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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.

As far as evidence in the form of plot hints, I'll have to go do a proper search when I'm not about to go to bed, but in the mean time... IMHumbleO, there's a strong case that Quirrel could be trying a supervillain gambit in order to make the world a better place. We know that there's a Dark Lord >somewhere<, and if it's not Quirrelmort then I think it can only be Dumbledore. Of course there is a whole spectrum of possibility here - maybe Quirrel is supervillain gambitting but is STILL the Dark Lord, maybe he isn't but Dumbles is the Dark Lord anyway, &c, &c. Also relevant is the fact that Dumbledore seems to have access to the Philosopher's stone but is not using it to save lives. I don't understand why that is, and as a result it feels like there's some major aspect of the Dumbledore-Voldemort dynamic that we're in the dark about.

Anyway, without going through and marshaling all the evidence I'm not prepared to make a bet either way on how it's all going to pan out. I do think the Dark Lord Dumbledore scenario is one that would have to be weighed in order to make such a bet, though, which is why I brought it up for discussion. I agree that that sort of ending could be done cool-ly. Whatever happens, I have a baaaaad feeling that Harry is going to find out that the world is a very, very ugly place pretty soon and I hope he comes through that without being irredeemably darkened.