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Unnamed comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapters 105-107 - Less Wrong
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Quirrell's Parseltongue statements could use a close reading.
This could just mean that the Pioneer horcrux prevents him from being "truly killed".
This seems quite explicit. Quirrell thinks that he can bring Hermione back to life.
(Not in Parseltongue.) Quirrell later asks Harry in Parseltongue to promise to help get the Stone, but he never says in Parseltongue that help getting the Stone is what he actually wants from Harry.
Does this rule out Quirrell transferring his soul into Harry's body (wiping out Harry's identity and reuniting with the Tom Riddle groundwork that he laid in Harry's mind)? Because without this line, that would be my leading hypothesis for what Quirrell actually wants Harry for.
I thought it was worth revisiting Quirrell's past uses of Parseltongue. Most are nothing noteworthy, but there are a few interesting ones in Chapter 58.
Quirrell was telling the truth about not trying to kill Bahry.
While this could be literally true, or only true in the context of the hypothetical scenario suggested by Harry, it is worth noting that Quirrell never says in Parseltongue that the healer waiting for Bellatrix is real.
This one sounds important now that we know it is definitely true (or at least was at the time).
What does "you" mean, though? Tom Riddle? In which case Quirrell could just as well be speaking of himself. The physical body others designate "Harry"? In which case Quirrell could just permanently transfigure himself into Harry's body using the stone, shoot Harry and vanish the body and claim "Quirrell" had urgent business elsewhere.
If Voldemort (or whatever created both Voldemort and Harry) consideres Potter the same person as himself, then "I do not intend to raisse my hand or magic againsst you in future, sso long ass you do not raisse your hand or magic againsst me." is a tautology and always true.
This is probably not the case however, as it would feel like a very cheap language trick given that Quirrel has used "you" and "I" in parseltongue in a non-ambiguous manner several times already. Even worse, if Quirrel was going by this then he'd risk Harry picking up the trick and promising to help himself get the stone, and not consider it a betrayal.
What if Quirrell is so good at dissociation that he can lie through parseltongue by convincing himself that what he's saying is true?
Canon!Voldemort, maybe. MoR!Voldemort, not a chance.
But rationalists should win, so MoR!Voldie should self-modify to be less Spock-rational and more capable of deceiving himself.
Only if the ability to lie to Harry Potter is more valuable than having a clearly-functioning mind that accurately represents the real world.
Well, I'm not denying that it's a Dark Art. He'd have to apply this very selectively. I couldn't pull it off. Eliezer probably couldn't pull it off. But this is Quirinus Quirrell we're talking about!
Edit after Ch 109: That's actually pretty similar.
Were any of these said by Quirrell as a snake, as opposed to Parselspeaking as a human?
All of them, as this is the first time Q hasn't turned into his Snake form first...
For that matter, why did he ever bother turning into his snake form? Just to make Harry think he had the limitation of not being able to speak Parseltongue while human, for some reason?
Voldemort is the last known Parselmouth, so it would be highly suspicious for Quirrell to also be one.
Looks like I misunderstood the relevant passage in Chapter 49--when Quirrell confirms that other snake Animagi can't overhear them, he isn't implying that you also have to be a Parselmouth, he's implying that he can only understand Harry because Harry wills it.
For an obvious reason - pretend to have more limits than you do, to be underestimated.
This makes me wonder whether we can trust anything Quirrell said as a snake. Let's say Parseltongue is "the ability to speak in snake language" and was created by Slytherin so that his heirs would have a way to talk to each other in a trusting way (plus so they could talk to snakes, because he liked snakes). Then Harry or Quirrell speaking as humans in Parseltongue are using Slytherin's creation, but Quirrell speaking as a snake animagus is just doing normal snake-talk and wouldn't have the restriction.
But Quirrell's justification RE Parseltongue was "snakes can't lie". So if we believe his explanation to begin with, we must assume that normal snake-talk is equally trustworthy.
Another possibility is that snakes can't lie (lying depends on some brain feature they lack) and Parselmouthing people can't lie (part of how it works) but a snake animagus is neither and so can lie.
FWIW, I'm pretty sure that EY would endorse the claim that lying depends on a brain feature that snakes lack. Lying in the sense of deliberate deception requires a theory of mind of the one being deceived, and snakes aren't that intelligent, or so I believe that EY believes (and for that matter believe myself).
OTOH, snakes aren't intelligent enough to talk either; in HPMOR, they only do so by borrowing the mind of the Parseltonguer. And Parseltonguers can conceive of other minds, both for the benefit of snakes and for their own speech. So this doesn't prove anything.
Yes, I'm pretty sure that's EY's model.
But a snake animagus doesn't have a snake brain; you keep your normal mind while you're an animagus.
Yes, I agree. So if Quirrel were deliberately trying to mislead, ‘Snakes can't lie.’ would be a great statement to use.
Or it's almost all truth with one crucial lie.
Does that matter?
(If you're suggesting that snakes -- even ones that are actually human animagi -- can lie when speaking Parseltongue even though humans apparently can't, where does that come from? If conversely you're suggesting that snakes can't but humans can, surely Harry's failure to say 2+2=3 in Parseltongue is strong evidence against that.)
That definitely hints that part of the plan is to make use of Harrymort in some way, which makes the "why the hell did he bring Harry along" part make sense.
On a side note, note that Quirrell is wrong or lying about already fulfilling the terms of the prophecy. The person that Quirrell marked as his equal, who has powers that Quirrell knows not, is the version of Harry Potter after Quirrell forked himself.
Hence, presumably, the sense of doom.
(... what is odd, though, is that Quirrell seems to be on the losing end of that conflict of magic.)
Quirrell marked Harry as his equal. I cannot imagine anything more marking someone as your equal than replacing their mind with your own.
... but that's not marking someone as your equal, it's killing them and replacing them entirely. That's like saying murdering someone is marking them - maybe, but only in the useless-prophecy "A great nation will fall" sense.
Whereas HJPEV got the same mark that Quirrell got in his first year.
On the first point : he can only be defeated by the Power He Knows Not!
On the contrary.
Voldemort can only be defeated by The Power He Knows: Nott!
Notice that Theodore Nott is right outside. He was (oddly) traveling with the Meddling Kids Squad.
Very good.
However, there's nothing odd about his presence with the other children. He's a Slytherin who's been portrayed sympathetically ever since his induction into the Chaos Legion, so it's very plausible that he's a member of the Silvery Slytherins and thus someone Draco would turn to for help in an emergency.
It's odd in the sense that he hasn't been especially prominent in the story so far. All the others were involved in the bullying storyline, or are Draco.
Therefore, by the principle of conservation of nonsense, Theodore Nott must actually be polyjuiced Dumbledore.
Memory magics also make "known" rather flexible.
seems like that last one also doesn't explicitly prevent quirrell shooting harry with a gun.
"Raise my hand," in standard usage, also contains the use of any weapons to harm.
Then one assumes he wouldn't have to specify the magic clause (which uses a wand as a weapon held in the hand).
Wandless magic
Seems quite weak promise to me. He just has to take hostages or do other actions/threats against something Harry values until Harry tries to stop him, and then he'll be free to do whatever he wants to Harry. He can even already have that plan in mind, and still say that sentence in Parseltongue.
But we are back to the problem of "no safe wish", promises made by Quirrell, even in Parseltongue, cannot be trusted. Same for
If he does revive her to true life and health, and after 5 minutes kill her again, he would fulfill the promise.
Parseltogue doesn't seem to allow for careful evasive wording but actually makes people speak openly about their intentions.
It's also worth noting that parseltogue doesn't produce binding promises. To do binding promising the unbreakable vow is required.
It's not as fuzzy/rich as human languages, so it's harder to do it, but it's always possible to only say half of the truth which opens all doors to careful manipulation
Indeed, it doesn't prevent people from reconsidering/changing their mind later on. The speaker has to believe what he says is the truth when he says it, but he can be honestly wrong, and he can change his mind later on.
It seems from the way Harry worded his own part of the deal that if the speak knows he's likely to reconsider, he cannot openly promise it, but it's just a matter of "Harry now knows that future Harry may reconsider, so Harry now can't say future Harry will do it", only about the knowledge of Harry now, and is non binding on the future.
Richness isn't the only limiting factor. When Harry did his 2+2=3 experiment he automatically said 4. That seems the language automatically makes things that reveal the intention to come out.
It's a good thing that he tried to say 3 and not 5. Otherwise we'd be debating whether snake-language might not be rich enough to include 5. (Compare rabbit language in Watership Down, which has a single word for all numbers above 4, variously translated in the text as 5 or 1000.)
This is a common feature of primitive languages (including Proto-Uralic, which Finnish and Hungarian are descended from, as well as possibly Proto-Indo-European according to this paper -- though it's best known from Australian languages), but there's no way Salazar Slytherin would have neglected to put a full system of numerals into a language designed to be used for trustworthily planning and executing plots.
What's a full system of numerals? Even in Proto-Uralic, you could say ‘four and one’, and a human mind would understand that (whereas rabbits start getting confused, if I remember my appendix correctly). Conversely, in English, we don't have a word for 21; we just say ‘twenty and one’ (abbreviating the ‘and’ to a hyphen, while in French and German the ‘and’ remains).
A semi-relevant paper: http://www.academia.edu/1917177/On_numeral_complexity_in_hunter-gatherer_languages
A footnote:
Also: https://numberwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/07/30/is-one-two-many-a-myth/ -- the urapon/ukasar thing suggests that you might be right, but that looks like the same structure as in Bardi.
I note in passing that the patterns in that first paper (that is, limits on numeral systems lining up areally, with Australian and Khoisan languages not having many numerals, other African languages varying but tending toward low limits, and Asian languages having high limits) look like they line up well with the IQ data I've seen, although South America is mildly surprising.
Are you sure? My understanding (from reading some anthropology paper I chanced across is that people in cultures without full number systems do get more confused by large numbers.
Right, that's the claim about the Piraha at least: their language has no numerals, only two terms for 'smaller amount' and 'larger amount' and then circumlocutions for things like 'many':
I haven't seen other studies, but I'd assume that people in cultures without full number systems would get confused by large numbers, just since they don't have practice with them.
Now, the claim about the Piraha is that they wanted to learn to count -- after Everett noticed they couldn't count, they got worried that they were getting ripped off in trade -- but couldn't. I don't know how much to trust that, though.
I still don't know what a full number system is, although you and nydrwracu refer to it again. Is the claim that English has one but Proto-Uralic didn't? If so, how is the distinction drawn?
The case of the Pirahã is different. They have less of a number system than the rabbits of Watership Down, and less of a number system than has already been established for Parseltongue. It makes sense that they couldn't learn to count [although the children could, if I remember correctly what I've read about them]. But I find it much harder to believe that a culture that can count to 4 can't learn to count beyond that.
As for confusion, I'll buy that you get confused much earlier if you grew up counting to smaller numbers. Most English speakers have no good idea how big a million is, even if they're comfortable with the word. Nobody has a good idea how big 3^^^3 is.
Well, earlier he did promise:
But not necessarily the same physical form - thus the Alicorn Princess.
Maybe she needs to come back as a unicorn, so she can have steady access to unicorn blood?
Except that according to Quirrell, the unicorn has to die in the drinking for unicorn blood to have its healing effect.
Hence the wings - she's a phoenixcorn. /lie
And when House Potter is elevated to royalty, then she (as a member of that house) becomes a Princess … now everything is explained!
Memory charm him to believe that some random young female person is his friend, and restore that person.
Alternately, just find a young female friend who is already alive. Doing your best to resurrect a living person == no action.