Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 21, chapters 91 & 92

NancyLebovitz

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 chapters 91 & 92 . 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, 17,18,19,20.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Why doesn't Dumbledore just diffuse the responsibility? Have battles like the current ones run by different teachers throughout the year, and also have each teacher, in their own lessons, teach a bit more practically about their spells?

Or is a tradition thing, like the snitch? Will people not let Dumbledore get rid of Defence Against the Dark Arts, even though it means their children won't learn anything?

A risky plan. What if dividing the subject among 20 profs made all 20 of them subject to the curse and lost the entire faculty? In the wizarding world, messing with things you don't understand extremely well can be dangerous.

3Velorien13y

It would be very hard to implement. Hogwarts only seems to have one teacher per subject, and many of those have given no sign of usefulness outside their own subject area (Hooch, Sprout, Sinistra) or indeed within it (Binns, Trelawney). They would struggle to take on the content of the DADA curriculum even collectively. We do know that some past defense professors have been effective even during just one year - Tonks is considered Auror material, for example, and she didn't pick all of that up from Quirrell. So abolishing the subject would be a step too far, not to mention that it would lead Hogwarts into conflict with the Ministry for failing to follow the national curriculum.