The Horrible Humming was great in itself, but it felt a bit artificial to me : why didn't the Auror just cast a Quietus charm ? Silencing prisoners with a gag is not that unusual in the Muggle world, and I would definitely except the wizards to use a Quietus charm or equivalent if a prisoner started to bother the Aurors with sound. It's not like Wizard Britain is very respectful of human rights of prisoners and that gags (mundane or magical ones) would be felt a non-acceptable behavior.
Listening and watching - monitoring - appears to be part of the job.
Because of the humor, I'm willing to suspend belief a little on realism. It's not a fundamental plot point. But it is funny.
The next discussion thread 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 84. The previous thread has passed 500 comments. Comment in the 14th thread until you read chapter 84.
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, 14.
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: