Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93

daenerys

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 93. The previous thread has passed 300 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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

I don't think the chapter was supposed to be a slam-dunk answer. I thought it was supposed to be the beginning of an example (implied to be an extended process of character development) showing how reading an incomplete story can mislead you on specific points. I'm somewhat torn about this, because if everything the author writes leads you to one conclusion, he doesn't get to complain when you believe it. This holds true even if the work is already finished, because he doesn't get to make people finish reading. But I do tentatively expect later chapters to change the current anti-feminist message.

Quite possibly Eliezer did miss something. For example, female billionaire J.K. Rowling said, "Hermione is a caricature of what I was when I was 11". Eliezer used her characters and world to (correctly) argue for his philosophy and against hers. He has frequently snarked at her. He made some readers ask why he was making her caricature sillier in the S.P.H.E.W. arc, and so inferior to his own altered stand-in. I don't know if he's thought these events through. Nor do I know what it would mean to miss this, as an author.

At the same time, I think I completely disagree about the treatment of McGonagall in this chapter. Harry is the one giving a factually incorrect apology. And I do think she'll show more competence after this, subject to the constraint of being in a story where children save/end the world. (TV Tropes link removed for your protection.)