All that you say is true, and irrelevant. HPMoR is both an original story and, at the same time, a reflection on another author's story (fanfiction). I believe Eliezer doesn't change things (that happened before the story's beginning), and general facts about the universe, without having a specific reason in mind. This makes it more focused and easier to read for people familiar with canon (the target audience).
A change to the universe that made prophecies in general not true/real, would be so big that it would thematically deserve to be the subject of its own story. In this story, the big change is everyone's intelligence, and we get to see how the smarter characters react differently to the same world as in the original story. In my opinion, a story that eventually revealed that "prophecies don't really exist and are always cons" - when even a character like Quirrel believes in them - would be in the same class as a story that eventually revealed that "magic doesn't really exist, it's all sufficiently advanced technology controlled by aliens who are the real mastermind, villain, and Harry ends up teaming with Voldemort to defeat them". It might be a good story, but it's not a Harry Potter story.
First paragraph: Irrelevant.
Maybe it's just an inherent constraint of writing a Harry Potter fic.
In other words, you're talking about what makes a fic a Harry Potter fic, not about what HPMoR is about.
...a story that eventually revealed that "prophecies don't really exist and are always cons" ... would be in the same class as a story that eventually revealed that "magic doesn't really exist, it's all sufficiently advanced technology controlled by aliens who are the real mastermind, villain, and Harry ends up teaming with Voldemort to def
The new thread, discussion 13, is here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. With three chapters recently the previous thread has very quickly reached 1000 comments. The latest chapter as of 25th March 2012 is Ch 80.
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, eleven.
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: