= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
FAWS 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 seems to suggest that her memories of the duel are a fabrication (or the "Draco" she was fighting was someone else under the influence of polyjuice). Draco has no particular reason to further provoke her and was genuinely unsure whether he could beat her. It doesn't seem obvious why anyone would do that if there was going to be a genuine duel anyway, though. Maybe the the genuine memories were just touched up a bit? Alternatively, why might Draco behave as in that memory when there's no one else around? (the behavior would have made more sense for the second, public duel)
I notice that the only thing we're told about Hermione's appearance in Chapter 78 is that she has bags under her eyes, no mention of a cut on her cheek.
That seems like the sort of thing wizards would heal as a matter of course.
Not first-years.
(I'm referring to the scene at breakfast before the arrest.)
Ah, okay. I was thinking at the trial. A slight cut could heal up in the ~eight hours between the fight and breakfast, especially if she managed to sleep, but that does seem like a clue that the memory is fake.
Really? Papercuts bother me for a couple days at least.
Something about a witch's constitution, perhaps.
I suggest you reroll. I heal paper cuts in a couple of hours.
Thanks, but nah. I'm a healthy white male American with a middle class background and an intelligence greater than one standard deviation above the mean. Slow healing wounds are not enough to reroll in the face of the great risk of a less privileged life.
Well, you get to pick your race and your class (middle), and assuming you roll 3d6 for stats the odds are at least one of your results will be 14 or better, so none of those attributes are at risk.
Pfft
I'd stick with the Human race. I don't like the lack of supplemental material for the others. They're really under developed.
I have serious doubts that class in the sense you use it in could possibly be elective. The spread just doesn't match any decision making process I'd want to relate to.
Both statements are true of me, depending on what's meant by "heal". Depending on where the papercut is (sensitive place, callus, etc) it might stop bothering me long after it's any risk of bleeding.
Upvoted for this suggestion.
You don't think a pissed-off 12 year old who's fighting a duel for vengeance might be inclined to rub a little salt in the wounds?
Well, the whole obliviate cycle on Hermione took place at a time when the events that led to Draco willingly challenging Hermione to a duel probably could not have been predicted, unless someone caused them deliberately. Draco had no intention of challenging Hermione until his hand was forced by some apparently chance events in a battle that did not have to go that way. So if a third party was planning a duel, that turn of events might not have been in their plans.
Although it raises the question of what they would have done if the battle had not turned out that way, since Hermione probably would not have challenged Draco.
Possibly nothing, if Quirrell is to blame. That would sound just like him:
Although he may have waited for this kind of opportunity to occur. He could also have arranged to increase its daily probability (Hat and Cloak making Hermione paranoid, for instance), without triggering it more directly.
Is... is it not possible to lie in Parseltongue? I mean, we have
and
1) Harry explicitly says earlier that he'd say he could be trusted with a secret, even if he couldn't be, because it was never helpful to be ignorant of it. I think his statement there is actually a known lie(albeit not by much, given that he seems to consider Quirrell his third father). 2) I think he was just trying to make things very clear - forcing people to actively say something instead of just passively accepting is an effective way of gauging them.
I'm going to need a direct quote. The only thing I can think of similar to this is
Not to mention
The first of those was what I was referring to. Apparently it's phrased a bit more softly than I remember, though it certainly displays that mindset. And all the second one says is that honest people keep their word. There's things in the world more important than honesty, Kant be damned.
...I don't think it does. I think what we're supposed to take from those passages, plus every other time Harry has made a promise, is that he doesn't make promises with the intent to break them.
The latter, yes. The former, no. I think he's basically honest, and as such the statement made in Parselmouth is not a lie, but he's not going to feel himself bound by that promise in extremis.
(Unless Parseltongue is magically binding.) But yeah, of course I agree that Harry doesn't consider keeping his word to be the be-all end-all. For instance, in the course of TSPE there were several times that Harry considered breaking that specific promise and confessing all, and I don't think the fact that he promised not to was ever even brought up in his internal narration- the decisive factor was always the consequences to Quirrell if he did.
But I still disagree quite strongly with
I didn't think of that. Sounds worth considering. But it doesn't change the fact that pretending to be a healer doesn't prevent being a healer. Quirrell knows that Harry knows it, so to me, "pretending to be healer" doesn't provide meaningful evidence in any direction.
Plus, Quirrell is exploring a hypothetical, here. And the healer could be genuine, and somehow tricked, seduced, or bribed. Now that I think of it, this is even more probable than the false healer hypothesis: a real healer genuinely convinced of doing good is probably both easier to find and more reliable than an actual minion.
I guess for me the thing that tips the scales between 'real healer' and 'minion pretending to be a healer' is that I don't think it's actually in Quirrell's interests to deprogram Bellatrix of her loyalty to Voldemort.
Though presumably she is at least competent in regular healing, of the sort needed to get Bella back in fighting trim.
Create enough tension and it'll spring loose somewhere, and I doubt Quirrel much cared where. There's no way that those two(Hermione in particular, given the lack of political training) have enough self-control to hate each other, think that they're scheming at each other, and then do absolutely nothing about it for an extended period.