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Randaly comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2 - Less Wrong
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Ch. 33-34 Author's Note: "It is a general law of MoR that no one is ever holding the Idiot Ball."
We know (from Ch. 42) that Sirius is in Azkaban. Canon!Sirius was thrown in without a trial, and without having been administered veritaserum; however, this would seem to require the Ministry and Dumbledore to both be holding the Idiot Ball, violating the above rule. Alternately, Sirius could have been obviated personally by Voldemort, prior to his death (I assume that an obviation subtle enough to escape notice would require Voldemort), but this strikes me as unnecessarily complex.
However, it seems to me that the most obvious way for Eliezer to continue with the plotline is to simply make Sirius actually be a traitor, and Peter actually be a hero. This would wrap up several previously mentioned discrepancies (e.g. Scabber's death), and also preserve his ability to spring a surprise twist on everybody even though we already know what occurred in canon.
This is what Eliezer has already done (in the early chapters). If Eliezer switched it up and made Sirius not the traitor it would undermine two of Eliezer's morals: "Conspiracy Theories, paranoia and schizophrenia" and "Courage isn't about being too awesome to need to be scared, it's about doing stuff even when you do have reason to be scared".
In canon, it was precisely Peter's fear (greater than that of his friends) which led him to join Voldemort. So while I wouldn't like to see Sirius made into a bad guy (since I side with wrongfully convicted prisoners and don't want them to turn out to be guilty after all), it would be a powerful statement in favour of the power to overcome one's fears if Peter stayed a good guy.
It would also be a powerful lesson if Peter was able to see when his loyalty to a certain 'side' was irrational and make a considered choice to do the action that best allowed him to achieve his own goals. But that is exactly the wrong kind of signal for Eliezer to convey! ;)
That would be a Family-Unfriendly Aesop (TVTropes).
As far as the methods of decision-theoretic rationality go, whatever Peter ultimately wants is OK and not for us to judge; we just consider how he should best go about achieving his goals. But MoR is not just a lesson book in rationality, and I'm happy for works of fiction to give absolute moral lessons too (at least if I agree with them ^_^).
TvTropes!
Sorry, am I supposed to warn people? Done.
I don't know about supposed to but I like to and tend to appreciate it when others do. It reminds me to consider the tendency for humans to be whisked away into an endless depth first search of popular culture references.
This is just why I would be shocked if the 'Sirius bad' idea was reversed. The lessons the side plot has already conveyed are solid!
Funny, I've got the opposite impression -- that Eliezer was setting up to use Sirius' story as an example of how the obvious explanation is not always right and how reality is allowed to be weird and present you with evidence leading to wrong conclusions.
What puzzles me more is how Eliezer will explain the fact that Bill Weasley randomly guessed about Pettigrew and the others being animagi? That problem doesn't go away regardless of whether Sirius was the traitor or not. Did he really travel back in time? Schizophrenic wizards temporarily become seers? Maybe it's another emergent phenomenon?
Are we sure that, in MoR, they were?
I'm assuming that Eliezer makes major changes to canon only when it is neccessary to make the story work and that he will exploit resultant opportunities to mock canon, other fanfiction, conspiracy theories etc. but not go out of his way to create them. Yeah, that's a big assumption.
But also, there were hints. Lupin is poor so he is still a werewolf. When discussing the Weasleys' family rat story, Harry mentioned rumors that "Black deliberately tried to get a student killed during his time at Hogwarts". In canon, Black tried to trick Snape into following Lupin when the latter was about to turn during a full moon. So they knew. They still made the map (it was featured in one of the chapters, right?). Well, they didn't have to be animagi to do that, but come on, you can't take away a major aspect of their friendship and have everything else turn out exactly the same (except the teenage gay romance thing).
As I recall, In MoR, the Marauder's Map is an ancient artifact that's starting to break down a bit, so "Messers Moony, Padfoot, Wormtail, and Prongs" are not Lupin, Sirius, Peter, and James Potter under animagus-based nicknames. Unless Fred and George are wrong about the Map's origins, though being the master pranksters of the MoRniverse (and canon, for that matter) it seems likely that their judgment would be sound in this case. So, evidence that MoR!Pettigrew, et. al. are not necessarily animagi.
I interpreted it that the Messrs put their names on the front of this ancient artefact. From Chapter 25:
By the way, this reminds me that the Twins seem to have found a couple of errors on the map:
(That's why they might have shown it to Dumbledore, to get it fixed.) In canon, there are important (and only apparent) errors on the map in Book 3, showing Peter Pettigrew and Bartemius Crouch. What are they showing now?
Indeed, there has some skepticism about this expressed in the reviews
That's what I assumed that the secret in Chapter 42 was, until it wasn't.
I'd like to see that. Just because I really didn't like it when Bill got messed over like that.
Sometimes the world is just cruel for no reason.
I didn't mean to suggest that it was unrealistic. It is a far more likely interpretation of events and a rather clever observation. I just didn't like it. It make me sad. :)
I know. But I thought Eliezer may have been trying to make a deliberate point, and I wanted to draw it out.