Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 23, chapter 94

elharo

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 94. The previous thread has passed 200 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, 21, 22.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Ah, there it is!

Harry time-turned to just before the troll attack. (In the one-and-a-half minutes when he went into Hermione's room.) This is probably pretty clear -- he's been keeping everyone else out of that room, and the centrality of the time-turner in this story more or less demands that Harry do so. Harry would have done this even if he couldn't come up with a plan in his previous six hours, just so he'd have another six hours to think, or do what he deemed needful to preserve Hermione's body.

Somewhere in there, he talked to the twins, and poorly obliviated them. Evidence:

Why does Harry know about the Marauder's Map? When else has Harry learned plot-significant information off-camera?
Obliviation, and Memory Charms in general, and Harry's horror of them, are repeatedly mentioned in the story, and haven't really been used that much yet.
Harry has just learned that he has access to learn obliviation.
Quirrell suggests that obliviation is within his abilities, but barely -- and so Harry is likely to botch it if he attempts it.
Who else in the story is likely to have performed a botched obliviation on the Weasley twins -- such that they have vague memories of having the map, but no complete ones? Every potential foe is powerful enough to perform obliviation properly.

Besides, it'll be a narratively nice, dark moment when Harry uses a spell whose existence he abhors on two of his best remaining friends and allies...

http://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/1i3y86/quick_question_about_chapter_94/cb0trf7 some new word of god spoilers you may or may not want concerning this

4solipsist13y

If you need more than 6 hours to learn Obliviation, you can use this method. Bonus: in addition to giving you more time to study, this method summons an army of hundreds of invisible Harry Potters (all with a single twist of the time-turner). I would have tried this method, but I my narrative sense tells me that Harry did not.

4alex_zag_al13y

... and prevents them from helping him find Hermione. You think he went back in time to become responsible for one of the circumstantial reasons for his failure?