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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Planned out from the start, but there's bound to be blank spots.

I don't think there'll be any real ponies in here (which is a shame), but there's a good chance Harry won't be able to bring back Hermione until he's cracked magic to the point where people can take arbitrary forms, and Hermione becomes an alicorn for a few paragraphs just to test it out.

Actually, this sounds increasingly probable the more I think about it. Troll regeneration is.. a form of continuous self-transfiguration. Some combination of that and however-the-heck animagus forms work might be the key to bringing her back - the regeneration to fix the bodily damage, the animagus bit to get her mind back (or convince magic that it's back, I suppose).

Let's call it.. um, 20% that self-transfiguration is involved with her resurrection (a number that includes the chance of resurrection), and 30% that alicorns are at least temporarily involved.

I had a similar thought--"Harry cracks magic to the point where people can take arbitrary forms"--and actually, I'd put the probability at >50%. In fact, I am slightly worried Eliezer will be disappointed in everyone who didn't immediately realize he was almost certainly telling the truth. He doesn't strike me as the type to say false things as a joke without a clearer warning that it is a joke. Unless someone can find an example of him doing that previously.