Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 112

Gondolinian

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 112.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 112.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 that attempting to shoot him there wasnt giving an intelligent enemy very much credit. It would only work if the stupid mistakes that Voldemort was making were real, and not a ruse. Given that Harry possibly has only one chance (because Voldemort promised in parseltongue not to try to harm Harry unless he tried to harm him first), taking the first opportunity that presents itself, which might be a trick to get Voldemort out of that promise, is probably unwise.

Regardless of the probability of Voldemort making a stupid mistake, Voldemort was apparently casting the Killing Curse on Hermione, which would be an independent reason to shoot him.

5Phigment11y

Wise sort of went on vacation when Harry elected to oppose the invincible dark lord instead of volunteering to be his most favored flunky. Voldemort is capable of making stupid mistakes; he admitted that with his whole discussion of being trapped for years without a body. But he doesn't make stupid mistakes very frequently. So, if you believe he's making a stupid mistake, you should try to take advantage, because you may not see another one.