I got the impression it was common knowledge among powerful wizards. Am I misremembering?
If you look back at Chapter 78, it says that
Harry had not made an original magical discovery, but rediscovered a law so ancient that nobody knew who had first formulated it:
A potion spends that which is invested in the creation of its ingredients.
But conversely, it also says that
The fundamental principle of Potions-Making had no name and no standard phrasing, since then you might be tempted to write it down.
McGonagall and Flitwick seemed to at least be familiar with the idea, though, so there's a good chance that you're right.
Edit: I should probably als...
Edit: New thread posted 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 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: