Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89

Vaniver

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 88-89. The previous thread has passed 500 comments.

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.)

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: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.

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:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

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:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Because it's implied that Quirrell thinks Harry used it, it follows that Quirrell thinks it was feasible for Harry to use it. IIRC it's mentioned elsewhere that the killing curse is powered by killing intent and not magical power. Harry may not have wanted to use the killing curse either because he didn't have enough confidence in his killing intent (he has to want to kill something terminally, not instrumentally) or (and this is stretching) because he didn't want to deal with the political repercussions of being known for using the killing curse on top of everything else.

Quirrel knows the killing curse better than Harry does. He also is likely to have information about Harry, which Harry lacks. So the fact that he is sure Harry could pull off the killing curse does not mean that Harry has any reason whatsoever to share his confidence. And having it fizzle would be fatal. "Finite the rock" on the other hand is going to work. So he went with that.

12ikrase13y

It's also possible that to Harry, 'tricky transfiguration weapon' is more mentally available than 'THE KILLING CURSE'. Also, for the same reason, Harry might not have learned it.