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Jonathan_Graehl comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 20, chapter 90 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think it's more likely that Quirrell is being sincere, and that he is trying to avert the prophecy that he heard at the end of Ch 89. As evidence, I submit:
I'm actually impressed with Quirrell's control, here. We can judge how great his fear of death is from his response to Dementor exposure, and here we have a prophecy which (to him, at least) is signalling the end of the entire universe. He's spent decades desperately trying to find a way to avoid death, and now he thinks he's looking it straight in the face. And nobody in the story has even noticed that he's concerned, although I'm pretty sure he was showing his fear a little at the end of 90 there. He must be gibbering on the inside, and holding it together out of sheer determination.
Of that much I'm fairly confident. This next bit is speculation on my part. I'm not going to give a percentage, it's just a hunch, but it is my pet hunch which I've had for a long time.
Quirrell has it all wrong. HPMORverse is actually a simulation being run at some higher level of reality, and Harry is going to figure this out and either rewrite the universe to his will, or airlift everybody in the world the hell out of there by their bootstraps, thereby mass-producing immortality. Merlin was the last wizard to know that the universe was a sim and he patched it to stop people breaking it. Unfortunately this resulted in the loss of a whole lot of useful stuff which may very well have been grandfathered in.
Several people have latched onto the idea that "in fact, harry is in a simulation [because it's fiction]". This is a deeply confused statement. [edit: I misread Argency; he's just speculating - no [because it's fiction] implied - I replied to the wrong comment]
A story can be about anything, and is exactly as meta as its author wants it to be. We've seen Harry use the idea that he's like a hero in a story as an intuition pump, but that's part of the very non-simulated [fictional] world he inhabits :)
I mean, the story events so far could turn out to have been simulated, or we could end up with a story where self-aware fictional characters negotiating with their creator, but I've seen no indication of that so far.