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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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)
Did somebody just get marked as an equal here is that it?
Not yet, but the gap is small.
ch 93
Eliezer, you made me cry.
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.
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.
Chapter 79:
I'm having to update my probability that HPMOR!Trelawney is actually good at her job.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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).
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'!)
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.
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.
I rather suspect he would be willing to sacrifice that goal (whim) if it seemed like it would help Hermione.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.)?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Dumbledore spied on their conversation, though - if he'd considered the matter that serious, he ought to have stepped in and taken the Time Turner or re-locked it.
At the price of alienating Harry a good bit further, of course.
If McGonagall wouldn't, Harry would go to Dumbledore. It's extremly unlikely that Harry wouldn't get his Time-Turner unlocked in the situation as Harry is willing to alienate the two but they aren't willing to alienate Harry.
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.
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.
These chapters caused me to update more in favor of Quirrell being genuinely scared. However, there are still some things that confuse me. First, Quirrell's not citing the prophecy in his favor, even though McGonagall was the one who paired him with Trelawney in the first place, and there's absolutely nothing incriminating in hearing a prophecy under those circumstances. Second, well, this is a problem with a murder-based solution, and I would expect Quirrell to take it unless (for some magical, personal, or prophetic reason) he finds death preferable to a world in which Harry is dead.
As far as Harry destroying the world goes, I'm most worried about Fred and George. In canon, they become quite skilled at spell creation in later books, and it's suggested that they experiment in earlier books; they're probably not especially good yet, but they might know enough information (or have enough books) to be dangerous already.
Quirrell values Harry - at least instrumentally, for purposes as yet uncertain, and possibly emotionally (if he is capable of valuing a person in that way). He is too valuable to kill except as a last resort, and Quirrell's actions suggest that he thinks he can avert the prophecy and make the killing unnecessary (otherwise he would not be taking all the measures he is currently taking).
As for not informing others of the prophecy, doubtless he feels that whatever (frantic and desperate) actions they might take in response would interfere with his own much more intelligent attempt to resolve the situation.
That's fair enough, but I just thought of one more thing that Quirrell could do that he's choosing not to... Why isn't Quirrell doing the star thing again, or at least offering to do so?
That... is an extremely sensible thing to do.
However, Harry would probably reject it the way he rejected Fawkes's song - he doesn't want to be freed or distracted from his pain, since he considers it the proper and correct response to the death of his best friend. He may also believe that it's powering his dark side, and thus helping him look for ways to save Hermione.
Showing Harry the stars at this point would probably kill him. The image of the stars is a talisman to him, representing the necessary triumph of human will over death. Harry has just made a resolution to unmake death, and we know he can do it because of Trelawney's prophecy. The next time he sees that image he is going to act on his resolution if he hasn't already, and right now he's exhausted and confused and desperately unhappy... He needs to be rested.
And besides, given that Quirrell thinks that Harry will destroy the world when he acts on his resolution, he should be diverting Harry's attention from the stars at all costs, and trying to bind him more strongly to the Earth and the people on it, which he is doing. I'm loving the irony of Voldemort desperately trying to remind Harry of all the people who love him.
Mind you, whilst I think Quirrell is smart enough to not show Harry the stars given what he knows, I could be wrong. So maybe he will try that at some point and it will blow up in his face.
EDIT: Hmm, prediction failed. I guess this means that I'm more swayed by emotion than Harry. No surprises there.
It's possible that he would reject it, yes, but I don't think it's that easy to compare it to Fawkes' song. If memory serves, phoenix songs actually change one's mood; the stars wouldn't do that, just comfort him. And, even if Harry does reject it, it's unlikely to cost Quirrell anything to make the offer.
I do kinda feel like "Snape asked for advice on understanding a prophecy; the defense professor should consider it." Except I'm sure Quirell doesn't view anyone else as smart enough to be any better at it than him, except possibly Harry/Snape/Dumbledore, except (A) not really and (B) he doesn't trust any of them with the prophecy, I'm sure.
Unfortunately, he has no way to prove the existence of a prophecy beyond taking asking Dumbledore to take Harry to the Hall of Prophecy. And a prophecy that Harry will end the world, coming from the obviously evil Defense Professor, is... well, obviously evil. Even if it isn't.
Quirrell can't prove it, but as it happens, the Headmaster has recently heard a true prophecy with (likely) very, very similar wording. Since Quirrell didn't hear more than a few words of the other one, the fact that the two are so like each other would be strong evidence that Quirrell's prophecy is also genuine.
He has a way: Legilimency. Occlumens can let others into their memory, and we are told the intonation of prophecy cannot be faked by false memory charms. Let Dumbledore into a carefully guarded compartment of his identity, expose only the memory of the prophecy, and you're done - everyone will trust Dumbledore's word.
It seems like there is some conflicting text here
in 27 we read:
http://hpmor.com/chapter/27
But on the other-hand Snape says
but, we have no confirmation that Snape is a perfect Occlumens and if the Defense Professor is, or is suspicious enough that people think he might be, its unclear if even Legilimency could be trusted to confirm the prophecy
Actually, examining Snape's words more carefully than my memory, I think I was simply wrong. Snape says that the 'quality' is something that 'even Legilimency cannot share', and so how did the Dark Lord then verify Snape's memory? He seized Snape's mind with such force and magic that Snape's Occlumency would've been hopeless and instead of perceiving the prophetic quality of voice, he looked for Snape's personal confusion at not understanding the prophecy.
So it seems that Dumbledore could not verify it after all: he could not be sure of breaking Quirrel's Occlumency both out of ethics and because Quirrel seems to be closer to Dumbledore in power than Snape was to Voldemort, and he cannot simply verify the prophetic quality in whatever memory Quirrel chooses to provide.
Which of course still leaves the Hall of Prophecy: surely Quirrel's word about a prophecy of the apocalypse would be worth defying the Department of Mystery over, in order to verify?
To hear the prophecy you need to be mentioned in it. So maybe anyone can hear this prophecy because the end of the world effects everybody. But if not, taking Harry there and him hearing it would be confirmation that its about him.
Though, verification may be a moot point and Dumbledore may already know the prophecy about Harry. After all, Dumbledore heard the end of the prophecy in the dinning hall back when it was "he is coming" rather than "he is here". And Dumbledore also gave excuses not to take Harry into the hall of prophesy
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.
For the foreshadowing pile:
Chapter 20 (on the Pioneer plaque):
Chapter 46:
Edit: Chapter 49:
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. )
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?
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.
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.
Or, perhaps, Madam Pomfrey is taking them to see the body, since it is in her medical ward.
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.
That makes sense, its possible I'm being paranoid, but when people with inconvenient memories get taken to hospitals it does make me worry.
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.
It sounds like they're either having medical issues due to stress, or they're going to where Hermione is being kept. If they were to be obliviated, I'm sure it would be in their own home.
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.
In canon, the Department of Mysteries has a room filled with preserved brains, presumably for research. For unexplained reasons, it includes a quick connection to the death room (where the vale is located). Ron, under the influence of an unknown mind-altering spell (confunding?), summoned one of the brains, and it attacked him with a silvery substance that sounds like a more solid version of the typical memories put into pensives. (This left scars, and seemed to break Ron out of the spell before silencing him.). Later, someone (I forget who, but a member of the Order of the Phoenix) commented that Ron would be fine, but the marks left by thoughts were deep--implication being that the silvery ribbons that came from the brain and grappled him were thoughts.
We don't know, based just on that evidence, that the Department of Mysteries can preserve human brains, or that said brains are capable of some form of thought in that state. What we do know is that they had tanks of the brains (I seem to remember it being several tanks, but I'm not sure), they seem to be in good condition for all that non-neurologist Harry can tell, and that they resisted Ron's accio with a projection that a knowledgeable wizard described as thoughts.
It makes me wonder what would happen if MoR Harry broke into the Department of Mysteries in his current state. (You know, in the few minutes before he found a way to open the "no, seriously, do not open this door" door and destroyed the universe.)
Unlikely to ever make an appearance, due to meta-knowledge:
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Excellent point, though gur jnl Uneel zragvbaf Ibyqrzbeg'f syvtug va uvf Qrzragbe synfuonpx vzcyvrf Ryvrmre ng yrnfg yrnearq ubj zhpu ovttre n qrny gung jnf va gur obbxf guna va gur zbivrf, nygubhtu fb sne vg'f orra n guebj-njnl yvar, fb vg qbrfa'g ernyyl punatr gur cbvag.
"Harry Verres"? What happened to "James Potter Evans"? I'm not sure what this means but I don't think EY is such a careless author that it means nothing. Maybe it's just intended to emphasize Harry's connection to his adoptive parents, but just maybe...
Is anyone else suddenly wondering what really happened to James Potter and Lily Evans 10 years prior? Have we seen their bodies? Harry "remembered" their deaths while demented, but given the emphasis on false memory charms in this story, that's not reliable. And we still don't know exactly why the Remembrall lit up when Harry grabbed it.
Unlike Potter and Evans, Verres is a name with no connection to the wizarding world.
Has anyone else noticed that Quirrell knew James Potter?
No, this means that the person Quirrell is pretending to be knew James Potter. So, either Quirrell's image of David Monroe knew James or Quirrell is inserting an inconsistency.
That doesn't seem likely to be an inconsistency to me. James (and Lily) Potter were members of the Order of the Phoenix during the last war. I don't recall David Monroe being a member of that group in this continuity, but he was an active member of the opposition. It stands to reason that moderately important opposition figures would have known each other, especially since there seem to have been relatively few people actively involved in the war on either side.
Moody's wording in ch86 seems to imply the Order may not have even existed before Monroe 'died':
(Although you could argue that Monroe had formed and was the head of the Order, and that is what Moody meant.)
Then it's less likely that it would have been called the order of the Phoenix.
If Quirrell is Voldemort, which is more or less a foregone conclusion at this point, then James and Lily are "those who have thrice defied him". It seems natural to assume that he would know a certain amount about them. He also observed James's behaviour in the face of mortal danger to him and his family, which I imagine tells you a lot about a person.
The boy is not much like David Cameron either. I haven't met David Cameron, but still feel qualified to make that assertion.
James Potter was not a David Cameron-level celebrity before his death; even if he were a celebrity, I strongly doubt that one could understand his reasoning processes from only what was reported in the Daily Prophet.
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):
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.
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.
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 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.
... Snape was not in the list of people told to deflect Harry from questions about spell creation.
Canon Snape both created spells and had some of Voldemort's hoarded lore.
And Harry does not know this. Or at least, we have no reason to believe that he does, and the fact that he didn't ask Snape about either seems like further evidence that he doesn't know (although, he knows that Snape did not resurrect Lillie, so might not have thought it worth pursuing).
I suppose this information is more frustrating than useful, since I don't expect Harry to be learning that Snape is a potential resource for anything that the Defense Professor deflects him from. (Well, so is Dumbledore, but we know how Dumbledore feels about it.)
He also doesn't particularly trust Snape; Snape is still on his list of potential suspects.
Of course, Quirrell is also high on his list, but having already become part of (in a sense, the entirety of) his inner circle, it's hard to kick him out again.
Snape is a professor. Why wouldn't he ask Snape?
He obviously can't ask everyone, but I'd expect he'd at least ask the professors, some of the more promising students, and any student who seems to create a spell. And maybe all of Hogwarts.
So, what did Harry do in that minute and a half he had with Hermione's body?
My best guess is that he transfigured her body into something, then transfigured something else into a copy of her body. Either that or he just used partial transfiguration on her brain and left the rest of the body behind as unimportant.
It's just not like Harry to just abandon his efforts to preserve her body, especially after he took care to keep it cold. If he has her brain transfigured into a coin or something, that should suffice as a preservation method.
You'll notice that he made sure no-one went in the room for several hours, during which he had his Time-Turner unlocked. He then went in there himself.
On the one hand, some things make it look like he did something of great significance there. (Which is why this subthread is happening at all.)
On the other hand, ch.92 seems to show Harry, from his own point of view, at least convinced that Hermione is lost-and-gone-for-ever and that there's nothing he can do about it. Which means that either Eliezer is deceiving his readers in ways I think he wouldn't, or Harry has managed to memory-charm himself, or he hasn't done anything that (from his own perspective) gives a substantial chance of saving or recovering her. The first two of those three options seem pretty unlikely to me.
It strikes me that Harry just asked how to use Memory Charms, and he has access to a time turner...
Would it make more sense to just save her brain instead of saving her whole body?
Figuring out how to resurrect the dead will be hard enough. Figuring out the way the brain connects to the body and reconnecting all the individual nerve connections makes the challenge much harder. I'm not sure we know all the connections even now with much better technology and decades of additional scholarship. Saving just the brain makes the problem much harder. Keep in mind that the reasons actual cryo sites offer brain only options has a lot to to with cost, storage, transport, etc and not due to thinking its a fundamentally better option.
But it is fundamentally better: the smaller the volume you are trying to vitrify, the better the process works because the greater surface area is compared to volume, and so you get faster and more even cooling (and in humans, you get problems with circulation getting blocked off after a certain point). Go read through http://chronopause.com/ . This is why you can drop small things into LN2 and they recover fine, or why Fahy could do a kidney and bring it back, but why we can't do larger things.
Those are instrumentally better reasons, not fundamentally better.
I study neuroscience. You may know something I don't, but I think body transplants would be a lot easier than resurrecting the dead, as long as you save the first few sections of the spinal chord as well - repairing broken spinal chords, albeit imperfectly, is somewhat in the realm of current technology. If we're talking magic, I don't think spinal chord injuries would even be a big deal.
Edit: never mind everything written below about the freezing
I was quite disappointed when Harry just froze her like that. The rapidly expanding ice will destroy much of her data - in real cryonics you pump 'em full of antifreeze to prevent this. Even if he revives her, she might not quite be the same now. He should have transfigured her head into a small crystalline structure and later found some way to securely maintain the spell (and if no one knows he did it, the pesky authorities won't try to take off the spell).
Huh. Drawing connections between the two of them seems obvious, but then again, I might be reaching.
Do we actually know (or strongly suspect) why Dumbledore hired Quirrell? It seems like when hiring a Defense Professor, "you may not investigate my true identity" should be a red light on the scale of a supernova, and Dumbledore may or may not be insane, but he is not stupid, and he's certainly never shown any sign of trusting Quirrell.
Being sinister and secretive is also a common Slytherin behavior, and they're not ALL evil. It's also possible he thinks he hired an incognito David Munroe.
It is impossible to hire good Defense Professors. Full Stop. The position is heavily cursed, and anyone who takes it leaves within the year. Practically no one will take the post in the position. Under these circumstances, if someone is willing to be the defense professor, well, that means Hogwarts has a defense professor this year. Again, this is a job no one wants after all these years of mishaps befalling the defense professors, like clockwork, every year.
I know it would defuse the whole dramatic potential of the thing, but has the wizarding world really not heard of one-year contracts? After all, there seems to be no rule that the professor has to leave due to harm coming to him or her, and many appear to leave due to circumstances set in motion before their arrival (like pre-existing incompetence).
Moody did have a one-year contract--when he introduces himself to the classroom, he says he'll only be there for the year. And yet he didn't exactly get off free and easy, either.
Ah, but that was the fake Moody - nothing he says can be trusted.
CONSTANT VIGILANCE!
An open lie, which could easily get back to the headmaster ("why can't the cool Auror guy stay for more than one year?") would be an exceedingly foolish way to start the year. Amusing nevertheless.
Lupin, Umbridge, and Snape all survive their terms as Defence professor essentially intact. One is drummed out by PR pressure, and two get promotions. Out of six total, that's not an awful record.
...what?
Lupin was publicly outed as the wizarding version of a leper, if every leper was considered a serial killer, and this information that will not become secret again later. If he was having trouble keeping himself employed before...
Umbridge was freaking gang-raped by centaurs, traumatizing her. I mean, she got better and did get a nice position later, but...jeez.
Snape did survive a whole extra year, that's true, but then he died. By the hand of the same person who implemented the curse, by the by. It could be a coincidence...but maybe not.
I've seen a fanfic where they started using that loophole.
Why doesn't Dumbledore just diffuse the responsibility? Have battles like the current ones run by different teachers throughout the year, and also have each teacher, in their own lessons, teach a bit more practically about their spells?
Or is a tradition thing, like the snitch? Will people not let Dumbledore get rid of Defence Against the Dark Arts, even though it means their children won't learn anything?
A risky plan. What if dividing the subject among 20 profs made all 20 of them subject to the curse and lost the entire faculty? In the wizarding world, messing with things you don't understand extremely well can be dangerous.
That's a very good point I hadn't considered.
I wonder if Dumbledore has actually done any experimenting over the last 50 years, like the one-year contracts I suggest downthread, or having two staff members rotate responsibility each year (and teach something innocuous like Muggle Studies in the meantime).
A also wonder what kind of curse would have such an incredibly powerful effect, and whether Voldemort could have used a scaled-down version of it to, say, get Dumbledore out of the headmaster position. Bearing in mind the original curse was cast before Voldemort had even achieved his full power.
It would be very hard to implement. Hogwarts only seems to have one teacher per subject, and many of those have given no sign of usefulness outside their own subject area (Hooch, Sprout, Sinistra) or indeed within it (Binns, Trelawney). They would struggle to take on the content of the DADA curriculum even collectively.
We do know that some past defense professors have been effective even during just one year - Tonks is considered Auror material, for example, and she didn't pick all of that up from Quirrell. So abolishing the subject would be a step too far, not to mention that it would lead Hogwarts into conflict with the Ministry for failing to follow the national curriculum.
I thought that was because Tonks trained under Moody?
"Sign up for the Auror preparation program in your sixth year," said Susan. "It's the next best thing. Oh, and if a famous Auror (assumed it was referring to Moody?) offers to oversee your summer internship, just ignore anyone who warns you that he's a terrible influence or that you're almost certainly going to die."
Yes, but one assumes that Moody doesn't offer to oversee someone's summer internship unless they've really impressed him.
She is a born shapeshifter. Of the line of Black. Moody offered to oversee that internship to learn who she was, because it would be fracking stupid not to. Finding out that Tonks is astonishingly decent people must have been the best news Moody got in decades.
Probably because Quirrell is insanely good at being a Defense Professor. After a long string of incompetents, I might be willing to overlook a little "obviously evil" if it meant getting the best Defense Professor in a century.
Combined with previous chapters it looks like top-level Wizards know that the secret of spell-creation is potentially universe-wreckingly dangerous, and that Quirrel fears that Harry is about to try to do it.
With the end of c89, I flashed back to the curious bit during the Wizengamot trial about some powerful old members now paying attention to Harry - did they interpret correctly his Dementor-frightening as indicating a newly created spell (Patronus 2.0) and that Harry might be joining their fraternity? Specifically, ch81:
I took all that as indicating that they thought Harry was [EDITED to add: er, that should be "might be"] Voldemort, an idea we know Lucius is already taking seriously.
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.
Quirrell is That Fucker.
Heavy spoilers for Nonjon's excellent A Black Comedy follow.
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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.
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.
Hermione will be resurrected before the conclusion of this story.
(Given that Harry wins and souls aren't real.)
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?
Is it reasonable to think that Harry's parents will be safer at home?
Not safer per se, but less likely to come to Voldemort's attention.
Edit: Chapter 37 also has Quirrell tell Harry that Dumbledore has thorougly warded his parents' home (though the fact that he is telling Harry this after having crossed said wards does nothing to reassure us, the readers).
MoR Voldy shouldn't need any hand holding to come up with a list of useful leverages against his mortal enemy.
It's an interesting point that the Death Eaters are going to be even more ignorant of the muggle world than the rest of the wizards are.