= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Ati comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (1221)
This chapter significantly increased my probability estimate that Quirrell was entirely behind the plot to > 90%. Also, the humming torture was awesome, but not helping his case.
Also, who the hell was Bones' story referring to? That whole section heavily confused me.
Same. The part about disappearing in Albania is from canon-Quirrell's backstory - that's where he ran into Voldemort's wandering ghost, so it's interesting that in MoR he supposedly went there before the war. The rest of the background recounted by Bones and by Quirrell himself don't really ring a bell with me, the closest thing I can think of is him needing "reconciliation" with the Lady of the House being reminiscent of Sirius Black and his spat with his family, but Sirius already exists in MoR and had a different history.
It might be possible that in MoR the house of Gaunt (the one canon!Voldemort is from) did not fall into poverty and retained their household and Wizengamot influence? If the general 'powering up' of characters can go that far back it would be plausible. And now that I think of it, Quirrell initiated talk about witch-on-Muggle magical seduction during the SPHEW arc, which could suggest that that part of his family background was carried over from canon.
(One of the things that annoy me about HPMoR is that when I can't quickly figure out what a certain passage might be hinting to, I have to assign a frustratingly high probability to the event that it's simply a reference/homage/in-joke to one of the myriad HP fanfictions.)
My concern is largely that Bones seems to be hinting that Quirrelmort is someone else, who was believed to be dead, someone who was thought to be a powerful enemy of Voldemort who went missing, which meshes with his spiel to Hermione. Presumably the person Bones thinks he is isn't Quirrel, since he's publicly known to be that person. Who on Earth is she referring to?
Thomas Marvolo Gaunt-Riddle, hero of wizarding Britain? Though since Dumbledore knows that Tom Riddle is Voldemort that seems like quite the narrow escape; his game would be up if Bones and Dumbledore talked openly to each other.
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Wait, that doesn't work, for Voldemort being a known parselmouth to allow Hagrid a retrial after discovering the charm on the Sorting Hat Tom Riddle and Voldemort have to be known to be the same person.
EDIT: Eliezer jossed heroic Riddle in the mean time anyway.
Remember, his spiel to Hermione happened after Bones fingered him as the dead hero. It's possible that he decided to just jump into the persona with both feet.
My thoughts.
The humming torture sounds similar to Vetinari's clock, only taken to the next level. I liked it too.
EDIT: Now that I think about it, the memetic attack is also similar to "The Book" in Anathem, though the delivery vector is different.
I tried looking up Vetinari's clock, but I only found a bunch of people building them. Which book is it from?
It's from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havelock_Vetinari
Thank you.
I wonder how hard it would have been to build such a clock at Discworld's tech level. It might require magic.
Fortunately, magic is widely available. That said, it should be possible to build such a clock using perfectly mundane means; after all, Discworld denizens do have perfectly ordinary mechanical clocks, AFAIK.
It would have to have its own tick completely muffled while just producing the fake tick. Perhaps the accurate time is produced by a clock on the other side of the wall.
Assuming, of course, that the clock does keep accurate time :-)
Pratchett quote a few posts upstream.
I don't attach very high probability to this, but: Yermy Wibble? (The guy who proposed a magical draft and was killed for it.)
ETA: To clarify, the reason I think it's a bit improbable is that the mysterious guy's family was dead when he returned, whereas Yermy's family was killed at the same time he was.
Double edit: Forgot that Wibble was first introduced in Chapter 3, in a way that made it clear he's not this guy. This is clearly wrong, forget it.
No. Madam Bones said that the man she suspects Quirrell of being just disappeared (and, indeed, was the last of his family before he did so). Granted we don't know where most of Wibble went, but 1) he had a family, and they were peeled as well, and 2) I don't think having your skin found flapping loose in your office counts as a mysterious disappearance.
A bit improbable? Another difference would be that Wibble was killed, rather than disappeared.