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 110.
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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.
Been thinking this through all day now.
Situation at the start of the school year: The stone is in the mirror, and it is anticipated Voldemort will be attempting to retrive it. Dumbledore is in possession of the true cloak of invisibility, and has "Flamel" on speed dial. Harry is known to be a harrycrux, which means Voldemort will either be taking over his body, or at least checking up on him.
There is no way Dumbledore gives Harry the cloak without anticipating Voldemort using it against the mirror. He wasn't obligated to hand that thing over to a first year, as opposed to hiding it under the proverbial rock in Greenland. Probability this was a misstep so low I can't be bothered to calculate it. It isn't just that he would have to miss the potential interaction here, every other person involved in building the trap would have to also miss it. For an entire year. So it's a plot.
This is the point where my certainties become less certain - I think what is going on is that the trap is set up to give Voldemort the false impression of victory at every step of the way while at the same time trying to take him off the board in various ways. This is being done to avoid him fleeing via blowing up Quirell's skull.
This means either Dumbledore was a fake of some kind or if actually there, that he lied through his teeth agreeing with every point of fact Quirrel brought up in order to convey zero actual information. Beyond that I thought of so many possibilities for what the actual trap could be that my head is currently spinning.
Option one : The True Cloak of invisibility is no such thing. They made a ringer. Option two: They flat out just cursed the darn thing. Option tree: The cloak has funny interactions with spirits, and the entire point is to kill voldemort while he is wearing it. Option 4.. you get the point.
I also think that there are likely plots in motion not related to the mirror at all - it would fit dumbledore's style to attack this problem at every possible point of intervention.
I am also fairly darn sure that Dumble knew or knows that Q is V - the phrasing used when professing surprise is just dripping with sarcasm.
I'm.. not at all sure Dumble actually has any unusual access to divination. See my earlier point about how he seemed to agree with every point of fact Voldemort raised, which has to be a disinformation tactic. Or the mirror just stroking his ego. Noone guesses that many things correct at this level of complexity on the first try.
I do assume that Dumbles operates on extensive access to prophecy as well as his own plotting, so it's possible that he gave Harry the cloak because he know this is required even if he doesn't know why.
One possibility I've been kicking around is that Harry will destroy this world with Quirrell in it (and the stars themselves) to take out all of his horcruxes, but will transport himself and much of the rest of the world into a mirror realm first. The mirror and it's contents will survive, and Quirrell will be left out of the mirror world escape because the cloak is covering him. I can't really make the details work in my head, but it's a scenario where the cloak becomes a liability to Quirrell.