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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

GoT is absurdly dark, though. Things like that have happened in history, but not so compressed in time.

This is historically inaccurate. GoT is fairly accurate for the time period depicted (it is based loosely on the War of the Roses). It is practically lighthearted compared to the vast majority of human history.

After I found out about the Red Wedding, I gave up on the entire thing, I found myself completely losing interest.

The Red Wedding, like most of GoT, is based on a historical analogy with the War of the Roses. Specifically, it is a combination of the Battle of Heworth Moor, where a wedding party was warned in advance of an ambush and managed to hire enough mercenaries to survive, and the Black Dinner, where the leaders of a clan were invited to dinner, then slaughtered.

I am currently reading a history of Byzantium. In the roughly three centuries from Constantine to Justinian, a situation with someone invited with guarantees of safety but betrayed and murdered occurs about ten times.

1Ritalin13y

Usually the War of the Roses isn't portrayed nearly as darkly. Hm. An interesting thing happened in my head. I imagined GoT as retold in the style of Horrible Histories, and suddenly it all became okay and tolerable. "Stupid deaths, stupid deaths, it's funny cause it's true. Stupid deaths, stupid deaths, hope next time it's not you!"