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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

You can only travel back in time if you've already arrived.

You only travel back in time if you've already arrived. I don't think "can" belongs there. You only travel to New York if you arrive, but you don't say that you only can travel to New York if you arrive, even though it's impossible to leave for New York and then disappear into the ether.

The mechanism by which the time-turner works is unclear, but if Harry didn't try and fail to use his time-turner simply because he already hadn't arrived earlier in time.

I can't seem to parse this sentence. Please restate.

We know that Harry won't successfully use his Time Turner from the fact that he hasn't arrived in the past, but we don't know why.

... That was lack of sleep talking.

And right now that we only know that Harry's attempts to travel back in time doesn't appear to stop Hermione's death. That could be because for some reason Harry is unable to convince or blackmail Dumbledore and unable to defeat a simple casing despite knowing partial transfiguration, it could be because of an as-yet unstated limitation on the use of time-turners (which would be the bad storytelling trope known as "ass-pull"), or it could be because the same enemy which buffed the troll also takes precautions ag... (read more)