What is Magic besides some form of superintelligence, or at least the remnants of superintelligence? The strongest evidence is that magic-users and even creators don't really have to understand how the spells actually work in order to use them. There is information entering the system from somewhere, and it's enough information to accurately interpret the vague wand movements and sounds of humans and do sufficiently amazing things without too many chaotic side-effects. Even the chaotic side-effects are usually improbably harmless. It's like an almost-Friendly, or perhaps a broken previously-Friendly, AI. Possibly the result of some ancient Singularity that is no longer explicitly remembered.
The strongest evidence is that magic-users and even creators don't really have to understand how the spells actually work in order to use them.
You don't need to know how muscles work in order to use them to move.
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: