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Donny comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 13, chapter 81 - Less Wrong
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Prophecy update!
Like most readers, I took Trelawney's magical clock for a listening device. What if it transmits instead of receives?
We've seen Dumbledore manipulating events into storylike patterns. He was the instigator of the three-way tie, and he precipitated Snape's fall and eventual redemption by the power of love.
In his Fortress of Regrets, Dumbledore gave the surface appearance of being terribly reluctant to allow his decisions to cause the deaths of others. But in the last chapter he was ready to let a small child be tortured to death - with much trembling reluctance, of course - in order to preserve his plans.
Could he have caused Trelawney to deliver the prophecy, triggering the other half of Snape's destiny, while feeding the Potters to Voldemort to create his orphan hero?
Dumbledore meant for Voldemort to have been killed by Lily's sacrifice. He believes it happened. Instead, Voldemort, taking the obvious trap (thanks Vladimir!) as a challenge to his wit (thanks Gwern!), pretended to lose (thanks buybuydandavis!), while fulfilling the letter of the prophecy in a manner maximally advantageous to himself.
He disarmed the trap by goading Lily into attacking him. He left a burnt husk of a body - not his, Avada Kedavra leaves no marks - and departed unharmed. Voldemort's not a ghost possessing Quirrell. He stole Quirrell's body the way he stole Harry's, although the defect in the copying process is different. He doesn't need Bellatrix's flesh to rise again. He rescued her, at least in part, while acting in the role of someone who'd been fooled by Dumbledore's ruse.
Events have followed the course of prophecy because someone created one as a deception and someone else played along as a counter-deception.
It looks viable to me. What do you think?
Oh hey. And we have a confession.
I actually noticed the dissonance when I read this, that Dumbledore had apparently overlooked the biggest and most obvious tragedy of Harry's life. But I didn't realize what it meant. Whoops.
And more significantly:
There aren't really any other good candidates for what he might have done to cause this particular problem (even if he felt responsibility on account of e g. not having been able to beat Voldemort permanently himself it seems unlikely to phrase it like that).
Well, he might just mean that he used the prophecy as a trap (by having Snape relate it to Voldie), not necessarily that he faked the prophecy itself.
Unnecessary detail, may or may not be the case. If he was aware of the trap, it would not matter whether this disarmed it; he just needed to not cast Avada Kedavra on Harry. Harry's memory of the event does not end with Voldemort casting the Killing Curse on him.
You're right. I would go ahead and flag everything in that paragraph as questionable. The method of Quirrell's possession, for example: perhaps Voldemort erased his mind and is possessing him through an artifact. It wouldn't change the overall picture.
Avada Kedavra leaves no mark, but getting killed by Lily's ritual sacrifice might. Even so, that the body was burned, which makes identification harder, is suggestive that it is not really Voldemort's.
Yeah, I'm less confident in the notion that Voldemort survived Godric's Hollow, and it's not integral to the hypothesis, but that's the obvious explanation for a burnt body, and the last few chapters have given me a new respect for obvious explanations.
It's also difficult to see why Voldemort would want to pretend to die at Godric's Hollow. He was winning the war. Why pretend to lose, throw away what he had built up to then, and try an entirely different approach to gaining power? I think the more obvious explanation for the burnt body is that whatever ritual magic protected Harry was very destructive to Voldemort. I think it is clear that some ritual magic is involved here; how else can we explain the danger of Harry's and Quirrell's magic interacting? And the violence of their magics' interaction in Azkaban makes it plausible that if Voldemort were to cast a killing curse directly at Harry, he might end up as a burnt corpse.
Tentative explanation: he was hedging his bets. If it's a trap, to walk into it would be stupid. If it's genuine, to ignore a warning like that would be stupid, too. He acted in a way that accommodated either possibility.
I think the ritual he performed that night was copying himself into Harry (note to self: this may or may not be the same thing as horcruxing), and the resonance between their magics is a side effect of that. As to which explanation is more obvious, well, I don't think an argument from obviousness is valid in the face of a genuine disagreement, so I withdraw mine. It's reasonable, though.
Also, if there was no one left alive except Harry, how did they know it was Avada Kedavra that rebounded from Harry, instead of some other spell?
(When the Dementor attacks him, Harry sees the green flash and hears the words, but only when Voldie kills his parents, not when he’s attacked himself, as I recall.)
They could have tried Legillimency on baby Harry, but nobody actually mentions that, and other than Moody it doesn’t seem like anyone would think of it.
Looking at the last spell cast by Voldemort's want.
Of course, you’re right, I forgot you could do that. In MoR at least they should have thought of it, though they didn’t seem to try it on Hermione’s. Prior Incantato* doesn’t show who was target, though, and shows only the last spell IIRC, so it’d be easy to camouflage.
I wonder if it “wandless” spells are still cast through the wand (just without holding it), or if they’re completely independent of it.
(*Edit:) The first version of this comment mistakenly said Priori Incantatem, a different spell than the one I was actually describing.
Not only does it show who the target was, it summons a pseudo-ghost if the target was the victim of a Killing Curse.
The one in canon showed at least the last four or five, I'm pretty sure.
Edit: Whoops, sorry, didn't get the context. "Priori Incantatem" is the brother-wand effect, "Prior Incantato" is the analytical spell, which we know a lot less about- I don't believe there's evidence either way whether it's possible to use it to display the target or show multiple spells.
I was right by accident. I was actually thinking of the Priori Incantato (the analytical one), which seems to behave how I described above. I didn’t remember the other one, but it just happens it doesn’t apply to the situation, since Harry didn’t have his wand yet. I’ll fix it above.
It's 'Prior (no i) Incantato'. The link in the great-grandparent is broken because you inserted an extra 'i'.
Thank you!
Ha! So Dumbledore inserts prophecy as a trap, and Voldemort plays along to set his own trap. Nice!
One reason I like implanted prophecy theory is that it would play into rationalist biases against prophecy. I expect magic to be explained as commands to some AI in Atlantis. But prophecy? Seeing into the future? Messages from Atlantis?
Maybe it's just my bias against backward in time causality, which he has really committed to anyway, with Comed-Tea. Me, I'd rather that prophecies are explainable by other means.
But wouldn't this imply that Dumbledore doesn't really see Harry as the destined savior against Voldemort? Maybe he is just saving him to use as a trap again, unaware that Voldemort had already seen through the trap and was playing it for his own purposes? Yeah, saving him as a trap again makes sense, since the dark ritual should still be binding.
As long as we're adding in people playing the prophecy, how about Lily and James? They could have been playing the honeypot knowingly, in league with Dumbledore. I'm reminded of Dumbledore bringing up Lily Potter as a heroine, and noticed the incongruity at the time, though I didn't notice my confusion, as it were. Now that I do, saying she was a heroine seems like she was promoted beyond her station, unless she played a knowing part in her sacrifice to attempt to bring down Voldemort. That would certainly qualify her for the ranks.
One thing - a Voldemort plan to upload into Harry could be said to keep the terms of the dark ritual by allowing Harry to live on a permanent basis. And Harry as Dark Lord also satisfies those terms.
I’m not sure I understand, what incongruity do you see there? IIRC, at least in MoR, the prophecy says something like “born to parents that have thrice defied him”, so James and Lily did take part in the war other than just trying to defend Harry when Voldemort came after him. (They had to have defied him three times so that he would know who the child is, assuming he went after him because of the prophecy.) That sounds kind of heroic even without them doing it just as a trap, given what used to happen to Voldie’s opposition.
McGonagall's description:
Is this meant to explain the incongruity (if so, I still don’t get it), or to support that they were heroic (as McGonagall claims it)?
Support. It seems difficult to read that passage, then go on to see Dumbledore's naming Lily a heroine specifically as "promoting her beyond her station". Regardless of whether it's true or not, Lily = Hero is apparently the official Light-side position.
Point in your favor - when discussing heroines during his time as Headmaster at Hogwarts with Hermione, he suggested she might add both Alice Longbottom and Lily Potter to the list. I'd count that as a point in favor of "thrice defying" as membership to the club.
But still, does defying the Dark Lord thrice really put you in the top 3 witches of 40 years, and the top 15 or so witches and wizards? With all the people who died, with Dumbledore's room full of dead friends, there aren't others who had done more and risked more?
Lily and James were in hiding. Are they really the best examples of heroes in the last 40 years - two people in hiding from Voldemort?
Dumbledore:
Hiding in Godric's Hollow sounds more like the former than the latter to me.
Unfortunately, even in canon, "thrice defied" occurred offstage, so we don't know the details. Just to keep it clear, though, the prophecy occurred before the births of Neville and Harry, so well before the deaths of Alice and Lily, so whatever final defiances they had at their deaths are not part of the 3.
Yeah, so I can’t quite contradict you. (Also, I haven’t read all books, and for those I read I wasn’t very careful with the details.)
That said, my understanding was that first Lily and James fought Voldemort before they had Harry, and perhaps for a while afterwards. And presumably fought well, since they survived to do it thrice, and courageously, if they didn’t stop after the first time (which would qualify both as heroes). In contrast, the journalist mentioned at some point was killed, together with his entire family, after simply writing an article. He was possibly brave (or maybe just an optimist), but not quite heroic.
(It’s not perfectly clear, but the wording of the prophecy seems to suggest that they defied V. thrice before H.’s birth, and possibly again afterwards.)
My understanding was that they went into hiding after they learned that Voldie was going after Harry; presumably this was because of the prophecy, but it doesn’t mean they knew it was a trap (if it was). Note that in MoR Dumbledore says he taught Voldie & Co. not to go after families of the Order of the Phoenix just for blackmail—which obviously had to be before his death—which suggests that they went into hiding only because (and after) they knew Voldie had a better reason to go after Harry, the prophecy. But nothing (AFAIK) indicates that they’d be aware that it was a trap (if it was one).
Also, going into hiding is not necessarily selfish or cowardly (i.e., wanting just to protect themselves and their son). If they knew and believed the prophecy they could just be trying to protect the future defeater of Voldie. Everyone was surprised at baby Harry (apparently) destroying Voldemort, including those that knew the prophecy, so their theory must have been that he’d defeat him after he grew up.
But not what I'd call heroic, either.
On the other hand, it would be definitely be heroic to set yourself up as bait for Voldemort on what was fully intended as a suicide mission.
If we go with the theory that Dumbledore was setting a trap for Voldemort, based on a dark ritual, I would think it's rather important to make sure that Lily fulfills the dark ritual. IN fact, I think this theory requires that Lily and James are in on Dumbledore's plot, otherwise why not just apparate away? Have port keys set up? At least have Lily and James attack him together?
The prior odds that Lily will just happen to fulfill the terms of a dark ritual seem miniscule, even if we assume that Voldemort had been prepped to give Lily a chance to live.
If it was a plot by Dumbledore to have Lily perform a dark ritual, Dumbledore would tell her to increase the odds that she actually fulfills the ritual. Otherwise he's spending the lives of two members of the Order for a miniscule chance at killing Voldemort.
IN fact, if Dumbledore is going to do this kind of plot, he'd want to set it up in advance with the people involved, not draft them after he got the ball rolling, so that he could arrange a proper prophecy.
I’m not quite sure how you got to the dark ritual part. At least, I see no hint of this, nor any indication that Lily would go with it. Even if you’re going with the “love sacrifice as old magic” in canon and calling it “dark” just because it has a sacrifice, I’m not quite sure it would work if you did it with the explicit purpose of stopping Voldie (intent might taint the sacrifice). Dumbledore might create a situation where Lily would sacrifice herself for Harry, because Dumbledore intends to get rid of Voldie, but this (I think) requires that Lily not know about it, so that her intent is pure.
Canon is careless enough with details to be hard to use for explanations. For example:
It does sound weird, but then again if it were that easy even Voldie would have much more trouble killing people than it appears. http://harrypotter.wikia.com/ suggests that for side-along apparition (i.e., for taking someone with you who can’t do it themselves) the “passanger” needs to be a wizard, and might need to have a wand. So maybe they just couldn’t take Harry. Also, Voldie might just have a policy of casting Anti-disapparition jinxes when he attacks, it’s not clear how hard they are to make. Something like this might also explain why someone who’s hunted by Voldemort, even in hiding, doesn’t have with them a dozen intercontinental portkeys, just in case. (In MoR, at least. In canon they probably just didn’t think of it.)
If he’s actually thinking in story terms rather than faking it, he’d likely think it almost certain rather than minuscule.
Why did you link there rather than here?
Mental hiccup. It’s 2AM here :)
By the way, there’s quite a bit lore on that site that would be quite interesting if we knew what parts of it applied to MoR, such as some info about Snape and Lily that don’t quite match what Snape says.
In canon, portkeys aren't affected by disapparation jinxes - or so sayeth some site.
You couldn't portkey out of Azkaban, so there must be some way to stop them. But probably not a lot, since Quirrell was relying on a few of them after they cleared Azkaban. But yes, I agree that canon is weak here. That's the benefit of this scenario - it makes a tighter plot that makes sense. They didn't run because it was a trap.
Can't but this one at all. The assumption I'm working under is that it was a plot of Dumbledore's to destroy Voldemort. Why would thinking like a story mean that Lily would automatically fulfill the conditions of a dark magic ritual? Just because it would be convenient if she did? That just seems like massive wishful thinking on Dumbledore's part.
I wouldn’t bet on it, it was just my impression that in stories good mothers sacrifice themselves for their babies in such situations—see canon for an obvious example—perhaps more often than in reality.
Two aurors would be most likely to beg for mercy for their child and let themselves be slaughtered instead of fighting back? Harry himself noted the absurdity of thinking that would work, and I believe called it her "final failure as a mother".
And wouldn't there be a whole lot of dark rituals going on, if mothers making sacrifices for their children would unknowingly and automatically invoke a dark ritual?
Seems unlikely that the original prophecy was caused by Dumbledore, at least by the method of the magical clock. As in canon, Trelawney seems to have made the prophecy during a job interview, presumably before she was regularly sleeping with the clock. I expect that if Dumbledore wanted her to make a false prophecy at a specific time, something like an Imperius folled by Obliviation would be more expedient. Furthermore, we have seen Trelawney spontaneously prophecy in the dining hall; this prophecy at least appeared unplanned by Dumbledore.
Regardless of what the clock is for, it didn't play a part in the first prophecy, since Trelawney didn't receive it until after she was hired. And it's less likely that there are two ways of forcing someone to speak a prophecy than only one. The obvious explanation for the clock is that it's a listening device. The clock is evidence against Dumbledore being the source of the prophecies.
The issue of the second prophecy is trickier. For a prophecy to be 'accidentally' overheard would be history repeating itself, if Dumbledore caused it. That would also be consistent behavior for a liar who tries to trick people into believing in destiny, as he did when he told Harry that his father's cloak had found its own way to its destined wearer. But it certainly looked like Dumbledore was surprised that morning, so I don't know.
I think the weight of evidence is still on Dumbledore. For the reasons I've given in this thread, and also this: In the aftermath of the prophecy, his manipulation of Snape and Lily netted him a defeated Dark Lord, a double agent and powerful ally, and a newly horcruxed hero. If the prophecy hadn't occurred, he'd instead have... a bouncing baby boy. It's hard to see what he hoped to accomplish by driving Snape and Lily apart if he didn't intend to prod Voldemort into attacking the Potters. His plot has a prophecy-shaped hole in it.
But I can't account for that damned clock, which means I've gone wrong somewhere. Ugh. I hope someone else gets interested in this question soon. I could use the help.
How do we know he was lying?
Obvious solution: real prophecies exist and fake prophecies exist.
One possibility is that he didn't intentionally drive Snape and Lily apart. I don't think there's enough evidence of that to overcome the prior probability that Trelawney's prophecy was genuine. Note that Dumbledore himself seems to regard the prophecy as genuine---witness, for example, his apparently genuine interest in discovering the "power [Voldemort] knows not."
Here's another way of looking at it. Assume Dumbledore planned in advance to defeat Voldemort by (i) convincing Voldemort of a false prophecy that would lead him to attempt the murder of a baby, and (ii) somehow manipulating the baby's mother into either performing ritual magic herself, or causing Voldemort to perform ritual magic that would bring about Voldemort's death when he attempted to kill the baby. We might now ask, is there a simpler way that Dumbledore might have tried to enact (i) and (ii), other than the means you have suggested?
Note that a priori, assuming that Dumbledore is primarily concerned with defeating Voldemort, there is no reason for Dumbledore to deliver the false prophecy to Voldemort via an agent who is in love with the mother in question. He must then rely on the agent not understanding the prophecy in time. Furthermore, if the agent figures out the prophecy after relaying it to Voldemort, Dumbledore must then rely on Voldemort disregarding the agent's request to spare the mother. So going out of his way to push Snape and Lily apart, and then using Snape as a messenger, seems like a very unintuitive way for Dumbledore to execute this plot. Why not keep Snape and Lily together, see that they have a child, and then deliver the false prophecy to Voldemort via some other agent?
Now, personally, I do think it's a possibility that Snape and Lily were driven apart by Dumbledore, maybe even intentionally. But I don't think it was for this reason.
Ah. See, my prior probability that Trelawney's prophecy was genuine is not very high.
This story has an epidemic of false prophecy. This looks to me like it's intended to prime the reader to accept that an apparently true prophecy is actually false. I also think this is a consideration, but that appears to be a minority view. I'm expecting a false prophecy, and I'm looking for a reason for it to have occurred and apparently been fulfilled despite its falsity.
I think Dumbledore expected the story to play out as it did in the novels. He would get a hero who was bred with the heroic qualities of his parents, bullheaded but pure of heart. Snape, who in HPMoR is terrible at riddles, would fail to solve this one, and his guilt at causing Lily's death would cement his status as a lifelong soldier of the light. Lily would die a martyr, and her sacrifice would ensure Voldemort's defeat. From canon:
This is a complex plot that hinges on storybook logic, but that's not out of character for Dumbledore.
(Yes, it's Quirrell saying it, but remember that he was right.)
The plot is not too complex to be Dumbledore's, but it is too complex to succeed. That's why it didn't. Snape is no longer Dumbledore's. Instead of canon!Harry, he got HJPEV. Harry's mother attacked Voldemort, so her protection doesn't exist; Quirrell can pass the wards around his house at will.
And although it failed, it has the outward appearance of having succeeded, because that's what Voldemort wants Dumbledore to believe.
Apologies for repeating things I've said upthread. I wanted to set my beliefs in their proper context. I hope I've addressed your objections. One that I missed was Dumbledore's apparently genuine interest in discovering the "power [Voldemort] knows not." Dumbledore's relationship to storybook thinking is something I still don't understand. He seems to genuinely believe in the pattern, the rhythm of the world, but also acts as though events need to be nudged into following it. I'm not sure whether this is a dragon in my garage situation of conflicting beliefs and anticipations, or that he thinks you can cause storybook outcomes by setting up storybook premises, or something else I haven't thought of.
My working theory for Dumbledore's emphasis on story logic is that it's a pragmatic decision supporting several different lines of influence.
First, we know he's pretending to be a lot crazier than he is: he acts like a character in a roleplaying game with "Insanity" marked down in the flaws section of his character sheet, not someone with an actual personality disorder, and going out of his way to act like Gandalf fits in fairly well with that.
Second, he spends a lot of his time working with kids, who're probably a lot more familiar with stories than with their real-life cognates: how many times does Draco make an analogy to something he's seen in a play?
Finally, people really are prone to generalize from fictional evidence, and maintaining a semi-fictionalized persona can aid in achieving instrumental goals when they're aligned with the narrative patterns it corresponds to. The Self Actualization storyline provides a good example of this in action: I read Dumbledore's part in that early on as using his persona to nudge Hermione into the high-fantasy hero role that Harry occupies in canon (and considerably more shakily in MoR). When she went off script, so did he. (I suspect that Riddle's Lord Voldemort persona was adopted for similar reasons, incidentally. He might even have picked up that trick from Dumbledore.)
I like this. More support from the text: the narrator draws a distinction between wizards who have walked the paths of power and everyone else. According to the narrator, it's the latter who apply story-reasoning to real life. Dumbledore is one of the former.
ETA: This too.
Which is a downright strange thing to say if you think Mr. Potter is the one with the prophesied "POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD". It's exactly what you'd say if you understood that the power of stories was a power you wielded over other people, and your hero was just another of your pawns.
Perhaps its not such a strange thing to say if you don't think Mr. Potter knows about the prophecy, and are trying to correct his insubordination. In the following chapters, Dumbledore doesn't act as though he has decided Harry is unsuitable as a hero. Rather than trying to replace him, Dumbledore begins to confide in him.
Does Nornagest's explanation of Dumbledore's relationship with story-book reasoning affect your previous analysis? If you agree that Dumbledore feigns a story-book persona, rather than taking story-book logic seriously, then doesn't it seem strange that he would hatch such a plot? Note that his manipulation of the last battle in December is consistent with having realistic view of the world. Yes, Dumbledore did manage to acheive a "story-book outcome," but he clearly didn't expect this to happen---he had a contingency plan.
So the explanation for
is that Dumbledore is lying, or...?
As I said, I don't really understand what's going on in Dumbledore's head.
This is a lie. He claims to have deduced Harry's possession of the cloak by seeing the storylike pattern, when he personally wrapped the cloak and placed it next to Harry's bed. He's trying to convince Harry that life is like stories. Then he contradicts himself in a later chapter. Why? I don't know. "He did it because he's crazy" is an answer that can justify any outcome, doesn't concentrate probability mass, etc., but he sure isn't acting in anything like a coherent fashion.
In that chapter, he uses the "life is like stories" excuse to "deduce" the identity of the cloak without revealing that he already knew it. It works. Harry still has no idea that Santa Claus is Dumbledore.
Dumbledore does think in stories, but he probably doesn't realize it. Some stories don't fit his model (if the villain carries too large an idiot ball or something?).
That's the best explanation I can come up with.
If it's a listening device. If it's a just a clock, it's not evidence of much. If it's a transmission device, I'd say it's evidence for Dumbledore being the source.
Sometimes the so called good commits serious atrocities to achieve a greater goal. This would be bad.
I agree. But y'know, it's odd that the three people most affected by the prophecy had their major life outcomes determined by Dumbledore's machinations. That's a coincidence that needs explaining, I think.
Another implication just hit me: it could make Sirius his accomplice, not Voldemort's. Odd that he didn't get a trial while Dumbledore was Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, come to think of it. Huh.
I'm not too sure Sirius has been Azkabanned at all...