That is how people fight over [...trivia...] when what they are really hurt by is loss of autonomy, or financial insecurity, or fading intensity of intimacy, or some other big deal.
Are you really comfortable putting "hurtful and/or stupid things written in a Potions textbook" in the same category as financial insecurity? Or are you saying that Dumbledore used the textbook to induce a profound fear like that? And did it such that Lilly never e.g. tried to respond to one of the Potions remarks face-to-face?
I dunno. I'm trying to imagine how this played out concretely, and I just can't manage it. Try this exercise: pick two of your high-school friends, and try to produce the effect you're describing, without either party realizing that anyone else is involved. Give yourself all of Dumbledore's powers. I don't believe I could have done it without mind-manipulation magic - and if I were going to use that, why bother with the Potions textbook at all?
Are you really comfortable putting "hurtful and/or stupid things written in a Potions textbook" in the same category as financial insecurity?
Yes, I am absolutely comfortable doing so. I'm talking about two children who have never been taught to communicate with intention, with raging adolescent hormones, and with typical teenage naïvete regarding bother their own emotions and those of others.
I don't have two high-school friends to rub together. The fact that I'm still in touch with one person from twenty years ago is the freak result of a wh...
EDIT: New discussion thread here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. With two chapters recently the previous thread has very quickly reached 500 comments. The latest chapter as of 17th March 2012 is Ch. 79.
There is now 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.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
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: