Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.
The load more comments links are getting annoying (at least if you're not logged in), so it's time for a new Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread. We're also approaching the traditional 500-comment mark, but I think that hidden comments provide more appropriate joints to carve these threads at. So as of chapter 67, this is the place to share your thoughts about Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic.
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: one, two, three, four, five, six. The fanfiction.net author page is the central author-controlled HPMOR clearinghouse with links to the RSS feed, pdf version, TV Tropes pages, fan art, and more, and AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.
As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:
You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR 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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.
Yes, but bringing in eye or skin colour distracts from the matter of sex, which is the focus of every other remark in the conversation.
So it's an interesting hypothesis, and I don't have a better one, but it still leaves me confused. I'll provisionally accept it, but I still hope that somebody can think of a better one.
Professor Sinistra was talking about the unequal role of women in Muggle society, and brought up her mother as an example. "And that wasn't the worst of it," she continues. "Why, just a few centuries earlier -"
The writer cuts off at this point, but it seems entirely plausible that Sinestra went on to talk about how women like her mother were treated a few centuries earlier, and slavery is a pretty major component of that narrative.
If they were discussing "the matter of sex," then I agree it's a distraction from the discussion.... (read more)