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 97. The previous thread is at nearly 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, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.
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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.
Do we know this for a fact?
Objections:
Going to Hogwarts is prestigious, meaning there must be lower-status options available.
Hogwarts regularly hires apparently British replacement teachers, most of them with at least the appearance of educational experience. It is improbable that said experience comes exclusively from abroad or from being a private tutor.
There are too few pupils at Hogwarts to account for the entire underage wizarding population, given the size of the overall wizarding population and assuming the majority of wizards' children are also wizards (not to mention having to factor in Muggleborns).
It seems improbable that the booming school equipment business of Diagon Alley survives on one school's worth of customers, especially if most of them only shop once a year.
If most of the population of magical Britain have been through the same school, we would expect an extremely high degree of social interconnectedness, with most people knowing everyone of the same age at least by sight. There's no evidence of this.
On the other hand,
It is implied that letters coming on one's 11th birthday can only come from Hogwarts.
If one is expelled from Hogwarts, one is forbidden from practising further magic altogether.
No other British schools, or pupils or graduates thereof, are ever mentioned in canon that I can remember.
I took the implication from reading the books that Rowling had different ideas at different times whether there were intended to be multiple schools of magic in Britain or not. It was referred to in the beginning as the "best" school in Britain, but by the end of the series, the Voldemort-run Ministry instituted mandatory Hogwarts attendance for all youth, and a character remarked that parents had at least had the option of homeschooling their children before.