Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 17, chapter 86

Alsadius

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 86. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments.

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, 16.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Who thinks that Lockheart was in fact possessed by Voldemort? It seems unlikely given that in canon Lockheart "accomplished" these deeds in a very different way, and there is no reason why he could not have done so here as well. (By the way on Predictionbook I estimated a 15% chance, but that is starting to look to high now that I am thinking it over a bit more.)

Moody going after Lockhart is Moody privileging hypotheses involving Dark Wizards; nobody's a perfect rationalist in this story, and Moody's experience causes him to privilege hypotheses involving Dark Wizards and discount hypotheses involving Huge Wankers.

1DanArmak14y

In HPMOR, there is no strong reason to think Voldemort is a disembodied spirit that needs to possess someone, rather than being and always having been embodied in the body currently known as Quirrel. I wouldn't give your estimated 15% to even the entire probability that hpmor!Voldie can or needs to posess anyone.

4Tenek14y

I don't. GL's canon strategy provides a perfectly reasonable explanation for all his supposed feats, and I didn't see anything in 86 to suggest this is going to be a major divergence. I expect it'll go something like the other CoS reference - at some future point we'll get a "gee, looks like he's just a fraud, moving on" with a possible joke about him teaching Defense.