For those who don’t know, the actual origin of “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” is Corinthians 15:26, specifically, the King James version.
JTHM
For those of you confused by this comment: I believe Manfred assumes Lucius suspected that Hermione was replaced by a polyjuiced Bellatrix Black. Lucius implies that he believes Harry to be a de-powered Voldemort in their discussion at the train station, and also believes Harry to be behind the rescue of Bellatrix from Azkaban. If you rescued your powerful minion, you would want to keep her close about you for your own protection and to accomplish tasks beyond your magical abilities. Hermione Granger is known to associate with Harry Potter, so she would be the ideal candidate for someone to replace with Bellatrix.
“Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line...”
This sounds like an alchemy circle, which has to be drawn “to the fineness of a child’s hair.” I guess it involves the creation of a philosopher’s stone.
Grindelwald accepted the inevitability of his death, and did not fear it—hence the laughter. Remember, Rowling is a deathist, and considers this to be a mark of Grindelwald’s maturity (he is a foil to Voldemort).
Lying constantly about what you believe is all well and good if you have Professor Quirrell-like lying skills and your conscience doesn’t bother you if you lie to protect yourself from others’ hostility to your views. I myself lie effortlessly, and felt not a shred of guilt when, say, I would hide my atheism to protect myself from the hostility of my very anti-anti-religious father (he’s not a believer himself, he’s just hostile to atheism for reasons which elude me).
Other people, however, are not so lucky. Some people are obliged to publicly profess belief of some sort or face serious reprisals, and also feel terrible when they lie. Defiance may not be feasible, so they must either use Dark Side Epistemology to convince themselves of what others demand they be convinced, or else be cursed with the retching pain of a guilty conscience.
If you’ve never found yourself in such a situation, lucky you. But realize that you have it easy.
I’m pretty sure that Quirrell DID just update. This chapter seems to be a pivotal moment in his character arc: a cynic learns that there really is such a thing as love and friendship in the world.
No, the abruptly-ended and grammatically-incorrect sentence preceding this passage indicates actual discontinuity:
“Dumbledore wasn’t being very cooperative, and in any case this was several minutes after the critical location within Time”
Notice the lack of punctuation. The end of this sentence has been lopped off, and deliberately. Eliezer Yudkowsky does not make careless punctuation errors.
Harry knows how smart Quirrell is, and he knows that if it occurred to him that the troll was an attempt on Hermione’s life, it would have occurred to Quirrell instantly. We (and Harry) know that Quirrell said nothing to McGonagall, from which Harry will soon infer that Quirrell could have saved Hermione yet did nothing. (Which makes it likely, but not certain, that it was Quirrell who was behind the troll.) In either case Quirrell has reached a point, or is about to reach a point, in his sinister plan where it no longer matters (or perhaps even requires) that Harry take him as a mortal enemy.
Draco (and maybe even Lucius) will most likely infer from the troll incident that Hermoine was not the one who attacked him, and he will align himself with Harry in the coming Roaring Rampage of Revenge. I would not be surprised if Lesath Lestrange also made an appearance.
Prediction for Chapter 90: Time Pressure, Part 3:
“Wait a moment,” you say. “Time Pressure, Part 3? Harry already lost his race against the clock. Why would Chap. 90 be called ‘Time Pressures’?”
Because Harry’s race against the clock to save Hermione’s life has only just begun, and he has slightly less than six hours left. Eliezer mentioned that one of his most significant purposes of Chap. 86 was to update characters’ states of knowledge before the next arc. If you recall, in that chapter, Harry learned the word “horcrux.” And in Chap. 87, Harry learned of the philosopher’s stone.
So what will Harry do? Get the shell removed from his time turner, or obtain a time turner from someone else. Learn about the Horcrux ritual as quickly as possible, travel back in time, get Hermione to create a horcrux, and erase her memory of doing so thus that her death plays out just as before. Then start working on the stone to restore Hermione to life. (He could also take the “bone of the father, flesh of the servant, blood of the enemy” route, but positively identifying Hermione’s enemy could be difficult. Lucius Malfoy and Company, who were tricked into antagonizing Hermione, might not count for purposes of the ritual.)
The hard part, of course, will be getting Hermione to kill, but Harry can probably find someone in a hospital who has only days to live and convince Hermione that creating a horcrux is a net ethical positive.
Without Hermione’s death, murder would have been a line Harry was unwilling to cross. I think that whoever is behind this plot really wants Harry to cross the Moral Event Horizon and/or create the stone (the second possibility is less likely though, since Hermione was already working on the stone, but that fact could have been unknown to the plotter).
Edit: As of Chapter 101, this prediction has probably been proven wrong, unless Harry’s memory of executing this plan has been erased (not completely impossible; there’s a moment when he becomes momentarily disoriented.) But I think this would make a totally awesome piece of recursive fanfiction. After HPMoR is finished, I might write this.
Musk knows Peter Thiel from their days at PayPal, and Thiel is MIRI’s biggest patron (or was, last I heard)—so it’s hardly surprising that Musk is familiar with the notion of X-risk from unfriendly AI.
Nicholas Flamel, who is already known to change identities frequently, is the obvious candidate.
(And Flamel could also be Quirrell; Of the canon characters, there are four people likely to be as powerful as MoR Quirrell is: Dumbledore, Grindelwald, Voldemort, and Flamel. He’s not Dumbledore; Grindelwald is probably still in Nurmengard; Voldemort is a distinct possibility, but that-one-infamous-post-we-all-know-about is, in my opinion, more likely to be a red herring than truth; Flamel is most likely. If Quirrell were not Flamel, Harry would be correct in assuming that Quirrell would kidnap Flamel if the stone were genuine. Lack of access to the elixir of life would also explain Quirrell’s illness and the accelerated aging that Harry observed when Quirrell was in the infirmary. It also explains why Flamel knows that the Stone is hidden in Hogwarts. And if Quirrel/Flamel is female, that would explain how an attacker managed to intercept Hermione in the girls-only staircase. This theory also explains Eliezer’s hints that a future story development will make it obvious that he is in no way shortchanging the female gender.)
I suspect that, if Flamel is Quirrell, the presence of the stone at Hogwarts is some elaborate trap to draw out Voldemort, whom Flamel may believe resides in, or is, Harry.
Edit 5/11/2014 (Spoilers up to Chapter 101): Dhveeryy unf abj orra frra qevaxvat havpbea oybbq, gur nqirefr rssrpgf bs juvpu ner fgngrq va pnaba gb or artngrq ol gur Ryvkve bs Yvsr. Synzry jbhyq or bar bs gur srj crbcyr jubz jr pna or pbasvqrag jbhyq or fher rabhtu bs guvf cebcregl bs gur ryvkve gb org uvf urnygu ba vg. Ubjrire, Dhveeryy unf nyfb orra fubja gb unir n yvax gb Uneel’f zvaq, n yvax juvpu Ibyqrzbeg cbffrffrq va pnaba naq sbe juvpu V pna vzntvar ab cynhfvoyr ernfba sbe Synzry gb unir. Gur onynapr bs rivqrapr va snibe bs zl traqresyvccrq-Synzry-Dhveeryy gurbel vf abj zhpu qvzvavfurq.
The fact that Quirrell seemed not to know the symbol of the Deathly Hallows is very strange—the symbol is reasonably well-known in the wizarding world, as Grindelwald used it as his own. Which raises the question: was Quirrell’s apparent failure to recognize the symbol an oversight on Yudkowsky’s part, or an important clue?
To make Harry Potter a worshiped celebrity.
Magick Moste Evile? (This is an in-universe book from canon, in case anyone forgot.)
There would likely be more intellectual diversity among a demographically diverse group randomly selected from the general population than there would be among a homogenous group randomly selected from one demographic within that population. However, if the demographically homogenous group was comprised of specialists of diverse fields of study, they would likely be more intellectually diverse than the demographically diverse group selected from the general population.
What I said was, “There is likely to be more intellectual diversity between an exclusively middle class white male group comprising a physicist, a lawyer, a mathematician, a programmer, a chemist, a politician, an economist, and a businessman than there is between a demographically diverse group of eight people randomly selected from the general population.” Please pay attention to the bits in bold.
And the qualities of supporting the left or right are not binaries, they are things that come in degrees, like a thing being hot or cold. When I say, “women support the left and men do not,” I mean that more women than men support the left and more men than women support the right. Taken completely out of context, I suppose “women support the left and men do not” could indicate that I meant every woman supports the left and every man supports the right, but that is obvious nonsense. You are twisting my words to fit the most absurd possible interpretation.
Huh. I think you might be right—that really never occurred to me, and I’m not sure why.
Harry seems to have neglected the possibility that the Philosopher’s Stone is a general-purpose transmutation device, thus explaining why it would be able to produce both gold and the elixir of life.
And since Fullmetal Alchemist was plagiarized from wizard lore, you’d think this would be a reasonably common hypothesis.
I use two spaces after every sentence, and I’m 23. It’s not a personal quirk either, it was just normal formatting in the American public schools I attended. (By the way, anyone who points out that this very post uses single spaces after a full stop should know that LessWrong messes with formatting. I typed double spaces; it’s just not displaying as written.)
Your argument is cogent, and yet I find the overwhelming majority of calls for diversity to be somehow underhanded. I suspect that your true motives are invisible to you. Consider this: is your motivation for valuing diversity really a product of your philosopher’s thirst for pure, pristine knowledge, or do you just want every social group you see as important to be loaded with demographics which support your political faction? (Think carefully—the truth might not be obvious from casual introspection; we are masters at self-delusion when politics is at play.)
I say this because I cannot help but notice that the cry of “Diversity!” is invoked exclusively by those who are trying to import to a group those demographics which tend to offer political support to the left. What’s more, the frequency which with this cry is invoked correlates positively with the degree to which that demographic supports the left. Consider the following data from the 2012 presidential election:
Whites voted 39% for Obama, and 59% for Romney. Blacks voted 93% for Obama, and 6% for Romney. Hispanics voted 71% for Obama, and 27% for Romney. Asians voted 73% for Obama, and 26% for Romney.
When I encounter someone singing the praises of diversity, I more often find that they are lobbying for Blacks than Hispanics, rarely for Asians, and never for Whites. Blacks offer overwhelming support to the left, Hispanics are more lukewarm, Asians’ support proportionally resembles that of Hispanics’ (but they are a smaller group overall so it is less important for the left to signal respect for their faction), and Whites support the right. Coincidence? Unlikely.
Now consider gender (same source as above):
Men voted 45% for Obama, 52% for Romney. Women voted 55% for Obama, 44% for Romney.
Again, women support the left and men do not. Again, the cry of “Diversity!” is invoked for those trying to add women to a group, and rarely for men. I seem to encounter such arguments invoked as often for women as I do for racial minorities. While women do not favor the left as heavily as Hispanics or Blacks do, they are a larger group than all racial minorities combined, and so it is highly important for the left to signal respect for this demographic, and to ensure that they occupy positions of prestige and influence.
The overwhelming majority of people shouting, “Diversity!” are not motivated by epistemology at all. They are subconsciously (sometimes even consciously) making a power grab. That is all. You can tell by who, exactly, they are trying to include and in what they are trying to include them. For one, they are always lobbying for a demographic on the grounds that said demographic will bring additional knowledge to a discussion, but not for someone from a specific field of expertise which would be relevant to said discussion. There is likely to be more intellectual diversity between an exclusively middle class white male group comprising a physicist, a lawyer, a mathematician, a programmer, a chemist, a politician, an economist, and a businessman than there is between a demographically diverse group of eight people randomly selected from the general population. And you regularly see the pro-diversity crowd lobbying for their favored demographics to occupy positions in which being demographically distinct cannot possibly be an advantage, such as in the hard sciences. I find the champions of diversity disingenuous in the extreme.
At this point, it would be the greatest fake-out in literary history if Quirinus Quirrell was actually just Quirinus Quirrell.