Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 108

b_sen

New long chapter! Since I expect its discussion to generate more than 160 comments (which would push the previous thread over the 500 comment limit) before the next chapter is posted, here is a new thread.

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 108 ~~(and chapter 109, once it comes out on Monday)~~.

EDIT: There have now been two separate calls for having one thread per chapter, along with a poll in this thread. If the poll in this thread indicates a majority preference for one thread per chapter by Monday, I will edit this post to make it for chapter 108 only. In that case a new thread for chapter 109 should be posted by whoever gets a chance and wants to after the chapter is released.

EDIT 2: The poll indicates a large majority (currently 78%) in favor of one thread per chapter. This post has been edited accordingly.

There is 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.)

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

EDIT 2: The poll indicates a large majority (currently 78%) in favor of one thread per chapter. This post has been edited accordingly.

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.

This seems like a good occasion to quote the twist reveal in Orson Scott Card's Dogwalker:

We stood there in his empty place, his shabby empty hovel that was ten times better than anywhere we ever lived, and Doggy says to me, real quiet, he says, "What was it? What did I do wrong? I thought I was like Hunt, I thought I never made a single mistake in this job. in this one job."

And that was it, right then I knew. Not a week before, not when it would do any good. Right then I finally knew it all, knew what Hunt had done. Jesse Hunt never made mistakes. But he was also so paranoid that he haired his bureau to see if the babysitter stole from him. So even though he would never accidentally enter the wrong P-word, he was just the kind who would do it on purpose. "He doublefingered every time," I says to Dog. "He's so damn careful he does his password wrong the first time every time, and then comes in on his second finger."

"So one time he comes in on the first try, so what?" He says this because he doesn't know computers like I do, being half-glass myself.

"The system knew the pattern, that's what. Jesse H. is so precise he never changed a bit, so when we came in on the first try, that set off alarms. It's my fault, Dog. I knew how crazy paranoidical he is, I knew that something was wrong, but not till this minute I didn't know what it was. I should have known it when I got his password, I should have known. I'm sorry, you never should have gotten me into this, I'm sorry, you should have listened to me when I told you something was wrong. I should have known, I'm sorry."