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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84
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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.
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Comments (1221)
Despite the many good reasons to believe Quirrell is H&C, My Red Herring Alarm (©) wouldn't stop going off while Harry was going over the list of suspects. My gut is usually fairly good at seeing plot-twists coming, and it's very certain there's someone Harry is forgetting about. Anyone else getting a similiar vibe?
The evidence against QQ is pretty strong;
Only a Hogwarts professor, Dumbledore, and maybe Lupin could do that.
That rules out everyone is isn't willing to kill innocent children to advance their plots. Realistically, only QQ fits.
Whether Harry has enough information to figure it out is a different question.
What is special about Lupin that he could pull it off? The professors would probably have security clearance. Dumbledore has security clearance and is incidentally freaking Dumbledore but Lupin is just some wizard. He's fairly competent but not so much as, say, Mad-Eye. I suppose he has better than average Hogwarts-security knowledge due to his misspent youth...
Lupin was brought in as a special instructor for the Patronus charm, thus might possibly have professor status.
Snape falls into the first category. That said, I agree that Quirrell is almost certainly the actual culprit.
I think H&C is Snape. I am really confused about what was going on with H&C1 and Quirrell but everything since then is consistent with Snape plotting against Harry.
What do you think is his motive?
(Full disclosure: I'm >80% confident it was Quirrell.)
Full disclosure for me as well, I want H&C to be Snape so there may be confirmation bias at work on my part. I think that the rage inducing revelation that Snape had in chapter 22 caused Snape to abandon his canon role has Harry's protector and went back to the obvious role for him: fighting for the dark lord whom he used to serve and will soon be returning. Which means fighting against Harry.
For what its worth Harry also thinks something significant happened in that interaction:
*Just before Harry left the workroom, with his hand on the doorhandle, the boy turned back and said, "As long as we're here, have either of you noticed anything different about Professor Snape?"
"Different?" said the Headmaster.
Minerva didn't let her wry smile show on her face. Of course the boy was apprehensive about the 'evil Potions Master', since he had no way of knowing why Severus was to be trusted. It would have been odd to say the least, explaining to Harry that Severus was still in love with his mother.
"I mean, has his behavior changed recently in any way?" said Harry.
"Not that I have seen..." the Headmaster said slowly. "Why do you ask?"
Harry shook his head. "I don't want to prejudice your own observations by saying. Just keep an eye out, maybe?"
That sent a quiver of unease through Minerva in a way that no outright accusation of Severus could have.*
(This isn't a prediction, exactly. Or if it is, it's extremely speculative and with a fairly low weight of confidence.)
The end of an arc will be posted here in a little while. The last couple of arc-concluding chapters have been from points of view we don't normally get. The end of TSPE was with Trelawney, and before the switch, Self-Actualization ended with Snape. Both were rather portentous moments: Trelawney had a vision of something horrible coming, and Snape made a decision that might ally him permanently with the Dark side.
For obvious reasons, we've not really had a section from Quirrell's point of view. The parentheticals a couple of chapters ago, about Amelia Bones being quite intelligent but surrounded by morons, might have been from Quirrell's head, and much of the rest of the section was written with implied omniscience of Quirrellmort's past, but it was far from a complete inner monologue.
As we approach the end of Harry's first year in Hogwarts, things are probably going to get much worse fairly quickly. And if the revelation of Quirrell's true nature is forthcoming, I wouldn't be surprised to see — or at least, I would love to see — Quirrell's last thoughts before his endgame plans are put into motion.
Nice catch.
I'm now wondering exactly how the prophecy system works. Did Harry's resolution alter time and directly cause these seers to see what they saw?
Quirrell is reading Hermione's mind and manipulating her during their conversation at the end of 84.
And also:
He stares at her, and plucks thoughts out of her head to persuade her, and her eyes start burning (maybe she's not blinking or something, or EY is adding that as a side effect of legimancy, or it's just to draw our attention to the eye contact), and the instant she decides he's responsible he echoes her thought. So that seems pretty obvious. I now understand why EY thinks that we're bad at reading clues, I've read that chapter about three times and this is the first time I've picked up on it.
Also, I'd like to have said that he stopped manipulating her right after she broke eye contact, but it never explicitly says where she breaks eye contact. I would assume that she broke eye contact when she stepped away from him though, that seems more natural and is how the scene goes down when I imagine it inside my head.
No, he echoes her thought the instant she physically reacts to move away from him. NOT the "instant she decides". Keep the facts straight, please.
We've already been told that common sense is often mistaken for Legimancy. This event doesn't require reading her mind, it just requires reading her body language.
Eyes burning has never been mentioned as a side-effect of Legimancy previously, as far as I can remember -- so I don't see how you can use it as evidence in favour of Legimancy. Eyes burning seems more likely to be indicative of someone who's about to cry.
I feel like your post is a bit snippy and that your tone and the negative karma you gave are not warranted.
I should have phrased it differently, but it's not body language, it's Legimancy.
There are many possible reasons that she could have taken a step back. That she stepped away from Quirrell in no way mandates that she's distrusting Quirrell, it could be many other things. There's also many possible reasons she could distrust him. Him naming the exact thought that she had almost immediately after she stepped away from him seems improbable. Quirrell is an idiot if he jumped to the conclusion that she thought he was responsible just because she stepped away from him, that conclusion only makes sense in the context of the information in Hermione's mind.
We already know that Quirrell can read minds and there's decent reason to suspect that he would do so. We know that Legimancy requires looking someone in the eyes, and he's doing that. Additionally, if you'd read my comment more carefully you would have noticed that I gave many explanations for why her eyes might have been burning.
Means, motive, opportunity, no probable counterexplanation...
I didn't downvote you - please don't assume that a criticism is always accompanied by a downvote.
Name three.
When her first reaction to his sight was "Are you here to kill me?"
Except that he didn't name the exact thought that she had. The thought that she had at the moment was "If the Defense Professor was behind this whole thing then Professor Quirrell had done it all just to get her out of the way of his plans for Harry." -- in short she thought of his motivation. She had already thought of him as number one suspect just before she said "Are you here to kill me?" at the beginning of the encounter.
So he wasn't actually echoing any current thought. He just assumed she thought him responsible, after several obvious physical and verbal indications she feared him.
He would be an idiot if he didn't jump to that conclusion.
Just noticed this lovely little tidbit at the very end of Chapter 84:
What on Earth is that supposed to mean? Who or what is cawing in Hogwarts or on the grounds, and how does she know something about it that we don't? Or am I missing some terribly obvious connection here?
I thought it was the phoenix, myself.
I'm very sorry about this. It referred to a part of Ch. 85 that I simply couldn't work out in time for the posting deadline. I've removed the corresponding lead-in from Ch. 84.
If I get Ch. 85 to work as originally planned, I may put it back in later.
It's so totally Snape.
Snape may have used the sound of a phoenix call to guide Hermione in the past.
There's still an aftermath chapter left I think - it may be we'll see first hand what Fawkes was cawing for.
Fawkes.
Yes. And it absolutely was meant for her.
I'm pretty sure it was meant for Dumbledore. If it was meant for Hermione it could have just fire-ported to her.
It's done similar things before. It called her to the bullies (probably) without her seeing it.
It's plausible that that was actually Fancr, vavgvngvat uvf pbasyvpg rfpnyngvba cybg.
This quote from Chapter 62 seems quite prudent to consider in hindsight.
Wild guessing:
There's a lot of things said about Voldemort that don't really make sense. How did get killed by a child? Quirrel himself makes fun of the Dark Mark, and why would someone who wants to be an effective leader torture his own servants for fun? He destroys the martial arts school without learning anything. I'm starting to think that Voldemort makes far more sense as a propagandized creation of Dumbledore's side than as a real entity. It's pretty obvious that the known story of what happened at Godric's Hollow isn't what REALLY happened. Dumbledore was the winner in the historic conflict, and who knows how well a wizard, the supreme mugwump, gets to rewrite history in his favor. He instantly acts to suppress knowledge of a prophecy, and why would he do that if he didn't have huge secrets to keep? Which is the side that uses dementors?
If Quirrel is Voldemort, I think it's possible he isn't and never was the Voldemort known from canon. Is it more plausible that crazy violent dumb Voldemort would become Quirrel, or that he never really existed at all?
Tom Riddle needed a Voldemort for his plot so he became Voldemort for a time. Just as he needed a Quirrel and a Mister Jaffe.
Ah... no? Actually, the opposite of that.
On the other hand, it surely wouldn't be beyond the Dark Lord to come up with a system that accomplished all that without leaving such an obvious identifier on his minions.
Shit, you're right. Who was it that made fun of the concept of having a sign that could easily reveal you to your enemies if they just asked you to roll up your sleeve?
Harry in chapter 21.
How many instances can y'all remember where Eliezer has repeated himself in an oddly specific way?
Chapter 17, when Harry picks up Neville's Remembrall: "The Remembrall was glowing bright red in his hand, blazing like a miniature sun that cast shadows on the ground in broad daylight."
Chapter 43, when Harry has a Dementor-induced flashback of the night... something happened in Godric's Hollow: "And the boy in the crib saw it, the eyes, those two crimson eyes, seeming to glow bright red, to blaze like miniature suns, filling Harry's whole vision as they locked to his own -"
That really sets off my deliberate-hint senses - so much is repeated that it's got to be intentional. (My apologies if this was already discussed to death in the considerable time since #43 was posted.)
Likewise the basilisk, which I know was discussed at some point:
Chapter 35, H&C speaking: "Salazar Slytherin would have keyed his monster into the ancient wards at a higher level than the Headmaster himself."
Chapter 49, the Defense Professor speaking: "or by some entity which Salazar Slytherin keyed into his wards at a higher level than the Headmaster himself."
I'm sure I could find more if I put my mind to it, but that's all I've got for now.
I have no idea how to interpret the first clue. Are Voldemort's eyes Remembralls?
My interpretation was that we're meant to connect the two incidents and conclude that Harry's (seemingly numerous) forgotten memories are something to do with Voldemort, whether specifically memories of that night or something wider.
After the escape from Azkaban, I thought that the most likely thing for the Remembrall to have been referring to, must have been the Newtonian physics that Harry was mentioned to have forgotten about in regards to broomstick flying -- but am not quite sure that makes sense anymore. At the time the Remembrall lit up, Harry hadn't spent any time steering/accelerating the broomstick, and had barely seen anyone else fly at all.
I prefer "Time turners are supposed to be a secret, don't flaunt it".
That was my interpretation also.
Well, the fact that he remembered the night of Voldemort’s attack (I have 80%+ confidence it was a real memory, though I’m not sure of what), it’s clear that there was at least one thing that he had forgotten at the time he held the Remembrall. I hadn’t made the connection until now. Previously I thought the crimson eyes were a hint pointing to Moaning Myrtle’s recounting of her encounter with the basilisk. Now I wonder if it’s just a coincidence because the “blazing sun” simile works well for a bright Remembrall, or if Eliezer is giving us a three-way hint. A basilisk being present at Godric’s Hollow had a lot of awesomeness potential, but it does seem like the less likely hypothesis.
On the other hand, pretty much everyone has forgotten most of their infancy—presumably, Dementors don’t bring such memories back because they’re almost never as traumatic as Harry’s—and Remembralls don’t start glowing like mad in everybody’s hands, so something is still missing there.
The basilisk has yellow eyes in the movies, and probably in book-canon as well. Are they explicitly stated to be red in MOR?
Yes, you’re right. Turns out my memory over-dramatized a bit Myrtle’s words. She said only “I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes.” For some reason I thought she had also said something like “blazing suns”.
Yes.
The basilisk hasn't been mentioned by name in MOR, aside from Moody suggesting it as a poison. Slytherin's Monster was mentioned as possibly-not-real in Chapter 49, but without physical description. So no, there's no reason to think it has red eyes.
Much more than infancy - apparently everything before 10 is suspect, and everything before 4 especially so according to Wikipedia on childhood amnesia.
I'm wondering if EY is going to come through on this whole "Dumbledore is the Dark Lord and Quirrelmort was in the right all along" approach that he has hinted at recently. There's a precedent here which raises my probability estimate of this slightly, [rot13 for spoilers from another EY story] va uvf fgbel "Gur Fjbeq bs Tbbq" gur gjvfg jnf gung gur ureb'f pubvpr orgjrra tbbq naq rivy jnfa'g n pubvpr bs juvpu bar gb sbyybj (gung jbhyq or boivbhf, pyrneyl) vg jnf gur zhpu uneqre pubvpr bs juvpu jnf juvpu. Gur "tbbq thlf" ghearq bhg gb or rivy naq gur "onq thlf" ghearq bhg gb or tbbq.
So from recent chapters it seems like we're supposed to at least be considering the possibility of that Quirrelmort has been playing some colossal super-villain gambit this whole time in order to set up the rise of Light Lord Harry and defeat death once and for all, and that the Dark Lord prophesied to oppose all this is Dumbledore, who has marked Harry for his equal by nominating him as the future leader of the people he mistakenly believes to be The Good Guys and who wants us all to embrace death when it comes.
This concerns me a little bit, not because I don't like the idea of Voldemort being secretly good but because it would be tragic for Dumbledore to turn out to be so evil. Don't get me wrong, Dumbledore is greatly mistaken on many points but on the surface it doesn't seem fair to call him a Dark Lord. His intentions seem to be better than almost every other person in the wizarding world, and it seems a bit rich to brand him with that label just because he opposed someone who was doing a very good job of pretending to be EVIL with a capital everything.
This, of course, is WORSE because it means that EY won't do it like that - if Quirrel turns out to be good it will mean that Dumbledore has known the Voldemort gambit was a ploy all along, and has been actively opposing Quirrel's attempt to reform the world because he doesn't think the end justifies the means. And now he's been broken further and further, forced to do more and more horrible things and turned into a monster just because he didn't want monstrous things to happen! I just can't help but think that it would have been better for Quirrel to sit down and talk this all out with Dumbles, but even if for some reason he couldn't, I dunno if it's fair to Dumbles to call him a Dark Lord since he was trying hard but got it wrong.
Of course there's always the possibility that Dumbledore doesn't care about the means and is just opposed to Quirrel because Quirrel wants to kill death. That would make Dumbledore more evil but be less tragic. It also seems a bit less believable that Dumbledore could be so smart but so intractable in his wrongness on this one point, though.
What do you guys think?
I don't think the guy who doesn't think twice about torturing or murdering anyone who slights him will turn out to be in the right all along.
My viewpoint is essentially opposite yours, lolz.
I don't really think it's probable that Dumbledore will become the next Dark Lord. The only thing that has happened so far to suggest this is the one line by Dumbledore in Chapter 84 (there might be other evidence but it would help if you would explicitly point it out). And I suppose there's an argument to be made that Voldemort couldn't have "marked Harry as an equal" since Harry was a baby who Voldemort expected to easily kill (which is why Voldemort didn't bring reinforcements). And there's probably some people on here who think Narcissa was burned alive (but I am almost certain that Dumbledore faked her death and that she is living in a secret OOTP base somewhere).
But I think the counter evidence is stronger. It's too late in the story to suddenly change the villain, and Dumbledore probably wouldn't have the opportunity or motive to cause mass death. Those points seem simpler and like stronger arguments than the above. Consider that, in canon, Voldemort attacking a baby was apparently enough to mark Harry as an equal. Also consider that Dumbledore was completely hysterical when he mentioned the possibility that he would become the next Dark Lord.
It would help if we actually knew what some of the unheard prophecies say. Maybe Dumbledore was misinterpreting one of them, and he doesn't have to be a Dark Lord at all, but Harry would still fight him. That's not a great solution and it's actually less probable than anything above, but it does represent a kind of middle ground based on details and possibilities not yet made known to us.
And, I actually like the idea of Dumbledore being a Dark Lord who was corrupted by his power. I really don't think it would be sad, because I'm not attached to canon Dumbledore very much. I actually don't really care about any of the Canon!Harry Potter main characters, I just realized that. I only care about the minor characters, and thus far HPMOR has only improved those characters.
Dumbledore as Dark Lord just would be really cool. Maybe the rule of cool will outweigh my above probability based assessments, and he'll end up being a Dark Lord. I hope so, at least, unless EY figures out something even cooler to do.
There's this, from chapter 80:
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.
I think you're confused about the meaning of Sword of Good. Without giving away too much, that is not the meaning I came up with. Instead I came away with the idea that everyone is the hero of their own story. Nobody is born innately evil
Dumbledore is good. Quirrell is good. Harry is good. Malfoy is good. But they're each only playing out the morality they've learned. Malfoy's morality about maintaining 1600s era stability and order and bringing prestige to the family. Dumbledore's is a conservative evolution of his imperial/nationalist era morality that turned sour. Quirrel's morality is difficult to discern, but I'd guess he was based on Randian Objectivism or Nietzschean philosophy. Harry's morality is rationalist and singularitarian. It's obvious to me that Harry's morality is the only one that's truly good. But then again I'm a rationalist singularitarian, and I bet people from other eras would look at the moralities differently.
I think the story is set up like this because that's the way the world works. Everyone thinks they're doing the good-and-right thing, but everyone has different starting points for their moralities. Wars occur because people have different ideas about what good-and-right is and how to achieve it. In real life, two good people sit down and talk to each other and neither one changes their mind, and the wars still happen. And the wars are not between good guys and bad guys, they're between good guys and good guys.
But that's the world we live in.
No, Argency summarized it well. It isn't a treatise on moral relativism.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that one of the premises behind both of these stories is that there is one objectively correct morality, given that a few basic definitions are shared. "If we agree that suffering is bad and that ~suffering is good then humanist, rational utilitarianism should follow directly," or something.
I can definitely agree that acting in a way that fails to optimally minimise suffering is >bad<. I can even agree that in a lot of cases, punishing bad people will minimise further suffering. The problem is (and this is the message that I got from The Sword of Good) no one sane actually thinks of themselves as the bad guy of the story, and it takes an Act of Rational Intellect to make a justified choice about which side is actually right about being right.
The upshot is that I balk at the "evil" label. People are bad and good, only cartoon characters are evil because they do bad for bad's sake. I guess in my head I think that to be a Dark Lord requires being Evil and not just bad. That might be a silly definition, since it means I'm essentially defining Dark Lords not to exist, but then again we only hear about them in children's stories and HPMoR.
Sometimes (not every time) I get a twinge of subconscious worry when EY primes his argument-cannon with rational powder but emotional wadding. It makes for incredible chapters - I get fully body pins and needles whenever Harry does something amazing with a dementor - and when the emotion is humanist triumphal awe then it's probably safe. I know the argument: there's no reason why rationality and emotion have to weaken one another; emotion aimed by rationality can work to good ends. I just don't want to confront a situation where Dumbledore ends up being the Dark Lord despite wanting to be a good guy and trying very, very hard - because there's the risk there of sending the message that we should not only fight against powerful bad people, but hate them because they are Evil for not quite being smart enough. I don't think that would be emotion aimed by rationality.
I know that's not the sort of ending EY would craft, I only wonder how we >would< write a Dark Lord Dumbledore ending, and how likely it is that he will.
EDIT: I just re-read the "Are you enemies innately evil" article that Xachariah referenced, only this time I read it from the point of view of a moral relativist. I have gained an insight into how the other side thinks. I have also found even more motivation to make hard relativism extinct.
A form of relativism does follow from naturalism, as does a moral system which favors ones own gains above the gains of others. See: the babykillers story.
Egoism and relativism are actually pretty powerful arguments. "Good" does not exist external to perception or experience. I cannot experience the "good" of anyone else's experience, except in an extremely diluted way through empathic networks, so in order to maximize the amount of good that exists I must try to maximize my own pleasure and achieve my own values. This doesn't preclude helping others, we can be helpful to others if we enjoy or value being helpful, etc.
Everyone accepts relativism on a small scale, like with favorite colors. It's not very different on a large scale, either. If someone is genetically modified to have a passionate drive to eat children, and has a burning desire to do so and sees nothing wrong with doing so, I think they should eat children. It's not justifiable to hold people to obligations that they don't internally recognize as correct, for the same reasons that "because God said so" is not an actual moral argument.
There's an important difference between this kind of relativism and other kinds, though. The kind of relativism I'm trying to defend here doesn't say that nothing is wrong and that all paths lead up the same mountain, or whatever. I'm trying to say that because morality is derived from inherent values, where those inherent values change we will get different moral answers for different people. But most humans share a lot of values, so this kind of relativism really doesn't open itself up to the kind of gut-level criticism that most people throw at it, like the argumentum ad consequentum "but then everyone would murder everyone!" which is so popular.
I personally don't follow any form of relativism, although I'm fairly selfish and egoist (yay rationality!), but that's because my ethics are totally ad hoc and disorganized. I personally use a sort of story based virtue ethics to justify my actions ("what would a hero do?"; "what kind of hero am I?"). Stories are important to humans, so there's probably a naturalistic or cultural justification somewhere in there, but I don't really know what it is specifically.
Well, that's the difference between hard relativism and soft relativism. Hard relativism holds that there is no "right", and that's the one I think has to go. Mind you, I think the relativism you describe is still a bit hard for me - I'd argue that whilst what is right is relative in the sense that it's contingent on the situation at hand, within a given situation rightness is fixed and not at all dependent on one's viewpoint. I certainly don't agree that a relativism with any hardness to it follows from naturalism. I say this only to identify my position relative to your own, since this probably isn't the right place for me to start trying to debate against your ethics. Plus it's 2am and I spent all day at uni arguing ethics. I'm burnt out.
I read the baby-eaters story a while ago - I think I disagree with EY on that one, although it's possible I misread it. I share his apparent belief that the baby-eaters had to be stopped: the babies were suffering and suffering=bad. I don't see why the first, "fake" ending was the sad one, though - to me the second, "real" ending was the horrible one and the fake one was close enough to what I would have tried for if I'd been there. I am warning you now, if I ever meet super-intelligent aliens who want to raise the human race up from perdition and erase the need for suffering, I'm going to be on the side of the angels until humanity sorts it's shit out.
If you think the humans should have stopped the Babyeaters, but you don't think the Babyeaters were evil for pursuing the values that evolution gave them, then you agree that naturalism leads to the form of relativism I am defending and that this form of relativism is okay.
An equivalent: the homosexuality "debate".
Well as I've said somewhere in this tree, I don't like the "evil" label, so I'll stick to "bad". But I do think that the baby-eaters were bad, regardless of what they were evolved to do. There are a whole bunch of things that humans are evolved to do that I also think are morally wrong - I think that humans who do those things are bad. If we didn't have a drive to do bad things, no one would ever do them and morality would be pointless. The baby-eaters perhaps shouldn't be hated too much for being bad (in the story they weren't as intelligent as humans and they thought slower) but in my books they definitely were bad, and had to be stopped.
So I don't need to admit relativism for the sake of consistency. I think the homosexuality thing is probably a huge can of worms that would trap me in this thread for weeks if I opened it, so with your permission I'm going to let that one pass.
I also, by the way, think that the baby-eaters' psychology was probably impossible, and their evolutionary path extremely contrived and unlikely. I know baby-eaters aren't necessary to argue for relativism, but if they were then I would think that relativism was outlandish and absurd. On the other hand, I think my ethics still extends to this crazy borderline case, so I'm willing to allow it for discussion, but that's a reflection of my confidence in my ethics, not the fitness of the thought experiment.
Anyway, I'm not trying to convince you - I only spoke out against relativism above to register my disapproval of extreme hard relativism, which you don't appear to espouse. I look forward to your reply if you choose to make one, but I won't rebut it because we are waaay off topic for the thread. :)
Sure thing, that all means that you don't support (pure) naturalism, which is okay with me even if I like naturalism.
I agree. What a pleasant conversation. This is why I love Less Wrong.
That the only death Tom is opposed to is his own.
Ack. I can't believe it took me this long, but I think Quirrellmort's plan has finally fallen into place for me. Quirrellmort's primary goals are:
(1) Attain immortality. (2) Enjoy it.
But he believes a necessary means to those ends is:
(3) Kill Harry Potter.
When Quirrellmort first said that when he made his Evil Overlord list, he realized following it all the time would defeat the purpose of being a Dark Lord. I wondered if he was telling the truth about that. HPMOR is all about playing with things that don't make sense in traditional stories, and the fact the bad guy wants to rule the world in traditional stories is one of those things that rarely makes any sense. It's taken for granted that bad guys want to rule worlds, but why? Wouldn't it be a lot of work?
At first glance, though, having Quirrellmort not want to rule the world (or even just Magical Britain) would have done funny things to the dramatic tension of the story. Probably the story would end up being about whether Harry could think clearly enough to do utopia right, with Quirrellmort acting not as a traditional antagonist but more of a tempter-figure, trying to nudge Harry towards becoming a Dark Lord.
Now I've become convinced that Quirrellmort was very much telling the truth about deciding not to be a Dark Lord. Here's the thing, though: he still wants to be immortal. Remember the scene where Harry realizes that his mysterious dark side is terrified of death, and he needs to coddle it? If his dark side is a piece of Voldemort's soul, that's telling us that Voldemort is terrified of death.
And Voldemort has heard a prophecy saying that either he or Harry must die. He's absolutely terrified of death, so he's going to try to make sure it's Harry. He didn't intend to kill Harry on the Night of Godric's Hollow, but that's because he knew the part of the prophecy that said, "He will mark him as his equal." He realized if he tried to kill Harry directly, according to the prophecy something would go wrong, so he decided to first fulfill the part about marking Harry as his equal intentionally, and then figure out how to kill Harry in a way that nothing would go wrong.
For purposes of the story's plot, his central goal isn't any different than Canon!Voldemort's. Both are focused on killing Harry. But HPMOR!Voldemort, once he's done that, won't try to rule Magical Britain. He'll go off and do whatever the hell he feels like.
I wonder if maybe from '73-'81 Voldemort deliberately avoided winning the war, because he thought fighting a war would be more fun than actually trying to rule after you've won.
Seems Quirrell has a good motive for conquest that you didn't mention, or at least a motive for attempting the unification of wizards, whether under his leadership or not.
And remember his magical fascism speech, where he said to imagine an outside enemy attacking the divided armies?
It could be that Quirrell wanted a believable fake secret motive for his interest in Harry, and all of the above was so that Harry wouldn't question this:
Or, his desire to unite wizards against the muggle threat could be sincere.
EDIT: A proposal of this theory by 75th, and a little bit of discussion, here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ams/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/60di
Seems an awful lot of work to go through rather than just siccing an expert killer on the baby. No, I find it highly unlikely that killing Harry is the main goal. On the other hand Dumbledore's version of good seems to be very incompatible with Harry's...
They prophecy does not say that "either he or Harry must die" it says that one will "destroy all but a remnant of the other." One way for that to be true is that Volde dies but is still exists as a spirit due to his horcrux. However even if that is the obvious answer it would be wise for him to try to determine non-obvious ways the prophecy might be fulfilled. Preferably one where he could win. For example, inserting his personality into Harry's mind so that his personality changes Harry's such that it is only a remnant of its previous form.
Prophecies are a done deal, what is said will come to pass. Considering that the obvious answer is that Harry kills Volde it might be a good idea to make sure that happens when Harry is still a baby and cannot finish him off. With the personality insert as a backup plan for fulfilling the prophecy without completely losing.
If I recall correctly, there are unfulfilled prophecies in canon.
Keep in mind that in canon, "either" in the prophecy was used in its lesser-known (but legitimate) definition of "both". "Either must die by the hand of the other", but what really happened was that BOTH died by the hand of the other.
So if that persists in MoR, we should expect both Harry and Voldemort to somehow destroy all but a remnant of the other.
Good point.
You might also interpret this sentence in a mathematical sense, the two of them being identical, so the survival of either one is good enough for either of them. Thus V. tries to ensure that HP (presumably) has the best possible chance of survival in the harsh realities of Magical Britain :)
It's definitely not just that, otherwise he'd have tossed Harry a knut port key into an active volcano or the like. His plan seems to involve Harry's "dark side" taking permanent control (like he expected to be the case before he was surpised by the news that there was a separate dark side in the first place rather than just Harry sometimes pretending to be non-dark).
Related to the discussion about the Defense Professor's talk with Hermione, but more generalized:
We've had Word of God (can't find the specific comment quickly) to the effect that parts of the text that are "too obvious" to readers are in fact meant to be that obvious, not meant as red herrings. Have we had any pronouncement about the truthfulness of things that the characters find "too obvious"? (As, for example, Hermione's realisation that Quirrell was apparently trying to get her to leave.)
Dumbledore tried to push Hermione away from heroism specifically to push her towards it. Maybe Quirrell thinks the same tool work work on her. He doesn't even have to know that Dumbledore thought that would work or used that tool on Hermione. He could just observe in her the same vulnerability to that method.
Okay, can someone answer in what way it would look different if Quirrel did try to get Hermione away and just honestly failed? As opposed to this supposedly not-real attempt?
Because I think too many people in this thread suffer from thinking that Quirrel is literally infallible in regards to anything he tries.
I have thought the same in conversations about other puzzles for that character, so I should heartily agree. The evidence shows no reason for him to want her to stay.
I update to believing that Quirrell tried and failed to drive Hermione away p>0.6. His groundhog day attack equipped him to expertly apply pressure to her but she still persevered, even barely, because she is heroic. (He was using reverse psychology to drive her toward Harry p<0.15. Something I do not understand was happening p>0.25.)
Thank you for the reality check.
A very minor mistake at ch.84
This of course should be something like "save them from bullies" or "save people from bullies".
It's disturbing that I read that like three or four times without once noticing.
How likely is it that the outcome of the Defense Professor's talk with Hermione was genuinely not what he wanted? Surely he has to have realized by now that Hermione is the sort of person who'd act like that, however incomprehensible it may be to him. I am reminded of the passage in the LotR omake that reads:
Maybe he truly doesn't understand her psychology, especially if he doesn't have H&C's, erm, experimentation to draw on. (I rather think he is H&C, but that's another issue entirely.) But working from the supposition that he wanted Hermione to react as she did, what does he gain from that?
She's within easy striking distance if he wants to use her in some future action.
She's acquired extra suspicion of the Defense Professor, which she will communicate to Harry, and which the Defense Professor may duly disprove to Harry, strengthening the latter's trust.
She may, if she stays near Harry, do something unpredictably Good (c.f. SPHEW) of her own free will (inasmuch as that exists anymore) that would be useful for enacting various lessons.
Something else that I haven't thought of yet.
Hermione came very very close to agreeing with the Defense Professor, and we see him using all the ways and mannerisms which cause her to trust him a little bit more -- not to 'acquire extra suspicion'.
So, no, I think Quirrel made a very very good attempt at what he wanted -- getting Hermione away. He simply failed.
He knows Hermione is suspicious of him. Why did he not let Harry - whom IIRC we previously saw saying that Hermione ought to be sent to Beauxbatons - beg Hermione to leave, or failing that, order her? Why did he make the blatantly manipulative hard-sell tactic of 'buy now, this is a limited-time offer only!' to someone whom he knows distrusts him, has read literature on manipulative tactics, and without giving a convincing Inside View explanation for why it's genuine and not what the Outside View says it is (manipulation)? Is this all reverse-psychology?
Excellent point about Harry. The Defense Professor virtually certainly knows Harry's opinions on the subject, whether by his mental model of Harry or by observing him telling anyone who'll listen that Hogwarts is dangerous.
On the other hand, I believe we've seen Harry failing to convince Hermione of something she was morally set on, much like this. (Anybody remember the specific incident, or am I imagining things?) Once Hermione had refused Harry's entreaties for her to leave, it would have been much harder for the Defense Professor to change her opinion.
And finally, there's this:
Which supports your argument that he's being a little too over-the-top. The Defense Professor is above all, subtle - this kind of all-out effort is not like him. Maybe there's some time constraint, though, and he doesn't have time for "subtle?" Aargh.
"Why did he not let"? I don't see any place where Quirrel isn't "letting" Harry do these things. Perhaps your question should be better phrased why he didn't ask Harry to do these things?
I think a simple enough answer is that he feels he has a better chance of convincing Hermione to leave, than to convince Harry to force Hermione to leave against her will. Since Bellatrix, Harry has learned to inquire about what is in it for Quirrel when Quirrel asks him to do things. And he'll see that wanting Hermione to leave may be to the advantage of whomever wanted to frame her in the first place, as both events lead to a Hogwarts without Hermione in it.
I don't understand your usage of the term. It's me who's saying he wanted her to leave (aka non-reverse psychology), it's LKtheGreat and you who seem to be saying he was applying reverse-psychology and that he really wanted her to stay.
The simplest explanation of why someone tries to manipulate you into doing something is because they want you to do it.
And frankly he came very close to getting her to say "Yes." We were inside Hermione's head. Quirrel came close to succeeding. If someone comes that close to succeeding, and fails just by something tiny which is outside their control, then the simplest explanation is that they wanted to succeed.
It's particularly worth considering that if Quirrel's last success in manipulating Hermione came at the end of a long obliviation cycle, then that was achieved when she was already in a state of mental exhaustion.
Can somebody explain to me why Harry was so into House points before Azkaban recalibrated his sense of perspective? It makes sense why most people seek them; you take several dozen kids, split them up into different groups, and soon enough you hear them talking about how they can't let those Gryffindor jerkasses win the House Cup and so on. But it seems to me like you need to identify with your House to an unhealthy degree to take so much pleasure in earning points for it. Hermione obviously has that problem (cf. her speech about House Ravenclaw in ch. 34), but I would have expected Harry to avoid falling into such an obvious trap.
Note that Draco never seems interested in getting house points (as far as I can remember, anyways), so I guess his Slytherin education allowed him to see what the Ravenclaws missed: House Points are just one of those totally useless things you use to incentivize people into desired behaviors without having to give them any real, costly rewards. Like employee of the month awards, and military medals, and lesswrong kar-
...
Nevermind, I think I get it now.
(But seriously, karma at least has an individual tracking component that allows one to gain status in the community; is there anything about house points that would win Hermione or Harry more status than they would if they just kept getting good grades in class, answering questions correctly, and saving victims from bullies?)
Who's the person who've deleted their account, and may I ask why? It's always sad/confusing when we lose someone and we can't even know the reason.
Well, for whatever reason he chose to unperson himself, so I'm not sure if I should be saying this, but that was jaimeastorga2000, I believe. I don't know why he decided to leave.
This was jaimeastorga2000. I think Misha deleted their account today too.
I regret that Misha is gone, he was one of the smarter commenters on mathy decision theory posts.
(blinks in surprise)
How odd and sad...
Hermione is less passionate about Ravenclaw than Harry is -- e.g. Hermione in January thinks that she should have gone to Gryffindor. Harry is very clear about wanting to go to Ravenclaw, and belonging to Ravenclaw.
Either way it's clear that it's marked how many points each student gets -- Dumbledore in Hermione's trial mentions she has earned 103 points for Ravenclaw so far, and even in canon it seems to be known who cost them/won them points (e.g. in Harry Potter & the Philosopher's stone, the protagonists are ostracized at some point for costing Gryffindor 50 points each)
In order to be an effective incentive system, house points would necessarily need to be awarded in social circumstances were other students can track them. And in practice that's usually how they're awarded. Points are given out in front of the class so all of the student's classmates can see them instead of privately. Some of this may be because teachers primarily interact with students in classes, but even private events which earn house points are announced publicly later.
Functionally, in canon, the house point system physically updates as soon as anyone authorized says "10 points to Gryffindor." Since it's auto-updating I'd be surprised if they don't track the reasons why as well in a magic ledger or something. When teachers were in strong contention for the house cup, they would give out house points on the flimsiest excuses, but they'd always have a reason for it, which implies that it's tracked. Otherwise teachers would subtract 50 points because 'potter looks stupid' when they're alone in the lavatory instead of taking 10 points for backchat while in class to unfairly win the house cup.
Sure. By earning house points, Harry and Hermione are essentially doing a favor for their houses independently of whatever they did to earn those points. It's a favor that's absolutely useless in functional terms (at least, I don't remember the House Cup granting any substantial perks), but that doesn't matter too much to the psychology involved; you're well above the 20 karma threshold but you still get a little spike of satisfaction when someone upvotes you, don't you? Same mechanism at play.
This is complicated slightly by the fact that House standing is zero-sum, but I still think in-house status gain would outweigh out-of-house status loss thanks to a number of considerations. Point allocations tend not to be announced to the entire school, for one thing.
Am I losing my mind, or was there a change made to Chap 16? I recall this section:
" No, there is exactly one monster which can threaten you once you are fully grown. The single most dangerous monster in all the world, so dangerous that nothing else comes close. The adult wizard. That is the only thing that will still be able to threaten you."
However now it reads:
" No, there is exactly one monster which can threaten you once you are fully grown. The single most dangerous monster in all the world, so dangerous that nothing else comes close. The Dark Wizard. That is the only thing that will still be able to threaten you."
If it was changed... why the change? The original was better, and (perhaps more to the point) more in keeping with Quirrell's character. He wouldn't distinguish between adult and Dark wizards when it comes to threat-to-his-students assessment.
That passage, of course, ties into what the Defense Professor says in the latest chapter: "You cannot use the Killing Curse, so the correct tactic is to Apparate away." If I had to work from the premise that the revision is actually related to that, I'd assume it's emphasising the Defense Professor being, in fact, a Dark wizard.
But I agree that from a point of view outside Eliezer's head, it appears to have at best neutral impact, and at worst negative impact on the effect of the passage.
Yeah. I dislike this change. "Dark" makes sense for Quirrell to say for purposes of not sounding too evil, for not sounding like he's encouraging being dangerous. But at that point in the story, it was pretty clear Quirrell thought it was a good thing to be dangerous, and saying "adult" wizard is more consistent with that. It's also more consistent with his decision to call "Defense Against the Dark Arts" "Battle Magic."
Definitely not insane. Do not like this change.
You're right. I search the PDF version, and have been told it doesn't receive edits in it's build (currently - though that's the plan for the future).
"The adult wizard." pg. 226
And I agree. I don't like the change either. Thinking that other adult wizards aren't a threat to you unless they're Dark is a horribly mistaken bias in more ways that one.
It used to say "adult wizard" yes -- I just confirmed it with an old pdf.
Maybe it's phrased that way in order to be similar to the bit several sentences down:
That instance of "Dark" makes sense (since they're Dark Arts and not "Adult Arts") and so there is a reason to use "Dark Wizard" throughout.
Best rationalization I can think of, but I still don't approve of the change. Let us remember that Quirrell intends to help Harry become a Dark Wizard, in which case, since Harry is in the classroom, he should include Light Wizards in the class of people who can threaten the students present.
It also makes more sense to say "the adult wizard" since that sentence is the conclusion of a list of species that are dangerous, and "adult" sounds more biological.
Maybe there's an important reason for this change, but otherwise I think this is too much like a composer making inane changes to a piece after it's already written, or like George Lucas messing with the original Star Wars trilogy.
I think Quirrell is working with an unconventional definition of Dark. Something like "in violent opposition to you."
If you're losing your mind, then either I am too or the nature of your mind-losing is a hallucination about what the chapter says now. I remember the same original text as you do (or, at any rate, the words "the adult wizard" and certainly not "the Dark wizard"). And I strongly agree that the original version is better.
Quirrell sure loves his stealth puns. Is there any reason he is not openly telling Hermione about Dumbledore's time turner?
Is Quirrell's half-smile a reference to Robin Hanson's picture?
Why would it benefit him for her to know about it?
If the light's coming from the doorway, it's one side of his face that's illuminated, not the bottom.
Edit: ...that is a pretty creepy picture, isn't it?
A question not on the latest chapter but ch4:
Did we ever find out whether the bounties were collected? I was wondering whether 40k Galleons was a reasonable sum for last heir of ancient family + entire wizarding world's bounties on Voldemort, but I can't remember the question ever being answered in the first place.
No.
It's still possible he's got some money down the pipe.
Or that the unpaid bounties were put up by people who now believe Voldemort to have returned.
The Davises have 300 Galleons in their vault, and they do not seem to be especially poor or especially wealthy. If Harry has 130 times the wealth of an average family, that sounds like a reasonable sum for the circumstances stated.
It's worth noting that we don't really know to what extent bounties would have been placed on Voldemort. For one thing, it seems like the international community couldn't give a toss about the fate of Britain, and British wizards seem to have spent their time cowering in terror and believing that Voldemort was invincible, rather than financing mercenary warfare.
Well, so far as the international community consists of other governments. There may have been plenty of concerned foreign citizens.
True, but we see not a single foreign finger being lifted to help magical Britain - and with wizards, individuals can be as influential as governments. Compare Dumbledore and magical Germany (though admittedly he had a clear personal stake in stopping Grindelwald). Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, and all that.
It's hard to compare, yes. But if you want to compare with the Davises and Potter fortunes, it doesn't sound like 40k is all that much.
For example, if we wanted to compare bounties, we could compare Voldemort to Osama bin Laden's federal bounty of $25 million; googling, the median net worth of an American household is something like $90,000, which gives us a Muggle multiplier of not 130x but 277x. If the Davises really are average (median) then with a Muggle multiplier the bounty on Voldemort might be as high as 113k galleons*. Then presumably you'd have the Potter family fortune of unknown thousands but let's round to 7k and then 120k total - that's 3 times what Harry actually has.
Of course, one can make assumptions which would erase a difference of 300% but you see why I might wonder if Harry did actually receive the bounties.
* Which if anything sounds low to me - Lucius shocks people by demanding 100k for Hermione just for attempting to kill Draco, but it seems plausible they would not be shocked by something like 10k - and Voldemort doesn't just attempt to kill one person, he kills dozens, hundreds, thousands, and multiple Noble House members. The Order, a subaltern organization unapproved of by Magical England, is able to raise 100k all on its own for its own operations. And so on.
Muggle America is also some hundreds of thousands of times more populous than wizarding Britain. That does change some things when it comes to ratios of that sort.
Also, is that $25 million in 1991 dollars (year the book's taking place) or 2011?
My median income figure was from ~2009; combined with the bounty not being inflation-adjusted, this implies this nominal ratio is an underestimate of the real ratio.
The reward was posted in 2001, and was unmodified for inflation until it was taken down in 2011.
That muggle net worth includes property values that would not be reflected in the Davis vault.
Wizards are specifically described as not engaging fractional-reserve banking, which implies that any real estate is bought without debt with saved-up funds; hence, we would also expect to see savings reflected in wizard vaults and the Davises in particular unless we think they already bought a property (in which case the 300 galleons would then become a massive underestimate, yes).
No fractional-reserve banking does not imply this - there could be lenders (whether goblins or wizards) with a large supply of their own gold which they use to make loans. Or landowners could sell property with a "rent to own" payment plan. Fractional-reserve banking is only necessary if you want to lend someone else's gold.
It's entirely possible that, for the most part, land ownership is not an economic issue for wizards. They are a very small population with no reliance on infrastructure and with easy, accessible and instant transportation from the FlooNetwork and apperation. They don't have pay utility bills either.
I'm willing to bet the only properties that change hands with meaningful frequency are shops in Hogsmead and Diagon Alley. Some folks rent rooms in these places when they are young and career-driven, but when they settle down to raise a family, if they haven't got a property to inherent, they just zip out to some picturesque chunk of rural Britain, get their friends together or hire some specialists to magically assemble a house, and then the ministry stops by to register the place and hook the fireplace up to the Floo Network for a fee.
The vast majority of wizards we see in canon live rurally. Bill and Fleur get set up with a little seaside cottage when they get married and no mention is ever made of cost. The only wizarding house that isn't rural which we know of is Number 12, Grimmauld Place, which was probably straight-up stolen from it's muggle owners in the 19th century and hidden.
Of course, if some muggles show up to ask why their land suddenly has a cozy little house on it that wasn't there yesterday, you bust out the memory charms and suddenly it's been your property all along, sorry for the trouble neighbor.
I was not using implies in the logical deduction sense. Not having fractional-reserve banking eliminates a massive source of capital which could be used for mortgage lending and ceteris paribus will reduce such lending, does it not?
It's probably worth comparing it to "the entire war chest" of the OOTP, 100k galleons.
Edit: ah, you did that.
How Magic Works, Some Facts, Inferences, Conclusions, and Speculations
The Facts:
The Speculations:
The source of magic has a certain limited number of permitted Spell to Effect associations on each power level. These associations are susceptible for expiration when no-one knows the spell anymore. High level associations were frozen in place by the Interdict of Merlin, but low level slots are still expiring, and whatever ritual the wizards use to create spells is merely triggering a garbage collect and conditional new spell insert.
Upon reception of the insert ritual, the Source of Magic scans the Wizard's mind, and performs an optimization algorithm on a set of existing spells to make a new spell which is close enough in some set of dimensions to what it thinks the Wizard wants, after which it associates the spell and effect. Therefore it would use thousands of years of existing infrastructure for making intelligent object effects.
In this scenario a wizard might be trying to create a spell for years, until a slot opens up that he will get to first, competing with everyone else trying to make spells.
Wizards, of course, not willing to accept the apparent randomness of this, have additional learned behaviors about creating spells, things they believe are required, most of which are not required and boil down to daydreaming about the effect you want and practice with the spell string and wand wave.
You don't distinguish your facts from your inferences well enough. Your list of "facts" seems to contains inferences like "Therefore time turners were limited after the invention of Equinoctal hours, in 127CE.", speculations like "Wizards seem to spend most of their time in pocket universes, otherwise you'd spot dragons and hogwarts trains on satellite imagery." and assumptions like "Children have unconscious magic, but not to the extent that OT Harry did."
I admit all the above flaws.
Chizpurfles appear to be canon.
Can you expand on the reasoning here? I don't see how you conclude that the limitation on time turners is somehow dependent on someone thinking in terms of equinoctal hours. It seems just as plausible that the (length of day)/4 limit (which happens to equal six equinoctal hours) is based on the physics of time turning and has applied all along.
My non-conclusive arguments for this are as follows:
Are we certain that the amount of time that each rotation takes you actually is an equinoctal hour, or a constant? If broomsticks can use Aristotlean physics, maybe Time Turners can be limited to six solar hours.
The length of an earth day is part of all Earth life experience, not uniquely human.
A good bit off topic but replying here anyway. If humanity was not special enough to set the Interdict of Merlin on absolutely everybody it could really turn against them when the aliens arrive.
Hm. If we were using physics here, I'd observe that a usable time turner has to be tied into things like the rotation and movement of the earth, because traveling back in time without taking those things into account somehow leaves one stranded in interplanetary or interstellar space. Given that we're talking magic, well, who knows. But sure, I agree that it's suggestive but inconclusive.
Would you mind giving your evidence for the following points?
We don't actually have any general comments on what kind of animals and plants don't exist. We only know which ones exist in the vicinity of Hogwarts, plus a limited sampling of foreign ones (such as Veela).
Isn't this the opposite of what it does? I thought its sole effect was to prevent the impersonal transmission of spells (and thus the rediscovery of old powerful spells from books).
Example, please?
This is Draco's opinion, IIRC, and apart from the fact that he's an 11-year old boy of limited education, we know that his information sources on wizard power over the ages are strongly biased and unreliable.
This made me think of an omission that's probably not a very big deal, but preHogwarts Rationalist Harry never reports having used magic before. At the same time, he believes in magic. So maybe he did some magic or saw some magic and was Obliviated?
Also, since Harry's magic bag responds to sign language, can all spells be cast that way even by people who're bad at nonverbal magic?
I very much doubt it. You have to say "prior incantato" or whatever it is, not "previous spell", and "expecto patronum" rather than "I'm waiting for my protector", etc., and (at least in MoR) the exact durations of the vowel sounds in "oogely boogely" are essential for conjuring glowing bats. It seems very much as if magic is keyed to particular sounds and (pseudo-)languages. There might be sign-language spells, which might make for an interesting underexploited niche for an ambitious magical researcher, but I don't see any reason to expect any sign-language translations of spells to exist.
In canon you have to pronounce it Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa and can't cast it unless you make the 'gar' nice and long. (In the movies, it's "Levi-o-sa, not levio-sah").
I don't think he really believes in magic... he just points out that belief is not necessary since it can be tested:
Although he also thinks
In canon, it's suggested that accidental magic is self-defense. Harry apparently has a perfectly happy & safe childhood spent reading, so no need for underage magic to ever manifest and no events to cause his dark side like an abused child. So what explains all this?
Well, we know one thing that explains both the certainty and dark side, and does not require any unhappiness or accidental magic in his childhood: influence from a Voldemort horcrux.
You know, if it weren't for everyone else taking it so seriously, I would have (and did, before I started following discussions) dismissed Harry's so called dark side as a perfectly normal personality quirk which he makes a big deal of because once he's told he's a prophesied hero he feels he ought to have something dramatically appropriate like a mysterious dark side.
In his place, I wouldn't be thinking "My mysterious dark side is good at X," I'd be thinking "I'm good at X when I put myself into the right frame of mind."
Well, actually, in his place, I might be thinking "my mysterious dark side is good at X," but that's because if I were in his place, I'd be eleven.
Sometimes I'm all simplistic and think to myself "I'm good at X when I get pissed off." Combined with a little emotional regulation with respect to pissed-off levels it amounts to much the same thing.
Especially if the 'frame of mind' has lots of other stuff going on as well: the implication is that he can't get the competence without the rest of the baggage. So it's like 'slightly drunk me is good at pool (but it also wants to drink more and thus become very bad at pool), rather than 'thoughtful me is good at understanding where other people are coming from'.
Okay, that makes sense. But I disagree that the dark side is part of Voldemort's soul.
The dark side is the one that wants to protect his friends, and calling it dark isn't really fair. Voldemort is pretty selfish so this doesn't seem like it applies to him. It's also been stressed in MOR that Harry's dark side isn't giving him access to any of Voldemort's powers. I think it's just a part of his psychology and lonely genius personality and that "the normal explanation is worth considering", even in the wizarding world.
I just thought of something, and I'm not sure what the connection is to this but I feel like there is an underlying connection. Is EY emphasizing Snape's history for a pragmatic plot type reason? Maybe there's a secret reveal coming up, about Lily or something? This is purely intuitive so it's probably crap. But sometimes my intuition is smarter than my active thoughts.
I would have thought Parseltongue was an obvious example.
It also allows him to master the preparatory Occlumency exercises with extreme speed and ease. Which makes sense since the heart of Occlumency is assuming whatever personality you want at a given time, a gift Voldemort claims to have in abundance.
My guess is that he's filling in Snape's character background to give him the full complexity he deserves as one of the major players. Although Dumbledore doesn't seem to think twice about him, Harry treats him as an obstacle, and Quirrell dismisses him as an opponent, it's been made clear that Snape is running his own multi-stage plans (such as his manipulation of Hermione), which interact and interfere with everyone else's. Perhaps his role is due to expand.
Harry is totally schizophrenic in MOR though. He's got all of the Founders in his head.
The dark side isn't even a personality, as such, which implies strongly that it's not a soul.
I think your interpretation of the Snape thing is probably accurate.
I was originally going to put a quote here, but it turned out to be pretty much half the chapter, so... Chapter 56. In particular, when you read
Think back to Deathly Hallows, Chapter 36: King's Cross, specifically the bit
You seem to be working from a unified view of the mind in which there is one single personality with one single voice, and deviations from this structure are pathological. I don't think this is accurate.
Even if it was, it is common for people to hold internal dialogues, and not unusual for patterns to develop where certain kinds of thought are given certain labels. I don't think this says anything special about Harry, except that he has a rich and vibrant inner life.
Also, a Public Service Announcement: "schizophrenia" is an umbrella term for a long list of possible symptoms whose main common feature is disconnection from reality or warped perception of it. You are thinking of Dissociative Identity Disorder (commonly known as Multiple Personality Disorder), which is a completely different thing altogether.
I was rereading the new chapters and got very confused about what happens between casting a spell and its effects.
Hexes are slow enough to be dodged from almost point-blank range. Chapter 78:
But some spells have instantaneous effect. Chapter 78:
(There is no way that could have been safe given normal reaction times and current values of g)
Then there is wandless magic, which (I think) is instantaneous in canon, but that would be far too overpowered for MoR. Actually even the hover charm, assuming it is instantaneous, could be deadlier in the hands of a powerful wizard than the killing curse.
I'm curious why the spell has to be shot out from the wand, rather than from a completely different direction or appearing spontaneously in the middle of the target. There's an underlying assumption that magic is like lasers and wands are like guns in much of Canon!HP and in MOR, but that doesn't really seem justified. Maybe this is just another conceptual limitation?
You're right, no hint of an explanation why wands are necessary has ever been given. Spontaneous underage magic, as well as high-level wandless magic, would be evidence in favour of the "conceptual limitation" theory.
On the other hand, this wouldn't explain why Bacon, who apparently lacked this conceptual limitation, was severely held back in his research by lack of a wand. Also, it doesn't explain why high-level wizards continue to use wands for the overwhelming majority of their spellcasting.
Maybe it's not that wands are needed to cast spells, but that they amplify magical power (and perhaps adds focus to a target). While the magically powerful are able to cast high level wandless magic, most are unable to. Hence, they have to use wands to make their spells powerful enough to have an effect. Children have spontaneous magic but they can't cast as much as adults normally can with wands.
Perhaps Roger Bacon just wasn't magically powerful. -shrugs- Not all great thinkers have to have tons of strength. Er, wasn't he Muggleborn? If the "Muggleborns-are-weaker" theory is true, then it makes sense.
My hypothesis for the reason why high-level wizards continue to use wands is that they've simply grown dependent. If they've been using magic-amplifying wands ever since they were eleven, then they would be used to being assisted by the wand. I think this matches my mental model of Quirrell, who is seen doing a lot of wandless magic (stopping spells midair, spontaneously combusting inkwells). He seems like the kind of person that would train himself to use his wand as little as possible. And even if he can't duel without, his magical ability is certainly very impressive.
However, the spells they do cast are fully as powerful as those of adults with wands.
Pretty sure this theory has been unambiguously dismissed both in canon and in MoR.
Otherwise your hypothesis is credible, though I still don't accept it as I can't see all the high-level wizards we know being dependent on wands when there are so many advantages to wandless magic (and when high-level wizards tend to be ones with strong, independent personalities).
I think both have been silent on the question of whether there is any notion of inherent "power levels" at all, let alone whether it is heritable or whether it is correlated to being a "muggleborn".
EDIT: It's clear in MoR that - if Harry's hypothesis on magic heritability is true (a big if), then other non-binary factors seem unlikely to be correlated to being a "muggleborn". However, I felt that Harry very strongly anchored on that hypothesis, which was one of my reasons for being annoyed with him and eventually stopping reading (to pick it back up later on, obviously)
In fact more powerful than most adults; there's a line in Chapter 78 that "If [Mr and Mrs Davis]'d been children young enough for accidental magic they probably would've spontaneously Disillusioned themselves.", which we know requires significantly above-average power in MoR. (Assuming that line from the narrator isn't exaggeration.)
If you accept the hypothesis, wanded magic has the not-insignificant advantage of being more powerful. What's the advantage of wandless magic?
I thought it was obvious. What if you're without a wand?
If you're in battle without a wand, it seems to me that either 1) you've been ambushed, or 2) you've been disarmed. I don't really see that the ability to cast understrength spells helps all that much in either situation.
That depends on how creative you get. Even understrength spells, especially if unexpected, could tip the balance in your direction - especially if all you're looking for is, say, an opportunity to escape. Even if you lose your gun, a rock can still be useful.
Yeah, thinking about it a little more, even just wandless Apparation would be pretty useful.
Non-reliance on wands is a big one, since watching the movements of an opponent's wand, or disarming them, are combat fundamentals. Being able to cast spells unnoticed is another one (consider the powerful effect of the mid-interrogation Memory Charm in the Order of the Phoenix). Also, it's presumably better training in terms of building up power and skill to cast spells without a crutch.
Besides, many spells don't really need extra power to work, as they have a binary effect (like the Quietus Charm) or typically target objects that can't resist (such as the Vanishing Charm).
Nitpick, but Quirrell cast a Quieting Charm on the rocket in the Azkaban escape, but Harry's ears were still ringing enough afterward that he couldn't hear Bellatrix shouting. So it's not a binary effect; there could be Quieting Charms that are capable of silencing louder noises than others.
It seems to be different for different spells. For example, some spells can't be dodged because of the missile shape rather than because of speed (e.g. wide blasts rather than beams or missiles). Likewise, some require physical contact (Transfiguration) while others affect everyone in the vicinity irrespective of location, targeting or obstacles (Muffliato, the one that stops people overhearing you).
Also, I don't think it gets deadlier than the Killing Curse by definition - it is unblockable and kills instantly. Any other spell we know of can be blocked by a good enough shield and/or have its effects undone before they are fatal (by an ally if not by the target themselves).
It can be dodged. My point was that if the hover charm is instant and cannot be dodged, then accelerating the victim into something (e.g. sky then ground) can kill them without giving them time before the spell hits. And with sufficient acceleration, the victim won't be able to react.
In canon, Snape was able to shut down everything Harry tried against him in combat in the sixth book, because as long as Harry hadn't mastered occlumency or silent spellcasting, his attacks were all sufficiently telegraphed that a superior duelist and leglimens like Snape could simply counter them all before he could fire them off.
Indeed. I'm reminded of martial arts - in a sparring match between a very fit beginner and a creaky master, the master still just toys with the beginner because their movements are so predictable. I've seen this in fencing, taekwondo, and karate, and it's a mixture of hilarious, impressive, and sad all at once.
If you're really good, you can toy around like that even with people who're quite proficient. I haven't seen it myself, but my sifu said that his teacher, grandmaster Al Dacascos, who's a first generation martial arts hall of famer, really is that good in his sixties, and on the wikipedia page of Kenshiro Abbe, it says that he recalled how his own kendo instructor, a 75 year old tenth dan (back when tenth dans in kendo actually still existed) couldn't be touched by any of the students or younger instructors.
True. But that would have to be an extreme amount of acceleration, whereas in MoR it takes several casters just to fully counter the effect of gravity on one teenage boy. Also, it seems unlikely at best that the Hover Charm can accelerate people downwards - and if you lift someone high enough for a fall to kill them, you give them time to react while they fall.
Also, it's possible that the Hover Charm could be blocked by a pre-cast shield - in fact, this seems likely, otherwise people could just get around non-spherical shields by lifting the target and then shooting them from underneath.
Several first-year casters. Quirrell stuck 50 people to the ceiling. You might say that he has better ways to use his power - but the killing curse is not one of them. His killing curse is little better than anyone else's.
There's got to be a spell for that, and it it likely to work similarly to the hover charm, i.e. instant effect.
If by a specific anti-hover shield, then one needs to always keep up a large number of shields against various spells. If by a generic shield, well, that isn't in my mental model of shields, but I guess it's possible. In which case I agree that the killing curse is superior agains a raised shield, but it is still inferior against an unsuspecting enemy.
An unsuspecting enemy can apparate when they realize they are being affected by the hover charm. When they realize they are being affected by Avada Kedavra... they're dead.
Ah. Hundreds of girls Summoning a Harry Potter into their arms?
You make some excellent points. I can only conclude that the Hover Charm (and your proposed opposite) must have some built-in limitations, otherwise no-one would bother using anything else against unshielded targets.
I do suspect that the spells we think of as instant are actually very fast invisible missiles - this would account both for the fact that one aims them with a wand, and for the fact that the likes of Quirrell can sneeze away spells which have no visible missiles.
I imagine SPHEW's battles vs. the bullies would have looked different if Protego didn't protect against telekinesis.
Are you assuming it can't be shielded against? That seems unlikely. And if you can catch your opponent before he casts any shields there are easier ways to kill someone.
You would need to always have a shield up.
For example? Most purpose-built spells are in the form of a bolt that you have time to see and dodge.