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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

[regarding nuclear weapons] "worse than the more...recondite...aspects of wizardry" "slightly worse than anything that's left in these days. nothing like what wiped out atlantis".
-There's a very big chance that there are interdicted spells that aren't quite as bad as the latter, but still a lot more powerfull than a nuke. There's no way Harry is going to intentionally switch the interdict OFF.

Although...he might try bypassing it with a bit of information theory at a conceptual level, or some mind-altering spells...say, tricking himself into believing he already understands a spell, thereby tricking the interdict into thinking he already has access to that spell. Or maybe even forcing himself to following the directions no matter how stupid they seem. (cough philosopher's stone cough).

Interesting, I wonder if Imperius helps with following instructions, i.e. if you’re better at following (non-Imperius) instructions after X Imperiuses you to follow Y’s instructions, than if you just wanted to follow Y’s instructions at the same time. There are very probably spells that make you (temporarily) better in terms of dexterity and such. Hell, there’s Felix. If the PS recipe is correct, its difficulty should not be a problem for Harry. (At least if we assume Flamel actually did create one—which we’ve taken on trust until now—which implies it’s within (extreme) human bounds of ability.)