I revise my position. 500 years seems to be excessive, in many areas. I would guess that the Hogwarts Express, and potentially even the toilets do rely on some level of magic, though.
My understanding was that most of the “modern” items (excepting things like the lamps in Azkhaban) are magic-based items, they simply got the ideas from muggle items. There’s no obvious indication that Minerva’s clock was purely mechanical; the one Trelawney used had voice recognition, for example.
Even torches are a “muggle-inspired technology” if you think about it. Purely magical lighting would be a glowing globe, or even unexplainably-lit rooms like the Wizengamot hall, there’s no reason to have it shaped like a torch (albeit proximity self-lighting an...
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: