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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

I think it's stronger than that. Quirrell suggesting this memory can only have two implications that I can see:

Either 1) A baby remembering an event like this in the HPMOR universe is not, in any way that Quirrell would notice, unusual, and would even be expected. This seems unlikely and unsatisfying to me. No reason for the existence of this discrepancy between their world and ours has been shown, no excuse made. I also think "how does anyone know this story?" is the nagging rationalist doubt Harry experiences when he first hears of it. Especially - how would one remember a conversation in detail before having learned the language it is in, or any language at all? If anything he would remember tones, emotions, sights. His supposed recall is an extremely improbable feat for baby Harry.

Or 2) Quirrell knows both that the memory was implanted and its contents. This is consistent with Quirrell, particularly that he has made the right guess for the wrong reasons, as previously described in Ch.49, "Prior Information". The main lesson from that chapter is that we should not assume that Quirrell's (or anyone's) seemingly extraordinary deductions are actually deductions, but look for other reasons why he would have that information.

The simplest explanation for #2 is that Quirrell knows because Quirrell placed the memories. I am assuming that the inability of Quirrell to interact magically with Harry is real because EY has called it a literary necessity, but Quirrel/Voldemort/Riddle/Monroe could have just placed the (unusually clear and detailed) memory into the infant Harry before turning him into a horcrux that he would then not be able to magically interact with (is this a thing that always happens with human horcruxes?) There would be no need to obliviate the real events afterwards, the 15-month-old babe would not remember anyway, but he could also just have Bellatrix do it. This would be part of some version of "Voldemort faked his own death." There are a few of versions of how this might have happened, and I haven't settled out what I believe yet.

The other possibility for #2 is that someone else, most likely Dumbledore, placed the false memories for reasons that are not clear to me and that Quirrell has come by this information somehow. If he had done it, and Minerva knew the secret she might be a weak occlumency link in the Order's chain, allowing Voldemort's legendary legilimency to obtain any information she has. She seems highly trustworthy but not particularly secure. I can't think of any reasons why Dumbledore would do this, though. It seems to only disadvantage Dumbledore's priorities.

It is possible, I suppose, that dementors have the ability to make their victims recall even the faintest of bad memories in stunning detail, or that Dumbledore has some inscrutable reason for faking the events of that night. Overall I think the most likely explanation is that Quirrell planted Harry's memory of Godric's Hollow.

3) Quirrell was pattern matching. People would see their worst memory when faced with a dementor, Harry needed to see a death to be able to see thestrals, and the murder of his parents was a likely candidate for his worst memory.

At that point, and perhaps at no point, did Harry tell Quirrell the details of what he remembered, so your objections about the detailed nature of the memory aren't very strong. That a 1 year old could process Mommy being killed doesn't seem like that much of a stretch.

You're right that the elaborate nature of the memories does p... (read more)