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 88-89. The previous thread has 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, 17, 18.
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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.
Two interesting observations: The most recent utterances of the words "temporal pressure" (similar to the titles of these last two chapters) was in chapter 86 when discussing the Halls of Prophecy:
Next, near the end of chapter 89, Harry "turns away from Dumbledore" twice, almost as if there's a kink in time after explicitly mentioning "pressure":
Hypothesis: Something very strange just happened to Time around Harry, possibly involving a time turner, and things are definitely not as they seem.
It's almost as if someone is trying to manipulate Harry's reaction to these events, like when H&C tricks Hermione repeatedly. Fred and George are unconscious at this point, too. It goes without saying that Harry is probably an unreliable narrator.
Eliezer
I think the facts at least are as described. Hermione is certainly lying in a pool of blood, something significant did happen to her (Harry felt the magic), and Dumbeldore definitely believe Hermione is dead.
If there is a time turner involved, it won't change those perceptions one bit, And I doubt Dumbeldore would try too Mess With Time ever again (as mentioned in the Azkaban arc). Harry might, but he's out of his Time Turner Authorized Range. Even then, it looks like he's thinking longer term than that.