Suppose enough people disbelieve Lucius, or just oppose him if he's keeping his reasoning secret. Harry is the one coming forward asking to testify, so they decide to let him.
But when testifying before the Wizengamot, standard procedure is to use a Legilemens. They even used one on Hermione, and no-one thinks she's any kind of Occlumens at all. So an Occlumens would be used, and would report that Harry is lying.
There's no way Daniel_Starr's plan for Harry would work - whether they let him testify or not - unless he is a perfect Occlumens, and I don't believe that even of his dark side, it's not been sufficiently foreshadowed. (Also, Eliezer just wrote in the A/N that in text fiction, a protagonist can't just power-up and gain new abilities during a crisis, because it makes for poor storytelling; he has to solve the crisis using abilities he already has.)
But when testifying before the Wizengamot, standard procedure is to use a Legilemens. They even used one on Hermione, and no-one thinks she's any kind of Occlumens at all. So an Occlumens would be used, and would report that Harry is lying.
I don't believe this is correct.
...The Potions Master raised his voice. "This is not Muggle Britain, Mr. Potter!" Severus's face was as expressionless as ever, but the bite in his voice was sharp. "The Aurors have an accusation under Veritaserum and a confession under Veritaserum. So far as they are conc
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: