Eliezer thoroughly deconstructed Dumbledore's (And Gandalf's) view of evil in Lord of the Rationality. "If the Enemy thought that all his foes were moved by desire for power alone - he would guess wrongly, over and over, and the Maker of this Ring would see that, he would know that somewhere he had made a mistake!"
Even if somehow Quirrell was stupid enough to not truly understand non-sociopathic motives, he would not make the obvious mistake of revealing this weakness to Harry. Harry thinks that Quirrell can't comprehend good because that's what Quirrell wants him to think.
And H&C didn't even fail because of a miscalculation about Hermione's altruism. It was a rookie mistake to not use a different appearance than you did with Zabini. Even if you still wanted to look dark and mysterious, you wouldn't pick the exact same disguise you used earlier, just in case.
Finally, H&C's dialogue is highly unquirrellish. "I hoped for better from you, Hermione. Surely such a Ravenclaw as you, the most intelligent Ravenclaw to grace Hogwarts in a generation, knows that appearances can be misleading." Those are not the words of a Dark Lord who doesn't care about your opinion and is about to wipe your memory.
Those are not the words of a Dark Lord who doesn't care about your opinion and is about to wipe your memory.
They are precisely the words of a mysterious person who's trying to persuade you of something. It's simple flattery.
Eliezer thoroughly deconstructed Dumbledore's (And Gandalf's) view of evil in Lord of the Rationality.
Excellent point, but I hardly think this is a Sauron-level mistake. He may not absolutely fail to consider the actions and thoughts of moral people, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take him a few tries to find what buttons to pu...
(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: