Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 16, chapter 85

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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 85. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments. Comment in the 15th thread until you read chapter 85.

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, 15.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

This may have been addressed already, but why doesn't Harry suspect at this point that Quirrell is Voldemort, or at least working for Voldemort?

This is especially puzzling after we get to hear Harry's thoughts on what happened to Hermione in 85.

Now, maybe I'm suffering from obvious-in-retrospect syndrome here, given that I did not realize Quirrell was Voldemort until V ernq Ryvrmre'f fvapr-ergenpgrq fgngrzrag gung Dhveeryy vf Ibyqrzbeg. But that was before the Stanford Prison Experiment arc. Relevant facts in that and the Taboo Tradeoffs arc:

Quirrell broke Bellatrix out of Azkaban
Voldemort is the only person in the world with an obvious motive for wanting to break Bellatrix out of Azkaban, and is who everyone else thinks is responsible
Quirrell uses at least one alternate identity, and Harry suspects him of having many more
Quirrell's explanation of his motives for breaking Bellatrix out of Azkaban (she might know something useful, also a whim, see Ch. 60) aren't terribly satisfying
During Hermione's trial (Ch. 80), Harry thought that it "seemed horribly and uniquely plausible that the entity who'd Memory-Charmed Hermione was the very same mind that had - made use of - Bellatrix Black."
In Ch. 85, we see Harry is taking the possibility that Quirrell was behind the plot against Hermione seriously.

What pieces of evidence doesn't Harry have here? He doesn't know about horcruxes so he can't make the connection to Quirrell's story about the Pioneer Plaque, and Hermione hasn't (yet?) told Harry what she's realized about what Quirrell did and why (Ch. 84). But Harry still has a lot of evidence.

The one thing that may be tripping Harry up--and was tripping me up until the moment I mentioned in rot13 above--is that Quirrell seems very serious about his "I don't want to be a Dark Lord, I want you to be a Dark Lord, Harry!" line, and it's hard to make sense of Voldemort taking that attitude.

Maybe Ridvolquir interpreted the prophecy as saying he can't defeat Harry until Harry becomes a Dark Lord???

One thing that's been really puzzling me since re-reading TSPE - why exactly DID Quirrell break Bellatrix out? If it's to do the resurrection spell (as in canon) then why not take Harry's blood right after the prison break, and just resurrect already? (Further, it assumes that Voldemort's body was dead in the first place and needed resurrecting, which we can't assume because Godric's Hollow looks like a set-up.)

But Quirrell's own claimed motive (to learn some of Salazar Slytherin's secrets) is even dodgier. If Quirrell actually is Voldemort, then he knows ... (read more)

13Desrtopa14y

What motive would Harry expect Voldemort to have? As far as I can recall, he doesn't know about the components required for the spell to revive someone kept from death by horcruxes, and Bellatrix is not a very capable servant for the time being, and he doesn't believe Voldemort cared about her in any case. Quirrell, on the other hand, has already claimed a selfish motive that he personally has for freeing Bellatrix that would not apply to Voldemort. Keep in mind that for Harry, the potential hypothesis space is huge. Quirrell might secretly be Rudolph Wizencamp in disguise. Don't know who Rudolph Wizencamp is? Well, neither does Harry, he's only lived in the wizarding world for a few months after all. We can reason by dramatic convention and conservation of detail, but for Harry, the list of all possibilities raised by the facts about the wizarding world that he's aware of is far from exhaustive.

2alex_zag_al14y

For Harry to be the Dark Lord in the prophecy, and Voldemort the one with the power to defeat him, would require Voldemort to be born to those who thrice defied Harry. Taken literally the prophecy requires the one with the power to defeat the Dark Lord to be younger than him. [...] Yeah, they're not satisfying to me either. If Bellatrix knew any rare and dangerous magic, I'd expect Dumbledore to have learned whatever he could from her by whatever means are within his moral restraints, and then Obliviated her to stop anyone else from doing the same thing. This puts some restraints on Quirrill's magic usage, too: if he uses any magic that he taught to Bellatrix, Dumbledore will recognize it.