What happens if multiple wizards try to Time Turner the stock market? Information can't travel back more than six hours in time. So if Wizard #1 sees a stock price falling, and goes back in time to sell, and Wizard #2 sees effects of that, and goes back in time to sell, weird things happen.
I'm not sure what the six-hour limitation on information actually does, though. We see Bones asking Dumbledore, "I have information which I learned four hours into the future, Albus. Do you still want it?" Dumbledore weighs the value of the information against the value of going back in time more than 2 hours. However, if he rejects that information, and goes back in time 3 hours, he still brings back the knowledge that Bones will have information to share. How exactly does that work?
The impression I got was that the Time Turner would fail to work. Thus, if Bones tells D, then D uses his Time Turner, he only goes back 2 hours.
That's an interesting thought, actually. Can you prevent a person from going back in time by essentially giving them information from the future, even if they don't know it is information from the future?
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 81, which should be published later today. The previous thread passed 400 comments as of the time of this writing, so it will pass 500 comments soon after the next chapter is posted, if not before. I suggest refraining from commenting here until chapter 81 is posted; comment in the 12th thread until you read chapter 81. After chapter 81 is posted, I suggest all discussion of previous guesses be kept here, with links to comments in the previous thread.
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.) When posted, chapter 81 should appear here.
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, twelve.
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: