Draco would take into account his father's wish for life as we know it to continue
He can do that, to the extent that he is able to ignore the influence of the drug. (ie. You are just denying the counterfactual.)
and lacks the resources to transform anything into computronium.
No he doesn't. It would be hard and potentially take years. He could also be stopped by force by others or killed while making the attempt. He certainly has the resources available though and to the extent that the mind control magic is assumed to work he has perfect, concentrated motivation.
Talking to Harry does not transform one into a genie.
Not assumed and not required. He just needs to be a vaguely competent intelligent agent (although the fact that he is already a gifted, machiavellian wizard also helps). The rest came in the ridiculously careless question given under the power of potent mind control magic.
Ah, I think I see the problem. IIRC, veritaserum forces Draco to be truthful, not to obey any given commands. Presumably if he was under such control (have we seen how the imperius curse works in the MORverse?) then he would indeed attempt to augment his own ability to perform the task, using whatever means available, and his conversations with Harry might indeed have suggested the possibility of computronium to him.
That said, he might seek a faster method if one was available, since time is almost certainly limited - whether by the limits of the spell (mo...
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: