.

[see]

“(Hermione was starting to worry about what exactly the impressionable youths of the Chaos Legion were learning from Harry Potter.)”

Hah!

[Nominull]

That line put me in mind of chapter 21, where Hermione says that Harry Potter is one of those rare cases where she can’t tell Good from Bad just by looking. She can, she just doesn’t want to admit he’s Bad, because of their friendship and possible romantic entanglement.

Interestingly, the chapter is entitled “Rationalization”...

[Acrinoe]

I am confused as to why Quirrell/​Voldemort would leave behind the false clue of the animagi potion. Revealing an escape mechanism that may prove usefull later doesn’t make sense.

So now Amelia Bones changed the rules of visitation at Azkaban to prevent forming a new animagus. However, the prison is still vulnerable to an unregistered Animagus from escaping (unless they have detection methods?). Escape like this would still lead to a Sirius style manhunt unless a realistic corpse was left behind.

Interestingly, Sirius whom in this fiction is probably already escaped (how he did it un-noticed is beyond me) may have free run of Hogwarts. Per cannon, Pettigrew in animus form was not warded from Hogwarts proper. I wonder if Sirius’s presence within the castle was the glitch Fred and George noted on the Marauder’s Map in chapter 25. They noted two glitches, one intermittent and one permanent. Pettigrew’s whereabouts if still indeterminant as well since he didn’t hid in plain sight as Scabber in this fiction (perhaps his death wasn’t faked this time).

[orthonormal]

I am confused as to why Quirrell/​Voldemort would leave behind the false clue of the animagi potion. Revealing an escape mechanism that may prove usefull later doesn’t make sense.

The reason for it was actually ingenious- look at the actual result:

Albus sighed. “Indeed. But even if he has tricked me perfectly, we may at least rely on the conclusion that it was not Harry Potter.”

Since Quirrellmort wanted to divert suspicion from Harry in the event of some mishap, he left what amounts to a “VOLDEMORT WAS HERE” flag at the scene of the crime. Not even Mad-Eye Moody would suspect that Voldemort and Harry Potter pulled off the prison break together.

[hamnox]

Not even Mad-Eye Moody would suspect that Voldemort and Harry Potter pulled off the prison break together.

Truly, it is insanely mind-boggling to think about. I’m still freaking out about it myself a little, even as I, a reader, was privileged with a much broader perspective on the circumstances leading up to the event than the characters. Except maybe Quirrelmort, he’s a grand mysterious meddler.

[orthonormal]

They noted two glitches, one intermittent and one permanent.

Oh, I see it now: the intermittent glitch is Tom Riddle, who disappears when Quirrell is in zombie-mode.

[Sheaman3773]

I thought that the intermittent glitch was there being two Harry Potters, when he’s using the Time Turner. Though, theoretically, they should have noticed this before, given that Harry’s not the first student to use one.

The permanent one could be that the name Tom Riddle is constantly juxtaposed with Quirinus Quirrell.

[TobyBartels]

The permanent one could be that the name Tom Riddle is constantly juxtaposed with Quirinus Quirrell.

That one’s so obvious that even a couple of Gryffindors ought to be able to figure out what it means.

[Sheaman3773]

Even when they don’t know that Voldemort’s real name is Tom Riddle?

[TobyBartels]

Good point! They ought to be able to locate the hypothesis that it really is two people in one, but with no understanding of the second person’s importance, they might well just consider it “anomaly”.

[Desrtopa]

Considering who it is they’re dealing with, I’d think that a more immediately available hypothesis is that Tom Riddle is another identity worn by the person who now calls himself Quirinus Quirrel. I certainly wouldn’t discount the possibility that magic related to true names exists, and if so, anyone with an interest in concealing their identity in the long term is likely to have messed around with it.

[Acrinoe]

Time Turners and the Marauder’s Map didn’t mix in canon works. Double entry glitch seems likely.

I can’t recall, did canon works show Harry in the Marauder’s Map despite being under his invisibility cloak? I would assume from dialog in HPMOR that it wouldn’t be able to detect him as it’s ability to hide is such that he can elude even death’s detection.

[TobyBartels]

Lupin saw Harry & friends on the Map while they were under the Cloak in Book 3.

[Sheaman3773]

Yes...long before Rowling decided to make Harry’s cloak legendary.

I don’t have any solid proof of it, but too many things don’t match up if you assume that the Potter Cloak was a Deathly Hallow from the beginning, starting with the fact that no one realized that the idea of a functioning heirloom Invisibility Cloak is apparently an oxymoron, and definitely including that Moody’s eye (buffed to an insane degree in MoR) and a toy invented by four pranksters in their teens (also buffed in MoR, if to a lesser degree) are able to see where Death may not.

[TobyBartels]

Yeah, things don’t make much sense in canon, but what do we do about it? Eliezer has been fixing this continuity glitch by going through the things that could beat Harry’s cloak and buffing them up, not (as he might have) by denying their powers over the cloak. (I think that there’s a slogan in here somewhere, to the effect that only an Epic Item can beat an Epic Item, and Harry’s cloak is Epic.) So Moody’s eye must be the Eye of Vecna/​Vance, and the Marauder’s Map must be an invention of the Founders of Hogwarts (only lightly tweaked by the Marauders, assuming that this is the same group as in canon). So it goes right along with what Eliezer’s been doing that the Map should see under Harry’s cloak. The Four Founders are better than Death at finding people, after all.

[Desrtopa]

Interestingly, Sirius whom in this fiction is probably already escaped (how he did it un-noticed is beyond me) may have free run of Hogwarts.

It’s possible they were tricked in believing they had ever captured him in the first place.

[TobyBartels]

“I’m not serious!”

[TobyBartels]

I don’t deserve all of these upvotes; it’s not my idea originally.

[Pavitra]

It’s probably Pettigrew in the cell.

[Unnamed]

There was some discussion of that in thread v; search the page for “Sirius”.

[Acrinoe]

It just occured to me that HRMOR strikes me as a bit similar in mode to Ender’s Game in the way that Prof. Quirrell set Harry up right at the start to being “different and better” to isolate him and force him to excel. He caves a little with offering advice, support, and hints,; whereas Graff would have told Ender he would have to figure it out how to win or he’d find another special kid.

I’m somewhat surprised that Dumbledor didn’t intervene, say with a side quest, to bind some friends and allies to Harry. Guess he likes what Quirrell brings to the table.

I really enjoy the deep game being played out in this story.

[Normal_Anomaly]

The Ender’s Game parallels are definitely striking, and I like them. That was a fun book, and I am enjoying seeing it played with by an author so bluntly opposed to the “whiny hero” trope.

I’m somewhat surprised that Dumbledor didn’t intervene, say with a side quest, to bind some friends and allies to Harry.

That may have been part of the purpose of Dumbledore pushing Hermione into being a heroine: he wanted Harry to have an equal partner instead of being isolated at the top.

[[deleted]]

The similarities to Ender’s Game are rather striking. So much so that the parallel might be a little belabored at this point: I’ve noticed a number of reviews saying that they’d like to see less of the “Quirrell’s Armies” business at this point, and I tend to agree.

I do agree that the “deep game,” if by that you mean trying to suss out Quirrell’s and Dumbledore’s ulterior strategies and motivations, is quite fun.

[Nominull]

I dunno, I liked Ender’s Game, and I would have liked it better if it had been written by the Wise Master instead of a crazy person. The Houkago Wartime parts aren’t my favorite parts of the Methods, but I sort of suspect that they are not in competition with the parts that are—I suspect they are easier to write than the more mainstream plotty parts, and so they may well act to help the story keep being written, by giving the Wise Master a relatively easy, unintimidating place to start writing.

[FAWS]

Downvoted for pointless random Japanese. There are several perfectly serviceable English terms starting with extracurricular, I don’t think houkago is even the most fitting Japanese word and it’s not part of the standard fanfic vocabulary leaked over from anime fandom.

[Nominull]

It’s not just pointless random Japanese, it’s a pointless random anime reference! :-)

[Eneasz]

At this point, this thread is the #1 search result if you google “Houkago Wartime”. And the other search results made me think it would be best not to click-through at work.

[FAWS]

Well, fair enough. I thought people still translated things like that, but apparently not when it’s a proper name and language mixed to begin with (some fictional band calling itself “Houkago Tea Time”, apparently). References usually work best if people unfamiliar with the source either never notice anything odd or only that there might possibly be a reference to something. In this case the context allows a very confident guess on what’s meant so you probably only shortly confuse people, and if you think packing in the reference is worth that that’s your prerogative. Downvote removed.

[[deleted]]

Upvoted for “instead of a crazy person,” because it made me laugh.

[Acrinoe]

Prediction/​Speculation:

The first half of the first year is over in HP MOR. Prof. Quirrell’s degraded health and the Curse of the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor are looming larger.

I speculate that Voldemort/​Quirrel’smotivation in breaking Bellatrix out of Azkaban is insurance for a new body/​host in the near future. I imagine that a willing host is not only easier to possess but might enable him with more of his powers.

[Sheaman3773]

This seems possible. However, picking a host that’s at the top of the Most Wanted list isn’t exactly the most intelligent of plans.

[drethelin]

The suitability of the host in terms of power and close connection to Voldemort is probably much more important, especially considering how easy it is to travel stealthily in the wizarding world. It was mentioned for the resurrection spell that Voldemort would go out of his way to use his closest follower, most powerful kin, most powerful enemy etc.

[ata]

Did anyone else not get the fanfiction.net email notifications for these new chapters? I didn’t know there were new chapters until I saw this thread.

[Sheaman3773]

I did get the ff.net notifications. You may want to double-check your settings, you might have changed something on accident.

[NancyLebovitz]

I got ff notifications, too.

[Raemon]

I’m curious: did the “plausible deniability” theme of chapter 72 arise from the very beginning, because of Harry’s explanation, or did you come up with it later in the chapter and then reinforce earlier scenes to make it more cohesive?

[Document]

The Rachel Aaron interview mentioned in the latest Author’s Notes update should probably appear under celebrity endorsements. I should probably post that as a review, but right now I don’t feel like registering an account there.

[radical_negative_one]

Has Eliezer said how long the story will be? How many chapters the full story will have, or do we possibly have an expected ending date? I’ve read and enjoyed the first several chapters, but i’d rather have the entire thing when it’s done instead of waiting for each next chapter. The current author’s notes state that there is a predetermined ending to the plot arc, but i haven’t seen an estimate of how far along the story currently is.

[[deleted]]

Ch 50

And Harry had reached into his pouch and pulled out some odd books, loaning them to her on condition of complete secrecy, saying that if she could comprehend those books it would change the pattern of her thinking enough that she’d never fall into harmony with Parvati again...

What sort of books would Harry have lent to Padma?

As of Chapter 70, we now have both Patil sisters acting together, probably on an adventure of sorts; I wonder if we’ll see any evidence of her recent reading!

[Pavitra]

I assumed he gave her a copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach.

[TobyBartels]

Ch 68

the Defense Professor couldn’t help anyone become the sort of hero that was worth becoming, and that he wouldn’t even understand the difference

Damn, another good line! Where do you get all this, Eliezer?

ETA:

Ch 69

it occurred to Hermione that there might be a lot more viewpoints on the subject than just four.

Am I just in an agreeable mood today, or is this really that good?

EATA:

And the end, of course, is the Crowning Moment of Awesome.

[[deleted]]

My favorite was ”...she was suddenly realizing just how large a difference had sprung up between Hogwarts students who’d signed up for all of Professor Quirrell’s extra-curricular activities, and students who’d had years of being taught by the worst Professors ever to go Professing.”

I dunno, I laughed.

[major]

Also, it’s a hint. With the previous generation so weak in Battle Magic (due to Voldemort’s curse—and this was discussed before, I think), it was part of Professor Quirrell’s plan to train up Harry’s schoolmates as well, so he can have a decent army someday.

It’s easy to miss it because of the funny. Eliezer does this kind of misdirection all the time.

[TobyBartels]

Ch 68

I thought, once, that I knew such a man, but I was mistaken...

A great line, at least for those of us who know the canon history. One might hope that Dumbledore would have learnt a lesson from this (the lesson that Hermione has no need to learn), but apparently not.

ETA:

Ch 69

Well, maybe he did know!

[Pringlescan]

I’m sorry in advance if someone already has mentioned these ideas but I’m not sorting through 1000+ comments to find out

Quirrel/​Voldemorts ultimate goal with battlemagic is to teach the students of Hogwarts how to be more useful soldiers in an army to be lead by Harry. The purpose of the three armies is obviously a continuation of this plan, with the goal of teaching harry to be a good general, giving Harry a platform to develop a cult of personality around himself (an important thing to have for any aspiring Dark Lord), and finding and developing lieutenants for Harry. However I’m not sure yet as to Voldemort’s plan for the army and Harry as its leader.

Harry could either be magically dominated and used as a figurehead OR Harry could be puppet-mastered into leading the army of his own volition. One likely scenario is to raise the Death Eaters again forcing Harry to raise his army in opposition. Then he has harry publicly defeat voldemort, followed by an immediate introduction of an outside existential threat, probably war with magical Russia or something, I will use Russia as a placeholder for this existential threat. This forces harry to pardon and enlist the death eaters and conquer magical Russia to end the war. During the war with Russia some sort of system of political thought is introduced which requires them to conquer even more countries, like how Communism advocated World Wide Revolution. Perhaps based upon science and rationality governing instead of tradition, with Harry as a de facto benevolent Dictator.

Upon victory against Russia they enlist their fallen foes and with the new Political system as an excuse continue to spark wars to conquest other nations until they rule the magical world and therefore the muggle world as well, after all no one will be able to stop them from imperiusing anyone they damn well want to.

tldr—Step 1 - Turn Hogwarts students into useful soldiers via teaching battle magic, Step 2 - Manipulate Harry into raising an army, Step 3 - Control Harry via magic/​manipulation and use the army to conquer the world.

[MatthewBaker]

I dont think the story will be that long, but if you write that as an alternate ending ill read it.

[wedrifid]

probably war with magical Russia or something

War with Russia? Because that usually turns out well!

[JamesAndrix]

Hypothesis: Quirrell is positioning Harry to be forced to figure out how to dissolve the wards at Hogwarts. (or at least that’s the branch of the Xanatos pileup we’re on.)

[Pavitra]

(This comment contains idle speculation about the psychology of Eliezer’s writing process. Eliezer, you may or may not want to continue reading.)

Abar bs gur guerr znva ulcbgurfrf yvfgrq va gur puncgre friraglbar nhgube’f abgrf jrer zl svefg thrff. V jbhyq unir fnvq (trarenyvmvat sebz bar rknzcyr) gung nf gur cebwrpg pbagvahrf, vgf abirygl naq gurersber shaarff qvzvavfurf. Vaqrrq, V fhfcrpg gung abirygl qrpnl jnf gur znva ernfba gung gur zrgubqf bs engvbanyvgl rkvfgf ng nyy—gur nhgube tbg oberq jvgu gur abasvpgvba engvbanyvgl obbx.

(Ncbybtvrf sbe zl fyvtugyl bss-xvygre chapghngvba naq pncvgnyvmngvba; V jnf gelvat gb znxr gur ebg13 uneqre gb nppvqragnyyl ernq.)

[Alicorn]

V svaq gung zl jropbzvp vf ybfvat vgf fuvar. Gur vqrn vf frireny lrnef byq ol abj. V tbg bire n frevbhf tnc va zbgvingvba ol fjvgpuvat gb na rcvfgbynel sbezng sbe n srj jrrxf, fb V pbhyq qb zhpu yrff qenjvat, naq abj rkcrpg gb or noyr gb svavfu gur fgbelyvar jvgubhg vagreehcgvba va zl fpurqhyr. V’z abg fher vs gurer’f n pbzcnenoyr fglyr punatr Ryvrmre pbhyq rzcybl vs gur bznxr qvqa’g bofreinoyl uryc.

[FAWS]

I think that in your case it might be because you as a writer have outgrown that story. I couldn’t stomach reading beyond the first chapter of the original Elcenia (I’ll certainly give the rewrite a chance though) and while HTHT had some nice touches from the beginning it’s rather bland and sometimes cringe-worthy. Once Luminosity gets going there is a night and day difference in quality. At first I thought it was because world building and characters are your weak point, but now I’m pretty sure it’s because you have just become that much better.

You introduced a somewhat interesting moral dilemma in HTHT recently, but the world still doesn’t feel alive and the mages still don’t feel like a credible threat or in any way interesting as antagonists. I’m not sure if that’s just because you are limited by what you did earlier (it seems like the setup necessitates that the mages continue to be idiots collectively or it’s game over, and the room for the protagonists to lose in important ways without ending the story seems very limited), but there is simply no comparison to your take on the Volturi as far as villain quality goes.

Another problem might be the genre: HTHT seems to be somewhere between a straight take on mahou shoujo and a deconstruction. I think the protagonists are too old, and the world, simplistic as it is, too constrained by logic for a straight take to work, and it’s too much of a straight take to work as a deconstruction.

If you could find a way to break out of the story you were originally writing and turn it into a story actually worth your time you would probably find the experience more enjoyable. You already seem to be doing that to some extent. If you are holding back because you don’t want to change the tone too much please feel encouraged to stop worrying about that ;)

[Alicorn]

Note that both Elcenia and HTHT have their origins in a collaboration, although Elcenia’s was longer-lived. HTHT’s co-creator (who is very invested, in general, in straight-up mahou shoujo tropes) was no longer on board by the time I started publishing, but I didn’t feel like I was free to arbitrarily discard bits of the original concept. But I think it’s mostly a matter of my having improved as a storyteller, as you say—that, and I’m a lazy, amateur artist, which makes webcomicking an awkward juggling act between leaning on the writing and failing at “show don’t tell”, and leaning on the art and having everything be incomprehensible and take forever to draw. At this point I’m not having fun with it, but I feel obliged to finish it (in part on the urging of my erstwhile co-creator). That’s not exactly inspiring me to new heights of quality.

Luminosity is sort of collaborative in the sense that I’m using a borrowed world, albeit with no direct participation from Meyer herself, but I honestly do not think worldbuilding is my weakness, nor character creation (Radiance in particular mostly runs on characters who are original or so far diverged from their canon origins that they might as well be).

[bogus]

Fanfiction.net user Black Logician has announced Harry’s Game, a spinoff of HP:MoR which branches out around Chapter 65-67 of the original fic. From his post at the HP:MoR review board:

...Hermione has already formed SPHEW. Quirell though doesn’t dismantle Harry’s army, but goes for an alternative condition to make the army wars more of a challenge to Harry. …

Please use ROT13 for spoilers when discussing Harry’s Game.

[Alicorn]

I approve of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles reference.

[Jonathan_Graehl]

Ouch (ch 68):

Minerva was going over the Transfiguration parchment due Monday, and had just marked down to negative two hundred points a fifth-year parchment with an error that could have potentially killed someone. During her first year as a professor she’d been indignant at the folly of older students, now she was just resigned. Some people not only never learned, they never noticed that they were hopeless, they stayed bright and eager and kept on trying. Sometimes they believed you when you told them, before they left Hogwarts, that they must never try anything unusual, give up free Transfiguration and use the art only through established Charms; and sometimes… they didn’t.

“It’s better if you don’t even try”—I wonder what inspired that sentiment.

[knb]

When I read that I assumed it was a critique of people who are bright enough to plausibly create an AGI but not bright enough to make sure it is friendly.

They shouldn’t “try anything unusual”.

[gwern]

I took it as yet another veiled criticism of the original books, although I’ll admit I don’t offhand remember any transfiguration mistakes in Order of the Phoenix.

[Jonathan_Graehl]

I only read the last book (or two). Maybe you’re right, but I took it as an expression of frustration with well-meaning but net-harmful people in some area of Eliezer’s interest.

[Risto_Saarelma]

Looks definitely like a real-world reference to me though.

[JoshuaZ]

I don’t like some of the changes to the chapter where Harry and Quirrel first go to Mary’s Room. The lack of any transition sentence between Harry being shocked and the mention of the crushed beetle make it almost sound like Harry is shocked by that, which is obviously not the case. The earlier version was better. At minimum, there should be some sort of transitional note like saying how he didn’t see the beetle.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

There weren’t any changes to that chapter...?

[JoshuaZ]

Huh. In that case my memory of the chapter ending isn’t accurate. I remembered there being more of a pause between Harry’s shock and the crushed beetle. Rereading it I got a bit jarred because it almost read like his shock was over the beetle.

[NihilCredo]

Perhaps you’re mixing it up with the final chapter of the first Dementor destruction, where the closing line about the empty tattered cloak was shuffled around a bit.

[Unnamed]

Eliezer has posted a new chapter (the 73rd) and I’ve started a new discussion thread (the 8th).

[TuviaDulin]

Is this thread the right place for asking when I can expect the next chapter by?

Just finished the existing chapters. I may have some fan art on the way.

[Alexandros]

So, I was curious to see how each chapter was getting reviewed. Here are some numbers as of a few minutes ago:

The reviews cover a total of 856,252 words, more than double the size of the fic itself.

The 10 most reviewed chapters are:

• chapter 05: 758 reviews

• chapter 01: 411 reviews

• chapter 10: 387 reviews

• chapter 09: 358 reviews

• chapter 06: 342 reviews

• chapter 07: 306 reviews

• chapter 47: 305 reviews

• chapter 17: 299 reviews

• chapter 08: 294 reviews

• chapter 70: 282 reviews

In terms of average words per review, the top 10 are:

• chapter 39, words per review: 158

• chapter 27, words per review: 110

• chapter 20, words per review: 106

• chapter 63, words per review: 105

• chapter 55, words per review: 103

• chapter 54, words per review: 96

• chapter 40, words per review: 95

• chapter 35, words per review: 94

• chapter 36, words per review: 94

• chapter 49, words per review: 94

Top 10 for total review wordage produced per chapter:

• chapter 09, words: 32684

• chapter 05, words: 29331

• chapter 63, words: 28956

• chapter 01, words: 28198

• chapter 20, words: 27191

• chapter 47, words: 25956

• chapter 27, words: 25288

• chapter 70, words: 23945

• chapter 06, words: 23936

• chapter 07, words: 22852

So overall, the first chapters are the best reviewed, and while the latter ones tend to attract longer reviews, the earlier ones still attract higher word volume overall.

The data is updated on a daily basis and you can explore it yourself here

If you want to see the scraper’s code, have a look here

Consider this (along with this) as fancode.

[Carinthium]

How long until the next update?

[Alicorn]

Shhh! Eliezer is the type of writer who does not hold up well when asked about that.

[Eugine_Nier]

Just noticed, they new matrix omake.

I found it awesome, but noticed that the last line is a plot hole. Even if the world doesn’t run on mathematics, that doesn’t preclude physics textbooks.

After all, humanity must have understood how the world works well enough at some point to built the AIs.

[Pavitra]

I kicked myself when I read it for not having considered the doesn’t-run-on-math possibility before.

Consider what Neo knows: the world he grew up in, which resembles ours, is really a computer simulation. Which features of that world should he most expect not to hold in the real world? Near the top of the list should be that the fundamental laws of physics look suspiciously like a computer program.

[Carinthium]

RE Chapter 64: Would a Dragon Ball Z o-make be possible? Or is there just too much stupid in it to get rid of?

[Desrtopa]

The trouble isn’t so much that there’s too much stupid to get rid of, but that if you get rid of all the stupid, there’s hardly anything left. The setting of DBZ is pretty much baloney all the way down.

Although an omake doesn’t really require much material, so I suppose it might be possible to pull something off.

[Carinthium]

I’m not sure if anybody’s seriously writing this up, but I’m bored so I may as well make some points just in case.

1- Going by the manga, Krillin’s Destructo Disk move (presumably made based on first use when training for the Saiyans post-Raditz) can literally cut thing through anything. Going by the anime, Cell blocked one but he’s several sagas after the start. 2- There is an ACTUAL AFTERLIFE in the DBZ-world (and they know it- Krillin died and was brought back, for one thing). For an ordinary person this might not mean much, but a rationalist acting under the assumption is going to seem insane. 3- Ironically, there is one point where being rational MIGHT work to a character’s disadvantage. After Goku idiotically believes Raditz’s claims to have reformed (his tail has been grabbed making him vulrnable), Raditz knocks out Goku making the situation appear hopeless. This is solved by arguable deux ex machina (I can’t quite remember if it was foreshadowed)- Gohan gets angry, and manifests enough power to seriously wound Raditz and give the good guys a fighting chance. Gohan’s just a kid, so if he were rational he’d probably stay out of it since he doesn’t know about his hidden power. 4- The saiyan Royal family has an Artificial Full Moon technique, which factoring for power loss to make it multiplies their power level by 10 (in terms of actual effectiveness going by the series it rises considerably but not that much). There are pros and cons to sharing it of maintaing power v.s effectiveness of the Saiyan race.

[Pavitra]

The obvious focus would be the not-quite-eponymous wish-granting dragon.

[Carinthium]

The obvious things to do with it (mass-immortality etc) are undermined the premise- from what I remember of the manga (good read when out of brainpower), Kami created the Dragon Balls so that mankind would have a hope even in the darkest of times- he failed to anticipate the Dragon Radar which made finding them trivial.

Upgraded Kami would probably realise that given the power of Shenron, he could create the Dragon Balls in such a way that, directly or indirectly if necessary, he could mold the world and prevent such dark times in the first place. It would then be down to whether he was smart enough to WANT everybody to be immortal.

[Raemon]

ARRR!!! I just started going to the New York Rationality group, and next week when they’re doing an actual HP:MOR meetup, I’m going to be in.… San Francisco, of all places.

Don’t supposed the meetup could be Sunday....?

[Danylo]

Oh, send me a link to this rationality group.

[ata]

Raemon might have been referring to the New York OB/​LW meetup group.

[Raemon]

I was indeed.

[gwern]

Much the same thing happened to me—I live on LI about an hour from NYC, and I flew out to SF in part to meet LWers… and then I read in yesterday’s MoR that Eliezer is out in NYC organizing stuff there. Consarn it!

[TobyBartels]

Ch 69

Labour or Conservative or Liberal Democrat

I’m surprised that Harry bothered to mention the LimDems in 1992. graph

ETA: The graph is a bit misleading, since the low point in 1992 (April) hasn’t quite happened yet (right?).

[Larks]

His parents probably voted Lib Dem.

[TobyBartels]

Good point!

[magfrump]

A prediction I made a while back, posted here for posterity. Rot13′d to avoid spoilers.

Fnagn Pynhf vf Avpubynf Synzry.

If anyone has made this prediction before, I’d love to see it discussed.

[Sheaman3773]

If I recall correctly, the idea was brought up a few discussion threads ago. I don’t remember much coming from it, though.

[Raemon]

Also, do we know offhand:

1) What the shield is? I want to say Shield of Hufflepuff, but googling that didn’t produce anything useful. Is it something I should know about?

2) What the flash of gold is? I have a vague feeling of something being introduced earlier in the story that’d be relevant, but I can’t remember.

[JoshuaZ]

1 - Presumably it is the original seal of Hogwarts, hence it has the symbols of all four founders?

2- My guess is that the flash of gold is Fawkes since Fawkes is described earlier as red-gold and I think at one point as having “golden flame” and since Fawkes really likes people who try to be heros.

[Sheaman3773]

Turns out, that was a good call.

[MatthewBaker]

“Because you are a responsible git, just like your dad.” Sirius sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. It was still a bit long, but much neater than Harry remembered. “Coming back the way you did,” his godfather said after a moment, “you have a lot of advantages. But it’s not everything. Maybe it’s easier to feel like it’s your fault than admit you can’t control everything.”

Harry thought about that for a moment. There was a certain… perverse logic to that, he supposed. At the same time, he felt bands around his heart, bands he didn’t even realize were there, slowly loosen a bit. “When did you get so wise?” Harry asked.

Sirius shrugged. “I nicked your mum’s notes every chance I got.”

Harry laughed at that, feeling a little better. Just like bloody Sirius to slip a joke in to break the tension. After a moment, he looked up at his godfather. “My dad was ‘responsible’?” Harry asked in a small voice, remembering Snape’s memory of James publicly taunting him.

“Yes,” Sirius replied. “Good thing too. Maybe, anyway.” He looked away, going suddenly serious. “When I was bloody pissed at Snape, I set him up to walk in on Moony on a full moon. James found out and decked me, then caught up to him and Stunned the tosser right before he opened the door.” Harry noticed the man’s fists clenching. “Of course, with what you told me, if he’d snuffed it, Voldemort would never have heard the prophecy and your parents would still be alive.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed. “Remus would never have forgiven you if he hadn’t,” he snapped.

Sirius sighed. “It seemed appropriate at the time. Remus’ books had been scattered during a scuffle our seventh year and I saw Snape picking up a letter from his parents before McGonagall sorted everyone out. A week later, Death Eaters attacked their hideout and burned it to the ground. I thought it was too big a coincidence to ignore and arranged a little payback for the Lupins.”

“That’s quite a stretch,” Harry said, still a little annoyed, even though it was years ago and Remus had obviously forgiven him.

Sirius shrugged. “They’d gone into hiding over a year before, but the letter might have held clues as to their location and I never said Snape was stupid.” He shook his head. “It couldn’t have been a coincidence.”

“Even so, I don’t think Remus would have accepted that,” Harry said.

“Probably not,” Sirius agreed. “It took a month before he’d even talk to me after what did happen. But I think what Snape did later with that prophecy means I was right.”

Harry scowled. He didn’t think this argument was worth continuing. They’d probably never know.

Sirius seemed to agree, because he changed the subject; sort of. “So what did the greasy bastard do after you got him sacked?” His lips curled into a rather evil leer.

Harry grimaced. “I don’t know. He was gone by the time Dumbledore made the announcement.” He frowned. “If he really was accepting money from Lucius to spy on me first year, he may have gone to the Malfoys for help.”

“Better to have him clearly on the opposite side then,” Sirius said with a grim smile and a satisfied nod. “Harder for him to play us off against each other.”

Harry needs to hear this common fanon about his father and snape… right now he thinks his fathers a douchebag not a crazy kid that grew into a responsible adult who saved the lives of so many.

[Pringlescan]

Also I hate to be one of those people screaming, ‘UPDATE UPDATE’ but does anyone who has been following this longer then me have any clue when the next update is coming? There’s nothing in the author’s notes and there has been over a month long delay from the last posting.

[MatthewBaker]

Eliezer works better when we leave him alone in a room and say that hes doing a good job. Which he is ^^

[Bongo]

This is a poll.

[Bongo]

Upvote this if you think neither.

[Bongo]

Upvote this if you think MoR has been getting better lately.

[Bongo]

Upvote this if you think MoR has been getting worse lately.

[Eneasz]

Is it bad form to down-vote a poll just because you think it’s a bad poll? If you have a criticism to make, then make it. That’s what this thread is here for. Or if you have great praise to lavish upon HPMoR, do that instead. That’s also what this thread is here for. But to put up a passive-aggressive and vague poll like this is annoying and gives no good info of any sort to anyone. It feels like a bludgeon being set up for future use.

Say what you want to say.

[TobyBartels]

Especially since you’ve explained your criticism of the poll, I think that you ought to be able to downvote the poll itself, as for any other comment. (Or upvote it too, of course.) This is separate from any votes that actually take part in the poll.

[TobyBartels]

What’s lately?

I think that it’s getting better from the 50s, but I’m not sure that it’s back to how good it was from the 20s. (Well, more or less; I don’t want to have to defend precisely what I just said. But you get the idea.)

[Manfred]

Define “lately.”

[Bongo]

Downvote this for karma balance.

[orthonormal]

Oh come on, this is your chance to say the most flame-worthy thing you can come up with. Don’t just squander it!

[Carinthium]

Elizier- Even it’s unlikely that you could make the next proper update any time soon (let’s face it- that’s been established), maybe you could at least get another O-Make chapter up? A few more rationalist adaptations could be made more easily (as you or somebody else can just expose the character’s irrational actions in the same style) and would mean the fans weren’t kept waiting.

[gjm]

1. It’s been established that we don’t have the next “proper update” yet. Do you have extra private information that indicates that it won’t be soon, or are you abusing the word “established” grotesquely?

2. I would rather have the next “proper update” a bit sooner, than have it a bit later but have an extra chapter of omake first. I doubt that I am unique in this.

3. Eliezer has indicated (in author’s notes) that he thinks making him feel guilty about updating slowly will tend to make him update slower, rather than faster. This seems plausible to me (the relevant mental quirks being ones that I happen to share). If so, your comment seems obviously counterproductive.

4. His name is spelt “Eliezer”, not “Elizier”.