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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

What do you think is Eliezer's motivation for Lily giving ricidulous excuses? Making her look like the person that gives ricidulous excuses?

It's established from the start that Petunia bullied Lily before Lily got magic, and later that Lily is not a very forgiving person, so it's entirely plausible that she just didn't want to use her potion-brewing skills for her sister's benefit, and came up with off-the-cuff excuses not to do so.

The excuse section serves as character development for Petunia. It establishes her troubled relationship with Lily, and the excuses make Lily sound like a petty little girl (which it seems like she was at the time, based on her relationships with James and Severus) rather than cold and harsh as she would have seemed with a flat-out "no" with no reason given. It establishes why Petunia dated Vernon at all, and gives her a chance to talk about her self-image issues and how she wasn't the kind of person who would gravitate to Vernon for his personality (the way canon!Petunia seems to be). It also makes her sympathetic by revealing the extent of her emotional vulnerability with the suicide threat.

We would get none of this had Lily just given Petunia the potion straight away.

Additionally, consider the timeline necessary for your theory to pan out:

Decades before the "power to vanquish" prophecy, which is only made after Harry's birth, and the "HE IS COMING" prophecy, which is only made after Harry does certain things at Hogwarts, the centaurs already know that he is going to destroy the world.
In spite of the cryptic nature of prophecies, they manage to identify a completely random teenage witch and her Squib sister as the subjects, as well as one specific action Lily must perform to lead to Harry being brought up a rationalist.
They somehow convey their warning to Lily, despite the lack of contact between humans and centaurs, but not emphatically enough to actually stop her dooming the world.
After determining that the end of the world is nigh, they sit on their equestrian posteriors and do nothing for the rest of time, not even warning the likes of Dumbledore (for whom I believe they have respect).
Lily speaks to no-one of the terrible warning she has received from a race famed for their powers of divination.
Lily does the one thing that she has been told will doom the world.

Or...

A teenage girl who is bad at forgiving people comes up with excuses not to go out of her way to help the sister who used to bully her.

Which would you assign a higher probability?

Decades before the "power to vanquish" prophecy, which is only made after Harry's birth, and the "HE IS COMING" prophecy, which is only made after Harry does certain things at Hogwarts, the centaurs already know that he is going to destroy the world.

You make a mistake in that you add additional details into your story for which there's no reason.

A "beauty potion" -> "end of the world" prediction wouldn't need to mention Harry at all.

Centaur divination isn't an exact science. Centaur are quite capable of making... (read more)

6elharo13y

In the real world? The second, unconditionally. In fantasy fiction that runs on narrativium? Especially fiction that is known to be full of hints, foreshadowing, and clues that the author put there? The first.