Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 21, chapters 91 & 92
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 chapters 91 & 92 . 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, 17,18,19,20.
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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.
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Comments (366)
Conspicuously absent from the canon, and from Methods of Rationality (so far) --- and absent entirely from the Hogwarts curriculum --- are two fundamental elements of rational cognition:
Therefore
Literary Remark Harry Potter would do well to reflect upon the words and fate of Captain Ahab:
Conclusion Harry Potter's quest to restore Hermione Granger may be leading him and the Hogwarts crew to a similarly disastrous fate as Ahab and the Pequod crew.
Both canon and HPMoR have arithmancy. In HPMoR, "Harry and Professor McGonagall had bought his textbooks from Flourish and Blotts just under the deadline. With only a slight explosion when Harry had made a beeline for the keyword 'Arithmancy' and discovered that the seventh-year textbooks invoked nothing more mathematically advanced than trigonometry." And Harry really shouldn't have exploded. Many real world Muggle schools don't get as far as trigonometry by the end of high school, and they don't have to spend any time on charms or transfiguration.
Ryvmvre unf fgngrq gung guvf vf abg na NV fgbel.
For a professional-grade comment on "muggle math" versus "Hogwarts math", see Michael Spivak's Physics for Mathematicians: Mechanics I.
To express this point another way ... how likely is it, that Harry's final understanding of magic will be non-mathematical? What grade of mathematical abstraction capabilities will Harry need to acquire?
I can't find the particular proofs of Noether theorems that your link refers to. Can you help me find them? I see no instances of the word "muggle" in Spivak's paper - in fact no index at all. Is there a different version of it? Please help, as I would greatly appreciate reading this!
Edit: I see now that the comment was referring to a book by Spivak, and that the linked PDF is only on 'elementary mechanics.'
Amazon UK's "look inside" feature has it. I haven't checked Amazon US. Search for "Muggles"; first result (page 576) is the one.
Edit 1: Kudos to "gjm" (see above) for pointing to Spivak's page on Amazon!
Edit 2: Spivak's Hogwarts proof implicitly uses a fundamental theorem in differential geometry that is called Cartan's Magic Formula ... this oblique magical reference is Spivak's joke ... as with many magical formulas, the origins of Cartan's formula are obscure.
Abominable Conclusion 1: the AIs that first negotiated with humanity, thousands of years ago, to levitate objects on command, had insisted that humans speak the protocol words... Wingardium Leviosa.
AI-1: And so we have decided to grant the humans great powers
AI-2: but when we bestow our awesome power upon the puny humans they may become arrogant and forget that they are small and ridiculous
AI-1: we've thought of that, and have a solution...
Wingardium Leviosa!
Except that said humans won't develop the language where those not-words sound kind-of-sensible for a few more thousand years. And even then, most of the people in the world wouldn't get the joke. (Do French wizards cast French spells? What about the Chinese?)
Probably. Quirrell teaches at least one spell which is clearly neither of English nor Latin origin.
Excellent point, I'd forgotten about that. Ma-ha-su.
Since Eliezer does nothing accidentally, this is very strong evidence that wizards invent spells with words related to the language they speak, and that spells then have a high turnover rate that doesn't let them survive longer than their languages.
LOL --- perhaps a chief objective of the Ministry of Magic is to conceive and require obfuscating interfaces to magic! That would explain a lot!
Parallels to real-world high-school and/or undergraduate mathematical education ... are left as an exercise. :)
Some thoughts on "Hermiones brain will be transfigured and kept frozen by Harry":
We know from Harrys first transfiguration lesson that transfigured living things undergo changes with time, which will kill said things. Harry knows this, and is thus likely to thing of deep-freezing the Hermione-diamond. Only he also plans to retransfigurate his fathers rock, and we know that one sustained transfiguration is a serious drain on his magic. Add to that the magical drain from having to cool the H-diamond and its thermal buffer, I think it unlikely that he did something of that sorts.
One way to circumvent the drain of the transfigured H-diamond would be to make it microscopically small, but he still would have to touch it regularly; given that its temperature should be in the cryogenic range, only touches with his wand would be feasible.
The only way I can think of to circumvent these problems would be to have others partake in the task, but that brings with it other problems.
Any thoughts which theories Harry tested with
Alternately, he might want people to believe he has transfigured his father's rock again, but not be actually planning to keep it transfigured, because he wants to carry the Hermione diamond and let people think it is the rock.
Any thoughts on the changing/cooling issue? That seems to really get brushed off. Is a perfect diamond supposed to be absolutely stable at room temperature?
It isn't
I rather suspect he would be willing to sacrifice that goal (whim) if it seemed like it would help Hermione.
He tested whether Dumbledore anticipated his use of the rock when he told him to carry it around. He's looking for explanations of all the early behavior where Dumbledore pretended to be mad, since he now believes that while Dumbledore may have wrong and even "mad" beliefs, he only does things like burning chickens to mess with people.
Quirrell is That Fucker.
Heavy spoilers for Nonjon's excellent A Black Comedy follow.
Va N Oynpx Pbzrql, Qnivq Zbaebr vf gur ragvgl perngrq jura gur Ubepehk va Evqqyr'f qvnel fhpprffshyyl erfheerpgf vgfrys, jvgu gur gjvfg gung vg jnf perngrq hfvat nyy bs Ibyqrzbeg'f 'cbfvgvir' rzbgvbaf. Guhf Qnivq Zbaebr vf bccbfrq gb Ibyqrzbeg, unf uvf zrzbevrf naq fxvyyf, naq frrf gung fgbel'f Uneel nf n cbgragvny gbby, nyyl, be rira rdhny.
Fbhaq snzvyvne? Gur anzr whfg znxrf vg boivbhf.
The story had me at
Started reading now. It's highly rated, so I'm expecting it to be at least amusing.
I read it on recommendation from one of these threads. It was amusing, but I've enjoyed others of the author's stories more - the Potter/Firefly crossover Browncoat, Green Eyes, for all that the premise sounds dumb, was excellent.
I like the one-liners, like
Hermione will be resurrected before the conclusion of this story.
(Given that Harry wins and souls aren't real.)
I continue to have at least 30% confidence that Hermione was never dead. There are too many would-be-conclusive bits of evidence just barely out of reach.
I'm about 95% confident Eliezer wouldn't do such a thing.
What would normally be considerd dead, sure. I wouldn't put it 19:1 against that Harry successfully prevented information-theoretic death.
I'm a bit divided on how I'd feel about that. On the other hand, finding a way to resurrect her would be thematically appropriate. On the other hand, it would also be thematically appropriate if there wasn't any way, and you just had to accept that the universe doesn't always play fair, with you sometimes not getting everything you want despite your best efforts.
I'll go a step farther, and say that regardless of the existence of souls, Hermione will be resurrected before the conclusion of this story.
I sorta feel that I know what you're getting at, but "Hermione lives" seems like a precondition for "Harry wins", no?
By "wins" I just meant "beats the bad guy(s)".
There is a very significant risk that without Hermione, Harry will become a bad guy. That's what the Hat warned him about, and we have reasons to think that it's why Quirrelmort tried to remove Hermione from Harry. And that's what the prophecies seem to be warning about.
The bad guy(s) relative to Harry. Hermione coming back is important whichever way his morality goes.
Though the English grammar is kind of second-rate, the anthem Reluctant Heroes from Attack on Titan is great for this theme of "We fight wars and our friends die" thing that's been going on in this fic
EDIT: Corrected typo oh lordy this is so embarassing...
I'm actually starting to believe EricMS is right, and Harry might use the resurrection ritual - blood of the foe, bone of the ancestor, flesh of the servant. No, I don't know how he'd source Draco's blood, Quirrell being out of the question, and the bone is a tall order as well, even with both parents at Hogwarts and Harry apparently about to learn the Obliviation spell. Perhaps a tooth will do? They are dentists...
But it's still a wonderful idea, because it pays off the story's Star Wars references, in particular the comparison of Neville to Darth Vader. If a lightsaber spell is introduced in the second act, someone must lose his hand to it in the third.
Neville Longbottom cuts off Ron Weasley's hand with a lightsaber. This has to happen.
Maybe, though I don't think teeth have any actual bone in them. But I'm sure a pinky toe wouldn't be missed. Not so much as one's child, anyway.
I don't think teeth have any bone in them either. I'm perplexed by the number of serious criticisms this comment has received. I was telling a joke. Does it not read like one?
Not really, but all of the responses sound friendly to me. Mine certainly was.
I don't see why bone would be difficult, given that it doesn't have to be taken from a living ancestor. Not unless Dumbledore prepared for this and warded their graves.
Harry's unable to leave Hogwarts. There could be ways around the restriction, but they add complexity to the solution.
ETA: Which, to be clear, looks completely unworkable on its in-universe merits. The real problem is that Harry's never heard a full description of the ritual, neither Dumbledore nor Voldemort would give him one, and Voldemort would have stolen the book that contains it.
Truly awesome though that wouuld be, as others pointed out in the thread you link, there's no reason to believe that said ritual works on the properly dead.
Furthermore, think about the implications if it did work - everyone who knows about it, including all Death Eaters, would have those three items readied in case of their unexpected demise, and would thus be functionally invincible.
The story looks more and more like it will end with Harry destroying the whole world. It would highlite the existential risk that comes from scientists who try to do everything in their power.
I'm expecting a positive ending for a few reasons, one of which is that since this is rationality propaganda I doubt Eliezer wants to portray Harry's super-rationality as having ultimately bad results.
It's rationality propaganda that isn't supposed to encourage people to accelerate the way to unfriendly AI but rationality propaganda that is supposed to prevent unfriendly AI from happening.
As far as the story goes, Harry is very rational but Quirrell is on a level where he outplays Harry. In the end Harry is a bit a projection of how Eliezer sees his own childhold self.
On the one hand Eliezer was very smart and rational. On the other hand he was delusional because he didn't take unfriendly AI seriously as something that can actually happen in reality.
A little bit of knowledge is dangerous. Creating people with enough rationality to do damage but not enough rationality to see the dangers of the whole enterprise isn't in the interests of MIRI.
If the reader learns that just being rational doesn't mean that you and that you better think before you mess with powers outside your control like an AGI, Eliezer teaches a very valuable lesson.
The hero always wins isn't a rationality lesson.
As far evidence in the story goes, Harry is rational because Petunia got a beauty portion from her sister. He sister got told from a centaur that the world would end when she gave Petunia the portion.
It's in chapter 1. (edit: I first mistakenly wrote chapter 10)
Now we have "HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN. HE IS HERE. HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD." at the end of chapter 89.
Quirrelmort takes it extremly seriously. He makes a point that when he was hypersmart Voldemort, he respected some sensible boundaries.
Quirrelmort is the person who fears that scientists will destroy the earth. He shares the fear to which Eliezer pledged his life.
-
You're conflating two different reasons there. Also, Lily was not stupid. I find it hard to believe that she could receive an apocalypse prophecy and not share it with Dumbledore at the very least. There is no evidence whatsoever that Dumbledore is aware of a prophecy connecting Harry to the end of the world.
Edit: Also, having gone through Chapter 10, I can't see anything there which supports your theory.
Dumbledore knew something we don't because he secretly helped Lily make a highly dangerous potion in the first place!
Why do you say Dumbledore helped Lily make the potion? Lily was a rising star of Potions herself.
When Dumbledore showed Harry the comments he made in her potions textbook the potion he was commenting on was the Potion of Eagle's Splendor, which is the potion for an increase in the Charisma stat (which technically doesn't have to involve appearance but is often considered correlated with it) in 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons.
ETA: The other things which makes it more suggestive is that the potion Petunia took was dangerous or rare, else more witches would also have permanently improved their appearance, and a normal potion listed in the standard 5th year text presumably wouldn't be; The suggestion presented was thestral blood, thestral blood was implied to have a role in the permanence of the Cloak and as Harry deduced that potions making isn't creating magic but reshaping that which is there some component in Petunias potion must have an association with Permanence.
Dumbledore scribbles nonsense in the margins of the Eagle's Splendour recipe of Lily's book =/= Dumbledore helps Lily brew Eagle's Splendour. At most, it confirms that Lily knew how to brew said potion when she was in her fifth year.
Furthermore, even if Dumbledore helped Lily brew a fifth-year potion, there is no reason to believe that he did so secretly, or that he had ulterior motives beyond helping her. Lily was a student he paid rather creepy special attention to - why wouldn't he help her with a special project?
Hmm, that's interesting, Petunia really did get sick for weeks
I know the blood is used to mark the Deathly Hallow symbol on the Cloak, but could you remind me where it says this relates to permanence? I rather assumed that, since thestrals are invisible to all those who have not seen and comprehended death, the relevance of thestral blood was to do with death and/or hiding from it.
I really really wish I could believe that, but I can't, not in the wizarding world. Felix Felicis, which is extremely difficult to make and disastrous if brewed wrong (and disastrously powerful when brewed right, especially in the hands of children), is to be found in the same textbook.
Hmm, rereading the section of his Azkaban trip where Harry was making his Cloak related discoveries I seem to have confused the fact of the thestral blood symbol empowering the Cloak with someones conjecture in some discussion thread after we learned the law of potion conservation that the thestral blood suggested as a substitution in the eagle's splendor potion could have served as a modifier to make it permanent.
Oh, my mistake. It says at the top http://hpmor.com/?post_type=chapter&p=10 so I thought it was chapter 10. It's chapter 1.
I'm refering to the paragraph:
Lily told Petunia that the world would end when Lily gave Petunia the beauty potion. Lily isn't stupid and would tell that to her sister for no reason.
Let's say a centaur just told Lily that the world would end when she gave Petunia the beauty potion without being in prophecy mode.
At the beginning that was enough for Lily to refuse. But in the end she didn't saw how giving Petunia the beauty potion would end the world in any literal sense so she gave it to Petunia.
Excuse 1) The world will end if Lily is nice to her sister (with no source cited).
Excuse 2) A centaur told Lily not to give Petunia the potion (with no explanation of why not).
These are two completely separate assertions.
Furthermore,
Petunia states that Lily came up with a number of other, equally ridiculous excuses, which means those two shouldn't be assigned any special importance in the list.
From what we know of centaurs, they are rare and typically hostile to humans, which makes it highly improbable that Lily had any sort of meaningful conversation with one.
All prophecies we know of are highly cryptic, and there is no reason to believe that centaurs can decode them well enough to identify two specific, highly obscure humans.
Lily already has far better motives not to give Petunia the potion, namely 1) they dislike each other and Lily doesn't want to grant her sister's wish and/or 2) the potion is very dangerous to take and she doesn't want to endanger her sister's life. Prophecies of doom are a much less probable explanation than either.
If Lily heard what she thought was a prophecy of doom, she would be very stupid not to share it with anyone, say Dumbledore. Lily was not stupid, but there is no evidence that she told anyone about such a prophecy.
If Eliezer would have wanted to foreshadow the fact that rational Harry would go on to end the world in chapter 1, this is what it would look like.
When Petunia says "ricidulous excuses" it means that she doesn't understand the validity of the excuses.
What do you think is Eliezer's motivation for Lily giving ricidulous excuses? Making her look like the person that gives ricidulous excuses?
It's established from the start that Petunia bullied Lily before Lily got magic, and later that Lily is not a very forgiving person, so it's entirely plausible that she just didn't want to use her potion-brewing skills for her sister's benefit, and came up with off-the-cuff excuses not to do so.
The excuse section serves as character development for Petunia. It establishes her troubled relationship with Lily, and the excuses make Lily sound like a petty little girl (which it seems like she was at the time, based on her relationships with James and Severus) rather than cold and harsh as she would have seemed with a flat-out "no" with no reason given. It establishes why Petunia dated Vernon at all, and gives her a chance to talk about her self-image issues and how she wasn't the kind of person who would gravitate to Vernon for his personality (the way canon!Petunia seems to be). It also makes her sympathetic by revealing the extent of her emotional vulnerability with the suicide threat.
We would get none of this had Lily just given Petunia the potion straight away.
Additionally, consider the timeline necessary for your theory to pan out:
Or...
Which would you assign a higher probability?
Conservation of detail. The two excuses mentioned can be assigned greater significance on a meta level.
And an apocalyptic prophecy is much like Pascal's Mugger: the centaur may not be in prophecy mode, so fear-of-embarrassment might keep you from telling Dumbledore, but you'd still rather not take the risk.
"I talked to a centaur and he told me x" is hardly embarrassing. She wouldn't even have to claim to believe it, just say "what do you think of this claim based on your superior experience?" And it's obvious Dumbledore would want to know.
Two small points:
I usually imagine rational!harry as 20-year-old Daniel Radcliffe. Try as I might, I just can't imagine him as an 11-year-old. The few occasions when the story thrusts his age to my attention are always jarring.
Any creative souls want to imagine how this omake would go?
On a side note, this probably should've really, really worried Michael.
... For that matter, it probably did.
In light of Eliezer's recent trolling, I guess it's official that all foreshadowings in the fic, even the ones that seemed like jokes, are going to come true. Let's see! The date is April 1992, we're at the end of the second act:
Harry is going to expose Quirrell in May:
Harry is a copy of Monroe:
And Harry is going to marry a whole lot of people.
Sixty-five years old is also consistent with being Tom Riddle, who was born December 1926. (Remember, that quote is from September, a few months before Tom RIddle's 66th birthday.)
(birth year and month from harry potter wiki)
What "trolling" are you referring to?
Killing Hermione with a mountain troll and causing strong fan reactions, of course :-) Note that the troll was introduced in Ch.16, and Quirrell made a callback to that scene when he advised Hermione to run away in Ch.84.
For the foreshadowing pile:
Chapter 20 (on the Pioneer plaque):
Chapter 46:
Edit: Chapter 49:
Just noticed this creepy detail:
Madam Pomfrey is in charge of the medical ward, so the Grangers are not going home, they are going to a hospital.
Harry from the prior chapter to his parents who still have a living child to give them this warning.
What I'm wondering is more why Harry doesn't push for his parents to be temporarily obliviated of his own existence, as a mean to protect them.
Hermione did it in canon at the beginning of the Deathly Hallows, and that was a very sensible thing to do, and it told a lot about Hermione for her to cast that spell.
And yes, it's very creepy, this "Obliviate !" scene in Deathly Hallows almost made me cry (both in book and in movie), it was the saddest scene of the 7 books to me. (And yeah, I know, I should be more sad about the people who actually died...), but Harry definitely is rationalist enough to force himself to do something as painful as that if it's to save his parents.
This was a bad idea in canon and will be an even worse idea here where obliviations are permanent.
Actually, they were pseudo-permanent in canon too. It seems like the caster of a Memory Charm can revoke it, but nobody else.
That is extremely creepy.
On the other hand,
My interpretation is that Madam Pomfrey is a trustworthy staff member, while at the same time being inconsequential enough that her time can be spent on escorting Muggles around. She is also used to dealing with horrified parents, and therefore a good first point of contact for the Grangers.
Obliviating the whole of Hermione's existence seems counterproductively difficult: She lived in Muggle Britain for 11 years. Are they going to Obliviate all the neighbours and relatives who remember her and might ask casually how she is doing at school? As for Obliviating the memory that she's dead, then why tell them in the first place? It is not clear what sort of memory eradication could be usefully applied. Maybe a False Memory of her dying in some sort of sports accident, rather than being half-eaten? But again, in that case, why tell them the actual truth?
This happened in Canon, and was done by Hermione herself, albeit in her I think 6th or 7th year.
Hermione didn't erase her own existence, but implanted false memories to get her parents to go to Australia. Distance did what magic couldn't.
Actually, she did both of those things. And, incidentally, it's the false memories bit that would be impossible in Methods - Hermione, of course, did not spend years to give her parents what are apparently years worth of memories.
It's only perfect, undetectable Memory Charms that require that much time. Giving someone years of memories in the quality that is customary for years-old memories, when no Wizard has anything against it, is probably not that difficult.
Well. I stand by the criticism. Either Hermione, or Rowling, wasn't thinking things through.
Consider that Harry is not the only player on the board:
McGonagall is being pushed towards taking action to fix this. Very, very hard. I do not just mean the defense professor. I mean the entire situation is leaning on her to go beyond the usual.
Snape: Been a loose cannon for a while now, and might decide to do something about this.
The Defense Professor. Probably set the hit in motion, but might be looking for the "undo! UnDo!" button due to the fallout.
Dumbledore: .. nah, actually do not think he is going to exert himself over this.
So, at present, there is a non-zero probability that Harry is carrying around McGonagalls living brain transfigured into a diamond because she swapped herself for Hermione, then Snape swapped the oxygenating potion for the draught of living death, and Harry decided to arrest decay with the tools at his disposal.
Mad cackle
Wait. I missed one. And Hermione and/or McGonagall got her soul anchored to the whooping willow courtesy of a timetraveling defense professor. (all the horcrux proposals ignore the fact that neither Harry nor Hermione would use that technique, nor do they know it. But Quirell does. And would. )
ch 93
Eliezer, you made me cry.
Did somebody just get marked as an equal here is that it?
Not yet, but the gap is small.
I have to write it somewhere - because what is the point of a belief that does not allow you to make predictions that you are willing to stand by - and I guess this is the place. I believe that Hermione is not dead (duh!), and planned this all for the purposes of getting Harry out of his debt to Malfoy and/or preventing herself from being used as a weapon against Harry. She used or was discovered by Fred and George who were subsequently memory charmed by Dumbledore, who has spent entirely too much time off-camera of late.
Edit: I'll add that - on the odd chance I'm right, and this ends up sounding like bragging - I don't think that makes me particularly clever; I think it speaks to skillful but subtle hinting on the part of the author.
Upvoted for putting your prediction out there like this, even though I very much disagree (for the reason that Qiaochu said, for example).
The route from mental phenomena to actions does not have to pass through explicitly modeling and making predictions about the world. You can just have beliefs that function as simple heuristics for making actions without any modeling or prediction at all.
I find this highly unlikely. Hermione should have some concept by now of how destabilizing an effect her apparent death would have on Harry. I don't think she'd have the heart to knowingly deceive him like this.
spoilers for 93
Strongly STRONGLY approve of the letter from dad, but kind of disappointed about how much talk about house points there was. Who the hell cares? Why didn't anyone interrupt to talk about what had actually just happened or ask the Weasleys about facing the troll or anything?
Hermione's body being gone: Congruent with some form of resurrection, congruent with transfiguration being used by Harry to preserver her, congruent with other possible preservation options, also possible that Quirrel or someone else wants to use the body for horrible rituals.
You should write Chapter 93 at the beginning of your comment, as a spoiler warning of those who didn't read it yet.
Are the rules to create a new thread for each new update, to avoid this problem?
The house points are symbolic. There are two worlds, the world of ordinary Hogwarts activity and the world where crazy shit happens, usually because of Harry somehow, and some kind of relationship between these worlds needs to be established. Especially because actually there's only one world and bad things happen when students, especially Gryffindors, are too afraid of repercussions from the first world to behave sensibly in the second.
The House Points are more of a way to formalize Minerva eating crow for all the students that broke the rules and acted when the situation required it. And, of course, most of the points talk was really about extending them to more students, which was extremely necessary for Harry. The Neville talk was probably the least justified, but there is a shard of importance in that Harry had to forgive and defend Neville during it.
Possible legilimency episode during Quirrell's tirade to McGonagall:
This could be Quirrell finding out about Harry's partial transfiguration. More likely, it is nothing.
I like this theory. But it's worth noting that Moody claimed that Voldemort could legilimens without making eye contact. EY seems pretty big on Conservation of Detail, so there's a good chance that this will turn out to be important. Of course, Conservation of Detail also weighs in favor of this eye-locking episode being important, so I suppose it could go either way.
Or both: perhaps sightless legilimency is handicap-inducing like wandless magic, so eye contact might be required to read a witch as powerful as Minerva.
Does anyone else find it implausible that Quirrell would both act upon the latest prophecy moments after hearing it and act as though he interpreted it in the most literal sense possible? To suppose that he is acting out of concern when speaking to McGonagall is to accept that this is what he does.
Yet, it has been made explicit in HPMoR that prophecies are riddles addressed to the one who hears it. Quirrell knows this. I thus find it unlikely that he would jump on the first ''obvious'' literal interpretation rather than ponder the riddle.
Not to mention that if Quirrell did embrace the line about the world ending in the most explosive, catastrophic and literal sense possible, and that it alarmed him, it would be foolish of him to say nothing of the prophecy. And Quirrell--we know that at least--is not foolish.
So, if the prophecy about the end of the world is a riddle, what could be its answer?
My hypotheses so far: 1. Harry tries to revive Hermione, and the knowledge he acquires in order to do so (whether or not he succeeds) lets him solve the riddle of what magic is/how it is ruled. He chooses to make that knowledge public, thus changing the face of the magical world to those who live it it. (50% estimate) 2. Harry will succeed in actually cheating death, and either as a result or through the means he employs to do it, this will affect the source of magic in a way that will change some of its features. (40% estimate) 3. Harry does not succeed in reviving Hermione, and this somehow ends up in the world catching on fire. (5% estimate). 4. Harry is not the one whom the prophecy refers to. It could be Snape, for example. (2% estimate).
The only outcome I've found any hints for so far is the intelligence amplification hypothesis. The last time Harry brainstormed ways to achieve ultimate power, mind magic was first on the list. And he was recently heard to say 'I will change and be less stupid'. IA breaks the plot, though, and leaves the author with a character he can't write, so I'm not hugely confident of it.
People seem to have had an easy enough time writing a convincing CelestiAI.
Clarification/nitpick: I'm sure Eliezer could create a character, tell us that it was smarter than him, and have most of us accept that, or at least lull us to suspending our disbelief. This isn't quite the same thing as writing a character who's smarter than him.
I suspect that at least Quirrell is smarter than him, when it comes to pure mental horsepower.
Okay, I see I've been using words in an idiosyncratic way, so I'll just dump out my thoughts on the subject, most of which came from Eliezer's author notes:
To write a character successfully, you need to show that character acting in ways in which it would be plausible for them to act. To write a character who's smarter than you - who would plausibly choose courses of action and speak lines of dialog that wouldn't occur to you - you need to cheat. Smarter-than-Author-Intelligences can think faster and remember more, but they can't be better than you at seeing the connections between the facts at their command. If they're Emmett Brown, they can invent amazing technologies, but the scientific explanations for them will be gibberish. If they're Sherlock Holmes, they reach startling and true conclusions on the strength of bad evidence.
The movie Gattaca is full of artificially-selected superbeings who never speak a single witty line. That's the difference between a character who's supposed to be smart and a character who's successfully written that way, between telling and showing. Eliezer may have intended for Quirrell to be smarter than him in some sense, but he hasn't been written that way, because he couldn't have been.
Unless all you meant by 'horsepower' was thinking speed, in which case you might be right. Dunno.
I did mean thinking speed. Note the exchange where Harry blames Quirrell for not thinking of stuff in time, and Quirrell retorts that even smart people miss stuff and need time to reach their conclusions. An author has usually much more time than the characters and the benefit of controlling the world entirely, so he can make the characters more intelligent than him in that they're able to think faster and better under pressure, and that they're able to legitimately draw the right conclusions from the evidence that's been left available to them.
Then we don't disagree on anything except word choice. Hooray! Upvotes all around.
So that's how you get high karma, is it?
Chapter 79:
I'm having to update my probability that HPMOR!Trelawney is actually good at her job.
Not really. if she says the same thing each time it shouldn't be surprising that a rare hit occurs. It seems heavily implied that Dumbledore keeps her around (both in canon and in HPMOR) because she occasionally emits a genuine prophecy.
Ah, but consider how rarely students die at Hogwarts: we're at a 50-year gap between Myrtle and Hermione. If Trelawney told every student this year that they were going to die, but not the other years, then actually she's remarkably accurate.
Sure, do we have any reason to think she's only done it this year?
Possibly. Since Fred and George thought it would have been a good deal scarier "if she hadn't said the same thing to every single other student in their Divination class" rather than "if she hadn't said the same thing every year/week/day," its weakly implied that this is the first time she's make this prediction.
edit: although "every single other student in their Divination class" is somewhat ambiguous and could mean that over the course of the semester she has made this prediction for everyone at different times.
Then again, after SPHEW, everyone in the school "knows" Hermione.
If everyone in the class knows Hermione (which is likely for a loose definition of 'knows' since everyone has probably heard of her either through SPHEW or as General Sunshine, as her being called up at lunch to receive an award) then telling that to everyone in the class may not include even a single miss. Which makes Professor Trelawney very accurate indeed.
My estimate of Trelawney in Methods has, for quite some time, been that she may or may not be good at formal Divination, but that she is a terrible teacher and an excellent seer, and that Dumbledore keeps her around primarily for the latter reason.
The "soulsplosion," in Hermione's death, was extremely hard to miss. But it was notably absent in a previous wizarding death we supposedly witnessed: Harry's mother's death. This has provided some unexpected confirmatory evidence for an old pet theory of mine: that Harry's memory of his parents' death was faked. I can only assume someone else brought a similar theory up around here before, so I won't go into too much detail.
If it were a false memory, though, why would the soulsplosion be missing? Well, we get an answer for that in Chapter 86: some things can't be adequately faked in false memories. If whoever created the false memory had included a false wizard's death, Harry might have wondered what exactly the strange light show was; if he had researched it, he might have realized that what he remembered was faked. But Harry had never seen a wizard die before; an omitted soulsplosion would therefore arouse no suspicions, whereas a faked one might. Hence there was none.
There is no reason to believe the burst of magical energy happens in every magical death. It could be something that only happens under particular circumstances, or for particular types of wizards/witches. For example, the killing curse might kill people too quickly for them to understand that they are dying.
Another possibility is that it can only be perceived under certain circumstances.
Or the Killing Curse destroys the soul (as does the Dementor's Kiss), whereas bleeding to death merely releases it from the body.
A test: Are there any ghosts of people killed by Avada Kedavra? Ghosts are noted as being only echoes of the dead person — but if they are echoes formed by the release of an intact soul, then there would not be one for anyone killed in a way that consumes the soul, such as Avada Kedavra or the Dementor's Kiss.
(I can't think of any in canon. The four House Ghosts were all killed by mundane means, and Moaning Myrtle by a basilisk's stare.)
In the original HP canon, people killed by AK appeared to Harry near the end of the last book, when he ambiguously crosses over into the afterlife.
McGonagall tells Harry that the Killing Curse "strikes at the soul, severing it from the body".
On the other hand, Quirrell says that it will "instantly kill anything with a brain." I'd be careful about assigning too much evidence to McGonagall's pronouncement, since it's likely that she doesn't really have the information necessary to isolate that conclusion.
Do the temporary ghosts of resurrection stone and "priori incantatem" count for you ?
That could only work if "permanent" ghosts are really made from souls (Dumbledore hypothesis), but the temporary ghosts are made from memories (HJPEV hypothesis). While it's not impossible to have both mechanism, Occam's razor gives it a low prior, I would more suspect the same mechanism behind both.
Or that it's detected via one's magical sense, and baby-Harry didn't have it properly developed yet.
That hypothesis is one that I considered. However, Harry can see every other magical effect just fine; he has no problem with the Avada Kedavra or any of Voldemort's special effects. Of course, if the memory is real, it must have been stored magically, and "enough magic to record magical memories but not enough to see the special effects" sounds like a very specific level of magic. The AK rebound, if it actually happened, may also indicate that Harry had enough magic for his resonance with Quirrell.
He doesn't see anything a Muggle wouldn't see. There's no reason to think the green light part of Avada Kedavra is magical.
In canon, it seems to be visible. to Muggles. The scene where Voldemort kills the Riddle House caretaker seems to imply that (although not fully since it turns out we are getting the scene from Harry's mental connection to Voldemort).
The only plausible reason whoever killed Hermione hasn't killed Harry too is because they want him to remain alive. They could have, because Hogwarts security is no great impediment to whoever did this, and Harry isn't a genius in his sleep. They would have, too. Anyone who hates Hermione would hate Harry, too. He was summoned to help during her confrontation with bullies. He used legal tricks to intervene when she was about to be "kissed." He's obviously the bigger threat, and whoever killed Hemione should have some fear of vengeance from him.
Unless it's Voldemort, who knows that Harry is a horcrux, as in canon, and knows that in killing Harry he would injure himself. Quirrel knows that he has a telepathic link with Harry. As Quirrel told McGonagall, he is a wizard "almost" on the level of Dumbledore and Voldemort. The Quirrelmort theory posits one less extremely powerful wizard. Hermione was killed by a troll. In canon, that is Quirrel's signature. Quirrel is voldemort in canon.
Am I missing anything?
And then there's Snape... who knows what evil lurks into the hearts of men?
Quirrel in Methods has pretty much stated that he's trying to mold Harry into a dark lord. That requires Harry to be alive and is significantly more likely if he doesn't have Hermione's moral influence.
Tom Riddle in canon was described as a classic charming psychopath, while the Defense Professor seems to be genuinely icy and blind to others' internal states. He even verbalizes this a few times, e.g. "I don't have the knack." So either HPMOR!Riddle was actually not charming but instead vastly more intelligent in a cold, calculating way, or the Monroe/Quirrell persona is supposed to be outwardly cold and obtuse while still secretly possessing insight, or this fragment of Riddle's soul has lost whatever insight or ability that formerly made him charming, or something I haven't thought of.
I know someone with Asbergers who manages to be very charming because he learnt social rules.
You don't need empathy to charm people.
Yes. Psychopaths are a prime example.
Aspergers. (I've occasionally heard "Ass burgers" used as an insult. No 'b'!)
That's a South Park reference. Insulting, yes.
Quirrell == Voldemort. This does not imply that Voldemort == Riddle. Dumbledore at least thinks that Voldemort was Tom Riddle, but consider the possibility that Dumbledore is wrong about this. Remember Voldemort really doesn't look very human at all, and could be almost anyone. Maybe Riddle was misdirection.
Quirrel tells Harry that they share an ability to "become" whoever they pretend to be. We even see this when Quirrel pretends to be someone else to the Healer after the Azkaban breakout. It would be very odd if Quirrel were able to do this and not have any insight into how people's emotions feel like from the inside. I believe that Quirrel knows perfectly well how emotions work; the icy exterior is just a role he plays.
I don't think Quirrell's model of emotions can be all that refined, since he seems to have repeatedly and legitimately mismodelled both Harry ("yes, I actually do care about people even if I don't relate to them, I don't want to be a Dark Lord,") and Hermione ("You know, a shadowy figure in a hooded cloak is really not the most trustworthy messenger.")
Obligatory protest that we don't know for certain Mr. Hat-and-Cloak is Quirrell.
The way I interpreted that, he thought that if he first showed up looking innocent and good, she would have suspected that the outside was a sham. But after she revealed that she really doesn't think that outsides are always deceptive, he changed his modeling.
Though that would still mean that he mismodeled her, yes.
My thoughts on the mismodelling* of Harry are much more speculative.
Why is Harry looking at his watch so frequently? And why was he so insistent on a particular deadline for people not bothering him? He seems to be paying an unusual amount of attention to the time, and that suggests Time Turner shenanigans, although I'm not sure what they are.
The answer s much simpler I think. He has precommitted to stay there until dinner, but the process of thining over his failures is deeply emotionally unpleasant so he really wants it to be over.
One point for parsimony. Minus one point for failure to properly model the character.
Nice idea.
If Harry wanted to do something rash to get Hermione back, messing with the Time Turner would be considered "rash". Also, Harry did conveniently manage to get his time turner unsheathed.
Harry tries something with his time turner. Harry gets a note - "Don't." Harry writes on the note, "Give Hermione back, or kiss my ass - take your pick."
He needs 6 hours of uninterrupted time with Hermione's body. His present self guards the door while his future self does whatever he plans on doing to prepare her body for long term preservation.
See this quote from chapter 91 set right after Harry exits the room where her body is stored:
That "lifetime" is more specifically 6 hours.
Is Quirrel hinting that McGonagall should Memory Charm Harry into not knowing that one of his best friends just died? (Worst case, Obliviate everything that happened since he received the Hogwarts letter, tell him he was hit by a truck and has been in a coma the whole time, then kick him out of Magical Britain completely.)
Where could the story possibly go in your worst case?
Now that I think about it, I wouldn't mind seeing a story about a middle-aged person who was kicked out of their Chosen One situation twenty years ago, but now the politics have shifted and they have to deal with magic and intrigue again. However, this would not remotely be HPMOR.
"Rule 8: Any technique which is good enough to defeat me once is good enough to learn myself"
Voldemort has been defeated once. What would he do, if he wanted to learn how?
Assuming the official account is accurate, we have no better explanation for what happened than Rowling's love shield(though I've heard the closely related theory that it was Voldemort breaking his promise to Lily that did it, because the laws of magic somehow enforce contracts). MoR!Voldemort is not the sort to leave it as an enigma, so he's likely gone looking through obscure magical texts of the sort that he didn't check pre-death to figure out what had the power to do it. As such, he would presumably have learned the importance of true love and/or honesty, and altered his tactics accordingly, which may be why Quirrelmort is noticeably less evil-acting than Voldemort.
Maybe the love-magic is the essential tool in Voldemort's new plan. He's going to induce Harry to love all of humanity in the same way that Harry's mother loved him, and then make him die protecting them. They'll all be unkillable and the Voldemort's fears of a nuclear apocalypse will never materialize.
That's a nice idea, but love-magic doesn't actually make people immortal. It wouldn't prevent nuclear apocalypse in the long run.
Harry should love all of humanity, and then get killed by a nuclear bomb, thereby giving all of humanity immunity to nuclear bombs.
Voldemort didn't break his promise to Lily - he intended to, presumably, but Lily broke her side first by trying to kill him instead of acting like a willing sacrifice.
I am inclined to believe that he wasn't defeated - the body everyone believes to be his had been "burnt to a crisp", which is inconsistent with everything we know about the Killing Curse.
Assuming, however, that the official account is accurate, the logical next step would be to learn the True Patronus Charm, the only thing he knows which can block a Killing Curse. He might also want to study Harry for lingering magical effects (if any such effect can endure over twelve years), though this is made more difficult by the resonance effect.
Nobody checked for dental history, did they?
It seems unlikely that the DMLA are even aware of such techniques. However, we do not know either way.
Edit: How would anyone have access to Voldemort's original dental records in the first place? And would they be accurate given all the self-modification he apparently underwent during his time as the Dark Lord (glowing red eyes, serpentine features etc.)?
Wizard ignorance on muggle matters is truly spectacular...
Do we know the True Patronus blocks the Killing Curse ? My own interpretation was more than Quirell-Harry magical interaction made both spells to fizzle when they interact (like in canon, where repeatedly Voldemort casting AK on Harry leads to unexpected results), but it wouldn't work with someone else casting either of the spells.
It's possible. However, insofar as the True Patronus is powered by the absolute rejection of death, and the Killing Curse is pretty much death in spell form, it is plausible that one could block the other.
I thought the idea was that reality extrudes an error message when they meet, because the Source of Magic can't decide what should happen. And when this error message meets...whatever causes prophecies...we get Harry's sense of doom (which seems stronger after his first Patronus casting and then after his recent resolution). I admit that second part confuses me.
Hopefully - since the oldest prophecies we know of supposedly refer to "the end of the world and its magic" - they all result from Ohtori "It" Harry reaching back in time.
What does anyone make of Quirrel's claim to be David Monroe?
It means that it's confirmed that Quirrell wants people to think he's secretly David Monroe. I'd be wary of drawing any other conclusions, though it does seem more likely that Quirrell pretended to be Monroe during the war.
Do you mean in general, or in Chapter 92?
In Chapter 92.
I have no theories yet. I did, however, just come across the following in my re-reading (chapter 60):
Huh. Drawing connections between the two of them seems obvious, but then again, I might be reaching.
I wonder what steps Harry took to test the limitations of his own Patronus. The thing is humanoid and it /speaks/. Is it conscious? Does it have memory, can you give it information, dispell it, call it back the next cay, and have it still know the information? Can it perform useful cognitive work, solve problems? Does it exist anywhere and in any way while not called forth by Harry's spell? (Can it think while Harry is asleep? what an asset that would be!)
And, dare I ask, can it recursively self-improve? ;) Okay, okay, stop it with the rotten tomatoes.
I'm sure the answer to most or all of that is "no" just because of the way it would affect the story but, if I were Harry, I'd test it anyway. It is a safer and more convenient magical-humanoid-that-speaks to examine than a Dementor, and Harry has given a lot of thought to how their minds work...
-
Note that Harry's Patronus appears to inform him of its own initiative regarding a fact which is important for him to know. Also that it delays until he is prepared to hear the message.
It might be borrowing mental capacity from Harry himself - useful for more perfect division of attention, but not necessarily better for all purposes.
Technically, a Dementor is not a humanoid - it only appears as one to those unable to face the cognitive gap that represents death.
This may have been mentioned elsewhere, but chapter 53 introduces "death dolls", and Hermionie's corpse is decribed as "waxy and doll-like".
The whole point of a death doll is to imitate a dead body perfectly and fool people into confusing the two (that was the implication with the death-doll of Bella). If so, we wouldn't expect Hermione's body to look unrealistic if it's in fact a death doll substitute.
Did anyone else find it increasingly implausible that the teachers kept trying to speak to Harry while he was thinking? The first one or even two approaches made sense, but if a person who has just lost a close friend says that they want to be alone until dinner, the only sensible course of action seems to be to say "okay" and leave them alone. It'd be one thing if he hadn't spoken for anyone in a month, but this was just a few hours: it'd have been completely reasonable for anyone to want to be alone for that long.
Granted, given that this is Harry, they might have thought that he was in risk of doing something really rash... but if they feared that he'd do something so bad that it wouldn't have been enough for them to guard the door to the room where he was in, then McGonagall would have been insane to unlock his Time Turner! And if they thought that he was in danger of developing some really crazy plan while thinking, it should have been obvious after the first couple of times that interrupting him now would just make him more unreceptive, and it would have been better to wait until dinner.
I'm just drawing a complete blank here - why did they keep doing it? Doesn't seem to make any sense to me.
Quirrell is trying to alienate Harry from his lifelines by manipulating everyone into being unhelpfully helpful. It's one of the core emotional triggers for the Harry, and the Defense Professor knows this.
After this chapter I've updated heavily in favor of Quirrell being genuinely terrified and trying to run damage control. That means giving him more emotional lifelines.
Admittedly, it also probably means making Harry dependent on an information source Quirrell can trust not to say too much, i.e. himself, but...
That does not seem to jive with the last lines of chapter 89, which are first-person accounts of Quirrell's feelings.
EDIT: I also updated in favor of Quirrell being genuinely terrified after chapter 92, but only slightly. The evidence from chapter 89 still dominates in my mind since 89 has an uncensored account of Quirrell's true feelings.
From 93:
Woop. There goes that theory :-).
First time I read that, I interpreted it as "it would not be enough to prevent Harry from tearing the world apart". But there is another possible interpretation : if we consider that Quirrelmort was trying to turn Harry dark, and killing Hermione was part of that plan, then we can interpret it completely to the opposite : the killing Hermione won't be enough to turn Harry dark.
I don't give a high probability to the second interpretation, but it does stand on its own feet.
And quite specifically, ironically, and counterpointedly placed before the prophecy.
For a rationalist fic, where you're meant to be able to work things out though, it does seem a bit 'magical' if the answer to every "well that's a bit weird" is "Quirrell probably did it". It's fitting the evidence to your theory.
What weird things do we know Quirrell wasn't behind?
Anything else?
What? Why? There was that time that he threatened her in chapter 25. Also, it would explain how he knew that Harry had enlisted the Weasley twins.
There's a motive, too. At lunch afterward, he made Harry deal with the cognitive dissonance of ruining somebody's life, yet feeling proud of himself at the same time. If I was Quirrell I would have helped fake the story just to make Harry rationalize destroying Rita Skeeter.
It's possible that the Weasley twins hired Quirrell and not Lockhart, but I tend to think that Quirrell was genuinely surprised at the newspaper article about Harry's betrothal and it took him a few minutes to realize it was done with a false memory charm. Quirrell's smart, but not omniscient.
For any weird thing, you may be able to find someone who thinks that "Quirrell did it". That doesn't mean some faction out there believes Quirrell is responsible for every weird thing -- different people think Quirrell is responsible for different weird things.
Good point. Now if only Quirrell wasn't actually behind 75% of all the weird things happening in the story (as far as we can tell)...
It wasn't done at Quirrel's suggestion, though, as far as we can tell.
Well, (in chapter 90), McGonagall's first visit seemed to be of her own accord but then the Defense Professor went in and upon returning said this to her:
Manipulating and convincing people of things is absolutely Quirrell's area of expertise and it seems plausible that he realizes that putting immense pressure on McGonagall to do something (because poor old Quirrell sure can't!) will cause her to make poor decisions regarding whether Harry should be left alone and/or unobstructed in his activities.
Further supported by Snape's line from when he enters the room at the beginning of chapter 51:
and by the continuing pressure Quirrell exerts on McGonagall at the end of chapter 52:
Again Quirrell cites his own inability to help with the problem and now disqualifies Dumbledore as well. The last part in particular echos Harry's criticism of her ineffectiveness and I wouldn't be surprised if Quirrell was somehow aware of their exchange and using McGonagall's weakened confidence to spur her to action.
So Quirrell seems to be manipulating McGonagall directly and everyone else by extension.
I suspect Quirrell was aware of the exchange, if he can do the same trick as in canon with names:
Specific mention of not screening the room, and then saying the V-word out loud.
Harry is extremely creative, with an intent to kill, powers others know not, and a Time Turner. He killed a troll and escaped from Azkaban using his unique transfiguration skills.
Harry is dangerous and desperate. He's not just some depressed kid who wants to be left alone, he's an apocalypse waiting to happen.
Insane, or just playing by the rules, as usual? Very dumb, as I commented elsewhere, to give a desperate Harry unfettered control of his Time Turner, at his prompting.
I think Minerva herself considered it worthy of note that Dumbledore had used Transfiguration in combat and was still alive. She should know that Harry has joined this elite group. Now, you could use this as evidence of his recklessness if you believe there were lots of people like Harry who died. But I don't believe he would use some of the ...inventive solutions people have proposed, nor would Minerva believe it.
I think she should actually have unlocked his Time-Turner after Bellatrix, or at least after the trial, though she made the right decision by locking it when she did.
I wouldn't. That's the rule following MInerva talking. She may have retired. We might see the new Griffindor Minerva doing what it takes to win, taking every edge she can in transfiguration. Harry's rock trick should be trivial for her.
Eh. In more typical situations it isn't that odd to force people who want to be alone in bleak times to not be alone. (I'm not sure if the primary impetus here is an anti-suicide measure, the thought that it improves mood, despite the annoyance, or the inability of people who want to help to convince themselves they are helping without visible action.) That Quirrel recommended it makes it more sensible (though, as the strong reader suspicion goes, Quirrel is trying to sabotage their relationship with Harry), even though Harry protests.
It seemed to me it was the way Harry told them off. He didn't exactly act like the day was wrapped up and everything was already said.
Had the first two been Macgonnagle and the Defense Professor, then the rest make a bit more sense in that the Defense Professor urged Macgonnagle to do whatever it took to get Harry off his current path, and, well, Harry had just lectured her about how responsibility works, and so she was in a state of mind that demanded action.
That said, you're totally right: continuing to throw potential emotional bonds at him to try and cheer him up wasn't the best idea, at least not so soon. Surely Macgonnagle is smart enough to know that Harry knew exactly what was going on, and would therefore be less receptive? It's a general trend when working with stubborn and upset people, and I imagine this is no less true among Hogwarts students, and thinking about it for five seconds should have made it clear that it'd only be worse with Harry. I suppose she couldn't think of anything better to try.
It wasn't just McGonagall, though - Dumbledore was the one who fetched Harry's parents, even though he had listened to Harry's and McGonagall's conversation and thus knew exactly what the situation was. Not to mention all the other teachers who she had clearly briefed on the situation before they went in.
McGonagall may have been insane to unlock the Time-Turner, but she was simply incapable of withstanding the emotional pressure Harry suddenly put her under. Doubtless it is not something she had originally intended to do, and she may well regret it horribly once she regains the capacity for rational thought.