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DanArmak comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 12 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Xachariah 25 March 2012 11:01AM

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Comment author: DanArmak 27 March 2012 09:45:35PM 0 points [-]

What does that have to do with Voldemort saying "riddle" to a baby, or with Harry thinking "riddle" was a strange word?

I'm clearly missing your point here...

Comment author: pedanterrific 27 March 2012 09:46:13PM *  1 point [-]

I don't think Voldemort said his own name, no.

ETA: You do know Voldemort is Tom Riddle, right?

ETA2: To explain a little more completely: my idea is that the Remembrall lit up because Harry's 'dark side' had forgotten (almost?) everything. Under Dementation it remembered at least that one bit of information. (Also, maybe, explaining how Harry remembered that scene when the neural patterns shouldn't have even still existed; I would feel more confidence in this part if it didn't include a description of how Voldemort appeared from outside.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 29 March 2012 01:35:49AM 0 points [-]

I would feel more confidence in this part if it didn't include a description of how Voldemort appeared from outside.

Perhaps this was an experience of Riddle's copy, in the moments it was being made, before running on the baby's underdeveloped brain disrupted its functioning.

Comment author: TobyBartels 01 April 2012 03:34:38PM 0 points [-]

Magically, a mind can continue working even without sufficient brain power behind it, as when McGonagall turns into a cat (or even more so when Rita Skeeter turns into a beetle).

Comment author: DanArmak 27 March 2012 10:20:22PM 0 points [-]

I know Voldemort is Tom Riddle. The scene as written (as Harry remembers it) seems to me to mean that the "strange word" was something baby Harry actually heard. Of course it might have been spoken "directly into his mind" via Legilemency or via Voldemort's consciousness or horcrux being installed in Harry's mind.

Either way, why would Harry think of it as a "strange word"? Why not just have him think that he heard the word "riddle"? It makes more sense that he heard a word he cannot recognize, namely "horcrux", and so labels it strange.

See also: first few sentences of Chapter 1. If that is the same scene, it's far more likely the word Horcrux was screamed by Voldemort (casting the Horcrux spell) than the world Riddle.

Comment author: gjm 27 March 2012 10:48:44PM 2 points [-]

Chapters 43 and 45 don't seem to me to imply that baby-Harry actually heard the "strange word", only that for whatever reason Harry found himself thinking it. It was strange because he had (so far as he knew) no particular reason to be thinking that word.

I don't have any very convincing theory for why he had that word in his brain at that point, though. Evidently he interprets it as a message from his subconscious that he should think of Dementors as a riddle, or something like that, but probably something more is meant to be going on.