I wonder if the exchange rate of 1 Galleon = 17 sickles = 493 knuts is fixed by law or a floating exchange rate that just happens to be currently at that value. Perhaps that would explain the unusual ratios that are in use.
Does anyone know what countries did back when coins were actually made of precious metals?
It varied. Some countries used a bimetallic standard with fixed exchange rates, some used one as the standard and let the other float. There's even been trimetallic(gold/silver/copper) at times.
It's actually been a political issue which of those to use more recently than you'd expect(and no, I don't mean Ron Paul) - the 1896 US Presidential election was fought in significant part on a Democrat plan to move to a bimetallic standard away from straight gold, which was in the day an inflationary move designed to help indebted farmers. If you've ever heard of ...
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 81, which should be published later today. The previous thread passed 400 comments as of the time of this writing, so it will pass 500 comments soon after the next chapter is posted, if not before. I suggest refraining from commenting here until chapter 81 is posted; comment in the 12th thread until you read chapter 81. After chapter 81 is posted, I suggest all discussion of previous guesses be kept here, with links to comments in the previous thread.
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. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.) When posted, chapter 81 should appear here.
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, ten, eleven, twelve.
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: