Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 27, chapter 98

Vaniver

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 98. 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, 26.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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, 25, 26.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

I notice you are confused

^ Don't do that.

No, I'm not assuming that children brokered the deal, but I can see that it may have looked that way, especially if you miss the context (that I was responding to the specific things EternalStargazer said).

To some extent, yeah, wizard children are, and are treated as being, more competent than muggle children. But there's still a very real difference between an adult and a child. For example, Harry Potter still needs a legal guardian. And I assume that McGonaggal's "She is a twelve-year-old girl, Albus!" isn't strongly atypical.

Anyway, no matter how mature they are (read the various dorm and SPHEW scenes for some sanity checks on that idea), they still don't have any authority; there are people whose responsibility is to make announcements such as these, and to have the kids do all this posing instead makes it a bit farcical to me.

I think if they really wanted to, the parties involved could make this happen, but why would they want to? I don't expect the world to be scandalized, I just expect some eye-rolling and mild incredulity. Not something you want if you're making a political move and want to be taken seriously.

But hey, I'm one of the probably small minority of readers who've never quite accepted things like, say, how easily Harry Potter gets away with being rude to Dumbledore.