Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84

FAWS

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:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

The next discussion thread is here.

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:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

World-building: Plot holes are a lot easier to make by mistake than atmosphere for the average author. Most of the "this place sucks" seems atmospheric to me - Rowling may not have thought as poorly of her world as I do, but I doubt she thinks it'd be a great place to live after the wonder wore off.

Unambiguous evil: I disagree entirely. Yes, the Death Eaters and Dementors are unambiguous, but Snape drove back and forth across that line so many times that it's ridiculous("possible", really?), Grindelwald was appealing enough to draw Dumbledore in, Hagrid was criminally stupid half the times we saw him(literally), Lockhart/Slughorn/every politician were some combination of pathetic and loathsome, Percy Weasley was an utter git and a massive enabler, and I could go on. Admittedly, most of those weren't big-E Evil, but they certainly did not lack for human flaws and ill consequences. Don't let the unambiguousness of Voldemort or Umbridge fool you.

Slaughter: It wasn't that long ago that's precisely what happened. And even today, I spent the last few days with the part of my family that's farmers, and all of them have been hunting since childhood. Perhaps that's "desensitization", but if so it's an utterly common sort in the right cultures. Death being locked away is a modern innovation, not the natural order of things.

Milgram: Yes, people react extremely poorly to animals suffering - sometimes worse than to humans suffering(which can be funny or just, depending, not necessarily simple torture). But Vanishing is not suffering, it's simply death, as odd as that sounds. That's a lot easier to handle when it's applied to animals.

World-building: Plot holes are a lot easier to make by mistake than atmosphere for the average author. Most of the "this place sucks" seems atmospheric to me - Rowling may not have thought as poorly of her world as I do, but I doubt she thinks it'd be a great place to live after the wonder wore off.

Yet the "this place sucks" atmosphere doesn't actually kick in for real until Book 5, when the protagonist finds himself on the wrong side of the barricades for the first time (and also when Rowling leaves the teenage angst tap on). Until ... (read more)