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buybuydandavis comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Yay!
This is another brick in the wall of the Prophecy and Potter massacre being a setup by Dumbledore.
Not a nail in the coffin? Evidence for and against Dumbledore and Voldemort as authors of the prophecy:
+Dumbledore
-Dumbledore
+Voldemort
-Voldemort
Quirrell has indicated that he plans to go to war with the Muggles and rule the entire world. If Percent_Carbon is right, and "Tom didn't want to be Hitler. Tom wanted to actually win", he may think that conquering Britain as Voldemort would cost him the larger war. He needs a hero, and his first hero failed. So for eight years afterward, he continued to build up the legend of Voldemort, slowly grinding down the opposition, and then, when all hope seemed lost, a prophecy struck like a bolt of lightning and Voldemort was defeated by a baby in his crib.
On the evidence so far, I've switched to Team Voldemort. You were right the first time. Dumbledore could still be responsible for the Potters being betrayed, because he expected Voldemort to be blindsided by Lily's sacrifice, since "evil cannot ever understand love". The prophecy itself came from Tom. Harry is the Last Scion Redux, but this time his storybook hero status is even more blatant, and he'll rise to power with the insights into rulership that Tom learned as Voldemort. Like creating a "Light Mark".
That's what I think today, anyway. Updating is fun.
Hmm? We have no good evidence to distinguish between the following two hypotheses:
All we know is Quirrell has let hints drop that he was the hero who disappeared. There is no reason to expect that any of his hints are anything other than deliberate lies. If a competent investigation would discover that Qurrell's not really Qurrell, then the deception absolutely requires a second layer to last the year, so people like Bones can feel satisfied that they've discovered "the truth" about Quirrell without suspecting he's Voldemort. The existence of this second-layer deception now does not provide any evidence that the same deception existed eighteen years earlier.
Quirrell certainly talks about the need to act exactly as the person you're impersonating would act. His speech to Hermione would be no evidence at all if it were delivered by someone who practised what Quirrell preaches.
But that isn't Quirrell. Far from putting up a perfect facade, Quirrell's mask is constantly slipping. He "makes a game of lying with truths, playing with words to conceal his meanings in plain sight." His dialogue is peppered with hints to his identity, his past, and his intentions. Almost everything he says about himself is a clue.
His love of the killing curse and his intent to kill. His childhood ambition to become a Dark Lord. The Muggle dojo. The Pioneer plaque. His intention to crush Rita Skeeter. Repeated use of the word 'Riddle'. His willingness to be identified as having eaten 'death'. His wish for Britain to grow strong under a strong leader. The story of Merope's enslavement of Tom Riddle Sr. His theft of Quirrell's body using incredibly dark magic.
I think you've confused the actual character of Quirrell with the master of deception that he claims to be. When he tells Hermione about the time he spent as a hero, that is evidence that what he's relating is a twisted version of the truth. Because it usually is.
Incidentally, while I was collecting links, I discovered that Quirrell foreshadowed this after all.
I read this as his saying Voldemort has previously played the part of a hero. And, as above, I think it's probably true. What's your take?
Yeah we do. When EY writes that the heroic Scion of X vanished while traveling Ablania in 45 he is telling the readers that Voldemort took him by making a shout out to what happened to Quirrell in canon.
The Ablanian Shuffle is good evidence.
I guess it depends on your definition of "good". Care to quantify yours?
I guess you should quantify your own definition of the word, perhaps in the same post in which you ask someone else to quantify theirs, since you used it first.
I'd say p>0.95 that "Went on a graduation tour abroad and disappeared while visiting Albania." is meant to communicate something to the readers that it does not communicate to the characters.
I'd say p>0.75 that the thing it is meant to communicate is that the hero was compromised by Riddle, like Quirrell was in canon.
I don't expect it to be the same. Voldemort's shade in canon may have had possession capacity that young Tom Riddle did not.
I'd say p>0.5 that the hero was replaced, that Tom Riddle physically played both roles in his own flesh.
Your turn.
(I asked you to quantify what you meant by "good" because I was suspecting you were treating a probability of, say, 30% as "good", and we were getting our terms crossed. Obviously not.)
Whereas I'd put that at roughly p=0.25.
I mean, sure, it might be trying to communicate that, but, I've got:
"Reader! She's about to undercover the Defense Professor is Voldemort!" as a message intended to be sent to the reader but not the characters at about p=0.25.
"The heroic Slytherin discovered something about Riddle in Albania in 1945, and spent his time trying to follow up on it. When Voldemort came back openly to Britain, so did he. What the hero learned in 1945, or in the years between 1945-1970, is going to be important to Harry's defeat of Voldemort, and here's the hint that keeps it from coming entirely out of the blue" (or variations of the theme) as about p=0.15
"The 'heroic' Slytherin died in 1945 in a confrontation with Riddle/Voldemort. In 1970, an ambitious person unconnected to Voldemort then tried to exploit the Voldemort's rise as a chance to make himself leader of Britain under the dead man's name, and died or quit in 1973. Voldemort then found it useful to try the same con as a backup for Quirrel." at roughly p=0.15
And, "Eilizer is planning to do something else with it, that I haven't thought of" at about p=0.2
Fantastic.
I dismiss the bait and switch because the passage does not seem to lay down that tease; p<0.01. It starts right out with a date that we now know is meant to assure us this is not Riddle. If EY originally intended the bait and switch, then regretted it, p>0.8 he would clean out other things that only exist to support his ill conceived tease. There isn't a WHAM paragraph with few words surrounded by white space. It's just not built like a bait and switch shocker.
While reading, I thought that Scion of X did fight Riddle and did as Hermione suggested:
And after Voldemort killed him he kept the identity close because things like that can be useful. But I know that I am gullible and literal (p>0.2 that I under value literal interpretations after an alternative is available), so I dismissed that as soon as I thought up an explanation that worked on a more in character plot. p<0.01
I dismiss the unknown, unrelated, unremarked third party because of Conservation of Detail. p<0.01
I don't have any other speculation worth mentioning, so "something else" gets p<0.25.
If 1970-1973 was a con by Voldemort, why was it given up in 1973? Surely he expected it to take longer than a couple of years to begin with, didn't he?
I don't know how long he thought it would take, but it sounds like he had no idea how hard it would suck.
What other things?
That is, if the bait-and-switch was intended, he would've had to come up with an actual character that fit all those facts as well, and it seems like "he spent seven years sleeping in the same room as Voldemort" is a non-trivial detail to change.
The Albanian Shuffle. See says there is a real chance that it is mentioned just to string the reader along and make us think Bones is about to say that Quirrell is Riddle.
I dismiss this because EY changed the date, which comes at the top of the passage, just so readers wouldn't jump to think Bones is talking about Riddle. If EY took such a step to prevent the tease that Bones was about to name Riddle, then I would expect EY would not leave things in that were only there to build up that tease.
So the Albanian Shuffle is dismissively unlikely to be referenced for the sake of making the reader think Bones was about to name Riddle. I really don't know how you could think that in the first place unless you first read that paragraph after already thinking that Bones was going to name Riddle.
That would only have changed if the year he started Hogwarts changed, which it did not. The birth date didn't change by a whole year, just from late enough in 1926 to enter Hogwarts in 1938 to early enough in 1927 to enter Hogwarts in that same year.
On the contrary, the reference to Albania is almost certainly a clue to the reader that the hero was replaced.
Almost certainly?
It's suggestive, sure, that he showed up from a long disappearance at about the same time as the "First Wizarding War" began. But the year could just be the one he returned at for some other reason, like, say, his Muggle Albanian wife dying.
In the latter case, why 1970? Because, like the original coincidental 1926 birth year, Eliezer was trying to make people go, "'Oh no, is she about to identify Voldemort?' . . . to be contradicted soon after by the Gaunts not exactly being on the Wizengamot or having a patroness grandmother."
Anyway, if you really think it's "almost certain", I'd like to arrange a bet on that. Say, my $5 against your $100?
You'd lose. Canon!Quirrell was possessed by Voldemort in Albania.
Canon!Riddle got Ravenclaw's diadem out of a hiding place in Albania circa 1945. Thus the inclusion of all four details — 1926, 1945, Albania, and 1970 — can all be explained as part of the same "Oh no, is she about to identify Riddle/Voldemort?" fake-out that was then deliberately blown up by the inconsistency with the Gaunts.
None of them need a separate cause to explain why Eliezer included them; all of them are explained sufficiently by the author-confirmed fake-out without adding the hypothesis "The hero who showed up in 1970 was a trick by Voldemort."
But if you're so sure I'm wrong, how about I put up my $5 against, say, your $500?
It would be more like your 1¢ against my empty instant ramen packaging, so no.
If you're that eager to lose money, loserthree can have it.
Thank you, Pedant One.
I will make three excuses for not taking the gracious offer of $5.00 (pre-tax) from the Holy See of Whereever, then I will give you a real answer.
I kind of lied: the status matter is totally part of the issue. But the real reason is that I have been conditioned to overvalue losses to gambling. I can only play poker by convincing myself it isn't gambling.
Really, though, isn't that gauche? Does it feel right to taunt a stranger with two-thirds of a fast food meal?
Even Urban Dictionary is no help with this one. What?
Is that really it? Would you have been happier with, say, $20 against $400? I generally think of "almost certain" as indicating p≥0.95; the $5 was driven by the math of keeping your potential loss down.
And, not that I'm asking for you to actually answer, but ask yourself - is it really that you overvalue losses from gambling? If I were offering to put $2,000 up against your $100, would you still refuse because of the exact same chance you'd lose that exact same $100?
(I raised the odds to reflect p≥0.99 for pedanterrific because he implied that I was being a sucker for offering 1-for-20 odds.)
The author has suggested we pay attention to the Conservation of Detail. With that in mind, the involvement of Albania is enough for almost certainty.
The detail is already conserved by its known use to try to make the reader suspect Bones is going to discover Quirrell is Riddle/Voldemort. Now the question left is whether Albania is a Chekhov's Boomerang, or whether theories based on it are an example of Epileptic Trees. I know I'm not "almost certain" either way.
So let me follow along. It seems like one extra level to what I've been thinking in terms of plotting.
The whole Voldemort Dark Lord war is just part of a bigger plot. First he creates the Villain of Voldemort. Then he creates a prophecy about a child destined to kill him - the eventual Hero. Dumbledore walks right into it by trying to use the prophecy as a trap to kill Tom, with Lily sacrificing herself in a dark ritual as the trap. So Tom gleefully takes the bait to create his Hero, and either is really diminished, or just goes on vacation for a few years waiting for Harry to get older. But clearly he also does something to Harry - creating the ultra resourceful Dark Side which itself contributes to the Harry Legend. And then Dumbledore grooms his hero as well, because he believes that he is destined to be the Hero because of what Voldemort has done to him.
IN the end, he'll lose to Harry again, once Harry is well on his way to being the Light Lord, but he'll upload into Harry and become the Hero ruler instead of the Dark Lord, until he uses up Harry's body. The end.
Another point in favor of this is Quirrell's talk with Harry after the bully climax, where he said Harry has everything Quirrell had ever wanted - the love, fear, respect, and admiration of everyone in school. This is exactly what he is after again - to rule and be feared, loved, respected, and admired.
You may or may not be going for the Upload bit.
That's a little bit of an evolution for me. I considered taking over Good Harry as a target of opportunity for Voldemort. That even the Voldemort persona is part of the scheme is new.
But I've got a new shiny toy. Evil for the Sake of Evil. In his contempt for the stupidity and weakness of people, I have a hard time seeing him even wanting to be the Hero anymore. He's now the Joker. He's Lord Foul - Corruption. He wants to corrupt Good. Corrupt Dumbledore into things like killing Narcissa. Corrupt Harry into being a Dark Lord. Corrupt Hermione and turn her away from Good. He wants Evil to be taken as Good. Then maybe he takes over.
I think it's the other way: he wants good people to be seen as fallible and fallen.
My model of him is like: "So when I tried to be the hero, people disrespected me, but for some reason the same people respect Dumbledore, Hermione, Harry. Why?! Oh, they are probably better at signalling. So let's manipulate them into difficult situations where even if they choose good, it will either ruin them or send bad signals."
He does not want to redefine the words with capital letters. That's a fool's game. He is just jealous that other people succeeded in having a good image, where he failed despite his cool plans. He wants good people to have bad image, so that he can become a person with the best image, which is his preferred way to rule the world; probably because it seems safer in long run than being an evil overlord.
I believe his frustration at his inability to become a credible hero. But at least he is learning. He has learned that "a single super-heroic action" is not a good plan, so now he is trying "a child with magical destiny" plan. He cynically believed that he could fool all people; now he is even more cynical, because he believes that he cannot fool them by something that makes sense (killing a few Death Eaters and saving a princess? meh.), but could do it by a superstition (to kill Voldemort while being a baby? cool, and nobody suspects anything!).
Some time after Chapter 38 showed us that Lucius thinks HJPEV is Voldemort, I took his position seriously and looked over the rest of the story.
If Voldemort is the hero, what is Quirrell? I figured he was the Basilisk. And if Quirrell was not the antagonist, who was? I figured it was Dumbledore because the opposite of rational is insane, not stupid.
I now think Quirrell is Voldemort and Dumbledore is not especially insane, but I wish I had thought to reinterpret the prophesy without Voldemort as the obvious bad guy back then. There is so much potential there.