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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4
[Update: and now there's a fifth discussion thread, which you should probably use in preference to this one. Later update: and a sixth -- in the discussion section, which is where these threads are living for now on. Also: tag for HP threads in the main section, and tag for HP threads in the discussion section.]
The third discussion thread is above 500 comments now, just like the others, so it's time for a new one. Predecessors: one, two, three. For anyone who's been on Mars and doesn't know what this is about: it's Eliezer's remarkable Harry Potter fanfic.
Spoiler warning and helpful suggestion (copied from those in the earlier threads):
Spoiler Warning: this thread contains unrot13'd spoilers for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality up to the current chapter and for the original Harry Potter series. Please continue to use rot13 for spoilers to other works of fiction, or if you have insider knowledge of future chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
A suggestion: mention at the top of your comment which chapter you're commenting on, or what chapter you're up to, so that people can understand the context of your comment even after more chapters have been posted. This can also help people avoid reading spoilers for a new chapter before they realize that there is a new chapter.
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Comments (649)
chp 54
So much for Harry's intent to kill. The Most Dangerous Student in the Classroom gets to his first real battle and he does just the opposite.
I guess Harry's Gryffindor/Patronus side is leading the way here, not his Slytherin/dark side (as I mentioned in the last paragraph of my other comment).
Well, it wasn't an individual who deserved death. Harry may have an intent to kill but he isn't going to direct it at someone like an Auror without a lot more provocation.
The rot13 use is becoming excessive in this forum, there is already a spoiler warning on the post. Let EY make a special request for it when he thinks speculation goes too far.
I wonder how difficult it would be to add a "Rot13 this" button to the options under each text item (that is, next to "Vote up" and "Vote down" and so forth).
That would significantly reduce the nuisance factor associated with reading r13'd posts, without the site having to give up whatever value it is people see in using them.
Not that I'm offering to write the code, or anything actually useful like that. Just ruminating.
That's much too much work, and it'll be pretty bad for the website. It'll require another database query for every post on every thread (which means the site will be slower and more expensive), but it'll only be used on, what? The Harry Potter threads and the occasional brainteaser?
Textbook example of overkill.
EDIT: I misunderstood the request. I stand by it being overkill, though.
Whence the extra database queries? Presumably it could all be done on the client side in JavaScript.
I agree that it would be overkill to have it on every comment, though.
It was earlier pointed out to me that the same goal can be achieved already (and without any changes to database interaction) by means of a browser plugin, which is a superior approach all around and makes this whole thread moot. So, yes, agreed that it was a lousy idea in the first place.
If we are going automate this, we should just use spoiler tags, so the marked text can be revealed on highlighting, or when a button is clicked or whatever.
This is not an endorsement of the add-on , but if you use Firefox
/dave feels sheepish/
Yes, of course there would be such a thing, and I ought to have looked for it rather than proposing that the feature be built into the site itself. Clearly, my intuitions have been distorted by working on self-contained rather then Web apps for too many years.
Thanks for both the thought and the pointer.
I think the policy should be that you do not need to rot13 anything about HMPOR 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.
More specificallly, (and I have to use rot13 here), vg'f svar gb jevgr nobhg Ibyqrzbeg pbagebyyvat Dhveeryy (jvgubhg hfvat ebg13), ohg lbh qb arrq gb hfr ebg13 vs lbh zragvba gur qryrgrq nhgube'f abgr nobhg gung be pynvz gung Jbeq bs Tbq unf rfgnoyvfurq gung D=I.
I affirm that this is what I think the policy should be. Speculation does not require spoilers.
Downvoted for endorsing a policy that requires people to keep track of whether something is still in the current version of the fic. I didn't know until today that the thing Unnamed put in rot13 had been "disrevealed".
I only just discovered what you meant here. I totally agree. Enforcement of 'unrevelation' spoiler policies is utterly absurd and is a norm that I would oppose rather than support.
The worst that can happen is that you make an error (and possibly fix it). A meaningful question could be, for example, whether the incentives drive the outcome in a wrong direction, or their enforcement is more trouble than it's worth.
Independent of the fact that I believe the desired outcome (less free discussion) is itself a wrong direction, it also encourages EY to be careless with authors notes in the future, due to believing he can "take them back". It also punishes people for honest mistakes.
Maybe 8 karma isn't a lot to you, but it's what I lost just for disagreeing, not even for violating the rule myself. I also think that rot13 is a bad choice, since it requires external programs - implementing a spoiler tag for comments the way there appears to be one in use in some article posts would reduce the burden both to discuss spoilers and to read those discussions. (this is more "compliance is more trouble than it's worth" than "enforcement is more trouble than it's worth", but it's a similar kind of problem.)
I think a likely result is that people either shy away from discussing it at all, or have it as an implicit assumption (to their unrot13ed posts) and are caught in a trap when someone who doesn't know asks what they're talking about. Or we end up with a lot of noise whenever someone who isn't aware of the rule runs into it.
I will add, having read some of the thread again with an eye for it, that it is enforced haphazardly. I've seen numerous posts that mention it and have a positive score.
EDIT: Here's a link to my post with a list of such posts
Don't do that. You're just helping the arbitrary punishers find more targets!
EY has made such a special request for it, and most of the rot13 content here is in compliance with that particular request.
ch53
Also... why in the world is Harry using the labels "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" and "Dark Lord" in his thinking, rather than "Voldemort"? Ditto Quirrell. It seems pointlessly imprecise.
We've established that there can be multiple Dark Lords, maybe even at the same time, and I see no clear reason to believe there's only been one in the last century. And one can manufacture "He Who Must Not Be Named"s to one's heart's content. Is this deliberate, either on the author's part or (bizarrely) the characters'?
[edit: oops. I'm a doof; thomblake points to the relevant cite below. (Thanks thomblake!) Which now makes me really wonder whether there's a massive piece of misdirection going on along the lines of what I reference below.
What I ought to do is go back through the fic and see who says what about the-presumed-to-be-singular-entity variously referred to as "Dark Lord," "He Who Must Not Be Named," "Voldemort", "Tom Riddle", etc. and decide what I believe about that entity's singularity.
Well, no. What I ought to do is get back to work. Here I go...)
Now that I think about it, this would be a decidedly clever strategy for a mastermind in the HPverse has to adopt.
That is, suppose I establish the "He Who Must Not Be Named" convention and then order a trusted (male) lieutenant to do something, and order everyone never to call him by name, on pain of death.
Now, "He Who Must Not Be Named" is doing that thing, while I am doing something else (say, establishing an alibi).
There's a term for the fallacy this takes advantage of, where I confuse myself by forgetting that the referent for a label like "the President of the United States" can change between uses; I've forgotten what it is.
Of course, this wouldn't work with any forensic technique that actually involved interacting with objects in the world outside one's mind.
But magic in the HP-verse (and, really, magic in fiction more generally) is so bizarrely inconsistent about when it's interacting with objects and when it's interacting with labels that it might be worthwhile.
In fact, there have been at least two Dark Lords in this (the 20th) century, since Grindelwald (defeated 1945) was also a Dark Lord. (But in canon, he is still alive at this time and imprisoned, although in Nurmengard rather than in Azkaban.)
In canon, using Voldemort's name was highly discouraged. Also:
Chapter 3:
Consider how, in 51-54, Harry decides to trust Quirrell. No one ought to trust Quirrell, at all. He has some agenda, which he does not let on to. Even if he did describe his complete agenda, you'd never be able to trust that he was telling the truth, because he's so rational and self-controlled that he would be equally able to tell you something almost the truth, except for certain modifications made to make your cooperation more likely.
And few people trust Harry; and with good reason.
The more rational someone is, the less you can trust them. The less rational someone is, the more you can trust them. You can trust a bigot to keep acting bigoted. You can trust a religious zealot to stay true to her faith. You can trust someone who votes the party line without thinking to keep voting the party line.
Whereas, a religious zealot who actually thinks about her religious principles is much less reliable. The Jesuits are a perfect example of this - religious, but prone to thinking about their religion, and thus a neverending source of heresy and controversy within the Church. A politician who actually thinks about the issues might break with his party, or vote differently than the people who elected him expected.
How much does society rely on our irrationality, on our inability to change our minds or avoid signalling our true intent, and our inability to avoid following through on our emotional commitments (revenge, punishment, reward, nepotism)? What's the social cost of rationality? Is it reasonable to think that people have evolved to be less-than-optimally rational?
I think in this post when you say 'trust' you really mean 'predict'. A trivial counterexample: the more rational someone is, the more I can trust them to be free of errors in their reasoning. And it IS easier to predict a religious zealot staying religious, or predict that a bigot will remain bigoted, than it is to predict a rational agent attempting to maximize their utility (especially if you're an obstacle to their utility).
Well, yes, if there was some shortcut that gave the mostly-optimal answer, or gave the optimal answer most of the time, and gave it in a significantly faster time than optimal rationality. The common example is, I think, reacting to the presence of a lion. Abject, heart-pounding, run-for-your-life terror is not optimally rational (it generally precludes climbing a tree) but it gives a mostly-optimal answer in a much shorter time than attempting to reason out the optimal course of action.
But what if our irrationalities aren't quick-and-dirty heuristics optimized for speed? What known cognitive biases are even applicable to running away from a lion?
What if some of our cognitive biases are evolved adaptations that make human society work better? It would be pretty surprising to me if this weren't the case!
ERROR: POSTULATION OF GROUP SELECTION IN MAMMALS DETECTED
Speech seems like an evolved adaptation that makes human society work better.
Why are people voting Tim's comment down so hard? Are there actually three people out there, let alone a majority of LWers, who do not believe it is correct?
I have seen people observe that they tend to be inclined to downvote tim readily, having long since abandoned giving him the benefit of the doubt. (This is not my position.)
Absolutely - when considering what it means in multiple level context which Tim explicitly quoted he is wrong on a group-selection-caps level of wrongness. (I was not someone who voted but I just added mine.)
I thought your (PhilGoetz) post on group selection was a good one, particularly with the different kinds of (subscripted) group selection that you mentioned and mentions of things like ants. But now that I see what prompted the post and what position you were trying to support I infer that you actually are confused about group selection, not merely presenting a more nuanced understanding.
... is spot on.
You are reading in too much context. You only have to look at the portion reproduced in Tim's comment. Eliezer asserted that there is no such thing as evolved adaptations that make human society work better. Tim provided an example, proving Eliezer wrong.
If you think I'm confused, try to say why. So far, no one has presented any evidence that I am "confused" about anything in <EDIT>the group selection post</EDIT>. There is some disagreement about definitions; but that is not confusion.
Close, but not exactly correct. My interpretation of what Eliezer EMOTED is that there are no adaptations which evolved because they make human society work better. That would be group selection by Eliezer's definition. Eliezer might well accept the existence of adaptations which evolved because they make humans work better and that incidentally also make society work better.
ETA. Ok, it appears that a literal reading of what EY wrote supports your interpretation. But I claim my interpretation matches what he meant to say. That is, he was objecting to what he thought you meant to say. Oh, hell. Why did I even decide to get involved in this mess?
I believe this to be correct representation of Eliezer's meaning and that meaning to be be an astute response to the parent.
It surely is an unsympatthetic reading to conclude from: "What if some of our cognitive biases are evolved adaptations that make human society work better?" - that those adaptations did not also benefit social human individuals, and may have evolved for that purpose.
You may note that I took care to emphasize that my reply was to what you were conveying in the context. Phil's comment does postulate group selection. While as a standalone sentence your comment is literally correct I downvoted it because it constitutes either a misunderstanding of the conversation or a flawed argument for an incorrect position.
What is the incorrect position? If you say "that group selection is possible", please state your reasons for being so certain about it.
In any case, my comment does not postulate group selection. It wasn't even on my mind when I wrote it.
Speech, sexual selection rituals, sex itself, cooperation in the social insects ... There are many things which seem to require a more complex and subtle narrative for their explanation than the usual simple Darwinian story of a mutant individual doing better than his conspecific competitors and then passing on his genes.
But that doesn't mean that a died-in-the-wool neo-Darwinian needs to accept the group-selection explanation any more than an Ayn Rand fan confronted with a skyscraper has to admit that Kropotkin was right after all.
However, I am taking your implicit advise and dutifully upvoting Tim's comment.
I wasn't suggesting that speech evolved via group selection - just that it evidently did evolve - and so proposing the existence of "evolved adaptations that make human society work better" is not an error.
Tim's comment doesn't say that speech evolved via group selection. It could be that it did not; in that case, Tim's comment would be pointing out that Eliezer was unjustified in calling out a belief in "evolved adaptations that make human society work better" as an error.
I was just thinking how there's a weird hivemind thing going on with the downvotes. Well-written and cordial posts arguing against the site's preferred positions are being summarily downvoted to invisibility.
This doesn't look like a very healthy discussion dynamic.
I have been using the Kibitzer since I started posting, and my handle on this matter is that well-written, cordial posts that don't use LW techniques are downvoted. That is, they argue against the preferred position, and they are downvoted because they argue badly. Small corroborations: the posts that get summarily upvoted are ones that point out lack-of-rationality in the arguments, upvotes on topics when they aren't flawed.
If that seems like an unhealthy discussion dynamic then you should review the LW techniques for rationality and make a top level post explaining how using these techniques, or how requiring everyone to use these techniques, could result in unhealthy discussions.
Possibility: Well-written, cordial posts are your criteria for upvotes because cordiality and well-writtenness usually correlate with clear thinking and good reasoning. This is true over most of the blog, except for the edge cases. These cases have their roots in subtle cognitive biases, not gross emotional biases, and it's possible that lack of writing skill and cordiality points out gross emotional biases but not subtler ones.
I think I feel the problem is more a mismatch between the subtlety of the problem and the bluntness of the tool. Downvotes are a harsh and low-signal way of pointing problems in arguments, and seem more suited to punishing comments which can be identified as crap at a glance. Since this site isn't doing the free-for-all comedy club thing Slashdot and Reddit have going, I'm not sure that the downvote mechanic quite belongs here to begin with. Users posting downright nonsense and noise don't even belong on the site, and bad arguments can be ignored or addressed instead of just anonymously downvoting them.
And yes, this probably should go to a toplevel post, but I don't have the energy for that scale of meta-discussion right now.
Downvoting wrong comments may be harsh for the person being downvoted, but hopefully in the long run it can encourage better comments, or at least make it easier to find good comments.
There may be some flaws in the karma system or the way it's used by the community, but I don't see any obvious improvements, or any other systems that would obviously work better.
Look at mwaser: he complains a lot about being downvoted, but he also got a lot of feedback for what people found lacking in his post. Yes, a portion of the downvotes he gets may be due to factors unrelated to the quality of his arguments (he repeatedly promotes his own blog, and complains about the downvotes being a proof of community irrationality - both can get under people's skin), which is a bit unfortunate, but not a fatal flaw of the karma system.
Downvoting mechanism is one way of making sure that obvious nonsense-posting gets visibly and quickly discouraged. Without it, there would be more nonsense.
The kibitzer does nothing to protect people from groupthink.
I haven't seen any recent examples of this recently (since the last times cryonics evangelism was considered, of course.) I suspect that instead you do not recognise the kinds of error in reasoning that have been detected and responded to.
That would be a systemic problem that deserves its own top level post.
Error: Most of human history is a recounting of group selection in humans. Every time one group of people displaces another group by virtue of superior technology or social organization, that's group selection.
Having a belief in, or at least openness to, group selection, is one of my rationality tests.
In related news, this weeks Science has the clearest demonstration of group selection that I've seen: The ability to self-pollinate in plants gives individuals a great reproductive advantage; but also increases the likelihood of the entire species going extinct. The presence of a feature (self-pollination) that provides an advantage to the individual, provides a disadvantage to the species, that causes species-level selection.
This is something of a quibble, but you really shouldn't think of species-level selection as a kind of group selection. In both group and individual selection, it is the species that evolves. But in species-level selection, the species does not evolve. It is selected - it either lives or dies.
Another key difference - the usual argument against group selection is that it is ineffective since individual selection is a stronger force. That is, individual selection is said to push harder and change the species more than does group selection. But comparing species-level selection and individual selection, it makes no sense to say that one is more powerful than the other. They are playing different games.
My apologies. Most theorists say species selection is a subclass of group selection; but Stephen J. Gould says it is not. See the long explanation here.
That is true if you're talking about features that groups have and individuals don't, or traits that aren't inherited genetically. But all the literature on group selection is about the competition between individual and group (including species) selection, within the same game of selecting genes.
I appreciate the effort you are putting into this, but I fear the terminological and theoretical confusion regarding group selection run far too deep. One enthusiastic person is not going to straighten things out in a forum where evolutionary biology is not the central focus. And now that academian has weighed in, the cause is hopeless. ;)
I agree with you (and Tim) that Eliezer's opposition to group selection was a bit naive and under-informed. But not completely wrong-headed. Many incorrect arguments in favor of group selection have been made over the years. A lot of them were incorrect because they simply did not work. Others were "epistemologically incorrect" because, though they worked, they could be reinterpreted more "parsimoniously" as individual-level selection.
D.S. Wilson's "Truth and Reconciliation" blog series strikes me as an example of extremely dishonest labeling. What he is really saying is that if everyone who disagrees with him would just accept his version of the truth, then reconciliation will take place. And his book "Unto Others" strikes me as even more dishonest. He defines "group selection" extremely broadly, provides examples of corner cases in which his "trait group selection" mechanism works, and then (here is the dishonest part) claims that if group selection works even in this extreme case, then it will obviously work in other cases.
Then he proceeds to discuss the case which every non-professional has in mind when he thinks of group selection - human evolution with groups = tribes, group death = tribe extinction, and group birth = split-up of a successful and populous tribe. The trouble is that the math of group selection really doesn't work in this case.
The only cases I know of where the group selection models do work are (1) Species level selection (Gould/Eldredge), examples like your non-selfing plants; and (2) the examples that Wilson gives in which "groups" are rather short-lived entities which "succeed" by keeping their members alive for a while and then returning them safely to the general population, where the individuals reproduce. A good example of a group that Wilson might use as an example of trait-group selection would be a flock of geese conducting a seasonal migration. Such a group might be selected against if it got seriously lost, or blundered into a tornado, or suffered some other collective catastrophe.
A human hunting party is another example of a "group" such that the mathematics of group selection works. A human tribe of hunter-gatherers is not, unless it is so reproductively isolated from other tribes so as to qualify as a species. I'm pretty sure that this degree of isolation (less than two cross-tribe matings per generation) has never held over any long period of time in human history.
But group selection for cultural traits is another question. If genes get transferred between tribes, but memes do not, then selection at the level of tribes may well help to determine the course of human cultural/memetic evolution.
Well, I seem to have provided you with a long response, which, unlike your own efforts, does not include any links/citations. Sorry about that. You are under no obligation to trust or believe me on this stuff. I will merely assert that I (and tim_tyler as well) have been a serious amateur enthusiast for evolutionary theory for many years. Clearly, you have been too. I do recommend though, that you take a second look at D.S. Wilson's work in light of my criticisms. He really is pulling something of a bait-and-switch. See if you agree.
Sorry, but I think this is completely wrong. Species-level selection isn't "like" group selection. It is group selection. In group selection, groups are selected for or against. That is the mechanism for group selection. That is the mechanism for group initially described by Darwin in chapter 4 of Descent of Man, and defended by Edward Wilson. It just happens not to be the straw-man depiction used by some opponents of group selection. They chose to ignore selection at the group level because it is easier to rebut group selection if you first assume that it doesn't happen.
Can you provide a reference for that usage?
They are both attempting to influence the same germ line. They are both attempting to influence the same set of traits. It makes reasonably good sense to look at a trait - and to ask whether it is more for the benefit of the individual or the species.
For example, one such trait might be: a love of swimming. That might be bad for an individual (drowning), but good for the species (island speciation).
Just because we are dealing with one individual, that doesn't mean it doesn't evolve. Check with the definitions of the term "evolution" - they (mostly) refer to genetic change over time. You could argue that they also (mostly) talk about a "population" - and one individual doesn't qualify as a "population" - but if you think through that objection, it too is essentially wrong.
Uh, I'm pretty sure I just stated that an individual - the species - does evolve. It evolves by way of organism-level or group-level selection. It just doesn't evolve by going extinct or not.
As for whether one individual qualifies as a population, I've thought about that and completely failed to imagine a population of one individual evolving by way of the standard mechanisms of evolutionary population genetics. That kind of population cannot evolve by differential birth, death, or migration. (I suppose it can change by mutation).
The thing you have forgotten in trying to extrapolate the meaning of 'population' in this way is that the essential feature of a biological evolving population is that its size is not fixed and its membership changes in time, whereas a population of exactly one entity by definition does not change its membership count in time.
Now, I will agree that a population of entities (say, the population of biological species within a genus) can evolve by selection even though its membership count occasionally fluctuates through having only a single individual. The genus does evolve. But the evolution of the genus as a population of individual species and the evolution of the component species as (possibly structured into groups) populations of individual organisms are conceptually distinct processes.
But here is not the place to continue this discussion. If you wish, please bring it up on sbe, and Dr. Hoeltzer can join in. I think he is getting probably lonely over there since we left, and the newsgroup is dominated by John, Tom, and Peter.
I realize your views may have changed by now, but isn't that obviously caused by Red Queen effects? Just like all other sexual reproduction?
That is one definition of "group selection". However, there is another definition - according to which "group selection" must refer to a different theory from "individual selection" - a theory that makes different predictions. For that you would need to show that the genetic traits that led to technological mastery benefited groups in a way that was systematically different from the way that they benefited the individuals that composed those groups.
I think it suffices to show that selection can operate at the level of the group. Even if all of the traits involved provide some advantage to individuals, if they also provide an advantage to the group, then group-level selection needs to be considered.
It is more interesting if you can show that a trait that does not confer an advantage to an individual, has an effect on group selection. But it is an unreasonable bias to demand that group selection requires traits that do not provide any advantage to an individual, and yet at the same time not insist that the theory of individual selection requires traits that do not provide any advantage to the group.
I should clarify - "group selection" connotes what Tim is describing: Selection for altruistic traits in individuals, by selection at the group level. That's because, historically, group selection has been invoked only to explain things that individual selection can't.
However, this has led to people excluding selection at the group level from models and simulations, because "group selection bad".
If group selection wasn't responsible for naked mole rats, what would be the right term for it? Kin selection seems like too much of an understatement for them.
Hmmm. Presumably there would be no objection had the speculation been worded "evolved adaptations that make people thrive in human society".
Now all I need to do is to figure out whether the meanings of the two are really different.
Be careful.
"Adaptations that make people thrive" can be interpreted in two ways: "adaptations that make people [who possess those adaptations] thrive" or "adaptations that make people [in general, including those who don't possess the adaptation] thrive."
As I understand it, the latter interpretation is essentially equivalent to group selection; the former is not. So it helps to be clear about what exactly you're saying.
Your original formulation ("make society work better") implies the latter pretty strongly. Your rewording is more ambiguous.
In any case, if you are proposing the former -- that is, if you are proposing that some of our biases have evolved to make the individuals expressing that bias more successful -- there's no group selection error, and I agree that it would be pretty surprising if that weren't the case.
Of course, as has been said several times, that doesn't mean those biases currently make individuals expressing them more successful.
Just because they are evolved, doesn't mean they are optimal. An evolved adaptation can be just as "dirty" as a fast cognitive heuristic; the architectural constraints of learning through genes can be just as constraining as those of coming up with something to do fast.
I've put forward a hypothetical, not claimed a proof. What's the point of responding, "But that isn't necessarily the case"?
You know, you're right. I was responding to peripheral aspects of your proposal rather than central ones, which is a waste of everyone's time. My apologies.
So, OK... rolling back: if I'm understanding you, you're hypothesizing that our biases are not design flaws, but rather adaptations to obtain the group-level benefit of having individuals be more irrational and therefore predictable.
(Is that right? I'm trying to infer a positive claim out of a series of questions, which is always tricky; if I've misunderstood your hypothetical it might be helpful to restate it more explicitly.)
Perhaps irrationality does provide a group-level benefit, as you suggest. For example, maybe it's easier to get valuable group behaviors by manipulating irrational people than by cooperating with rational ones. That doesn't strike me as too plausible, but it's possible.
Even granting that, though, I have trouble with the idea that the benefit to individual breeders exceeds the costs to the individual of being more easily manipulated by others.
Yes, and let me add to that, just because something was adaptive when humans evolved doesn't mean it is at all adaptive now. To use a concrete example, the weight humans put on anecdotes is likely connected to the fact that in our ancestral environment, that was the primary source of data about what the risks around us were. However, now this leads to silly things like people being terribly scared of shark attacks precisely due to the rarity of such attacks making them get a lot of news coverage.
Okay, not evolved adaptations, but how about culturally/socially imprinted cognitive biases? Something about
clicks with Nancy's comment here.
The more I thought about it ... it seemed like rational agents couldn't trust anyone (the best course is to convince them to trust you and then betray them while never trusting anyone yourself) except in the early and middle stages of iterated games. But a society where everyone irrationally trusted everyone else, and irrationally nobody betrayed anyone else, would be more successful than the 'rational agent' community. (all things being equal; if their irrational trust also caused them to irrationally trust lions...) It might stretch the word evolution too much, but I think the term "competitive selection" applies to this process of societies competing with each other for growth and the most effective societies wiping out the less effective societies (wiping out or completely integrating, as the lesser society's land and resources would already be purposed towards supporting a society, and therefore more desirable than land requiring work).
Basically, what if 'trust' is because a society where everyone trusts the other guy to cooperate in a PD was successful enough to dominate the landscape?
NB: Originally I had thought of trust as a sort of greenbearding. Is there an analogous concept in sociocultural evolution?
In the real world, the iteration never completely ends.
A population or society in which everyone trusts completely is not an ESS. A population or society in which everyone adopts the slogan "trust, but verify" and cooperates in the punishment of defectors and non-punishing freeriders probably is an ESS, assuming the cost of verification and punishment are low and verification is reasonably effective.
Your second quote is ill-formatted.
This gets to one of the Hard Problems, both for FAI and a great deal of life. How can you tell who can be trusted to do a good job of taking your interests into account?
This is not always the case. In fact, in practice I trust rational people far more than those that are irrational. If I know what a rational person's goals are, know the respective payoffs for each of the various available options then I can reliably predict what the rational person will do. Irrational people can not always be counted on to do what is in their own best interest - this makes them less predictable than they would be if they were rational unless they are an adversary trying specifically to foil your intelligence.
Chapter 51 (emphasis added):
Chapter 54:
Seems to indicate that Quirrell casted some kind of spell on Harry at that point in Chapter 51.
Anyone have any ideas as to what this is about?
Why does he need to float the pouch about at all? Why not just pick it up?
That's the telekinesis that allowed Harry to activate the time-turner. If Harry's hypothesis about the sense of doom being magical disharmony is correct, then the creepiness would just be from getting close to one of Quirrell's spells. And the subterfuge with the wand direction isn't intended to fool Harry (who knew that Quirrell planned to cast telekinesis), but rather is Quirrell's distrust of the privacy wards.
With Chapters 55-56, I have some theories regarding Quirrell's true plan. He is Voldemort (or rather contains a piece of Voldemort) but we know he doesn't want Harry dead; he's had ample opportunity to simply murder Harry if that was the goal. I think rescuing Bellatrix is a distraction as well, really nothing more than a cover story or "fortunate side effect" of achieving the true goal. If rescuing Bellatrix was the true goal, he wouldn't have jeopardized the mission by attempting to murder the auror.
I think Quirrell's ultimate goal is the Dementation of Harry, probably in order to draw out Harry's dark side (which I think is the horcrux-fragment of Voldemort). He tried this at Hogwarts and it would have worked if not for Hermione's intervention. Since he was unlikely to be able to bring Dementors to Hogwarts a second time, he concluded that he'd have to bring Harry to Azkaban. The rescue plan is a cover story designed to persuade Harry into going to Azkaban--although I suppose Quirrell figured he might as well make the rescue target someone who could actually be useful to him/Voldemort if freed.
So basically Quirrell deliberately put himself out of commission, thinking that Harry would quickly fall prey to the Dementors in such a situation. The hole in my theory is that this seems like an all-or-nothing play: he's now revealed at least three pieces of important information to Harry (1. His own willingness to kill innocents; 2. The spell-clash aspect of their joined magics--which for my theory to be correct, Quirrell must already have known about; and 3. Quirrell's own insanely-high power level). These three pieces together are probably enough to make Harry suspect that Quirrell is an aspect of Voldemort, once he has the chance to think things through. Quirrell is subtle enough that he should have had a backup plan in place in order to retain Harry's trust in the event that Harry is not Demented, but I can't imagine what that might be. Maybe Quirrell's backup plan involves the Imperius Curse or memory charms or something. I'd say that "Kill Harry" would be the simplest and most obvious backup plan, but I think Voldemort wants/needs Harry alive.
Not a prediction so much as a guess: Bellatrix's Innervate charm did work on Quirrell. He's currently faking unconsciousness (and remaining in the form that gives himself some protection from the Dementors) as he waits to see whether Harry will or will not succumb to Dementation.
To counter this, it was Harry's actions that lead to the fight with the auror. Up to the point that Harry almost lost control of his patronus Quirrell had been acting to shield Harry's hearing, perhaps fearing that exact response. I don't think there is any evidence that the fight was inevitable.
I agree that it's unreasonable to expect that Quirrell could have anticipated the entire chain of events that led to the duel with Bahry. However, it's not at all unreasonable to expect that a duel with one or more aurors would occur at some point during the course of breaking in and out of Azkaban, and in fact we know that Quirrell planned for this contingency, because he gave Harry standing orders for what to do if/when it happened. So, while that fight was not inevitable, a fight was always likely.
Doesn't work. It was Quirrell (and only Quirrell) who spotted Harry's wand next to the Dementor's cage and alerted Flitwick so he could remove it.
If he had wanted Harry Demented he would have kept his mouth shut.
I think he did that because he didn't want Hermione going in front of the Dementor again -- she was getting too much information from it -- and also because he figured (rightly) that Harry had already received enough exposure for his purposes.
But it was more likely that Harry would get picked up be Aurors than Dementors (now it doesn't look that way, but Quirrell couldn't have predicted Harry's actions), and Quirrell wouldn't risk his own arrest.
Yes, my theory definitely depends on believing that Quirrell COULD predict Harry's actions when he cast the killing curse on the auror. You also have to be willing to believe that Quirrell knew Harry would figure out a way to observe the battle, even though he was ostensibly lying out of sight. I think the first is more of a stretch than the second. Anyone who knows Harry at all could predict that he would try to find a way to spy on the battle: using the Patronus to block the Killing Curse is a much more specific action that only somebody who understands Harry really well would be able to predict. I guess I'm willing to believe that Quirrell does understand Harry that well.
Could Quirrell have guessed that Harry's patronus would block a killing curse? That seems like a stretch.
Harry really isn't that hard to predict... If he had a few moments spare I can even imagine him giving an impassioned speech on the subject before he used the patronus.
A few thoughts, just to go on record with them. As always, apologies if I'm repeating well-covered ground; I have not read all the comments on this thread, nor am I likely to. I would appreciate pointers to comments I ought to read, though.
OTOH, the same person is described in ch52 as
It's unclear whose voice that is in, but the same sentence describes the voice as "unfamiliar," which suggests we're getting Harry's POV rather than Word Of God. So Harry believes Quirrell Polyjuiced into this man.
So either: A. Harry is right, and Bahry is mistaken about what's possible while Polyjuiced. B. Bahry is right, and Harry is mistaken about what happened. C. They're both right, and something weird is happening. (E.g., Harry's companion is not actually doing magic as delicate as he appears to be doing, or some such thing.)
B seems most plausible to me, as Bahry ought to know about such things. The simplest explanation is that he isn't Polyjuiced at all -- the "sallow lanky bearded man" with the "low and gravelly" voice is Harry's companion's natural form. (Of course, there might be other means of changing his appearance that we've never heard of before, but that would be a cheap narrative trick.)
Which suggests he is not and never was the actual Quirrell. And also that he is not and never was anyone Harry would recognize (from pictures, from extrapolation in mirrors, etc.)
So either: A. There is in fact no plausible reason for this. B. There is a plausible reason, but neither Quirrell nor Harry can think of one. C. There is a plausible reason, but Harry can't think of one, and Quirrell is pretending not to be able to think of one.
The most likely of those given the data I'm aware of is A. Which suggests that Professor Quirrell is not and never was possessed by Voldemort (ETA: er, I mean, by the shade of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named).
Which is not to say that Harry's companion isn't or wasn't.
The fact that Quirrel sometimes reverts to zombie mode suggests that Voldemort is teleoperating that body. Perhaps he has more than one body for that purpose, and simply used a different body for the breakin, rather than polyjuicing the first one. It would be odd that both bodies could assume snake-form, but I see no reason in principle why that magic wouldn't be transferrable.
If that's what happened, then the Quirrel body might still be alive somewhere. Voldemort might be alive (in which case he would return to Quirrel's body, and pin the blame on Harry), or temporarily dead, in which case Quirrel's vacant body might turn up somewhere.
This is plausible, and fits with my speculation that Quirrell's been Dementor-kissed.
On the other hand, Harry still feels a sense of doom when Quirrell is in zombie mode, which suggests that Voldemort isn't completely gone then.
Re: Voldemort teleoperating Quirrell... if there's a quick summary somewhere of why this is a plausible explanation for Q's occasional zombie mode, I'd love a pointer.
Re: remote-snakeform... if that's what's going on, it would be better writing to introduce the possibility of remote animagusing somewhere along the line. Lacking any such introduction (or have I just missed it?) it seems a far simpler explanation that Harry's current companion and Harry's DODA instructor share a body, and that body is a snake animagus. (cf hooves, horses, zebras)
Yeah, I think the naive reading is that the narration is from Harry's POV, and Quirrell Polyjuiced into the man (as planned), and Quirrell is such a badass that he can do whatever magic he wants while polyjuiced, which is unusual enough for Bahry not to expect it.
And Quirrell claiming there's no plausible reason to think he's possessed by Voldemort is just him thumbing his nose at the reader (aside from the usual misdirection).
If it turns out to be just "Quirrell is such a badass" then I'll be very disappointed.
My reason for choosing A over C wrt: possessing Quirrell is not that Quirrell lying is implausible (that much is entirely likely) but that it raises the question of why, if there is a plausible reason, and Harry was invited to think of one, he didn't come up with any.
That said, we're only getting cherry-picked fragments of Harry's thinking, and he's being manipulated anyway. So maybe Harry just isn't thinking straight.
Still, until I see a plausible reason to believe it, I don't.
Considering that Quirrell is one of the most powerful and feared wizards ever to live, sheer competence is probably the simplest explanation for him being able to perform exceptional feats of magic while handicapped.
From Bahry's perspective, the possibility that the unknown criminal he's facing is secretly the most dangerous dark wizard of modern times is unlikely enough not to merit immediate consideration. From the readers' perspective, it's an established fact.
Huh.
When you put it that way, it seems plausible.
In fact... you're right, and I'm wrong.
If there's a highly salient fact in play that Bahry neither knows nor can reasonably be expected to consider, which is certainly a strong possibility, then Bahry's beliefs about the situation stop being credible evidence about much of anything, and I should not be treating them that way.
I'm falling into the trap of assuming that everybody else already knows what I know.
I hereby repudiate my earlier speculations.
Thank you.
Re. the "sentient snakes": I had a similar reaction, "What, snakes in this world are intelligent, and that has no consequences?" But centering the reaction on moral issues... well, this is a gripe/rant/sore spot with me. Particularly when the word "sentient" is involved.
"Sentient" means the ability to feel. I don't know if snakes are sentient. But I absolutely guarantee you that cows and pigs are sentient.
In moral debates, the word "sentient" is one of a class of words I call "words that don't mean what they mean": words that we systematically abuse, by having 2 definitions; and we use the word in practice with definition 1, and pretend it has definition 2 when we want to justify our actions.
It is so very very common for people to talk about "sentient life", and use it to mean "life forms with a grammatical language". If you just came out and said, "I think that the feelings of beings that can't express themselves with a recursive grammatic structure need never be considered", people would realize how unjustified and self-serving this view is. So people use the word "sentient", yet in a way implying it applies only to beings with grammar, so they can say what they want to say, but in a way that sounds like they are saying something less self-serving.
I think you're looking for the difference between Sentient and Sapient. The problem is that they are often conflated to make an awful mess of things.
Sapient means "wise". Most people are not sapient.
Curious why people voted this down. It is correct. Please comment. Note that people don't have a good feeling for what "sapient" means; it is preferred over "wise" only when people wish to be obscure. And using your species name as your criterion for having moral standing is rigging the game.
In any case, I am not looking for the difference between sentient and sapient. The Harry Potter chapter I'm responding to said -
"SNAKES ARE SENTIENT?"
I noticed something odd in chapter 17, which seems relevant:
As Harry observes, this exchange is extremely out of character for McGonagall. Telling Harry not to voice his concerns about Quirrel, I could believe; but cutting him off mid-sentence, and them making such a graphic, violent threat if he does, I can not. It is so out of character, in fact, that I think it must be a symptom of being Imperiused.
We know that Voldemort used to use Imperius quite a bit, and the only real reasons he might stop would be if someone figured out how to detect it (which hasn't happened), or if his new form didn't have the power. One Imperiused person rules out the second possibility, so if if Quirrelmort put an imperius on McGonagall, he has almost certainly used it elsewhere too.
Which brings us to Harry's attempted breakout of Bellatrix. Breaking in to Azkaban to rescue Bellatrix Black, I could just barely believe. Pretending to be Voldemort while doing so, however, pushes credibility too far. From Chapter 52 to Chapter 54, Harry is Imperiused. There are just too many things stupid and suspicious about the plan to believe that Harry overlooked all of them.
And that brings us to the question of what Imperius actually does. And this, I think, explains the chapter title, "The Stanford Prison Experiment", which otherwise seems not to fit at all. The conclusion of that famous experiment was that if you give someone a role - even a fake role, like a prison guard over subjects in a psychology experiment who are technically free to leave - then they adopt it as part of their identity, including the evil parts, and become blind to the wrong things they do as part of that identity. So perhaps that's what Imperius does: it assigns its target a particular role, which their mind will bend to accommodate. That would also explain why the title was redacted for part 1, which takes place before the Imperius curse was cast.
Here are some abnormalities in Harry's mind:
The only problem with this theory, is that Harry believes that Quirrel can never use magic on him. His Patronus and Quirrel's Aveda Kevadera certainly didn't interact well, and there seems to be an issue if they touch. But the theory that they can never use magic on each other, seems to have appeared from nowhere; there is no evidence for it whatsoever, except the sense of doom. Perhaps that idea was planted, to make the idea that Harry was Imperiused seem less plausible?
I think the title was redacted in order to not give the game away too early, as in Chapter 9.
Maybe the magical incompatibility is real, and perhaps the dark social engineering behind the Stanford Prison Experiment relates to Chapter 16, Lateral Thinking. In Ch16, there's almost the same words in all-caps dizzying his brain. It might be explained by the sense of doom and magical incompatibility. Also Ch16 has “Mr. Potter, I never said you were to kill. There is a time and a place for taking your enemy alive,..." If Quirrell senses similar doom on his side, framing Harry as the Dark Lord and almost capable of breaking his most trusted lieutenant out of Azkaban might be a cunning lateral-thinking plot to dispose of all but a fragment of his nemesis without using anything direct.
The business with Snake-Quirrell whispering instructions to Harry might suggest the Imperius Curse. In Rowling's book #4, Moody casts the curse on students and that's just what it's like -- verbal commands that are followed without question (unless you're trained in resisting the curse). Bellatrix doesn't seem to notice that Harrymort is talking to his snake. Perhaps Voldemort was known to do this all the time, but it could be because the instructions were being issued directly to Harry's brain.
But the fact that they can't cast magic on each other is a big obstacle for this theory. Of course, a key point in these chapters is that it's possible to control somebody without ever Imperiusing them.
When Harry powered up his Patronus, Quirrell was not able to get him to stop verbally. This suggests that Harry is not Imperiused.
Under a certain reading Quirrell actually did get him to stop.
Where is that "WRONG. DONT." coming from? Harry's inner dialogue or Quirrell? Note that the sense of doom has been associated with Quirrell's proximity since the start of the mission, and the "man reaching out in entreaty" is Quirrell. So maybe it actually only was by Quirrell's influence that Harry was able to stop.
Anyway, I think the bit about them not being able to cast spells on each other (which is true-ish in canon) is a stronger argument. But other have pointed out how unusual it is that Harry would go along with any of this unless he was either being imperiused or mind-fucked by Quirrell.
Probably, but EY is a tricky writer and can make me second guess everything.
It appears that the phrase "The sudden sense of doom clashed with Harry's steel determination", tells us what happened. The Quirrell doom field brought Harry to his senses. In that context "WRONG DON'T" appears to be Harry's awakened response to what he is doing. Nothing seems to imply that Harry's will is not his own.
However, the sense of doom suggests a connection between Harry and Quirrell. Based on canon this suggests Q=V, but I suppose it might also suggest that Quirrell has been Voldemort. The connection with Harry could be residual.
That special connection could be the source of "WRONG DON'T". It implies that Quirrell has a subtle route to Harry's mind that does not require the Imperius curse and that gets around Harry's Occlumency. In canon Harry could sense Voldemort's mood and occasionally see through his eyes.
So perhaps Quirrell is reading Harry's mind and carefully manipulating him through the scar connection. This would help to explain Quirrell's ability to make deductions from insufficient evidence.
Chapter 49, Prior Information:
You have to remember the fact that the Imperius curse can be resisted in canon. There's no reason for that to not apply here.
And, sorry this has probably been gone over before, but why doesn't Harry think about the sense of doom all that much? He keeps glossing over it as if he's under a Somebody Else's Problem type field. If he's under some sort of mental power it's likely causing both mistakes
EDIT: Spoilers even if you have read all chapters (particularly spoilery to those who have not read the original books). Following post is in rot13. Collapse thread from this comment if you want to avoid said spoilers, as some repliers commented in rot26 before it was established this information qualified as spoilage.
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Gur xrl nffhzcgvba orvat znqr ol pregnva ernqref vf gung N--->O naq bayl O, naq fb ~O--->~N, naq fb P--->~N. Guvf vf n pyrne snyynpl jura fgngrq rkcyvpvgyl, ohg jura yrsg vzcyvpvg gur vzcebcre ybtvp tbrf haabgvprq ol zbfg. Fbzrguvat gung zvtug uryc va guvf ertneq zvtug or gb unir fbzr nqhyg cbvag bhg gung Dhveeryy unf punatrq fvapr gurl ynfg zrg uvz, rg prgren, nygubhtu ng 50 puncgref vg'f engure uneq gb chg gung va fzbbguyl naq vg jbhyq pbzr bss gb ernqref cerivbhfyl pbaivaprq gung Dhveeryy jnf abg Dhveeryyzbeg (jurgure sebz vaabprapr gb UC pnaba be whfg abg guvaxvat vg nccyvrq va guvf cnegvphyne fgbel) nf urnil-unaqrq sberfunqbjvat, naq gb ernqref jub unq haqrefgbbq gur znggre sebz rneyl ba vg jbhyq frrz gb or znxvat n cyrnfnagyl fhogyr cbvag gbb boivbhf.
I came to realize in time that what I thought was a bug was a feature, however frustrating that may be for me, so please rot13 that comment with the warning "spoilers even if you've read all chapters".
I consider the thing that you point to a spoiler for future chapters for those readers lucky enough to not have had it spoiled the first time around, and it would be nice if you did not state it explicitly in your comment.
The way I understand it, MOR is meant to be an example of how a rational being might go about approaching a completely new and confusing set of observations, such as discovering that magic is real. However, I think harry has missed a lot of the low hanging fruit he could be researching. Although my suspension of disbelief shut down these thoughts pretty fast when I first started reading, I was always pretty curious about why magic was created in the first place, why only certain people could control it, and how exactly the energy needed for spells was obtained and applied. So here are a few things I would want to research ASAP if I was harry.
A) Is it possible to fool the source of magic (sm) so that it allows a muggle to cast spells? It was pretty safe for harry to rule out the idea that your DNA contains all the information needed to create a complex mechanism which can generate a magical field and respond intelligently to your intentions, so it makes sense that your DNA only serves as a signal that tells an external force to activate spells when you verbally or non verbally cast them. However, this raises a few interesting questions. does sm actually read everyone's DNA constantly/ whenever they try to cast a spell? or does the sequence of DNA cause a more obvious external change to your appearance that sm looks for? If it uses something like the pattern of your brainwaves, the shape of your face, etc as a marker, then it may be possible for a muggle to mimic a magic user easily and vice versa, but if it actually DOES read your DNA, then where? Could you grow a heart using a magicians DNA, have it implanted, and acquire magical abilities? For that matter, if you preserved the body of a dead wizard, and set up a electric transmitter in their mind which mimicked the signals sent when someone cast a spell, what would the effect be? Any recognition system should be possible to fool, and this would be the most important thing to test for me. Imagine being able to give every person dying of thirst or hunger in the world unlimited access to the resources they need. there would be no more third world countries, although you would also be distributing a terrible weapon.Which actually brings up another question...
B) Why on earth would you invent a powerful system for allowing someone to directly effect reality with their thoughts, and then let everyone with the right DNA use it with no inhibitions whatsoever? Avada Kedavera, Imperio, and fiendfyre may have their uses, but I would not let all of my ancestors use them without supervision with no more training then it takes to cast any other kind of spell. It would be as idiotic as giving everyone I knew the codes required to launch a nuclear missile whenever or wherever they wanted too using their cellphones. Even if they all had good intentions, someone is going to make a dumb mistake eventually. Creating a system for inhibiting the use of such spells would be complex, but only an idiot would not try. This has several implications for harry, either magic was invented by a moron, there are even MORE powerful spells out there that he could cast if he knew the access codes (!!!), or someone already found out how to game the restrictions so they fell apart long ago and nobody even realizes they exist, you may even be able to get it working again.
C) the SM has to have a a sustainable energy source somewhere, a method for using this energy to create the effects we call spells, and in order for it to perform the complicated routines needed to assess someones intentions, it probably has to be somewhat intelligent. Somewhere out there may be an AI, a group of slaves being used to perform observations and calculations, or the work is being sent on a distributed computing network to the minds of every sentient being on the planet. this may be the hardest thing to research since there are almost an infinite variety of of possible systems which may be the cause, and it is probably concealed. But, If you could find the physical source of magic, you could reprogram it to do whatever you wanted, and could achieve world peace or destruction in one step
I would write more but I am honestly hoping for people to actually read through this and give their thoughts, so I guess I had better stop now in the hope of remaining somewhat concise.
Harry makes mistakes too. He once planned out a whole series of experiments only to have the first one turn out way different that expected. I hope there is a completely usefull justified explanation for magic, but even if not it was well worth reading. Hopefully it is not something like scrapped princess.
In chapter 30, Harry makes himself pass out by casting Luminos 12 times rapidly. That could be a foothold for investigating the effects of casting magic on the human body; he could see if he can replicate the result consistently, then try it with different spells or combinations of spells and different rates of casting, and possibly other varied conditions.
This is why, in canon at least, they must be cast with hatred. That's a great safety valve for getting rid of accidental murders.
(I also suspect you mean descendants, not ancestors.)
I think I'd prefer the safety valve working the other way. "Let's limit it only to the people most likely to abuse it" sounds like a dubious tactic. Although come to think of it it is a rather good analogue to elements of standard morality (with respect to power and status).
I agree that a safety valve that makes sure only Good Guys (who?) kill Bad Guys (who?) would be more morally valuable. But if you're doing that you might as well program moral laws into the universe itself, so it is impossible to lie, steal, or murder.
This is a technically feasible (but this is magic we're talking about) hack which makes it more difficult to mistakenly murder or torture people with magic.
I think that many people here would disagree with you about how easy FAI is.
Furthermore, we already have magic plenty, but not understanding of how to use it.
The "low hanging fruit" which you argue Harry ought be researching... they seem to involve organ transplants and the manipulation of dead bodies with "electric transmitters in their mind which mimicked the signal sent when someone cast a test".
Are you serious? How the hell would a first-year student of Hogwarts perform these experiment? How can you call these "low hanging fruit"?
Low hanging meaning that the concept would be fairly easy to come up with, reveal a lot about how magic actually works, and it would be simple to implement. If you can convince a dying wizard who sympathizes with muggles to donate their body to science, the rest is easily within harries means. Also, harry could even test the idea on himself or draco first. If you set up a radio to mimic human brainwaves, tell the wizard to hold onto a wand without casting any spells, and mimic the signal from a wizard casting a spell, you would be able to at least confirm whether or not it is worth trying to get a unconscious / dead / completely artificial body.
As for the organ transplant, that idea sucked which is why I should not write when I am tired, there are a lot more tests you should logically do first. I imagine that you could find a dying wizard who consented to the experiment and was willing to be an organ donor, a muggle who needed a new heart, and see what happens, but since there is no evidence that the DNA in your heart, mind, feet, etc is what is read, it would make more sense to wait until later.
And finally, I resent the implication that his being a student makes a difference :p if their society makes it impossible him to do it, he has more than enough influence to get help from an adult.
A) is very hard to test given the restriction on using magic around muggles. As for B), powerful spells are mostly restricted by the edict of Merlin. C) is, as you pointed out, extremely difficult to research effectively. I'm more surprised that Harry never bothered to ask how new charms are discovered. After all, how are you supposed to figure out that you are supposed to say "Wingardium Leviosa" and then move your wand in a certain way? And he as been told that new charms were discovered every year, so we know it's possible.
IIRC, in canon they tend to talk about spells being "invented" rather than discovered. For a while I pictured advanced wizards somehow writing particular programs into the Source of Magic, which were then run by saying the spell name; or at least something like that.
Chapters 55-56: disappointment. Harry recovered way too easily, if the story were consistent he'd be screaming on the floor until the Aurors arrived. The obstacle of Bahry's future testimony shouldn't have been so easy to remove, now I'm suspicious that Eliezer will deal with the obstacles posed by McGonagall, Dumbledore and others in the same fashion. In general, the end of Ch. 54 seems to promise all hell breaking loose, 55 undoes that, tries to build more suspense instead, and fails to be believable because it erased previous suspense too easily. It's like a prelude that promised a fugue and didn't deliver. But the part where Harry momentarily thinks of Bellatrix as a good unquestioning minion was one of those moments of brilliance that I love the fic for.
The best description of hell breaking loose I've ever read was the first part of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot". I first read it assuming it would be a difficult work of "serious" literature, and it totally upset my expectations by being more exciting than any "fun" literature I'd seen. Here's how it goes: all the heroes and the main conflict are introduced in the first couple pages, then the situation quickly becomes tense, then passions begin to flare up, then the whole thing explodes while we're not even halfway into the chapter, and when you expect it to subside it explodes some more instead, then more and more, and unbelievably the chaos just keeps growing until the last page of Part 1 when it ends with a couple paragraphs and you have to close the book rather than read on to Part 2, because you're shaking and you need to work out who was thinking what.
Well, to the accusation of inconsistency I will respond that (a) Harry is not standing five paces away from a Dementor this time and (b) he has been strengthened somewhat by previous realizations, thus he does not instantly fall over and gets a chance to recover.
I've thought about this a bit. Emotionally, I agree with you. But all the counter-arguments make sense. I've finally narrowed it down to a single sentence, at the end of Chapter 54:
This sentence is epic. It sent shivers down my spine when I first read it. It resounds with finality. The jig is up. The battle has been lost. Despair, all ye mighty. I couldn't wait for the next installment to find Harry waking up in an holding cell with his plans crumbling about him, desperately thinking his way out of this jam without giving up his friend.
Now, I do actually enjoy the next two chapters. But the promise of finality was broken. Ch55 starts out with "And then it was already too late... PSYCH! It's not too late at all!" It feels like the X-men comic books I'd read as a kid, which on the cover showed our heroes dead or mortally wounded, the villain of the month triumphant above them, but when you grab the comic and read it you find that nothing like that happens in the story.
If that line was removed (or at least changed to not be so Final) the transition between 54 and 55 wouldn't be jarring.
Prisoner's Dilemma, huh? :-) I had the same hopes for 55. Right now it looks like Harry will escape the mess without losing anything. Whyyy? Corwin of Amber had a spectacular failure that got him imprisoned and blinded, and the story was better for it.
I think you're right. The power of that line even confused me into jumping to conclusion that Quirrell died, despite a much better explanation. The book will be better if this device is changed.
I agree entirely.
In chapter 52, I was able to empathize with Harry. I felt what he was feeling. And the feelings were was surprisingly intense.
But in the next chapters the story just started getting too unrealistic, and Harry became an impossibly superpowered character, and I lost my emotional connection with him.
This was a constant problem throughout the rest of the story too, but the problem is especially egregious in this story arc. And the impossibly-superpoweredness kept escalating.
Chapter 52 was vaguely plausible.
Chapter 53 might have been plausible, if Harry had a lot of time to prepare.
Chapter 54 was only slightly less realistic than chapter 53.
And I thought that after Chapter 54, this story arc was over. Harry failed at his mission, and just had to keep from losing his mind entirely before the aurors found him and he had to face the consequences of his actions.
But then in chapter 55, he made a miraculous recovery. Noone could recover like that. Not even Eliezer Himself could recover like that.
From then on, this wasn't a story about a real person, it was a story about an impossibly superpowered character, and the story lost almost all of its emotional impact.
I still think Harry should have just given up, and turned himself in to the aurors. I don't see how this could possibly end well, and Harry's actions in chapters 55 and 56 are just making things a whole lot worse.
But this is a story, and so of course it's going to end well, no matter how stupid or reckless the protagonist seems to be acting.
It's still an awesome story though, it's just that the suspension of disbelief is gone.
But that's just my opinion. Your Mileage May Vary.
EDIT: ok, I accept Eliezer's explanation and David Allen's explanation of why Harry was able to recover. I take back my complaint about Harry's recovery being unrealistic. But, not knowing what Harry's plan is in chapters 55 and 56, it still seems to me like Harry would have been better off giving up.
One of Harry's established traits is his highly trained reflex to question his own perceptions, especially under difficult circumstances.
This situation is probably the most extreme that we have seen Harry in. In this context that ability comes across as a super-power, but it is not out-of-character.
I agree with most of your comments, but -
So you'd offer 4-1 odds on that bet?
sorry, what I should have said is that the story as a whole will end well. It's still possible that Harry's actions in this particular story arc will have disastrous consequences, that Harry will have to try to fix later. It's also very likely that Harry won't be able to fix all of the disastrous consequences.
but I would still offer 1-1 odds that this particular story arc will end without disastrous consequences... though there is some ambiguity about what counts as "disastrous".
um... oops... did I just challenge Eliezer to not give this story a happy ending? I want a happy ending. or at least a bittersweet ending. It's just that I would prefer if the protagonist didn't recklessly get into impossible situations that he then goes on to use impossible superpowers to get out of.
And what happened to Harry having learned how to lose? This seems like a situation where losing immediately is the best option. The more Harry resists, the worse things will be when he loses. Unless something really improbable happens.
Anyway, I expect that all of these things that I'm complaining about are probably a case of "the plot demands it". It would have been nice if Eliezer could have avoided these problems, but sometimes you just can't please everyone.
Also, we won't know for sure if Harry is holding the idiot ball until we find out what his plan is, hopefully in the next chapter.
oh, and is it just me, or are the words "trust the author" really unconvincing? I mean, if you already know how generally awesome Eliezer is, it's a whole lot easier to trust him as an author, but those words would be entirely unconvincing to anyone who hasn't heard of Eliezer before... though he has already earned lots of trust with the previous chapters...
(Harry having to learn how to lose was great.)
Remember "The Cold Equations"? I wouldn't be shocked if Eliezer wound the entire fanfic up with some similar message.
No no no no no. Not a stupid space Aesop as in the cold equation. No!
I remember the extensive discussion about "The Cold Equations", in which it was concluded that the only way that sort of tragedy could be generated would be if there was massive organizational incompetence.
Stowaways were a known problem. Why wasn't the spaceship locked? Why was there a door on the closet?
I think a reasonably happy ending is forced for MOR. Harry survives. So do other major good characters. However, perhaps a MFAI (Magical FAI) is created, and power and responsibility are handed off to it. What would Harry do with the rest of eternity then?
Harry will invent Fun Theory, of course. And then he'll spend the rest of eternity testing and improving this Fun Theory.
I think there's textual evidence suggesting that he would have descendants and then attend a lot of birthday parties on celestial objects.
He might still enjoy exploring how magic works-- I expect it's as rich a field as physics. (Last I heard, the idea that physics may offer unlimited depths is still respectable.)
Ending for a rationalist fairy tale: And then they learned how to live happily ever after.
Even with Bahry obliviated there should be lots of clues it was Harry. Especially now that Quirrell is down and whatever spells he was casting to confound the wizarding equivalent of forensics are probably down. Harry sized foot prints in the dust, cloth fibers where Harry lay down? The angle/position that the stunning spell hit Bahry implying it was cast from a low elevation?
Or to put it another way who are the Wizarding community going to think did this?
Ex-death eaters? Not killing Bahry is a sign that it is not them. The unusual patronus that seemed to be able to hide Bellatrix, and will possibly kill Dementors next chapter, has the hallmarks of Harry.
If they didn't know about the existence of time turners then they might be fooled, but he has used them so much, it is really a poor alibi.
So yeah put me in the camp of all hell should still be breaking loose even if Harry doesn't get caught red handed in Azkaban.
The wizarding world doesn't stoop to non-magical forensics. Footprints? Fibers? How barbaric.
I don't think that it is obvious to most of the other characters that it is a patronus that is hiding Bellatrix. It would also be discounted because she remains invisible under the cloak after Harry's patronus is extinguished in Ch. 56.
Canon Dumbledore would have observed the masking power of Harry's patronus, and would be clever enough to to guess that the Harry's cloak could have this property. Presumably the HPMOR Dumbledore is at least this clever.
Dumbledore however observed Harry's extreme response to an unshielded dementor, so he might be confused at a Harry that walks around unprotected and apparently unaffected.
Working against Harry is that Dumbledore's patronus could be used to identify Harry's patronus as the one it observed in Azkaban, and that any dementor that observes Harry, and survives, could also identify him. It seems that if Dumbledore wants to later verify or exclude Harry as the intruder, he can.
Hey Eliezer- if you're planning to upload your Author's Notes to the LW wiki, it might be helpful to post that intention to your profile on Fanfiction.net. I know of at least 3 groups independently trying to collect all of the AN's themselves:
The Facebook Page
An Evernote Page
Dan Cowell's Translation Page
Has Quirrell been kissed by a Dementor? With Voldemort responsible, presumably.
That would explain his zombie mode - when he slouches, drools, doesn't speak, and can only stagger around.
And in chp 45 the Dementor could have been speaking to (zombified) Quirrell rather than to Voldemort when it said to Quirrelmort "that it knew me, and that it would hunt me down someday, wherever I tried to hide."
Voldemort can take over Quirrell and act through him, turning him into articulate Quirrell. But when he's not actively in control Quirrell enters zombie mode. Voldemort might be going someplace else while he leaves Quirrell on autopilot, or maybe he just needs to rest because controlling Quirrell uses up his energy.
Eliezer's author notes say: If you want to know everything HJPEV knows and more, read the Sequences.
That would have been fair enough while there were only a few chapters of MoR up. Now, however, Eliezer is promising that reading the Sequences will teach readers how to perform Transfiguration, how to protect themselves against telepaths, how to conjure up a (v2.0) Patronus, and so forth. That seems a little optimistic.
Yeah, I can only imagine how disappointed they'll be when they learn stuff about how to build benevolent superintelligences instead.
You've worked out how to do that now? Cool!
The website hosting MoR now has a popup with audio when you go to it, so it is now NSFW.
Would Harry's patronus block any killing curse, or only one thrown by Quirrell?
New thread after 500 comments.
I've figured out what Harry's "sense of doom" reminds me of. The old action movie Timecop with Van Damme. The antagonist there used a clever plot to help a younger version of himself succeed in the past, but they had to avoid touching because "the same matter cannot occupy the same space". In the end the protagonist forces them to touch, whereupon they both die in freaky fashion and disappear from the timeline. But it's probably just another of Eliezer's clever shout-outs, not an actual clue.
Chap 65:
Harry's treatment of the different (agents?) in his head make me wonder about the MOR Horcrux mechanics and the possibility of making copies of a being. If the horcrux copying process is repetatively damaging, like analog copies of a wax cyinder recording, there would be a degradation in each stage, and the last horcrux, Harry would be the poorest copy. Or if each horcux was same-quality, there might have been only something like limitations on the first analog-digital conversion, and successive generations of copies might be exact, like digital-to-digital. The ability to copy consciousness is interesting. One can, a la Star Trek transporters, destroy the original to keep from having duplicates, you could let either the scanning process not destroy things, or you could make the construction process repeatable. High-fidelity digital reproduction make software and IP copies have constant marginal cost, and I wonder what that might mean for copies of consciousness.
If Voldemort can have a number of horcruxes, each of which can regenerate a new Voldy, why can't he generate multiple selves from them? Would a being with the ability to copy itself do so, or not? A team of Voldemorts, or post-horcrux-Voldemorts would be more powerful and resilient than a single one. Or is Voldemort too selfish to work with himself?
Most of them do, for reasons that should be obvious.
Copying mind state differs from sexual or asexual reproduction. I was wondering how the MOR soul-splitting, copying, backup, imprinting, and possession mechanism works and how it might be exploited.
Could, for instance, Harry split his soul into its separate agents without the act of murder? Or is the important part of the Horcrux magic stealing someone's soul to use as media to make a copy your own soul? How close are Harry's suppositions in Ch20 to the MOR-reality?
Evidence for a 'soul' and the need to eliminate another in order to do horcrux like magic gives some credence to theories that MoR is in a simulated world. You need to wipe out an existing virtual machine in order to put an extra instance of yours there, splitting your own may require dividing your 'soul/computational resources' between multiple instances, etc.
Regarding Author's Note:
Perhaps: Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped
chp 55
Cognitive therapy as a pre-Patronus intervention in early stage Dementation
Slight spoilers for those who haven't read chapter 55:
My god, Harry is infuriating. Why, after realizing that Quirrell might have set him up, after deciding to doubt everything Quirrell said about the plan (and needlessly dismissing his doubts), did he assume that there really is a magical psychologist to fix Mme.Black up?
Why, after deconstructing his predicament did he then fail to apply the same rationalism to its immediate effect? Ugh. If there's one scene that convinced me that he's under the Imperius curse, it's his thinking up ways of convincing the likely-fictional-Doctor of healing the likely-uncurable maniac.
These past 5 chapters have been as infuriating as thrilling. I hope Harry stops being human and once again becomes his hyper-rationalist self at some point in the near future.
P.S. Does anyone else find dramatic irony to be the most infuriating, anxiety-inducing literary tool known to man?
No, I personally find it a close second to the comedy of errors (which I just plain cannot watch or read, I instinctively curl up in a fetal position or storm out of the room upon exposure - being unjustly blamed is my biggest rage button by far).
It occurred to me that Harry is confused with Hermione's reactions (possibly Dumbledore's) not because he is a consequentialist and she is a deontologist, but rather because he hasn't yet realised that offending her is a consequence of being a consequentialist, and so he should include "deviates from deontological ethics; may offend friends and society" as one of the negative consequences for actions that otherwise seem right by consequentialism.
So, what's the importance of Roger Bacon's diary? Canon & conservation of detail both suggest it's something, possibly a horcrux or possibly some other tool of Quirrelmort. This Voldemort is too smart to horcrux his own diary, but this diary would be an awfully convenient trojan horse for him to have (extremely durable, treasured by Harry).
It doesn't seem to produce any sense of Doom, though, which seems to count against the horcrux hypothesis.
Could Quirrell be using it to spy on Harry, to get his curiously accurate priors? Does Harry keep the diary in the pouch which he carries around everywhere, and which he brought to Azkaban, and which the Quirrell cast a spell on and entered in snake mode? If so, it could be a part of Quirrell's current plot. (Or, Quirrell could've done something else with Harry's pouch, which doesn't involve the diary.)
In canon Harry's sense of pain when encountering Voldemort doesn't occur when encountering horcruxes. Moreover, it turns out that Harry is an accidental horcrux and he doesn't have any similar reaction to himself, or even to a time traveled version of himself that he sees. So by analogy a horcrux here may not be enough to trigger the sense of doom.
Could Roger Bacon's diary have important information in it?
I would be pleased if Quirrel was using the diary to affect Harry (whether by getting Harry to accept a gift or by some magic-related method), but Harry read it with more knowledge and/or attention and/or willingness to make deductions, and got some crucial addition to his abilities thereby.
Re: 54:
Harry can still salvage the situation somewhat, if I understand the ending. They're going to know Bella escaped, but Harry can still put Quirrel in his pouch (since he's in snake form) and hide with Bella under the invisibility cloak, right? Or can Aurors see through the cloak in HP:MOR? I think in canon nobody can penetrate the Cloak's invisibility.
Auror Bahry threatened some "area effect curses" and "anti-disillusionment" charms, so they seem to have some effective methods if they suspect invisible adversaries.
In canon there are ways to penetrate it. Mad-Eye Moody's magic eye can see through it.
They can't touch each other, so no. Quirrel also obviously knows this, because his pre-mission prep was carefully designed to avoid them touching each other or casting any spells on each other, vs. easier ways to accomplish the same tasks.
Moody's eye can see through the Invisibility Cloak.
One of the systematic changes in MoR is that things which are sufficiently powerful are artifacts, and things which are artifacts are sufficiently powerful: The Marauder's Map was originally devised by Slytherin as part of the creation of Hogwarts and only slightly twisted by the Marauders (Ch. 25), and the Cloak of Invisibility is now in a class of its own compared to standard invisibility cloaks or Disillusionment (Ch. 54).
Rowling, of course, wrote that thing with Moody's eye before she decided the Cloak of Invisibility was a major artifact. So if Moody's eye can still see through it in MoR, it's going to be because either Moody's eye is also a major artifact, or, more likely, a specialized artifact devoted to seeing through invisibility (a specialized, specific artifact can defeat a generally more powerful artifact if the specialization is narrow enough).
Wow... I had imagined that Moody lost his eye in a fight or something -- but it would be way more awesome if he cut it out intentionally, to replace it with an eye more suited for the hunt.
The idea of Moody as a voluntarily enhanced magical cyborg is awesome indeed.
In fact, the entire notion of human enhancement using magic would be an interesting theme to explore. It's already been done to some degree with the idea of defeating death and Harry making a mental note to research mind-altering spells in chapter 12 (intelligence explosion?), but things like Moody's eye and Wormtail's hand (which was strong enough to crush stones) show that there are also ways for Wizards to improve their abilities by replacing body parts with magical counterparts. Seeing what the wizarding world and/or Harry think of such ideas would be pretty interesting.
And very Odin-esque.
Mad-Eye Modin?
As you already know, this is already true in canon; it's just that, as you say, it took Rowling a while to decide this.
I do like that you gave the Map such a great pedigree; it really was too powerful for a few students to make on their own.
Chapter 54: why don't Harry and Quirrell cast Somnium on Bellatrix instead of deceiving her? (The deception requires Quirrell to tell Harry the Death Eater password, among other things...) Why does Quirrell talk to Bahry so confidently while Bellatrix can hear him? Why does he follow his whims to play-duel and then kill Bahry instead of quickly subduing and memory-charming him, if they planned to pull off the perfect crime? Why is he so vulnerable to Dementors that he drops immediately when Harry's Patronus vanishes, even though Bahry's Patronus is still there successfully protecting Bahry and Harry? (Or am I misunderstanding the reason for his screaming? It's very similar to Harry's screaming when he first encountered a Dementor. If the screaming were caused by Quirrell's spell coming in contact with Harry's - brother wands or whatever - then Harry should've felt a symmetrical effect, which he didn't.)
Also, am I the only one stupid enough to only now realize that the professor's name is Quivering Squirrel?
It was caused by the spell contact. Harry was also screaming (Bahry's POV mentions hearing this). He was probably less affected than Quirrel because he was much farther away.
Case in point: Quirrel had spent about a minute in Azkaban (top floor) without any Patronus, until Harry arrived, and all that happened was that he had to lean on the wall for a bit to recover.
Naw, Quirrell spent that minute in his snake form because it's less vulnerable to Dementors, and when disaster struck he threw away his wand (recall how Harry got attacked through his wand) and assumed snake form again, probably as a last ditch defense. So I'm not sure if your final point supports your conclusion or mine.
And Harry was probably screaming just because he was scared.
ETA: I just realized another funny thing. As Quirrell is an unregistered Animagus and Bahry saw him transform, in the aftermath he'll be going to Azkaban for two years unless something unusual happens.
I have very little, if any, idea of what something "usual" would look like under these circumstances.
Polyjuiced Quirrell, mind you.
Presumably, as I mentioned below, for the stated reason that "'It's been quite a while since I had a serious fight with a serious opponent'" As Quirrel himself said earlier, if you can't have some fun once in a while, what's the point?
Sorry, how does ‘Quirinu‑’ become ‘Quivering’?
How about: Should Harry have trusted Quirrell? I don't mean "did it have a good outcome"; I mean, was Harry's trust justified by what he knew? Would you have done the same thing?
In retrospect, I think Harry ought to have said, "Professor Quirrell, I owe you a great debt, and have great respect for you. If you ask me to do something, I'll probably do it. But I don't trust you one single bit." But I doubt I would have said that myself.
That reminds me of something else Quirrell arranged for Harry -- occlumency. If they read Bella's and the Auror's mind, they'll see Harry as a villain, and since Harry has training in occlumency, he's no way to prove them wrong. The entire thing looks like a set-up.
Bingo. I think you have it.
Harry didn't even consciously try to stop Quirrel's killing curse. It was an accident. Quirrel couldn't have counted on it happening to set Harry up.
Oh, you're quite right. Perhaps Quirrel was planning to kill the Auror to make it clear that a break-out had occurred? That way, a full check of the prison would occur and Bella's replacement would likely be found. Which in turn would mean that it was put there simply to deceive Harry into a false sense of security. When the break in is made public, Dumbledore would naturally come under suspicion (since a Dementor disappeared under his watch) and he would suspect Harry. That might also explain the lack of the 30th charm by Quirrel. Might make Harry traceable.
I could be completely wrong, of course. Pure speculation.
The Auror saw Quirrell fight him with amazing skill, attempt the killing curse, and turn into a snake. Harry saved him from the killing curse. Quirrell's the clear bad guy from his point of view (is that enough evidence for people to conclude that Q=V?), and only Harry's last Somnium spoils his innocence.
It will also be clear that they were lying to Bella, at least about some important things, since it was Harry's Patronus.
I'm pretty sure I'm being exceedingly careful here, but...
It's enough evidence to conclude that he's a bad guy.
Assuming I had never read Eliezer's assurances that Q=V, I would most definitely not put it past him to make his rewriting of HP not so much about the Dumbleharry vs. Voldemort war, but about the internecine fight between Quirrell/ColdHarry and Dumbledore/WarmHarry about how to confront the Voldemort threat - by finding a worthy dictator (in the original intent of the word, hopefully) or by making free citizens, I mean subjects of Her Majesty stand up for themselves. Each of them convinced that fighting Voldemort by the other's means would be as bad or worse than giving up; each of them wondering how much can they scheme and sacrifice, how close can they come to Voldemort's methods in order to successfully lead the fight against him... damn, speculating about it makes me want to read it already, no matter all the stuff that doesn't quite work with this scenario (sense of doom in primis).
So write it. Nothing wrong with having an AU of an AU.
I mean: Is it enough evidence for people within the story to conclude that he is Voldemort? Being a ridiculously powerful dark wizard should be enough for them to locate the hypothesis and consider it a possibility, at least for those who know that Voldemort is alive. Then there are other clues: his attempt (with Harry) to free Bellatrix Black, knowledge of the Death Eater password (among him & Harry), his strange relationship with Harry Potter (including the odd magical interaction & Harry's sense of doom), and his ability to turn into a snake. Is that enough evidence to convince someone like Dumbledore who already knows that the Dark Lord lives? Is it enough for the rest of the wizarding world to be persuaded?
I didn't realize it until you mentioned it.
This is a general question based on the observations that Harry doesn't seem to be as acute as usual in the most recent chapter-- could there be a spell on him which is taking his default ability to check on whether things make sense down a few notches? What would it take for him to notice something like that?
Edit: My inference that Quirrell is overwhelmingly vulnerable to Dementors seems to be incorrect, explanation here, although he is more vulnerable than usual. The importance of keeping Patronus 2.0 up derives from it being a blind spot for Dementors, allowing prisoners to escape. Enough time without Patronus 2.0 leads to impossibility of prison break.
Ch. 54. Since Quirrell was that unusually vulnerable to Dementors, he should've made the point of how important it is to keep the Patronus 2.0 up at all times and immediately restore it in case of failure, making that idea more available to Harry's mind. Not making that point explicitly was stupid.
(Quirrell should know that, since Auror's Patronus utterly failed to shield him from Azkaban's Dementors, which means that he must've felt the difference between level of protection from the Dementor offered by different Patronus variants at training session at Hogwarts, as well as the abnormal vulnerability to Dementors shielded by merely classical Patronus. The point of the training session now seems to be exactly the research on influence of Dementors on possessed Quirrell, with Harry's wand left near the Dementor possibly an experiment.)
brilliant.
Ch. 54: If Harry and Quirrell discussed the possibility of an Auror seeing them, Harry should have told Quirrell that AK is out of the question- no sense in killing one innocent person in the course of saving one innocent person.
And it's a pretty big miscalculation of Quirrell not to anticipate Harry's intervention at the key moment. He really should have seen by now that Harry's light side is that strong.
Unless, of course, that was the real gambit somehow.
ETA: Loved the writing, though- I was on the edge of my seat.
I interpreted it that he was just too caught up in duelling-lust, and momentarily eriregrq gb uvf Qnex Ybeq crefban, forgetting how Harry would react.
ETA: rot-13d some stuff which is apparently supposed to be secret again.
Huh? Spoilers for HP and HP:MoR are fair game here!
Spoilers for HP:MoR that do not come from the text itself are not so much fair game.
They are if they are derived independently from the text via discussion here or guesswork. ie. You can guess stuff. They aren't if, um, you raid Eliezer's dwellings and find yet to be published manuscripts, for example. Or torture Eliezer to find out his plans. Any source of knowledge that hasn't passed through the bottleneck of the text at some point.
Dclayh didn't reveal anything remotely privileged. Or anything that hasn't been speculated on ad infinitum.
dclayh was complying with the spirit of this request from Eliezer:
Harry didn't consciously intervene. His Patronus 2.0 sort of teleported to block Quirrel's spell. Quirrel (like Harry) may not have even been aware that could happen.
It's also a pretty big miscalculation of Harry not to anticipate Quirrell using AK in such a case! But that makes sense, considering how Quirrell got him into this in the first place.
chp 51-54 & A/N
Is it plausible that Harry would go along with this rescue? It is harder to accept than a Sirius rescue, which would've been based on the belief that Sirius was actually innocent (he hadn't done the awful things he was convicted of). The extenuating circumstance of having become evil under the influence of the Dark Lord provides a much weaker reason to rescue someone, and requires much more trust in the person who is conveying the information (since they must not only get the facts right, but make some subtle and complex judgments about the prisoner's character and what they deserve).
If Quirrell had just come straight out and asked Harry to help him break Bellatrix Black out of Azkaban, and to pretend to be Voldemort while doing it so that she would follow him out, I don't think he would have done it. Far too many red flags. Sure, Harry wants to end Azkaban, but to start with Bellatrix, who undeniably did so many evil things? Quirrell's case in favor of Bellatrix's innocence sounds like what a partisan would say when trying to make their side seem favorable, not an argument that Harry would buy (just as he could see through Draco's case against Dumbledore). Genre savvy Harry has read plenty of stories about villains with a sympathetic backstory.
Harry knows that Dumbledore doesn't trust Quirrell, he can imagine how Hermione would react to this (and she was right about transfiguration experimentation), or how Neville would react (Neville, who said with his voice shaking that torturing his parents was "not even close to the worst thing she's ever done").
Or even how Draco would react: Bellatrix Black? She was one of the few who were truly evil (chp 47). Forget that nonsense about wanting to save a poor innocent person from the nasty Dementors (you really think that's why Quirrell wants to break someone out of Azkaban?), this is obviously part of a plot. As Father would ask, who benefits? What kind of plot would involve breaking Bellatrix Black out of Azkaban?
But Quirrell didn't just come right out and suggest that they go free Bellatrix from Azkaban, he gradually and artfully got Harry to buy into the plot. So if we're going to wonder whether it's plausible for Harry to go along with it, we'll have to look at how Quirrell manipulated him into agreeing, and why Harry fell for the manipulations and wasn't stopped by these red flags.
If Harry is a utilitarian, he shouldn't need extenuating circumstances. He should want to free everyone from Azkaban and from all forms of torture and suffering, including truly evil people. The only reason not to free Bellatrix Black should be the danger of her attacking other people later on, and that's the point on which he should seek reassurance from Quirrel (re: what they are going to do with her once freed).
But it seems Harry reverts to common human morals in the last few chapters. He attaches much weight to Bella's innocence. He thinks he'd like to kill Voldemoret as revenge or punishment.
There's also the TDT idea that people who did evil things should be punished.
yeah, punishing agents for doing 'bad things' as a deterrence against other agents acting similarly is quite rational.
It is a lot more important than just deterring similar acts. A failure to punish after having made a commitment to punish removes a big part of the deterrent effectiveness of all kinds of punishment for all kinds of 'bad things'. For that matter, it may decrease trust that the government/society will keep its other commitments - pension obligations, for example.
Another reason is that (as pointed out elsewhere) there could be other people much more deserving of being freed; freeing Bellatrix or freeing her first might cost him the opportunity of freeing any of them in the near future.