Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93

daenerys

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 93. The previous thread has passed 300 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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.

at some point Dumbledore tells Harry that Snape is one of his most valuable allies.

I can't help suspecting that what you're actually thinking of is this:

My beloved son:

I would say that you have been so fortunate as to meet someone who enjoys the intimate confidence of our friend and valuable ally, Severus Snape.

in chapter 7, which of course was written not by Dumbledore but by Lucius Malfoy.

Snape is in a perfect position to cleave together the cleft worlds of wizardry. If he can convince Malfoy that not Dumbledore but Voldemort threatened the life of his son, he can make these old enemies into allies against voldemort.

2ChrisHallquist13y

When I wrote my comment, I went looking for the passage I was thinking of, and found the one you quote instead. But I could have sworn there was a later passage where Dumbledore tells Harry essentially the same thing. I'd put more weight in Dumbledore's claim, as we see Snape helping Dumbledore/Harry extensively, and all of his actions seem to have the best of intentions. (Also, Eliezer does not seem to have tampered with canon allegiances much.) EDIT: Upon looking through the HPMOR archives, I think I may have been thinking of chapter 18, where Dumbledore says that Snape has his fullest confidence. Other useful information on Methods!Snape's loyalties are to be found in chs. 77 and 86. I feel like there may be some other relevant chapter here, like after Dumbledore had more fully taken Harry into his confidence, but not in a discussion with Snape or McGonagall present.