This is another case of an issue that's supposed to be mysterious to the characters, but not to the readers. We know what actually happened: the Sorting Hat said "SLYTHERIN!" to try to scare the crap out of Harry, to make his life flash before his eyes, to make him think that his hopes and dreams were ruined, so he would get serious and vow right then and there not to become the next Dark Lord. But the Hat actually, truly meant him to go to Ravenclaw.
Harry acknowledges that this is what happened: "It had been an awfully cruel prank the Hat had played on him, but you couldn't argue with the results on consequentialist grounds."
No other characters know what happened, so it adds to Harry's mystique for them, but we, who saw the whole thing from Harry's point of view, ought to know better.
Harry is wrong sometimes. From his point of view Quirrell is awesome, and engaging his Dark Side is a perfectly valid option whenever he runs into a problem hard enough (despite his vow to not become the next Dark Lord). He acts more Slytherin than Ravenclaw most of the time.
If Harry had an image of himself as belonging to Ravenclaw and not Slytherin, and the Hat told him "You deserve this too" and then yelled out "SLYTHERIN!"... and then after a few seconds of silence yelled out "Just Kidding, RAVENCLAW!" - given that Harry k...
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: