PeterS comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Unnamed 30 August 2010 05:37AM

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Comment author: PeterS 06 September 2010 09:56:43PM 2 points [-]

Anyone have any guesses as to what Quirrell's game is?

Quirrell is operating on a level that I surely don't understand. The only theory I can think of that's neither preposterous nor disappointing is that Quirrell is protecting Horcrux!Harry.

In light of the recent exchange where Quirrell asks Harry how he would hide something:

Tell me, Mr. Potter, if you wanted to lose something where no one would ever find it again, where would you put it?"

... "Well," said Harry, "besides trying to get it into the molten core of the planet, you could bury it in solid rock a kilometer underground in a randomly selected location - maybe teleport it in, if there's some way to do that blindly, or drill a hole and repair the hole afterward; the important thing would be not to leave any traces leading there, so it's just an anonymous cubic meter somewhere in the Earth's crust. You could drop it into the Mariana Trench, that's the deepest depth of ocean on the planet - or just pick some random other ocean trench, to make it less obvious. If you could make it bouyant and invisible, then you could throw it into the stratosphere. Or ideally you would launch it into space, with a cloak against detection, and a randomly fluctuating acceleration factor that would take it out of the Solar System. And afterward, of course, you'd Obliviate yourself, so even you didn't know exactly where it was."

The Defense Professor was laughing, and it sounded even odder than his smile.

... "All excellent suggestions," said Professor Quirrell. "But tell me, Mr. Potter, why those exact five?"

"Huh?" said Harry. "They just seemed like the obvious sorts of ideas."

"Oh?" said Professor Quirrell. "But there is an interesting pattern to them, you see. One might say it sounds like something of a riddle."

Assume that Quirrell was asking where he could hide a Horcrux. It's funny because all those options leave Horcrux!Harry dead. The riddle is thus:

  • Voldemort must hide his Horcruxes in a place where his mortal enemy, Harry Potter, will never be able to find them.
  • Harry Potter is one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.

Any takers?

Comment author: mkehrt 09 September 2010 12:15:20AM 8 points [-]

Or ideally you would launch it into space, with a cloak against detection, and a randomly fluctuating acceleration factor that would take it out of the Solar System.

Is this a MoR explanation for the Pioneer anomaly? Because that would be awesome.

Also, I assumed Voldemort was talking about the classical elements, too, and was amused that Harry, a scientist, had come up with those at random.

Comment author: Sniffnoy 09 September 2010 01:14:52AM 3 points [-]

Is this a MoR explanation for the Pioneer anomaly? Because that would be awesome.

I noticed that as well, but the Pioneer anomaly doesn't randomly fluctuate IINM, and he would have had to not only horcruxed both Pioneer plaques, but also screwed up his randomness so as to get approximately the same anomaly on both.

Comment author: TobyBartels 09 September 2010 04:47:44AM 2 points [-]

Unfortunately, he only did one plaque.

"I subscribe to a Muggle bulletin which keeps me informed of progress on space travel. I didn't hear about Pioneer 10 until they reported its launch. But when I discovered that Pioneer 11 would also be leaving the Solar System forever," Professor Quirrell said, his grin the widest that Harry had yet seen from him, "I snuck into NASA, I did, and I cast a lovely little spell on that lovely golden plaque which will make it last a lot longer than it otherwise would."

Comment author: katydee 09 September 2010 04:53:25AM 2 points [-]

Unless he lied.

Comment author: TobyBartels 09 September 2010 02:10:06PM 2 points [-]

Unless it's all part of his fiendish plot to trick Harry in precisely that way, there really isn't any point in telling that story with that untruth. But you are correct.

Comment author: orthonormal 06 September 2010 10:05:33PM 6 points [-]

Naw, the "interesting pattern" is the contrived "fire, earth, water, air, void" pattern to the suggestions. It seems rather out of character for that meme to slip into MoR Harry's subconscious, though.

Comment author: wedrifid 07 September 2010 01:59:10AM 4 points [-]

Naw, the "interesting pattern" is the contrived "fire, earth, water, air, void" pattern to the suggestions.

Really? Not "inaccessible places ordered by increasing distance from the centre of the earth".

Comment author: Nisan 08 September 2010 10:48:12AM 10 points [-]

These two patterns are the same. Recall that the world is composed of four elemental planes, and each element is attracted to its plane. This explains why rocks fall but air rises in water.

Classically, we would expect the plane of fire to lie above the atmosphere, because fire rises in air. But in this case, fire is the lowest plane.

Comment author: NihilCredo 09 September 2010 06:00:37AM *  8 points [-]

I now want to see someone write a high school physics' handbook in which every single fact that gets mentioned is correctly described, but everything is interpreted according to Aristotelian physics.

Comment author: PeterS 06 September 2010 10:10:15PM *  3 points [-]

True, I didn't look at it that way. It seems more likely that that's correct -- "Why those exact five?" -- but why would Quirrell find it so amusing?

edit: Maybe Voldemort has already hidden his Horcruxes in just those manners -- we already suspect that he launched one into space. In that case the riddle may be -- given that Harry and Voldemort think in precisely the same way, how can Voldemort think of a hiding place that Harry wouldn't think of himself?

edit2: It's out of character for them to come naturally to Harry, but not to Voldemort. Voldemort is into that kind of superstitious ambiance -- e.g. he wanted precisely 7 Horcruxes, because it's a lucky number. Harry is part Voldemort, so that's why they slipped into his subconscious.

*shrug* maybe I'm grasping at straws.

Comment author: whpearson 06 September 2010 10:07:33PM *  5 points [-]

Not been reading the series recently... but I noticed that these are classical elements

Roughly fire, earth, sea, air and void. Which fits the japanese element system.

Unsure of the meaning though.

Edit: I've recently learnt that Voldemort real name was Tom Riddle, did he like riddles in canon? It could just be Voldy checking to see how strong his horcrux's influence was on Harry?

Comment author: TobyBartels 07 September 2010 01:39:03AM 3 points [-]

Already the ancient Greeks extended their four elements with the fifth: quintessence, or æther, the substance of which the heavens are made. (So four elements in the world, a fifth in the heavens, and never shall they meet.) So I took Voldemort's riddle as referring to Greek rather than Japanese elementology.

I don't recall any Riddle riddles in canon. In Book 2, identifying Riddle as Voldemort is the riddle that the reader (or Harry, but he never did) must solve. Later on, Dumbledore considers the riddle of why Riddle became what he did.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 07 September 2010 01:56:04AM *  2 points [-]

Well, in book 2, it seems to be a point that the reader is supposed to solve a riddle based on his name. This is parodied in Barry Trotter where everything remotely connected to the villain is some anagram of the villain's name.

Comment author: Pavitra 07 October 2010 08:16:35PM 1 point [-]

One might say it sounds like something of a riddle.

That is, it sounds like something Riddle would say.

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