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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

1) ...huh. I didn't get that impression. I mean, I certainly got the impression that Harry was going to kill them (starting with the auror) but he doesn't know AK, and one thing Harry has never had trouble with was coming up with clever ways of killing.

2) Um. Homing?

The first is that the Killing Curse strikes directly at the soul, and it'll just keep going until it hits one. Straight through shields. Straight through walls.

I guess I can see where you got that impression, but that wasn't my interpretation at all. I thought it just meant that it will continue going on until it hits a soul, off in a straight line (though obviously I was curious about whether it will curve with the Earth, could you drill into the ground and give a pathway up for magma, etc.).

Hmmmm... Let me describe my perceptions of Rationalverse spells...

Avada Kedavra: Moderate to fast bolt, at least a little bit homing or auto-targeting (Allegedly the Sumerian Simple Strike 'has a tendency to hit whatever you look at', this might be similar) at souls, penetrates all normal shields, penetrates at least a few inches of mundane material but probably cannot be targeted in a hugely indirect manner, or would be overpowered. If it homed really well, or was both auto-targetting and an instantaneous bolt, nobody would be able to dodge it. Also, I t... (read more)