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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 think perhaps you've misread the context of my comment. The grandparent comment asked why Eliezer felt chapter 93 was an answer to the critics, and I explained why. More precisely, I explained why he was concerned that 93 might be interpreted as an attempt to fix a perception of fridging.

In a previous LW thread, someone defined fridging as killing off a female character solely to further a male character's arc; chapter 93 demonstrates that Hermione's death was not solely to advance Harry's arc: many other people are affected, most notably McGonagall.

What I expect is pissing off Eliezer (or so I imagine, putting myself in his shoes) is far less the criticism of fridging per se, than the idea that he changed the story in order to avoid the accusation, when from his POV it was never a valid criticism in the first place under the given definition.

it's not reasonable to tell people they're wrong to feel it's another bloody fridging

Whether people "feel" it's a fridging is frankly irrelevant, since an author's control over people's feelings is rather limited. However, under the definition Eliezer's working from, as of ch. 93, people are in fact wrong that it's another bloody fringing. In addition to it not being solely to motivate a male character, it's actually the direct result of Hermione's brave stance against Quirrel -- part of her arc, not Harry's. (Something that I missed myself at first due to how long ago it was I read that chapter, plus the fact that we're not directly shown Quirrel's subsequent machinations to arrange her death.)

(Come to think of it... why didn't the phoenix also come for Hermione that night? She, too, was making a choice to save another (Harry) in the face of mortal danger to herself. I suppose Eliezer would say that this is too abstract for a phoenix's brain to process, since the danger is not immediate, and the thing to be saved too vaguely specified.)

Whether people "feel" it's a fridging is frankly irrelevant, since an author's control over people's feelings is rather limited. However, under the definition Eliezer's working from, as of ch. 93, people are in fact wrong that it's another bloody fringing.

Eh? We're not playing Scrabble here; anyone Eliezer's pissed off with the last few chapters isn't going to suddenly feel retroactively fine about them if it turns out that the events don't count as fridging by a strict dictionary definition. Whether people feel it's a fridging, or functionally equivalent to one, isn't just relevant; it's the only thing that's relevant in this particular context.