Oh, and I suspect that the Sorting Hat Summoning is going to happen during the trial
Either that or Eliezer anticipated this train of thought (not unlikely) and is playing at the second level (slightly unlikely). Multiplying that out, the probability is miniscule.
Eh, by now you know you overthought this. Eliezer could have just meant that he knew there was a trial coming up, or that the song in question mentions the word "hat", or a number of other possibilities.
Seriously, don't limit the hypothesis space to "Either my current theory is exactly right to the letter" or "Eliezer tricked me into thinking the current theory is exactly right to the letter". It's always possible that the other guy just meant something different, no deception involved.
(The HPMOR discussion thread after this one is here.)
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. There haven't been any chapters recently, but it looks like there are a bunch in the pipeline and the old thread is nearing 700 comments. The latest chapter as of 7th March 2012 is Ch. 77.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.
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, seven, eight, nine.
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: