Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89

Vaniver

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 Dark Lord Tom (or whoever; insert 'Lord Dick' jokes here) definitely wants Harry to use the Killing Curse or otherwise stop wanting everyone to live. This would likely make their magic compatible and Doom-free, since Harry would no longer have terminal values directly opposed to those of Avada Kedavra and the curse's master. So in theory it would allow Q to possess Harry's body. It would also explain why Q doesn't just kill Harry indirectly, having tested his ability to affect the boy with a paper-cut.

But we know what Q wants in part because he wanted to kill the Auror (as a terminal value). Actually doing so seems stupid at first glance. If allowing this to happen destroyed Harry's Patronus, which seems like the goal throughout, Q would almost certainly have died. But he may have five backups. Hell, he could have six - we haven't established if he's possessing Quirrell or using that body as a puppet from somewhere else. (Azkaban argues strongly against this, but by then he could have copied all skills to his secondary body so the main one could stay out of it.) So losing one brain and even a few memories to break and then Dement his nemesis may count as a win. Why accept his self-serving explanation when the prerequisite and range of the curse argue against it?

Had he killed his target without thereby breaking Harry, he could still have used some rationalization to excuse his actions. Or he could have trusted in his ability to do so.

The fact that Harry continues to breathe makes more sense when you recall that One Does Not Mess With Time. (In the Company novels by Kage Baker, the physical law that history cannot be changed causes a time-traveling organization complete with immortal cyborgs to pop into existence. I get the impression that the cosmos 'saw' this as the simplest way to stop a particular change.) This could readily extend to prophecy. By the natural interpretation of the first prophecy, Q can't kill him - and he may have other evidence for this, though I'm still confused about what happened in Godric's Hollow. (I'm confused about how prophecy works, come to that.) This seems like a great reason to refrain. Q could very easily decide to focus on breaking the part of Harry that opposes him.