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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Only a few inches: There is a huge difference between typical house walls and all the walls in the path of several buildings. There is also a difference between that and a large chord of the Earth. (By comparison, modern heavy machine guns may penetrate a whole city block provided they don't hit anything really heavy, man-portable small arms may penetrate several weaker house walls, or some masonry.)

Hugely Indirect: If you can shoot Avada Kedavra through a significant chord of the Earth, then it seems like it would be broken. Targetting might be a problem, but for all the uncreativity of Rationalverse wizards, they are not that bad.

Power: Of course, we've only seen two lethal fights in the Rationalverse. (Team Weasley against the troll, and Quirrel against an Azkaban Auror). Team Weasley seems to use spells that seem like they would be instantly disabling if not fatal against a human, especially with more mana behind them. However, shields might change that significantly (How do shields interact with material forces? We've only ever seen this once. Most people use shields to protect against personal effect spells!) What about counterspells? (Unclear how this works, seems to care about stamina or mana, but we've never had a good description of them even though high-powered fighters use them a LOT, and Quirrel relies on them exclusively. Quirrel took a while to fight the Auror, but was going for shock, and not fighting anywhere near full strength. Plus he probably had to attack shields to avoid killing the Auror.

What about Hypothetical Auror-Level HPEJV? If Harry can transfigure at a rate of 250 grams per second, he will be able to spam Muggle-style kinetic, directed energy, and explosive weapons, especially if he can use physical or magical air protection and armor. These also would benefit from having no audible incantation and a faster time to first impact. (Nothing like Lily Potter shredding Voldemort with a hail of Transfigured recoil-less rounds!) Granted, most wizards are not aware of this possibility, but it suggests that AK has odd characteristics compared to, say, AK-47.

I see. I didn't see it as "it will go through a wall," I saw it as "once it is fired, it will go through anything, and keep on going through it until it hits a soul." Which even on reflection appears to be the more correct interpretation, but that is just my view.

...you don't think that they are that bad, that they could not figure out how to hit a moving target, with a projectile a few inches across, moving slow enough that it can be dodged within a few meters, without the ability to adjust the projectile midflight, through a significa... (read more)