Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 111

b_sen

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 111.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

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 111.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 think I have a better interpretation of this line than I did before:

"My great creation -" gasped Voldemort. His voice was high, sounding panicked. "Two different spirits cannot exist in the same world - it is gone, it is severed!

The "great creation" is a 'pocket world' where a spirit resides, and can possess anyone who touches a portal to it, and can perceive the world around the portals, and so on. As another feature of not testing the Horcrux system, Voldemort is unaware that it's limited to one inhabitant--and so when he introduces Hermione, he evicts himself. This is a terrible shock, and gives Harry the drop on him.

Voldemort is unaware that it's limited to one inhabitant--and so when he introduces Hermione, he evicts himself.

One obvious possible implication of this is that if Harry did kill Voldemort's current body with the gun, Voldemort may be permanently dead. I guess we'll find out in 22 minutes...

2lerjj11y

This seems viable. The line immediately preceding: [...] This strongly suggests to me that he wanted to make Granger a horcrux (as in, a horcrux for Granger). This helps to pattern match with 'practising being nice' but as before, we meet the same confusion: If Voldemort is going to kill HP, why is he trying to make Hermione invincible? At least if this all ends well, Hermione really will be the stand-out witch of her generation. And the next.