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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.

Prediction:

Quirrell is grooming Harry to become as similar to himself as possible because he wants Harry to become his new permanent vessel/body ("Want you to rule!" - ehehe!).

He chose Harry because Harry already contains part of himself (hence the "resonance") and/or has a high innate potential for magic, and because the dark ritual for permanent possession requires a very high degree of "fidelity", of similarity between him and the host (in this case raw brainpower).

That's why his takeover of the original Quirrell isn't taking, and why he requires more and more rest to retain control (he may have lobotomized the original Quirrell to keep him from taking over, hence the original being just a drooling idiot when Quirrel isn't in control). Only when Harry is as similar to Voldemort himself as possible will the permanent ritual work, and time is running out for Voldemort to engineer Harry such. Which is why HPMOR is fast building towards its climax.

Enough conjunctions for you, enough of a complexity penalty? Eh? We'll see!

The Dark Lord Tom (or whoever; insert 'Lord Dick' jokes here) definitely wants Harry to use the Killing Curse or otherwise stop wanting everyone to live. This would likely make their magic compatible and Doom-free, since Harry would no longer have terminal values directly opposed to those of Avada Kedavra and the curse's master. So in theory it would allow Q to possess Harry's body. It would also explain why Q doesn't just kill Harry indirectly, having tested his ability to affect the boy with a paper-cut.

But we know what Q wants in part because he wanted ... (read more)