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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 want to speak up in defense of McGonagall, and Eliezer's treatment of her.

One of the central conceits of HPMOR is that, basically, everyone in the wizarding world except Harry and Riddle/Voldemort/Munroe/Quirrell are stupid. Yes many Order of the Phoenix members got slight upgrades from canon, but from their point of view they were still losing and it's pretty clear Voldemort could have defeated them easily at an early point except for some reason he didn't try.

Add this to the fact that while McGonagall screwed up, a bunch of allegedly responsible adults plus Harry watched her screw up and didn't correct her. When Harry chews her out, he implicitly chews out everyone; he sees himself as the only person capable of taking responsibility for what happened.

One of the central conceits of HPMOR is that, basically, everyone in the wizarding world except Harry and Riddle/Voldemort/Munroe/Quirrell are stupid.

One of the central conceits is that the viewpoint character, Harry, comes across as believing that everyone who has not earned his respect is stupid. But it is not really in the interests of most wizards to prove the full extent of their magical or reasoning abilities to every judgmental 11-year-old who comes along.

(I commented on this back in December.)