Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82

FAWS

The new discussion thread (part 15) is here.

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 82. The previous thread passed 1000 comments as of the time of this writing, and so has long passed 500. Comment in the 13th thread until you read chapter 82.

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: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

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:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

The new discussion thread (part 15) is here.

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:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

One thing I learned from the Imperius debt experience is that this sort of impression can be misleading.

I thought that the possibility of Harry bringing up the Imperius debt was unlikely because it seemed like one of those crack fic ideas and the story so far was very much unlike those. What I failed to consider was that a lot of my impression of the plausibility of the story depends on the external details surrounding it: the writing style, Harry's internal thoughts, the reactions of the other characters, and so on. It was somehow a lot easier for me to come up with such details for other ideas, and so I thought they were much more likely.

Similarly, here, the "Send Dumbledore a conversion table" idea is already a Harry-like thing to do as stated, so it's easy to imagine in a story (it seems a little OOC, but not significantly so). "Just say he's sorry" is not a Harry-like thing to do at all, it's a very generic thing to do. So you don't imagine it being in the story.

But it's easy to wrap the plot feature of Harry just saying he's sorry in believable detail. Have him approach the table while angsting about some psychological experiment related to apologizing. Maybe have him start talking like a book for a minute and then stop and say "So, I guess, what I'm trying to say is... I'm sorry." Have Dumbledore put on a penitent, yet wise and understanding expression and say a Dumbledore thing. Now it's much easier to imagine, isn't it?

Edit: Or let's go the other way. You are, in particular, saying that Harry is ten times as likely to apologize to Dumbledore in writing as he is in person. Stated that way, does it strike you as plausible?

Sadly, yes, it does. I could see him apologizing in person, yes... maybe your scenario brings it up to 10 and 3 - three times as likely. But it still seems that apologizing through writing is much more likely.