Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11

Oscar_Cunningham

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:

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

The Dementor is literally death. The "sword that has slain a woman and rope that has hanged a man" ritual will almost certainly summon one, but that's known Dark, and thus probably not something that can be used in the middle of a Wizengamot proceeding. And other than altering the punishment, how would this help? Even killing the Dementor outright will just make them mildly annoyed.
Dumbledore did (plausibly) burn Narcissa alive, and Potter saying so openly might be enough to swing something. It'd be unlikely to turn out well - Dumbledore would of course deny it, Potter's alliance would instantly be sundered, and unless Dumbledore wound up in jail, it wouldn't save Hermione. But, it might be tried.
The scarred man is likely Jugson, not Greyback. Isn't Greyback in Azkaban right now? Not a solution, but it should be noted.
If he's learned Avada Kedavra, there's always the option of blinding everyone with a super-Patronus and then committing mass murder until your side has a majority. Somehow, I don't see that one happening.
Snape and/or Quirrell(or someone else - Padma Patil would be a funny choice) comes to the rescue. Vanishingly unlikely, and hardly in keeping with the message of the story, but not strictly impossible.
Hermione figures out the super-Patronus, with Harry's prompting. This one is actually the least crazy of the lot, I think - the super-Patronus works on the principle of love for all human life. Someone who casts it ought to be damn near incapable of murder, and if the principle could be explained to the Wizengamot without ruining everything, the fact that Hermione managed it would actually constitute exculpatory evidence. It likely wouldn't be believed, but it's closer to possible than most of the others.

As I said below though, these plans all share one common feature - they suck. I can't think of one that isn't either vanishingly unlikely or obviously stupid, and too stupid at that to be used even by a despairing child trying to save his girlfriend from a fate asymptotically approaching death.

If he's learned Avada Kedavra, there's always the option of blinding everyone with a super-Patronus and then committing mass murder until your side has a majority.

You don't need that particular spell to commit mass murder. Harry would likely use transfiguration or napalm. That said, Harry-who-can-murder is not Harry-who-can-Patronus.

1Vaniver14y

Love of all human life does not translate into an inability to do math or unwillingness to murder. As well, it's not clear that guilty Hermione feels good enough about herself or all human life that she would be able to cast it.