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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Well, at this precise moment Harry cares rather a lot more about moving her out of the "Dead" state than he does about rendering her immortal, so if vampires have a finite lifespan, that is not an unacceptable drawback at this particular juncture. (.. and would outright be an advantage if it means she gets out of being stuck at age 12. Not that having her stuck at age 12 would stop Harry. That can be fixed when he is not staring down a 6 hour timer)
Further upsides; keeping her rising on the quiet would shield her from repeated attempts at ending her, if he can swing that.

Likely downsides: 1:Feeding. But there has to be an acceptable solution to that, or the magical community would not tolerate vampires at all. On the other hand, the wizarding world generally fails ethics 101 very badly, so maybe they are just all hypnotizing people into being faux-willing donors.

2:Might no longer count as a witch. Giving her the brick powerset of a stereotypical vamp would be a hilarious mismatch for her personality.

That all assumes vampires have continuity of personality with who they were, but if that is not the case I would be somewhat puzzled why they are tolerated. Also, that turning her is workable. If the process of becoming a vampire takes a year and a day or requires her to die from a vampire bite..