Harry did not have his bag with him when he went in.
undermind
Karma: 605
The character who seems to be the best response to this, and whom I hope we will see again shortly, is Amelia Bones. She seems to kick just as much ass as Moody, without the significant aid of a literally all-seeing eye. Watching her Azkaban defense was quite impressive, and I hope that the hints of “Bones” in this chapter mean we’ll see her in action again, and not just as a potential signatory.
Moody should have expected Harry to outprepare him (and probably did) - based on past experiences, plus general caution. What Moody completely missed was the direction of Harry’s preparation—of having set up the meeting with his own goal in mind.
Harry’s reason given to the Malfoys for suspecting Quirrell is “just because he’s the defense professor.” I’m sure he knows all of this other evidence as well, and would consider it appropriately if actually given a chance to sit down and consider the possibilities (though he might be rather distracted by Draco’s Dumbledore hypothesis).
Has it been pointed out yet that while Hermione lay dying and Harry was trying to save her, he neglected to cover her in the cloak that hides the wearer from death, and also neglected to notice this fact during the time afterwards when he was getting mad at himself for everything he had screwed up?
Mrs. Hat-and-Cloak
In any fic that comes out in installments, there’s incentive for the author to have ever-more-gripping plot, for the sake of readers’ short attention spans. I’m glad Eliezer has not fallen into this spiral, and still feels able to post a chapter in which no new plot developments happen (other than characters finding out about previous events).
So have a heart-shaped red-foil-wrapped candy.
It’s okay, he’s just rewriting Ender’s Game.
I was enjoying the interpretation that each of them gets their own magical world optimized as they see fit, which would be such a lot of fun, though I agree that the “all but a remnant” line shoots that down, unless you want to be really dodgy in your interpretation of it (e.g. Harry’s mortal body dies, but he gets uploaded).
Just leaving the Pioneercrux going slowly out to infinity, to possibly have Voldy reform in a galaxy far, far away means that we don’t get any actual story in space. (Well, it doesn’t necessarily eliminate the possibility, but makes it a whole lot less probable). And my assessment of this fic is that Eliezer really can’t resist bringing magic to space for several chapters, because a) he’s demonstrate a need to constantly escalate in awesome; b) as a reader, I expect all the hints of magic-in-space to come to something significant; and c) just think of all the references he would include to every SF ever.
Prophesies are good things to read closely:
...for those two different spirits cannot exist in the same world.
Given the large amount of magic-space travel that’s been hinted at, I see this as a pretty clear indication of the final outcome of this fic: Voldy and Harry each get their own planets. It could also be the reason Voldemort has deliberately left Harry alive on many occasions (twice Quirrell saves him, on top of deliberately making him into a living horcrux instead of simply killing him. (comment here)
Another subtle point that was full of win:
“I cannot believe that guy’s reaction time,” Harry said, brushing off his Cloak as he stood up from where he’d been lying invisible on the floor, unseen by his previous self. “I can’t believe his movement speed either. I’m going to have to figure out some way to zap him without speaking an incantation that gives it away...”
The “I can’t believe it” is because it’s not true—this is the moment he figures out Moody can see him when invisible.
It’s been implied elsewhere, but I’m pretty sure that in HPMOR, Voldemort has specific plans for Harry that go beyond merely killing him, which included him deliberately being made into a horcrux.
Some evidence for this: the odd italicized text fragments in the early chapters (which Eliezer has emphasized), Harry wondering many times at the convenience of Voldemort’s supposed death, and repetition of the idea that Voldy should have a) known about sacrifice/dark rituals such as are involved in sacrificing yourself for somebody else and b) have had other, better, more guaranteed ways of killing Harry if that’s what he had wanted to accomplish.
Actually, further to that, I really think Voldy was intentional with the whole horcrux thing, as shown by the set-up of giving Lily the chance to escape. One possible reason for this is for Snape’s loyalty; another, which I consider more probable now, is that if she was going to die anyway it wouldn’t have counted as a sacrifice for the purposes of the (horcrux) ritual.
I still don’t see this as sufficiently different from a blue-green tribal fight—there’s a lot of “quantitative/Bayesian approaches are the way to go, and everyone else sucks”. By targeting everyone who is not an established philosopher, you’re just demonstrating that you’re smart enough to make this divide along generational lines (which is, as Kuhn tells us, how new paradigms succeed).
In my interpretation, yes, subconscious bias, and avoiding the issue or finding various non-answers when it is raised to conscious attention.
Hmm. My attempt at answering this: The “incidental decisions” is about such actions as choosing male candidates over female candidates with identical qualifications, ignoring women`s contributions at meetings and then agreeing strongly when a man later says the exact same thing, and so on. As for “excluding the threat”, maybe it refers to perceptions of women as being less skilled, rather than having the cognitive dissonance involved in admitting you’re picking the man because he is male.
The thought behind it was not too simplistic, but I think its presentation in that comment was, largely due to leaving out this background information; I think this is why it was downvoted, and is also what left it open to strawmanning (sigh sexist language).
I think it’s not.
I can’t figure out which part this is refering to.
Also: I’m pretty sure I agree with what you’ve been saying in these posts, including this one. (Has that come across clearly? I’m curious.) I also may have been strawmanning you (thanks MugaSofer for pointing this out), which is an interesting combination.
True. Sexism is frickin pervasive, and that is the underlying problem.
Though it’s only pointless quibbling at this point, I still think your previous comment was too simplistic—if nothing else, it doesn’t have any of the depth of this, and, though it is perfectly consistent with the view “most people, even good people, have sexist tendencies due to our culture”, it appears to be coming from a less well-developed view, which is why it has been downvoted. This again may be a question of inferential distance, which thus demonstrates itself to be a very useful concept.
In my opinion, the standard English/Math/Science that we expect elementary and high school students to learn are not difficult. I mean this as more than just “they were easy for me”; I think that with good teachers, the right motivation, curiosity, clear relations to other knowledge or interests, and paying attention, any reasonably intelligent child can learn them with far fewer hours of class time dedicated to the task than the current average. This would free up a lot of time to learn such “supplementary” material.
In fact, I think that the supplementary material is really, really helpful for developing interests in the core subjects. Reading and writing are, to a fairly large extent, the practice of thinking. If someone has had experiences facing discrimination and wants to relate their experience or what they think is going on societally, they will generally (or can easily be led to) learn to write well to express this. If someone is puzzled by what’s happening with the population of some animal around their house, they will be willing to learn basic ecological models and the associated math.
Of course, actually implementing any of these—especially good teachers—would require rather large changes to education as it is currently done, which seems difficult, to say the least.
Counterpoint: it appears that Harry is now serious about using Transfiguration as a weapon. However, he has not recently been considering very much else, meaning that he has fewer backups than perhaps he should, in the case where someone counters his Transfigurations (e.g. with good shields, or casting finite on Harry before a fight).