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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

It was meant to be a clever rejoinder by Brienne. I may need to rewrite if people are interpreting it this way.

My initial reaction was one of surprise that Harry would even attempt to bring up ELIZA in a conversation with a non-muggleborn NPC. Even Hermione would probably take a second to access the relevant data item. He seems to be better at judging his audience than this.

If he wants to convey the chatterbot idea, he could use a relevant local example, like some talking magical item, or some magical creature known for mindlessly parroting human speech. Maybe Binn's ghost, or something.

8Alicorn13y

I thought it was clever in a vaguely self-deprecating way. "I obviously have no way of knowing what that thing is, but I can be funny about it." This could probably be conveyed through tone - deadpan may be what you're looking for?

3gwern13y

I think you need to rewrite it; I still don't see how it is clever, rather than insulting. (If you're uncertain, I suggest private messaging a few random Redditors and asking them to summarize what they think that exchange meant.)