Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 23, chapter 94

elharo

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 94. The previous thread has passed 200 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, 21, 22.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

If the secret to Merlin's Opus Magnum is similar to either partial transfiguration or patronus 2.0, then it may not be a problem. Both require special knowledge that isn't easy to convey or transfer to others. In the case of partial transfiguration, it's timeless QM and probability graphs; in the case of the patronus, it's a Long View of the future.

Both are exceptionally rare even in our world; for wizards, much more so. And also as in our world, it's exceptionally hard to convey those things to others. Add to that the burden of responsibility for that kind of power and you may have a situation where wizards who figure out part of all of the Interdict know better than to tell anyone.

That said, I'm not sure how I feel about Slytherin's monster being that important. Even if it did have a pile of spells, the question is how many, and of what actual value? It just seems too small scale for Harry.

I get the feeling that there's something up with the rules of spell creation, and not just that "it's dangerous for people to try". Much like potion brewing, I suspect there's some simple, obvious in retrospect rules which Quirrel knows Harry will grossly abuse once he figures them out.