Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 20, chapter 90

palladias

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 90. The previous thread has passed 750 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, 17,18,19.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

A retreat by the students to the outside that's babysitted by the professors would prevent the professors from going to the third-floor corridor to defend it.

I think the core error that they made, was not sending Patronuses out to help. McGonnegal should have messaged Dumbledore.

Also there's supposedly the Order of the Phoenix to fight. McGonnegal should have messaged Amelia Bones. Amelia Bones would have time traveled back and arrived into Hogwarts with her crew at directly the right moment to kill the troll.

Michelle Morgan was put on the spot and her primary objective was preventing that the students had to walk around. She's excused for not thinking about getting help from the outside. McGonnegal isn't.

Even McGonnegal herself could without any problem time travel back via Harry time turner and then send the message to Dumbledore and Amelie Bones 6 hours in the past. That way neither Dumbledore nor Amelie Bones would have to use up their own time turner and could use it later that day against another attack.

Bones is the head of the DMLE. Why would anyone need to call her in on a stray troll? If Hogwarts staff can't handle that, they're not worthy of their titles.