jaibot comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: palladias 15 August 2013 02:18AM

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Comment author: OnTheOtherHandle 15 August 2013 05:11:00PM *  18 points [-]

I'm concerned if, this late in the game, Harry's only reason for suspecting the Defense Professor is "just because he's the Defense Professor." It would seem that he has way too many excellent reasons to suspect Quirrell no matter what his title. The sense of doom. The fact that he was able to cast Avada Kedavra on a random guard. The fact that he carried Harry off on a disastrous plot to free Bellatrix Black. The fact that he happened to be there on time to save Draco's life when the wards were disabled. The fact that he is one of only a handful of wizards with the ability to disable Hogwarts' wards. The impassioned speech advocating benevolent fascism. The fact that no one knows who he really is and Harry can think of at least three different identities he's taken on. The weird zombie mode that seems to roughly correlate with Bad Things happening. The excessively harsh and sometimes downright abusive way he runs his class. The lack of empathy and inability to accept or even understand love.

My question is, do you think Harry has realized all this and is really strongly suspecting Quirrell for other reasons, and he only told Lucius that the only reason was the curse on the Defense Professor's position? Or do you think Harry is still reluctant to seriously entertain the possibility that it was Quirrell?

Comment author: jaibot 16 August 2013 06:27:52PM *  16 points [-]

You left out "The wards explicitly say that the Defense Professor killed Hermione."

I mean, it is quite literally spelled out. I'm completely baffled at how both readers and characters are not promoting Quirrell to the top of the suspects list by a mile.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 17 August 2013 07:46:09PM *  20 points [-]

The old witch’s eyebrows rose. “How did he identify you to the Hogwarts wards, then?”
A slight smile. “ “The Headmaster drew a circle, and told Hogwarts that he who stood within was the Defense Professor. Speaking of which—”

Quirrell is Baba Yaga, a "she", and some "he" also in that circle is the Defense Professor. EDIT: The Troll is the Defense Professor.

Past Professors of Defense have included not just the legendary wandering hero Harold Shea but also the quote undying unquote Baba Yaga, yes, I see some of you are still shuddering at the sound of her name even though she’s been dead for six hundred years.

" quote undying unquote Baba Yaga"

Quote hint unquote.

“Here of course we have the Sorting Hat, I believe the two of you have met. It told me that it was never again to be placed on your head under any circumstances. You’re only the fourteenth student in history it’s said that about, Baba Yaga was another one

Gee, Baba Yaga's mind had the same effect on the Hat as Harry's. Do we hypothesize his brain being like anyone else's brain?

And I daresay that most wizards would be hard-pressed to name a single Dark Lady besides Baba Yaga.”

Yes, they'd be hard pressed to name a single Dark Lady besides Baba Yaga. Note how that doesn't say there weren't any, and indeed many. Maybe, let's say, the quote undying unquote Baba Yaga masquerading as other people? Do we know anyone else who masquerades as other people? Anyone else with a brain like Harry's?

I will say this much, Mr. Potter: You are already an Occlumens, and I think you will become a perfect Occlumens before long. Identity does not mean, to such as us, what it means to other people. Anyone we can imagine, we can be; and the true difference about you, Mr. Potter, is that you have an unusually good imagination. A playwright must contain his characters, he must be larger than them in order to enact them within his mind. To an actor or spy or politician, the limit of his own diameter is the limit of who he can pretend to be, the limit of which face he may wear as a mask. But for such as you and I, anyone we can imagine, we can be, in reality and not pretense.

There are 3 and only 3 mentions of Baba Yaga in the book so far, and they tie Harry, the Dark Lord, and Quirrell together.

“Oh, now I see!” said Tracey Davis, speaking up so suddenly that Hermione gave a small startle. “You’re joining our protest because you’re worried that not enough girls are becoming Dark Witches!”
There was a half-smile on Professor Quirrell’s face as he replied,...

Probably a good idea to pay close attention to what Quirrell says when he smiles to himself.

EDIT: Guess who else Harry is like?

“Congratulations indeed,” said Dumbledore. “Even I did not make any original discoveries in Transfiguration before the age of fourteen. Not since the day of Dorotea Senjak has any genius flowered so early.

Latest half baked idea. Harry is Quirrell. I'd been operating on the theory that Quirrell is preparing Harry to take over the world, and then take over Harry. He's actually already taken over Harry as a baby, and lived out a new life as Harry. There are multiple scense of Quirrell comparing events in his life to Harry's, with the implication that Harry's life is the new and improved one.

The whole "Sense of Doom" business is the potential coming together of one person in two time turned bodies in the same space time.

With the ridiculously rampant and specific foreshadowing, some kind of time turning solution seems likely. And causality back through time was already set up with the Comed-Tea incident

but it all makes sense once you draw the causal arrows going BACKWARDS IN TIME!”

Here's a fascinating quote by Dumbledore about Fawkes:

as close to undying as any creature that exists in this world, for whenever their bodies fail them they immolate themselves in a burst of fireand leave behind a hatchling, or sometimes an egg.”

And Harry is discovered as a baby next to the presumed immolated remains of Voldemort.

Comment author: gwern 17 August 2013 09:38:55PM 5 points [-]

You make a better case for Quirrel=BY than anyone I've seen to date.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 18 August 2013 12:06:03AM 7 points [-]

Reading the PDF and using the search function is very handy. 3 comments on BY doesn't take a lot of effort to analyze. I was surprised there were so few comments.

A harder piece of analysis would be to look at Quirrell's views on gender. Harder to search on.

But the SPHEW protests provide some interesting tidbits. First of all, that Quirrell is there at all. Of the faculty, it's predominantly the female faculty, and Quirrell doesn't seem your prototypical human rights protester. He even had a button.

“You mean that’s how men would treat us if we didn’t have wands to defend ourselves?”

There was a short, sardonic laugh from the direction of Professor Quirrell. When Hermione turned her head to look she saw that the Defense Professor was still idly toying with the button, not bothering to glance up at the rest of them, as he said, “Such is human nature, Miss Clearwater. Rest assured that you would be no kinder, if witches had wands and men lacked them.”
“I hardly think so!” snapped Professor Sinistra.
A cold chuckle. “I suspect it happens more often than any dare suggest, in the proudest pureblood families. Some lonely witch spies a handsome Muggle; and thinks how very easy it would be, to slip the man a love potion, and by him be adored alone and utterly. And since she knows he can offer her no resistance, why, it is only natural for her to take from him whatever she pleases—”

Maybe Quirrell speaks with some authority about what women with power would do. EY has a habit of having his characters smile or laugh to themselves when they're think thing they're not entirely sharing with others.

“Professor Quirrell was testing Hermione to see if he wanted to be her mysterious old wizard,”

So that Quirrell took Hermione seriously in ways that others didn't. He also awarded her "100 points for doing what's right". And he tried to get her out of Hogwarts before she died. He looks to be another character who values Hermione more than EY's "feminist" detractors.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 18 August 2013 02:24:18AM 13 points [-]

Maybe Quirrell speaks with some authority about what women with power would do.

The story Quirrell recounts here seems very much like the canon story of handsome muggle Tom Riddle's seduction by pureblood witch Merope Gaunt — the parents of Tom Riddle, Jr. aka Voldemort.

Comment author: Tenoke 18 August 2013 11:31:14PM 0 points [-]

Twist: Quirrell is Voldemort's mother.

Comment author: Fhyve 19 August 2013 08:36:35PM -1 points [-]

aka Baba Yaga

Comment author: buybuydandavis 03 September 2013 12:38:24AM 1 point [-]

Very good catch. It lessens the support of that particular response to my thesis, but I still think the scene as a whole still does lend some support.

Comment author: gwern 18 August 2013 03:07:07AM 3 points [-]

Reading the PDF and using the search function is very handy. 3 comments on BY doesn't take a lot of effort to analyze. I was surprised there were so few comments.

I think it's more that I never took the idea seriously enough to note the links between the Sorting Hat, Occlumency descriptions, etc all formed a reasonably persuasive picture.

Comment author: tegid 19 August 2013 02:22:52PM 2 points [-]

You make really good points. The 'laws' of storytelling go against it, though, in the sense that with only 3 mentions, Baba Yaga being important would be unsatisfying. In any case, if this were true there must be other things on top of it that are more meaningful (i.e. Quirrel is Voldie who is BY, or whatever...)

Comment author: buybuydandavis 03 September 2013 01:18:10AM *  0 points [-]

On the original point, of who the Defense Professor is, I saw a great idea on Reddit - the Troll is the Defense Professor.

“Not so,” said Dumbledore. “If Voldemort has not fully mastered the wards, then the wards had to believe that some Professor’s hand was at work. Else they would have cried out at Miss Granger’s injury, and not only upon her death.”

So if you need an agent in Hogwarts to kill a student, you want the wards to think that they're a Professor.

Also, about Quirrell stealing bodies

The smile that the Auror gave had absolutely no mirth in it. “So where’s the real Quirinus Quirrell, eh? Under an Imperius in the bottom of a trunk somewhere, while you take a hair now and then for your illegal Polyjuice?”
“You are making highly questionable assumptions,” the Defense Professor said with an edged voice. “What makes you think I did not steal his body outright using incredibly Dark magic?”

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 24 August 2013 03:51:20PM -1 points [-]

Quirrell aka Baba Yaga aka Voldemort is Harry's biological mother. (James Potter is his father.) That would explain their similarities better than the hypothetical brain surgery / horcrux thing.

Comment author: atorm 26 August 2013 12:01:11PM 0 points [-]

Boy-Who-Lived Gets Draco Malfoy Pregnant

Comment author: buybuydandavis 27 August 2013 11:53:47PM 0 points [-]

Given the extreme and multiple foreshadowing EY indulges in, I wouldn't count it out.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 27 August 2013 11:48:46PM *  -1 points [-]

That's interesting. Baba Yaga, traveling through time by uploading her mind into host after host, decides to make a more compatible host, and produces a child to be her next host.

My position for a while is that Quirrell is grooming Harry to be his next host, and who better for the Dark Lord to move into, than the Boy Savior as he defeats the Dark Lord?

Though as Quirrell, presumably "he" could have fathered Harry through Lily. However, it kind of fits the story of that Munroe guy that Harry is actually a replacement baby left behind when the Potter family was exterminated. That would be the 2nd Old House that was killed off and left with a single replacement survivor.

But the thing is, if uploading is an integral part of the story, he's already committed to that complication, and so it adds little further complexity to say that he uploaded some chunk of himself to Harry, and a biological explanation becomes superfluous.

Comment author: Dentin 18 August 2013 08:41:54PM 0 points [-]

Probably just pattern matching on it, and Quirrell is ridiculously powerful, but he was the one to notice and stun 100+ females summoning Harry to the ground.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 19 August 2013 04:03:01AM 1 point [-]

And note Quirrell's comment:

“I should have foreseen it myself,” Professor Quirrell said,

He thinks he should have anticipated the actions of young girls taking actions based in romance. That's about the last context a grown man expects to be able to anticipate events.

Pattern matching as well, but the pattern matches quite a lot.

Comment author: Gurkenglas 16 August 2013 10:43:24PM 7 points [-]

You mean Dumbledore says that the wards say that the Defense Professor killed Hermione. We would have to trust both Dumbledore and the wards for that. But you are right, it leaves only Dumbledore and Quirrel as plausible suspects.

Comment author: Fermatastheorem 16 August 2013 10:22:44PM 7 points [-]

This only narrows Harry's list to 'The Defense Professor and people who could rig the wards to say the Defense Professor killed her.' Dumbles is easily on that list.

Comment author: OnTheOtherHandle 19 August 2013 12:49:18AM 1 point [-]

Yes, but "The Defense Professor" and "anyone else who can rig the wards" shouldn't have the same probability in his mind. What with all the rest of Quirrell's strange behavior and the curse on the position, "The Defense Professor" should be allotted a massive probability, with a comparatively smaller piece left for "whoever else has the ability to do this." He should be suspect number one by far.

Comment author: Fermatastheorem 19 August 2013 01:57:36AM 2 points [-]

For that, I'd point to undermind's comment that this is only what Harry wants the Malfoys to know.

There might also be an element of Harry's art as a rationalist being forgotten when he needs it most.