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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

It's clear that in Potterverse, there are at least four inputs to a spell: wand, gesture, incantation, and state of mind of caster. Killing Curse and Patronus, for instance, are quite clearly dependent on state of mind. Transfiguration also depends on state of mind, and I don't recall any indication that there is any modification of the gesture or incantation depending on what transfiguration one intends to perform; that is determined entirely by intent. I think that it is reasonable to assume that, just as the Transfiguration spell is a "Do the transfiguration I'm thinking of" spell, the Finite Incantum spell is a "End the spell (or class of spells) I'm thinking of" spell.

"End the spell (or class of spells) I'm thinking of" spell.

This would make the most sense, of course. But remember that this thread started from the idea “what if Dumbledore mass-Finites”, i.e. without knowing what spell he was cancelling. This might work if Finite is smart enough to identify a class like “unknown spells that entered the room together with Harry in this general area”, but that’s stretching it a bit.

Also, though that wasn’t my original point, it still has the risk of very dangerous effects. E.g., if Harry had used a 1 ton stone... (read more)