Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96

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 chapter 96. The previous thread is at almost 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, 21, 22, 23, 24, .

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

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, 23, 24, .

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Creating arbitrary animals that are barely alive, don't need food, water, air, or movement, and made of easily workable material which is also good as armor seems like a good place to start, and also within the bounds of magic. This isn't as absurd as it seems. Essentially living armor plates. You'd want them to be thin so you could have multiple layers, and to fall off when they die, and various similar things. Or maybe on a different scale, like scale or lamellar armor.

Oogely Boogely? Summoning a desk and transfiguring it into a pig? Petrifying numerous terminally ill people, transfiguring them into something small and stable (aka the ringmione hypothesis), and using a finite to turn them into a shield? Filling a mokeskin pouch with chilled snakes? (Imagines Voldemort constantly casting AK at Harry, who constantly shouts snake and pulls something out of his pouch). Or maybe even Serpensortia, if the conjured snake counts for purposes of AK (it can be finited, after all). Or one could just summon a cloud of spiders ("The Amazing Spider-Mage! Not to be confused with Spider-Muggle!)

In canon, Faux-Moody demonstrated AK on a spider. Are spiders still vulnerable to AK in MoR?

0ikrase13y

Oh god. What if you used nanotech to make your skin be made out of patches with very small brains...