Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96

NancyLebovitz

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 96. The previous thread is at almost 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, 21, 22, 23, 24, .

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

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, 23, 24, .

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

It does seem that a large number of people (Dumbledore, Snape, Quirrell, and Hermione—all intelligent, but not all likely to credit random crackpot theories) all know about the Cloak, and Quirrell at least has heard of the Stone and credits if existence if not the standard explanation for its powers. There's no evidence that many people know of the Wand, but the subject has never really come up so we wouldn't know if that's common knowledge. I expect that those who study wandlore would know about it, as in canon.

Probably all three artifacts' existence is common knowledge, and that they are connected in some way (I think most people would notice, upon hearing The Tale of the Three Brothers, that all three exist; additionally, Hermione recognizes "the Charm which [...] would not reveal the Cloak, but would tell you whether it or certain other artifacts were nearby."). However, even if people know about the Deathly Hallows as real objects, they may not know details (such as the sign, or the connection to the Peverells, or what "conqueror of Death" actually means). I doubt anybody today except Harry, Lupin, and possibly Dumbledore (who may have noticed it when taking Lily and James to the Hall of Prophesy) know about the prophesy; Harry and Lupin know the contents but not that it's a prophesy, while Dumbledore may know there is a prophesy but not the contents.

I assume that QQ knows much more than HP about all the wizarding history and trivia.