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Nominull comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
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It's possible, but not everything that's possible is true. You'd think there'd only be able to be one Defense Professor, especially if that position was referred to with the definite article, and so properly coded wards would throw an exception if his identifier did not uniquely pick out an individual.
It means that he won't show up as Tom Riddle or Voldemort or Quinirius Quirrell or Jeffe Japes or Scion of X on the Marauder Map. He'll show up as The Defense Professor.
That doesn't seem to follow.
Actually, maybe this is the glitch in the Marauder's Map? 'the Defense Professor' is a little unusual a tag opposed to 'Minerva McGonagall' or ordinary names. (Although yes, it could also be reading 'Tom Riddle' or whatever, and Dumbledore wouldn't notice because IIRC he only grabs the Map from the twins to check for Riddle in Hogwarts after Quirrel goes to the Ministry.)
Yeah. p > 0.6 that this is the constant error in the marauders map for me. That's exactly what I thought when I was reading this.
The glitch in the Marauder's Map is
You might want to edit those to clarify the constant glitch as opposed to the intermittent.
Since I made it, I'll estimate this, but I'm really hesitant to flood my predictionbook with HPMOR predictions. We really need categories there.
Done.
The intermittent error could also be a pet snake, though I don't know if that would count as "standing" in the circle. Does Voldemort have a house-elf?
Doesn't it?
Correct me if I'm misremembering, but can't the Marauder's map show all people people in Hogwards? Regardless of them getting explicitely identified to the wards, so it must get its names independently.
I mean, what makes you think the Map is affected by this?
Given that places can be made unplottable, I'd guess identities can be made unknowable. Uncertainty in potterverse can be a quality of the thing itself...
If it must, then Dumbledore overrode it.
He did so specifically to prevent himself from learning the Defense Professor's identity, because that was the term stipulated by Quirrell.
Those lines were specifically included to keep the story from prematurely reaching its climax as soon as Quirrell returns to Hogwarts. I think you will enjoy stories more if you accept that sometimes things happen for story reasons.
In Methods of Rationality, the Weasley twins refer to the Map as being part of the Hogwarts security system. So it probably gets the information from the wards.
My interpretation of the quote is that the Headmaster overrode the usual process of identification (which is automatic) in order to protect Quirrell's privacy; in that case, the Map would also know nothing beyond "The Defense Professor".
An alternative interpretation, however, is that the circle-drawing bit was only meant to key Quirrell into the wards as a professor. Normally, I suppose, this would be done by something like "I, Headmaster of Hogwarts, declare Quirinus Quirrell to be the Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts! So mote it be!" In this case, Quirinus Quirrell was a false name, and Dumbledore knew this, so he used an alternative process that doesn't require a name.
Yes; remember that they speculate it was made by Salazar himself, and remember in ch43 Quirrel independently says:
The twins never mention in canon seeing the Basilisk on the map.
(Salazar seems to have specialized in security - one of his other talents was being a Legilimens.)
That would have borked the plot, and it's entirely probable that Rowling hadn't even come up with the Marauder's Map by then.
In MoR canon it probably makes more sense if it doesn't show up on it though; the whole Chamber of Secrets certainly doesn't.
Yes, but how do the wards get people's names? It's not like the name "Ron Weasley" is tattooed on every molecule of the boy's body.
True Names are a feature of some systems of magic — Earthsea comes to mind — but not of the canon Potterverse, nor of MoR as far as I can recall. In canon, the name "Voldemort" has unusual power because of specific spells keyed on it, and it's an adopted name.
Real-time Legilimency? If so, we would expect the map to display whatever name matched a person's self-image; and a sufficiently potent Occlumens could be expected to fool it by sufficiently good Method acting.
On the other hand, there's a subsystem of Hogwarts Castle that does get told the name of every student on their first day, and has a close-up chance to read it from them by what resembles Legilimency: the Sorting Hat. Possibly a similar system is in place for professors and others ... which involves the Headmaster drawing a circle ...
This was recently discussed here. I came up with this specific idea here.
The 'drawing a circle' thing: Dumbledore expects Riddle to show up on the Map as Riddle forty-five years after he graduated. Apparently student records are preserved; professors wouldn't need to be named to the wards unless they weren't alumni.
It seems like an important feature of a security system would be to detect outsiders as well as students.
Who says it doesn't? The problem would be coming up with a way to get their names.
In canon, the map was made by "Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs". I'm pretty sure Voldemort could override an artifact made my four teenagers.
It was labeled as made by them, which isn’t necessarily reliable information, considering the incantation you use to activate it. And at one point it’s shown to locate and identify people under the True Cloak of Invisibility, which seems like powerful magic. (It could also be “made” in the sense that they found some sort of magical ingredient or component, ancient and much more powerful than they could make, which the integrated into the map, or even just that they customized an existing map with their silly “access code”.)
And in MoR, Dumbledore himself needed to use the map. Which suggests it was much more powerful than what four of his students could have made.
Rowling probably hadn't even decided that Harry had the True Cloak of Invisibility yet.
Alternately, they found some way to tap into the castle's existing security systems.