Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101
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 99, 100, and 101. The previous thread is at nearly 500 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, 25, 26, 27
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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.
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Comments (365)
Of course, the real reason that it's not gleaming is that Eliezer once read that!
I'm not sure what point you're making.
We can also say that the real reason it's not gleaming is because it doesn't exist at all; there is no blade, only words referring to a blade that doesn't exist.
But why would we say either of those things?
It's not a deep point. The reference to Harry's having read such an odd fact just struck me, that's all.
I would like to know where he read it.
I have also read it, I don't remember where. It's not a particularly outré piece of knowledge, just a piece of knife-sharpening lore. The reason a properly sharpened blade does not show a visible edge is that the edge is thinner than the wavelength of light.
I do not know if this is true, which puts me in much the same position as Harry. It's just something I've read but never put to practical test.
As an owner of a penknife that I occasionally sharpen: It is definitely true that a dull blade gleams, but I am not sure if it is true that a sharp blade does not.
Sharp edges don't reflect any light visible to the naked eye, but it'll show up on an illuminated microscope.
The edge width is on par with the wavelength of light at ~300-500 nanometers at best
And when it says that Harry read something in The Feynman Lectures on Physics, that is because Eliezer read it there and thought that it was the kind of thing Harry would have read. Of course Eliezer and Harry read similar things, Eliezer built Harry based in part on himself. It is hard for any author to do otherwise. If Eliezer had not read that, there is no way he could have had Harry read it.
Perhaps that is the curse of authorship: All you characters must be a subset of you. You cannot, however hard you try, write a character that is more than you. The author always has to at least be able to imagine each thing his character does.
Your characters can be mentally superior you in at least three ways: they can think much faster than you can, they can independently think of things for which you needed outside help, and they can come to correct conclusions based on less evidence and/or less obvious evidence than you would have required.
Yes. In the heat of the moment when the character needs to make a split second decision, the author can sit back and and think long and hard about the answer.
When the hero has a choice and no opportunity to research it, the author can still do that research, or make up how the answer goes in his world.
What I was driving at is something subtler: I cannot count the times I have heard someone praise HPMoR for, among other things, teaching them something new to them. People loudly talk about how the got into rationality and Less Wrong from it, and how they got from HPMoR ideas that change their lives. This is good, and a sign that HPMoR is a darn good piece of fiction.
But: Eliezer did not gain any of those things. Eliezer cannot read HPMoR and be enlightened, for every piece of enlightenment contained within came from his mind. No, Eliezer is not perfect either, and I am sure he makes many mental mistakes that he has the smarter HPMoR character avoid. This is a point. He can write smarter characters than him. But, everything he has the characters do is something he knows, and it must be that way.
Eliezer may only know some of the things he has the characters do on the type 2 level, but know them he must.
I get where you're going, and I mostly agree, but technically it's not 100% exact. Eliezer, like every human, forget things all the time, and reading HPMoR can makes him rediscover things, or can make him see things under a new light. It can also teaches him things about himself, about how his vision of things evolved with time.
Re-reading things (be it "serious" stuff like LW posts/comments, fiction work or even to a point source code) I wrote a while ago regularly enough does "enlighten" me, making me remember things I forgot, making me "propagate" some updating I did since but didn't fully propagate, and improving my internal model of myself.
No, no... that's true in a limited way, I mean the characters don't know about any real-world experiments that he doesn't, for example.
However, they can have novel insights. This is a good reason to write fiction, in fact. I write dialogues between characters in comics that I read when I'm stuck on math or programming problems. When I do this, it's still me that's thinking of it, of course. But it comes to me in a character's voice.
So that might happen with HPMOR, too. There might be things in HPMOR that Eliezer only figured out when he heard, internally, one of his characters say them.
While these mechanisms can potentially make a character seem smarter than the author, the last one can also backfire; you can slip up and make the character leap to the right answer on the basis of less evidence than could plausibly isolate that answer.
This is one of the main issues which prevented me from buying into to the conflict in Death Note.
You can go and choose to read things that the character would that you under other circumstances would not. The set of things I've read pretty much solely so as to be able to write in character is small but nonempty.
Harry's blindness to Quirrel being pretty obviously bad news at this point is definitely something I'd like to see explained. I know that as the reader I get to see things more clearly than Harry does, but when you start thinking painfully murdering magical creatures to preserve your life for a short amount of time is fine if the person doing it is someone you like, something is going wrong there! I am fully expecting at this point to understand that Harry's thinking on Quirrel is being deliberately suppressed. After all, Harry's meant to be fundamentally curious about magic... why has he not investigated what could cause the anti-magic effect?
Painfully murdering nonsentients to preserve one's own life is considered fine in almost all human cultures. In fact, painfully killing animals for fun is considered acceptable by most people, so long as the killing is done in a non-sadistic manner.
Oof, this was a punch to the gut of a chapter. I've gone from "Harry, Wake Up!" to a sort of baffled expectation.
What on earth is up with you, Harry? You are usually so clearsighted! Are you still grieving for Hermione? What possible ethical system justifies the decisions of this chapter?
A speech about the power of truth, then a cover up. Punishment for Filch and Hagrid, but mercy for the centaur and Quirrel.
Feh, this is just what the entry describes as refusing to process something I've already processed. There's an easy description for what's going on here, for treasuring some grievances and renouncing others. Harry is doing exactly what Snape told him Lilly did. He is being shallow, and I hope he's able to change.
Harry doesn't believe in death or Azkaban as valid punishments. Harry would oppose killing Filch or Hagrid.
If Harry would reveal what Quirrell did the punishment might be Azkaban.
Imagine that I'm a pal who explained the modern analogous position to you. I tell you that I think our prisons are inhumane, and the death penalty is problematic. I know a guy who beat up 3 cops, a teacher and some kids and drugged them so they forgot what happened when they interrupted him slaughtering some horses, but I don't report him, and in fact helped him cover up his crimes because of my belief. We still buds?
Setting that aside I'm not clear at all on why Harry would still have a problem with the Azkaban/death penalty. Earlier, sure, it made sense, but now that he's declared himself the Vanquisher of Death he just seems confused.
Suffering is certainly bad, but Harry's cool with False Memory charms, and those can negate suffering. The time lost becomes the issue, and Harry intends that folks shall live forever.
I mean, he's going to conquer death, right? Not only that, he's going to resurrect Hermione, who is dead and whose body is gone presumably by now decayed. So he's confident that he will be able to resurrect someone based on, effectively, name and description. Surely he doesn't think his abilities as a researcher are terribly singular, never to be duplicated.
I mean, if he might in theory do it then its ultimately doable, then someday it'll be done, and all will rise.
So.what matter then, when precisely any given individual dies, so long as it does not alter this future? Worst case scenario. Quirrel goes to Azkaban for a few months before his disease overcomes him, and dies a howling deranged lunatic. Later on he's resurrected, false memory charms fix his trauma and bob's your uncle.
I tend to disagree. In fact, if you really meant to write "decayed", I think you're transparently wrong, because Quirrellmort wouldn't let it decay - he'd stick the body in box A (so to speak).
That seems like the main alternative to the obvious fulfillment of the ancient prophecy. I do worry about it, since why wouldn't Q have done this? (If he's figured out reflective decision theory, I'm officially confused about the direction of this story.) But if Harry transfigured the body quickly enough, he might have left Q without a good opportunity.
You're allowed to have a utility function over things you can't perceive. I'm allowed to say that I value a life where I got tortured and mind-wiped less than I value a life where neither happens.
I think it's worth distinguishing between "Harry intends to conquer death by any means possible" and "Harry knows that he will succeed in conquering death". If the first is true and the second false, he still has ample reason to try to stop people dying prematurely.
Let's try an analogy that's a bit closer to the mark:
"I know a guy who needs to eat freshly killed bald eagle meat every now and again to stay alive, and while doing so he was discovered by some forest rangers and kids out hiking on public land. He quickly used a gas grenade to knock them out without harming them, then gave them a drug that caused them to lose their short term memory of the event. He then dialed 911 on one of their cell phones and watched from a distance to make sure they didn't get eaten before help arrived."
Note that there are several things here which don't have good conversions into Real Life due to magic. In cases like that, you can't just pick the 'closest equivalent' and expect it to make sense. Sometimes, you'll have to drag something magical into the real world as well.
Analogies are hard, at least if you're trying to be accurate. Doing a double analogy to see if you can get back the original helps. For example, let's take your analogy, and try to convert it back into the original scenario:
"I know a guy who was killing some horses in the forest when he was discovered by a group of aurors, a school teacher, and some kids. This guy beat up everyone using curses that take weeks to heal and must heal painfully and naturally, then he stunned them and memory charmed them to get away with it"
This is a good way to tell where your analogy breaks down. In particular:
1) [minor] horses in the muggle world are typically owned by someone, with the very rare exception being free range horses on public land. Be default, the reader of your analogy will assume that the horses are unspecial and owned by someone. This is very different from killing something unowned but special, like a bald eagle.
2) [major] "killing a unicorn because my life depends on it" is turned into "killing some horses with no justification."
3) [critical] beating up a person to the point that they can't function is a much, much bigger deal in the real world than using stunning magic, where the stuns are reversible and extremely temporary, and healing magic makes major wounds no more threatening than a hangnail.
4) [minor] Quirrel did not leave until he knew that the aurors, teacher, and students would be safe (because of the presence of Harry's future copy), but this is lost in your analogy.
5) [minor] Dumbledore himself uses memory charms to wipe Harry's patronus 2.0 from the minds of three aurors, so memory charms are clearly less 'against the rules' in wizarding society than mind altering drugs are in muggle society.
You confuse agreement about moral principles with the judgement that a moral system is consistent. There are a lot of possible ethical systems that I don't like. That doesn't mean they aren't consistent ethical systems.
Let's say I know a homosexual from a country where it's illegal with the death penalty. He was in a situation where 3 cops witnessed him engage in an homosexual act. He managed to make them temporarily unconscious and drug them up to forget that they found him.
Would I let that person get away with that? Probably yes. How I treat someone who opposes a cop depends a lot on whether I believe in the law of the land of that cop.
I don't think there's evidence to the claim that false memory charms can negate all suffering.
I don't think it decayes in the transformed form.
Consequentialism in action? Hogwarts would be better off with Filch and Hagrid removed, but no future purpose is served by exposing Quirrell or killing the Centaur.
I don't think Hogwarts would be better without Hagrid - Hagrid as teacher is dangerous and terrific, but Hagrid as gamekeeper is quite good in his job. He just needs a bit more of supervision to ensure he doesn't keep a dragon or an acromantula as a pet.
Then again, supervision of teachers is something that would never ordinarily happen in Hogwarts.
Harry recognizes the power of truth, and doesn't want give that power out indiscriminately. That makes perfect sense.
Harry doesn't care about sentient-but-not-sapient things (or thinks that animals including unicorns are mostly not even sentient), so under his ethical system, Quirrel hasn't done anything wrong (which he knows about). Harry didn't have the power to "punish" the centaur through anything short of death. He knows the centaur is only after him, and not children in general, and that it probably won't get another chance to kill him. Filch and Hagrid have not only done things that are bad, but they are dangers to students.
If we interpret the power of truth as being "the power to know whether things are true", or "the power conferred by believing true things rather than false things", then giving that power out indiscriminately, to every sentient being in the world, is the exact thing that Harry wants to do.
That is the interpretation I'm thinking of, and no he doesn't. When he describes science to Draco, he says that not keeping secrets is one of their mistakes. Spreading the power to everyone has bad consequences he wants to avoid (things like knowledge that could enable a small faction of people to destroy the world). In this case, it would have consequences he thinks are bad, which are people interfering with Quirrell's plans to stay alive.
I disagree. Harry watches Quirrel stun the professor and 3 Aurors, let them tumble off their brooms and false memory charm them, but Quirrel hasn't done anything wrong? That's, what, 8 felony equivalents at least? (Assault x4, and presuming False Memory Charm would be at least equivalent to assault, probably more like rape).
Filch's crime, for which Harry wants him to serve jail time, is that he sent Draco & co to the Forbidden Forest, potentially exposing them to assault. Quirrel actually assaulted them.
To grossly simplify, there's a consistent set of ethics that says that Filch and Quirrel both need to be punished. (action -> consequences) There's another, which says both ought to be forgiven. (no harm, no foul) Forgiving those who are cool and punishing those who are lame is unethical, particularly given the disparity between their offenses.
On another tack, how on earth can Harry know anything about the Centaur? It attacked a child after rambling on for a while. Jumping to the conclusion that its fixated on him and won't just attack some other child is really arbitrary. I mean, plenty of serial bad guys fixated on their victims, it doesn't make them safe for other folks. Today 'the stars' told Centaur to kill Harry. Tomorrow they tell him to kill Ron, or Hagrid, or set himself on fire. I wonder what they told him to do yesterday?
Filch testified that he intentionally wanted to expose them to assault and a chance of dying. Quirrel didn't do anything that gave Draco a chance of dying.
Quirrel on the other hand drinks the unicorn blood to safe it's own life. As far as Harry thinks Qurirrel also only stunned the centaur and wanted to safe Harry's life.
For Harry morality being alive and saving lifes is very important. Short term pain and being stunned doesn't factor much into Harry's utility calculations.
Maybe this is just my narrative epistemic advantage talking, but: the centaur mentioned stuff relevant to the prophecy, knew specifically who Harry was, and probably was trying to kill him for a very specific reason.
Even if Harry doesn't realize what the centaur is talking about, it seems to me that of the people who try to attack and kill Harry Potter, probably most of them are actually trying to kill him specifically and are not just random psychopaths.
The net result of Quirrell's actions were to prevent some people from knowing that he was feeding on unicorns. Consequentially, that's keeping Quirrell's secret, which McGonagall (and Dumbledore?) seems to want in the first place to keep him as Defense Professor.
Harry can obliviate people well enough to make them "lose every single life memory involving the color blue". This is a Big Deal. It allows for things like:
O-
October
After walking Herminone to Broomstick class, Harry wandered alone about the upper hallways of Hogwartz pondering Neville's rememberal. He must have forgotten about something important, but w-
Ow!
A Green Elephant appeared out of nowhere and struck Harry's head. It was a stuffed animal, the type you might buy for a small child, if the child's favorite color were Eerily Glowing Green. Harry removed an index card pinned to the elephant's side.
Harry rubbed his temple. It was at times like these that Harry wished he had less affinity for cryptic clues and assaulting people with glowing megafauna.
Less than 5 minutes of search at the library Harry and found the next hint: a fluorescent green post-it labeled "Elephant" on the book Mind Magic: A Modern Approach.
Harry kicked himself. Well, that solved the mystery of the glowing rememberal. He had forgotten a task he had assigned himself his first day at Hogwarts:
Todo 1̶2: Research every kind of mind magic you can find. Mind is the foundation of our power as humans, any kind of magic that affects it is the most important sort of magic there is.
Harry opened the book at a green elephant-shaped bookmark and read.
...Or every life memory involving Green Elephants, Harry thought. So that's what he was up to with the elephant. Harry had ensured that every memory he made while learning obliviation would be tagged with a obvious marker. If Harry ever needed to plead ignorance of mind magic in the future, he could obliviate all his life green-elephant memories (be prepared!). Alright, new plan. He would study obliviation in secret, always thinking about a green elephant when doing so.
A grinning Harry wandered out of the library and into the Weasley twins.
"Harry! We got you a present." said Fred or George.
"You'll never guess what it is."
Harry put a finger on his cheek "Is it...A glowing green elephant?"
April 16th, 1992.
2:34 PM
Harry slowed the broomstick to a halt in midair of a hallway, his wand already coming into his hand, the driving will to protect Hermione Granger rising to the front of his mind like a sun of silver fire and flowing down his arm as he cried
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"
and the blazing white humanoid burst into existence like a nova, the Weasley twins' voices crying aloud in shock.
"Tell Hermione Granger - that there's a troll loose in Hogwarts - it could be hunting for her - she needs to get into direct sunlight, now!"
The silver figure turned as though it was departing, and then -
A floating green elephant appeared
Harry's Patronus raced out of the room. It took forty agonizing seconds before the silvery figure returned, opened it's mouth and said <spoilers redacted>.
An invisible voice shouted "EXPECTO PATRONUM!".
A second true Patronus appeared next to the floating green elephant.
The invisible voice instructed "Send the following message to me: 'Hermione Granger says,'" the invisible voice rose in pitch in a poor imitation of Hermione, "AHHHHHHHHH!"
The floating green elephant disappeared.
"Merlin's underpants," breathed Fred or George.
Battle with the troll:
One hand held a tremendous stone club as long and as wide as an adult human, and the other hand held a green elephant and <spoilers redacted>
...
The troll snorted and spun around to face them, dropping a green elephant and <spoilers redacted> into the red pool that had spread out beneath its feet, raising its club high.
Aftermath:
Harry told Dumbldore about the <spoilers redacted>, though he knew later he would be unable to process the memory later.
...
But Harry didn't see anything helpful he could do using spells in his lexicon, Dumbledore wasn't being very cooperative, and in any case this was several minutes after the critical location within Time and Harry's green elephant weilding, time-traveling double would be more chronologically equipped.
Dumbledore walked to Harry's side, George moved to keel next to his brother, and Fred lay supine.
Why had future Harry shown him the Green Elephant?
"Harry," the Headmaster whispered, laying his hand on Harry's shoulder. "Harry, you must go from this place"
Harry sat outside the infirmary storeroom clutching his time-turner. He could go back; he could save her. But not yet.
Think of a green elephant
He knew too much. He could't go back now -- the information carried in his mind would strech time too far.
Think of a green elephant
There was only one way left. Harry turned his wand on himself, his fingers forming the motion he had practiced all year.
Think of a green elephant
In a flash, his mind would race his memories of a Green Elephant and wipe them out forever.
Harry drew his breath.
-bliviate
I had the exact opposite interpretation of that line. I thought it meant that Harry still had so little control that if he was trying to get rid of a memory which involved the colour blue (presumably referring to the unicorn and its blood, which was "not white, but pale blue, or appearing so"), he would instead end up removing all such memories without meaning to.
That's rather like saying "he couldn't perform surgery unless he wanted somebody to lose every single organ in their abdomen". Not something you want to use as a tool - at most, it's a very blunt weapon where Harry has access to far better ones for most situations.
The silver from the begging of HPMOR seems unicorn blood. Eliezer said:
Tvira havpbea oybbq vf nobhg ceriragvat qrngu, jr unir gur vaterqvragf sbe n zntvp evghny.
Tvira gur cebcurpvrf gung evghny vf cebonoyl tbvat gb unir n punapr bs qrfgeblvat gur jbeyq. V guvax vg cebonoyl qbrf.
Two unrelated ideas:
Drain Hermionie's blood and fill her up again with unicorn blood. (Would that even work?)
Kill a dementor and use it to make a horcrux. (Does killing a dementor spilt your soul?)
Silver seems to be a running theme for anti-death things (add the Silvery Slytherins and the Peverell crest to that list). Unicorn blood is a likely candidate, though. (Also, that bit you mentioned is probably worth rot13ing since it came from a source that he suggested not reading.)
Just to check: Chapter 100 is the scene foreshadowed in the opening quote, right?
(Unicorn blood)
(The aurors and McGonagall falling from their brooms)
...this doesn't quite fit, unless I'm picturing the scene wrong.
Edit: Uncertainty. Based on replies, I'm now leaning against this being the foreshadowed scene.
I don't think it does for meta-reasons. The opening quote is build up too much to not be perfectly fitting and clear. It's also more narratively pleasing to have it return in the final chapter.
I don't think any of it fits. "Tiny fragment" and "fraction of a line" don't sound like blood spatters, or anything liquid. The sound of black robes falling doesn't sound like bodies hitting the ground, and if this were the fulfillment of the Chapter 1 epigraph, I would expect there to be at least a mention of their robes.
This whole scene doesn't seem significant enough to be such a heavily anticipated revelation. I'm going with "No" on this one.
Nice double (well, one and a half) cameo for alicorn, under different names.
I've already forgotten why, but I wound up wondering how Quirrell confronting Grendelwald might go in HPMoR. I can't think of a reason it would happen, but it'd doubtless be entertaining, if canon is anything to go by.
(In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort goes to Normengard to interrogate Grendelwald over that device Dumbledore mentioned. Grendelwald believes from the moment he detects Voldemort's approach that he's probably going to die, and still deceives and verbally belittles Voldy, until he laughs at the Avada Kedavra aimed at him. Not being a complete idiot, Voldemort saw through Grendelwald's lies, but it was still fun to read. Our current Defense Professor would, if he wanted that same information, be likely to come up with it without visiting the previous dark lord, and Grendelwald's attitude would likely lose its effect on him, but "Have you come to kill me lollollol" ... eh, a smart interrogator would probably resort to torture instead. Which I guess means Grendelwald is a perfect Occlumens, for all the good that does.)
Grindelwald accepted the inevitability of his death, and did not fear it—hence the laughter. Remember, Rowling is a deathist, and considers this to be a mark of Grindelwald's maturity (he is a foil to Voldemort).
True. I tend to think a combination of losing while invincible and being stuck in prison for 50 years might have had something to do with his feelings on the situation, though. He also recognized Voldemort, implying either they'd made contact before, or Grindelwald had access to information from the outside world. I could see his personal deathism making much better sense in context (I wonder if Normingard has anti-suicide measures? No one seems to concern themselves with death at Azkaban, but Normingard doesn't have Dementors.).
I suppose it comes down to a question of "How does one coerce someone who just doesn't care?"
It seems the entire race of centaurs have taken something of a hit - in the books, they were perfectly aware that their divination was based on one's state of mind and could easily be applied to the patterns perceived in, for example, twisting smoke from a campfire.
I wouldn't mind much - Eliezer may not even have known or remembered that - except that this is not a new lesson for the readers, and it seems a missed opportunity to talk about pattern-matching, maybe tie it in with some of the other stuff about subconscious knowledge or desires in that scene.
I'm torn between vaguely hoping Eliezer will decide to change this, and uncertainty as to whether he even reads these comments. Heck, why should he? I certainly can't write anything like HPMOR, why would he expect to get a useful suggestion from such a comment? (And it doesn't help I'm signalling incompetence with typos from this darn phone, props to TobyBartels and others for reminding me to fix them.)
It seems that your entire first paragraph -- which one might have expected to end with something explaining what it seems is true about the entire race of centaurs rather than stopping in mid-sentence.
[EDITED to note that now MugaSofer has fixed the mistake I was commenting on.]
Thanks! Forgot to update one end of the sentence when I changed the wording at the other.
I think the missing phrase from context is something like "don't know that in HPMR".
Yes, I think so too.
Yes, please fix the typos! You have a good point, and it's getting lost.
Was this by any change a reference to Permutation City? That was 17× slowdown, but that could be explained by taking the ratio of real+simulated time. But I do not get the "sixteen major tracks of memory" then.
Far fetched, I know...
I know Harry is just a kid, but his reaction towards unicorns don't seem very rational to me. Remember, Harry became vegetarian for a while when he was afraid animals could be sentient. And now, he speaks about massively killing unicorns, magical creatures whose sentient status isn't very clear (like with phoenix), for a "temporary" stop of death at a cost of "permanent side-effects", without inquiring how temporary temporary is, what are those side-effects, and how sentient unicorns are. Without measuring those three parameters, there is no way to know if utility(killing unicorns in St Mungo) is positive or negative.
This is true. However, in his defence, I will say that he has no real idea of whether unicorns are sentient or not, and although it was remiss of him to assume they are not, under the assumption that they are not sentient it is a good plan.
Yes, though. It is out of character for Harry, who has in the past done things like become vegetarian when he though that there was the slightest possibility that animals could be sentient. He was still in shock, sure, but the Harry that we know should have known to ask.
Harry has dropped the Batman code. Life is full of trade offs.
Being alive and sentient trumps side effects and consuming animals, magical or otherwise.
Not if those animals themselves are (note that sentience is not really the relevant quality here, that should actually apply to most animals above a certain level of complexity) also sapient.
Considering that other magical creatures such as centaurs, goblins and house elves are known to be sapient, and animals not normally considered so, such as snakes, may become so due to magic, the prospect is certainly worth considering.
It's weird that you're assuming Harry doesn't know that unicorns aren't sentient. You don't know that, but Harry has already researched the known intelligent magical creatures, and he could easily know that unicorns are just magical horses that are pretty.
Harry isn't even a vegetarian, of course he would be OK with someone killing unicorns to survive.
Except for its attraction to innocence, there's no particular reason to think that the unicorn is more sentient than a horse, is there? Did I miss something important in the story?
That's true, but unicorns are immortal, and they have to be killed in order to give a human a few more years of life. Presumably some number of horse-years are worth a human-year; horses aren't quite so negligibly intelligent that the life-value of infinite horse-years converges to zero.
perhaps, but the unicorns don't actually have infinite life-spans.
Well yes, because people keep vamping on them.
Well, the magical world is full of sentient or half-sentient things, from house elves to phoenix. The hypothesis that unicorns are half-sentient like a phoenix can't be excluded a priori, it's something a rationalist should inquire before taking any decision. And the scope and nature of side-effects should be inquired. Harry doesn't even do the simplest inquiry, asking Quirrel about it, but jumps to conclusion with incomplete data, doesn't sound like him at all.
I don't think there's any particular evidence in the story which bears on the intelligence of unicorns, save for the fact that some non humanoid magical creatures such as acromantulas are much smarter than their mundane kin. This alone should be sufficient to raise it to the point of being worthy of consideration.
Here's another possibility which Harry failed to consider; the side effects of drinking unicorn blood may in fact be worse than death, not for the individual, but for society, if it does something like permanently compromising the recipient's morality. Quirrell is already amoral enough not to care, but if Hermione had been saved with unicorn blood, she might have come out like Demented Harry.
It might not be the sort of thing which is obviously likely enough to be worthy of consideration in his position, but the way Dumbledore described in in the original canon, I think suggests it as a distinct possibility.
I don't think you did and neither was there anything in canon about this. Unicorns are about as sentient as any other magical animal. The taboo of killing unicorns stems from the bad effects it has, rather than the sentience of the creatures.
Well, the point is that "magical animals" have very varrying degrees of sentience - some, like acromantula are fully sentient, some like phoenix are half-sentient, the status of unicorn can't be established without some inquiry.
He does at least know that "temporary" is long enough and the side effects are small enough for Quirrel to consider it worthwhile.
He also knows that Quirrell is totally amoral: Quirrell himself admits that he does not comprehend the thing that people call morality.
Thus, he knows that Quirrell considering something worthwhile is only evidence about that thing's utility to Quirrell, not its moral validity.
I'm not generally in the habit of calling out typos, but that particular one is probably worth fixing. I think Quirrell understands mortality rather well.
True, very true. Edited.
I think it's less that Harry is a kid right now and more that he's specifically extra-freaked out than usual by perma-death at the time. Plus the Quirrel Distortion Field is keeping him from ever seriously considering anything Quirrel does as really evil.
What leads people to even suspect that unicorns are sentient?
Sentient is not a binary thing, but a more fuzzy ones. The sentience of apes or newborn for example is hard to quantify in a binary way.
Many magical creatures have a higher level of sentience than mere animals. Some are fully sentient like centaurs or acromentulas, some are half sentient like phoenix. Even magical owls or cats tend to be more sentient than their mundane counter-parts.
So it really seems from 1. and 2. that the level of sentience of unicorns has to be carefully evaluated, to be able to figure out if the harm done to them would be worth a "temporary cursed" life, it depends of the values of the three parameters : how sentient they are, how "temporary" it is and how "cursed" it is.
He's only brainstorming now, not actually rounding up unicorns or even in a position to do so. That said, I would have expected him to go into more depth about the possible downsides, to be in character.
Not sure what to make of Harry's willingness to go to any length to preserve Quirrel. Immediate emotional reaction to the death of a 'friend'? Or change in underlying morality?
Not a fan of Twilight Sparkle dying.
That wasn't Twilight Sparkle. It was a unicorn who was a reference to Twilight Sparkle.
Well, yes, in the sense that Alicorn isn't dead either, and this isn't a crossover universe with MLP (as far as I can tell). But it depends on how you interpret this.
I think something about giving unicorns in the HPMoR universe (whose only plot relevance is that valuable things can be extracted from their corpses) cutie marks skeeves me out, and makes their death that much more tragic.
Perhaps as a result of reading Harry Potter and the Natural 20, I have problems with the various cameos in HPMOR, including this one. People who have distinctive names and characteristics are automatically marked somewhere in my mind as "important NPCs", but then there are so many of them, and so few of them actually turn out to be important, that the relevant part of my mind gets confused. It's like the literary device where you introduce a character with a lengthy background and description, only to promptly kill them off - except unless your name is George R. R. Martin, you're unlikely to do this more than once per book, whereas Eliezer's version is less extreme but can happen multiple times per chapter.
Interesting, I had almost the opposite response: I thought it seriously undermined the seriousness of the chapter and gave for a very conflicting feeling.
In the MoR universe, being able to do magic is a sign that the underlying Source of Magic recognizes you in some way. Wizards make ghosts, muggles don't; as Draco puts it, the simplest explanation for that is that wizards have souls and Muggles don't. (Suppose the soul is just some part of the self that persists that taps into the Source of Magic for computation. Then it doesn't require the physical body for computation, and Harry's intuitions about souls from "the brain makes the mind," which is true in our world but possibly not exclusively true in the MoR world, are not necessarily correct.)
In the MLP universe, a cutie mark is the physical manifestation of having found your purpose in life. MLP unicorns can also do magic. If we transport Twilight Sparkle from MLP to MoR with the least number of changes (i.e. the Source of Magic recognizes her and the philosophical interpretation of the cutie mark is the same), we end up with a being who has more directly observable evidence for being morally valuable than wizards... whose only purpose (in the eyes of the story* and protagonist) is to die to extend the life of wizards.
Alternatively, we assume that it's basically a horse with some magical properties, that's just colored that way as a referential joke. Then, yeah, jokes like that do decrease the seriousness of the chapter.
*Originally this was "author," which is not quite fair; the primary purpose of Rita Skeeter in MoR is to be murdered by Quirrel, but as the author's note / other commentary that Eliezer almost put in McGonagall telling Skeeter's children that their mother had gone missing showed that Eliezer was modeling her as an actual person, and the same might be true for the unicorns Quirrel is murdering.
In fact, I had both these reactions.
It made it sadder but also kind of stupid.
Twilight Sparkle, specifically, is associated with stars (in FiM, the symbol of Magic generally is a six-pointed star). More meta-foreshadowing for the stars dying?
This isn't a particularly bad thing, but I must say, chapter 100 was perhaps the most self indulgent this story has had yet.
Tto whom is it indulgent? Harry, Eliezer, or the reader?
I would say Eliezer. Introducing another event from the first year of school and subverting it utterly. Blatantly referencing Twilight AND My Little Pony (to the point of bending canon for its inclusion) AND a Methods or Rationality fanwork AND an obscure math program AND Several other cameos sprinkled throughout.
Does it matter for this discussion that MLP canon unicorns are sentient?
Nothing specifically to do with these chapters, but it's only just occurred to me: Is it supposed to be significant that the initials of Potter-Evans-Verres are also the start of "Peverell" (indeed, you can get more if you take a few more letters of "Verres")? It seems a rather superficial observation, but "Verres" is a really unusual surname and it would be nice to have an explanation for why Eliezer chose it.
Eliezer mentioned in a past discussion where he got the name Verres. Iirc it was a reference to someone/something, though I don't remember who/what. (This falsified my standing hypothesis at the time, which was that EY got the name from Latin for "truth".)
"Verres" came from combining "Vassar" and "Herreshoff". Here's the thread you're remembering.
I think there's a good chance Eliezer started writing before he read any of the books that have the name peverell in them?
Peverell -> Potter Evans Verres Quirrel?
Yay pattern matching.
PEVQ? erell = rrel? Doesn't really work.
Why did Quirrell allow the unicorn corpses to be found? Why didn't he dispose of the corpse by making it disappear, instead of trying to pass it off as a predator? Would anyone notice if a unicorn vanished without leaving a corpse? ( I suppose they might, since they're medically valuable, but since unicorns are known not to have predators the predated corpse is hardly a good cover, as we saw. Vanishing the corpse would have made it take longer to notice.)
Anyway, this is one of the few times we see Quirrell's plot clearly failing without anyone actually acting to thwart him. Is it plausible that he was actually unable to kill and drink a unicorn without anyone immediately noticing?
Hagrid would have noticed. Hagrid named each individual unicorn in the forest, and if one disappeared, he'd definitely go to Dumbledore about it.
Doesn't work. Hagrid says explicitly in the chapter that he's had almost no interaction with the unicorns.
He did notice when one died... No interaction does not mean being unaware of their existence (or lack thereof.)
Specific proof is that he knew Alicorn was dead before they found the body.
He can know that the unicorns live in a place, see the signs of their passing, without actually going up to them and interacting with them.
The alternative is that Quirrell does want people to know that unicorns get attacked.
If you want to make a magical reanimation ritual, a species that helps people on the verge of death seems to be a path to go. This whole interaction gave Harry information about unicorns.
Since school children were being used to investigate the dead unicorn it seems that passing it off as a predator worked fairly well.
This bothered me too. To fanwank something, perhaps when near death and desparately in need of unicorn pony blood Quirrell's mental capacity is reduced.
Ah, that's possible too. I was more implying that since such a mistake is implausible, it must have been intentional on Quirrell's part- for example, perhaps it was a purposefully orchestrated plot to kill Draco. (actually, now that I thought of that, it seems obvious that this is exactly what it was)
How does he arrange for Draco to go to a Silver Slytherin meeting at exactly the right time to get caught by Filch, and then for Filch to give Draco that precise detention? That's a lot of Imperiuses or other manipulation.
He did it with hermione, no?
He just needs to know about SS meeting beforehand and tip off Filch about it without linking the tip to his ID. Only one hard manipulation here, which is to suggest a specific detention.
And that could probably be done with appropriate False Memory Charm.
He's got to have a time turner.
If he wanted to kill Draco, why not just AK him without being seen in the middle of the forest, and not reveal that the unicorn-eater is Draco's murderer? Revealing that gives the heroes a place to actually strike back against the student-killer, which is the unicorn population.
1) Dunno, but I'm guessing it's for the same reason why he didn't just AK Hermione instead of using a troll? We haven't been told the full extent of magic useful for forensics in this story - for example, in canon there is a spell that allows you to check which spells have been recently cast, so if you find an AK'ed corpse it would be fairly simple to check everyone's wands for recently cast AK to narrow down suspects. (Not that there aren't other ways to discreetly kill, but my main point is that we as audience aren't aware of the constraints involved.)
2) Hogwarts ward doesn't operate outside of Hogwarts, and the ward pointed fingers at Quirrell for Hermione's death (presumably he possessed the troll or something). It wouldn't do for that to happen repeatedly - how many times can one use the "framing" defense? Doing it in the forest avoids the wards, the dead unicorns were a pretext for getting Draco out to the forest, and the unicorn killer identity creates a possible extra suspect,
Or, are you saying that it allows the heroes to fight back by simply relocating the unicorns? That's true...which means that Quirrell doesn't think he will desperately need additional unicorn blood in the future.
An AK'ed corpse in particular should be pretty easy to diagnose; the total lack of any other apparent causes of death should give it away.
However, there's nothing in particular to prevent feeding the corpse to any of the various horrible creatures in the Forbidden Forest.
I have an alternative explanation for Harry's Dark Side: Harry's mother is narcissistic, impressed by education, and not particularly smart.
"by far the simplest explanation for this unverbalizable fear of yours is just the fear of losing your fantasy of greatness, of disappointing the people who believe in you" (ch. 77) is textbook thinking for a child of a narcissistic parent. The child feels perpetually ignored because the narcissistic parent needs validation from the child's accomplishments but refuses to actually listen to the child. Thus, the child is spurred to ever greater heights of intellectual achievement by the parent's need for more status and withholding of love.
"The black rage began to drain away, as it dawned on him that...his family wasn't in danger" (ch. 5) suggests that Harry's Dark Side is Harry desperately trying to stay close to his family.
Typically, children of narcissistic parents inherit either narcissistic or people-pleasing traits. Comparing Harry’s personality to these traits (google “Children of narcissistic parents”, 1st link) shows that Harry has textbook narcissist traits:
Grandiose sense of self-importance? Check. He wants to “optimize” the entire Universe
Obsessed with himself? Check. He appears to only care about people who are smarter or more powerful than him -- people who can help him. He also has contempt for most students and their interests (Quidditch, etc.)
Goals are selfish? Check. Harry claims to want to save everyone, but in practice he tries to increase his own power most quickly. The saving-Hermione thing is still selfish because Harry sees Hermione in the same way he sees his mother -- weak in many ways and bound by emotions and convention, but someone Harry must impress. “It’s disrespectful to her, to think someone could only like her in that way” (ch. 91) makes sense in that a child would be disgusted by Oedipal implications. If Harry’s mother was not narcissistic, then Harry would not have worked so hard to impress Hermione and would have been less disgusted by the thought of being sexually attracted to her.
Troubles with normal relationships? Check. Harry is playing high-stakes mind games with those he is closest to (Quirrell, Draco, Hermione, Dumbeldore), which is emphatically not normal friend behavior. Harry has contempt for nearly everyone else, and is currently hiding alone under an invisibility cloak.
Becomes furious if criticized? Check. When Snape mocked Harry in Potions class, Harry tried to destroy Snape’s career. Quirrell explained, “When it looked like you might lose, you unsheathed your claws, heedless of the danger. You escalated, and then you escalated again.” (Ch. 19)
Has fantasies of unbound success, power, intelligence, etc.? Check. Harry wants to conquer the entire Universe with the power of his intelligence.
Believes that he is special and should only be around other high-status people? Check. Harry avoids average students when possible, and certainly does not hang out with them for fun. A possible exception is Harry’s army, but minimal text is devoted to Harry instructing them, while much text explains how powerful (in battle) and high-status the students in the army have become. In Harry’s mind, the army is a tool to use and an opportunity to show off, not an opportunity to give back and help friends improve their skills for their own sake.
Requires extreme admiration for everything? Check. Harry takes anything less than admiration for his brilliance as an insult, and responds by striving for new levels of intellectual achievement and arrogance, until the others recognize his dominance. Quirrell’s lesson on how to lose described how to avoid making powerful enemies, not how to empathize and care for others -- the insatiable need for admiration is merely delayed and repressed, not corrected.
Feels entitled - has unreasonable expectations of special treatment? Check. Harry requires subservience from the school administration, and special magic items such as the time-turner. “McGonagall said, "but I do have a very special something else to give you. I see that I have greatly wronged you in my thoughts, Mr. Potter...this is an item which is ordinarily lent only to children who have already shown themselves to be highly responsible” (Ch. 14).
Takes advantage of others to further his own need? Check. "I only used you in ways that made you stronger. That's what it means to be used by a friend." (Ch. 97)
Does not recognize the feelings of others? Check. “Er, can I take it from this that you have been through puberty?" (Ch. 87)
Envious or believes they are envied? Check. Quirrell said to Harry, “You have everything now that I wanted then. All that I know of human nature says that I should hate you. And yet I do not. It is a very strange thing.” (Ch. 74)
Behaves arrogantly? Check. “Minerva's body swayed with the force of that blow, with the sheer raw lese majeste. Even Severus looked shocked.” (Ch. 19) I can’t think offhand of a single instance when Harry is not arrogant.
"The Drama of the Gifted Child" by Dr. Alice Miller (Google for the .pdf) spells out what a child raised by one narcissistic parent and one distant parent typically looks like. It looks a lot like H.J.P.E.V.
I can relate personally -- my mother drove me to extreme academic success so she could feel good about herself. I succeeded, then (99th percentile on standardized tests, attended a prestigous and excellent college that I will not name here) but it harmed my ability to relate to people, to distinguish my actual dreams from my mother’s grandiosity/insecurity, and to succeed academically once I had surpassed my mother’s ability to judge progress. When I first found HPMOR I was overjoyed that I was not alone in my arrogance and hope for immortality. It’s only recently that I realized why that is, and what that cost. “Every time I call on it... it uses up my childhood.” (Ch. 91). Suffice it to say that I studied obsessively for years.
I thought about spoiler-warning this to avoid memetic hazard, but apparently on this site “that which can be destroyed by the truth should be”.
While this is an excellent explanation, I can't help but wonder if it's not metafictional. Remember, Harry is "almost but not quite" like 18-year-old Eliezer, and I would not be at all surprised if, well, certain stereotypes about pushing one's child relentlessly (usually labelled "Jewish mother" but actually trans-ethnic) held true for 18!Eliezer, and therefore for his model of Harry.
As a show of respect and allegiance, I can say that they definitely held true for my mother and thus for me, and it's only after spending a lot of time out of her house and away from her influence that I've even remotely mellowed down into a decent adult. Actually, my mother still manages to give me neurotic freak-outs whenever I visit home, due to the massive swings in her evaluations of my life choices that can take place inside five minutes. Like, yeah, I was the dickface kid who mentally compared himself with Paul Atreides.
By the way, the easiest way to deal with the arrogance is just to continually take note of how blatantly unadaptive and useless it actually is. If you're really trying to get what you want by blatantly using other people (and this is not nearly as evil in real life as in fiction: in real life, this is what a purely professional relationship actually is and everyone knows it), then quite often the most useful move is to acknowledge that status hierarchies are situation-dependent and treat them as just another component of the situation, subject to optimization like everything else, rather than as a component of your utility in that situation.
(Wow, that sounded a lot less sociopathic in my mind.)
I agree that HPMOR is intended to describe reality: the entertaining story is the vehicle meant to entertain, and the theoretical content is the payload meant to be remembered. Long before I found HPMOR, I reacted to the death of a family member by planning how to defeat death with science, because nothing less would give me safety. I was baffled that most people preferred to cry for a bit and then forget about it, without making any effort to save themselves or even to fix the particular problem that caused the one death. I read somewhere that EY had a similar experience and reaction, that is mirrored in HJPEV's reaction to Hermione's death.
I've also mellowed out (e.g. learned, mostly, to seek my own approval instead of my mother's or that of managers, etc.) I'm glad to hear you can relate. There are many similar labels that might fit: "Jewish mother", "tiger mother", "helicopter parent", etc.
I suspect most people here have not had this experience, and many that have can't not idolize their parents, due to denial. Harry claims "Suppressed memory is a load of pseudoscience! People do not repress traumatic memories, they remember them all too well for the rest of their lives!" (Ch. 6), but this is inconsistent with "Her mind was slow to remember [the negative information] for a few seconds, which frightened her" (Ch. 84), and denial is a well-known defense mechanism against trauma. The American Psychological Association website says "shock and denial are typical" reactions to traumatic experiences, a well-known historical example is FDR's refusal to accept the incurability of his polio, and I can attest from personal experience that denial/repression sometimes happens.
I'm not sure what you mean by "acknowledge that status hierachies are situation-dependent". It sounds like you mean that it's usually best not to challenge higher-status or higher-arrogance people, because in most situations that's the best way to get what you want. This matches my experience at least in professional situations -- challenging people risks the failure of negotiations or looking incompetent, and is rarely rewarding because if you actually are right or higher-status you can get the same benefit by using your knowledge/skill in a less confrontational way.
I don't agree that purely professional relationships are optimal for work relationships -- I have learned more and gotten more done (both for myself and for my manager) when I feel that the manager truly cares about me and wants me to succeed, and when I truly care about the manager and the team's success.
I'm not bothered by well-meant but sociopathic-sounding thoughts -- if I was, I would not have finished HPMOR. The question of how self-awareness changes moral responsibility is problematic, because there appears to be no scientifically-testable moral authority as well as many opportunities to claim ignorance/feelings as a mask for thoughtful evil intent. That said, I want to do the right, moral, thing, in the hope that there truly is a right thing to do and that my search for meaning is not just my reaction to loss of my mother's imposition of good/evil judgments.
There are different kinds of status. My adviser might have higher science-status than me, but I have higher otaku-status than him. The situation determines which sort of status is salient.
Oh no, I didn't mean they're optimal. But they're a very useful fallback when you realize that you're just never going to actually like someone but still need to maintain collegiality with them.
I will admit that I never thought of transhumanism on my own, but I've ended up endorsing it simply because I can't actually think of an involuntary or unwanted death where I actually thought that we shouldn't have saved the person even if we could have. Then again, I only ever lost a grandmother and grandfather who were extremely old, and seemingly quite ready to pass on.
I think it depends if you merely sustain a trauma or actually develop PTSD.
Well of course there's a right thing to do. I'm just not going to tell you what it is, because I want to know if other people's conclusions when they research the issue converge with my own. :-p
My theory about HPMOR and what is going on.
"Voldemort's final avenue is to seduce a victim and drain the life from them over a long period; in which case Voldemort would be weak compared to his former power."
But raw power is nothing compared to intellect and Harry Potter seems like the best possible candidate for resurrecting this way.
Quirrell and Harry both have a dark side, and dark sides are parts of Volondemort soul. They are horcruxes basically.
Quirrell's dark side took control over good old Quirinus Quirrell. He is in the same condition Harry was when he was under dementation.
Quirrell is trying to push Harry to his dark side. He tried dementation, he tried to take all Harry's money and friends away, he killed Hermione. And he gave Harry his diary to "seduce a victim and drain the life from them over a long period".
What we will see next? Quirrell doesn't have much time so he will act now.
I think Quirrell will kill Dumbledore and provoke Harry to fight against Death itself. They need a Dumbledore wand + resurrection stone + Harry's cloak + magic resonance + some Quirrell's and Harry's wisdom. And I don't think that we will see happy ending. There will be a disaster.
If plan fails then Voldy has a golden plate on Voyager as a backup horcrux.
p.s. Apologize for my English :)
I'm a bit bothered by Dumbledore's behavior in 101. He's supposed to be at least reasonably wise and reasonably cunning, with a dead brother and a room full of gravestones. He knows all about prioritizing people's lives. He's just had the first student fatality in 50 years, and now he almost had a second. So how could he possibly have taken Filch's side?
From the Azkaban chapters:
Dumbledore's lesson from his room isn't that you needed to shut up and multiply, it's that war is so terrible that you must be willing to sacrifice anything so prevent it from occurring again. He prioritized people's lives to stop a war, but he's not willing to sacrifice anyone except to prevent more violence. Dumbledore never wanted to sacrifice his sacred values for the greater good, he was forced to by the war. From "Taboo Tradeoffs":
In "Pretending to Be Wise", Dumbledore says that the reason he doesn't subscribe to purely utilitarian ethics is because he doesn't trust himself:
So he sticks to his virtue ethics, unless he is forced to, since he doesn't trust his morality enough to do non-virtuous things in service of it, lest he become another Grindelwald. It is only when forced to that he abandons his principles, and only to prevent further violence. Choosing to sacrifice someone is against his nature, his room might remind him of the costs of that course of action, but it doesn't change who he is, only make him regret his failure in the War.
Add to that the fact that Filch is someone Dumbledore feels much sympathy toward, and the fact that he wasn't facing Lucius or anyone on the other side, him taking Filch's side is understandable, if not expected.
Who is Sirius? Fudge!
So in this theory, Pettigrew is just innocent and dead, and Sirius was the one who betrayed the secret to Voldemort?
http://predictionbook.com/predictions/24307
I think Harry might have been the one to secure Hermione's body. He managed to convince McGonagall to remove the restrictions on his time turner. He probably used the time turner right after he was allowed to be by himself in the room with Hermione's body. That would have given himself more time to think and act. He was also checking his wristwatch a lot, especially when he had to leave the room, and when he had interruptions.
In the scene where he convinces Dumbledore and the others that he doesn't have Hermione's body, we don't get very far inside Harry's head. It shows what he says and does, but not his thoughts. Also, he doesn't spend a lot of time speculating about where Hermione's body went, in later chapters.
I'm not sure where he would have put it though. Could he get out of Hogwarts to take her body elsewhere? Or is there a suitable place in the Hogwarts grounds where he could stash it? Would he have to keep visiting the body to renew the spell on her body to keep it cold, or could he figure out a muggle way to cool it, or a different magic way that didn't need to be renewed?
Sorry if these questions are stupid, but with the long pauses betwen the chapters I find it difficult to remember what exactly happened.
1) What exactly is the puzzle we are trying to solve?
If I remember correctly, Eliezer wanted us to solve something before the story is finished. Which pretty much means now or never. I just don't know what exactly is the question. (Yeah, knowing the question is half of knowing the answer.) Who is Voldemort? Seems obvious that it's Quirrell. What should Harry do? What exactly is happening? What are the motivations of the main characters in the story? Who killed Narcissa Malfoy? Do we have a list of unanswered questions? How likely it is that answering them will provide a new view of the story, and will uncover some new possible strategy for Harry?
2) Does Dumbledore know or suspect that Quirrell = Voldemort?
I am not sure. At some moment it seems to me that yes: Dumbledore expects that Quirrell will cause some problems (e.g. when bringing a dementor). At some moments it seems to me that no: Dumbledore explains Harry that Voldemort should be killed without mercy at the first opportunity... and yet does nothing against Quirrell. I am specifically condused about the part (after Draco was attacked) when Dumbledore took the map and asked about "Tom Riddle". What did he know at that moment?
Also, I am disappointed that Dumbledore plays an idiot so successfully, that Harry actually treats him like an idiot. Thus two people who have best chance at defeating Voldermort, have trouble communicating.
Quirrell may have some blind sports about humans, but he is good at disrupting communication channels.
Quirrell:
The Sorting Hat:
Harry thinks every death is a horrible tragedy. So, wouldn't he want to bring back everyone in the past as well? Make their deaths "not happen"? So he goes back in time to Atlantis, to arrange a self consistent history where no one has in fact died, but only seemed to die, much as he suggested Dumbledore do for Hermione's death.
One of the first lessons was ComedTea, and thinking about causality going backward in time. There's people like Harry and BDumbledore thinking about history as a story. There's the ridiculous levels of foreshadowing we see. History looks like a story because it is one, written by Harry. There was more powerful magic in the past because future Harry took those powers back in time with him.
There's even the foreshadowing of Harry going back in time to play a trick on himself.
"Ssalutations from Sslytherin to Sslytherin."
Quirell saw that. Partial transfiguration is not the power the dark lord knows not.
Narcissa?
Been suggested many times, yes.
Discussion on HPMOR (along with other Potterverse topics) on the blog Crooked Timber.
I found it interesting because Crooked Timber is a (very good by the way) mainstream-liberal-academia blog, and I got a sense of "worlds colliding" by reading the opinions of their commenters on LW and its more niche subculture.
Probably a stupid question, but wasn't Draco was out of the picture already?
He went back after the negociations between Harry and Malfoy and the enforcement of "eductional decrees" to make Hogwarts safer, re-read chapters 97 and 98.
Unrelated to the latest chapters:
Inspired by RomeoStevens's comment in this thread, I am going over HPMOR, summarizing each chapter in a haiku. Tell me what you think:
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Poetry is a union of form and content. Putting something into the form of a haiku is essentially trivial, so most haiku writers focus on content instead; however, your content should also be familiar to everyone reading, so you can't win there. (Also, #2 and #4 have 6 and 5 syllables in their respective second lines.)
Limericks would be good, if you could pull those off. Obviously, it would be harder. That's sort of the point, though: to impress people with form, you have to do something that isn't easy to do. On the other hand, if you write 101+ limericks, you'll probably be good at limericks by the end.
(Half good; I'm told the other half of limerick writing is that they have to be dirty and/or funny, ideally both.)
Not for those who've had the time to forget about the contents of the story. This could be a useful way for people to remind themselves of the rough structure of the story without re-reading everything.
I don't know. I think there is a virtue in succinctness, an art that appears when things are put into a tightly limited form. It makes you look at what is essential, and so shows the essence.
Maybe I'll try limericks next. It's as good an idea as any, I suppose.
Different people pronounce things differently, so arguing over syllable numbers is going to be be frustrating, but can you tell me how you see 6 syllables in line 2 of #2? Do you pronounce "tales" as a single syllable?
You are certainly right about #4 though, so thanks for the pointer. I changed it. It lost a bit of punch, but whatever. If I am building elegance out of restrictions, I had better keep to them.
Chapter 23:
Some more:
Chapter 6:
Chapter 7
Bonus one:
And another:
Nice.
Rewrite of Chapter 6:
I like it. I think that's definitely an improvement on the last line.
Here are a few more:
Chapter 8:
Chapter 9:
Chapter 10:
And another:
And:
And:
For what reason does Harry think Quirrell is applying false memory charms to everyone? What's wrong with what they saw?
The last bit, from Draco's perspective, is the False Memory. If they had remembered what really happened they would've seen blindingly fast spellcasting, which implies ridiculously powerful wizard and would be dealt with very differently.
Lets talk about chapter 99.
Chapter 99 was there for a reason. I think the most likely reason is to emphasize the 10 days later. Chapter 98 was April 20, and chapter 100 was May 13. For some reason EY wants the first attack to happen on April 30. This could be because QQ only needs to drink the blood every couple weeks. However, why not just make the first unicorn found on May 12 and have no chapter 99? This would make more sense. I would expect the forest to be searched immediately afterwords. This is empathized further in chapter 100:
Maybe the goal with this is to give some character a full 2 weeks to research unicorns or make a plan.
Other theories for chapter 99:
He wanted the reveal of the unicorn to fall under the Roles sequence for some reason.
He wanted to build suspense. (But then I would expect him to have posted 99 on Sunday and 100 on Wed.)
He wants chapter 99 to be written in passive voice to hide the identity of the person who "found" the unicorn.
I think that the fact that chapter 99 falls into the 'roles - aftermath' title, indicates it's relatedness. This is the consequence of the roles arc, somehow - perhaps this is Quirrell's response to the new regulations, whyever that might be.
I didn't think of that. I think that is more likely than my hypothesis. EY is telling us that the unicorn attack is a consequence of the roles arc.
Or he's telling us that Quirrell is playing the role of someone who is on the verge of dying.
I'm just curious how Hagrid felt about his own role in Hermione's death. I'd wondered if I'd see evidence that he thought about it.
Perhaps his personal hero Dumbledore persuaded him it's none of his fault and that he'd acted reasonably.
What role? Standing in the way of an overly brave 11 year old who wants to go out and fight a troll is probably the morally correct action to take. If any other kid than Harry had done what he did, they would've died along with Hermione. (Well actually they probably never would've guessed to use a patronus to find her and thus been fine). It's not actually reasonable for humans to recognize another human as the player character and themselves as NPCs, much as eliezer would like the world to work that way.
Harry was not looking to fight a troll, he was looking to save Hermione from the troll.
Further, if Hagrid had authorized a 7th year to help, they could have followed Harry's plan of searching for Hermione and bringing her back with the most powerful wizard then available to aid and protect the search.
Hagrid could have had authorized 2 seventh years ride the broom, giving ample power to ward off a troll and protecting the supposedly helpless Harry at the same time.
Hagrid clearly prevented effective aid from riding to Hermione's rescue, and he was the first "responsible adult" to know that she was missing. He is more responsible for the outcome than anyone but the Troll and the attacker using the troll.
Sooo... Quirrel knows a stunning hex that looks like Avadra Kevadra?
Then, back in Azkaban, facing that auror, when Quirrel used Avadra Kevadra in an attempt to force the auror to dodge, and Harry stopped it with his patronus...
...why did Quirrel not use the green stunner, unless Quirrel actually wanted to kill the auror?
And how long will it be until Harry asks that question?
Presumably, an Auror knows more about hexes than a centaur.
What do you think you know about which spell Quirrell used, and how do you think you know it?
Quirrel could have learned the spell after the endeavour. On the other hand Quirrell is probably lying.
As in this comment: Probably Quirrell is lying. When he realized Harry was upset about the centaur dying, he thought fast and Inferiused the centaur and made up the bit about green stunners.
IIRC, in canon Avada Kedavra has a distinctive color not shared by any other spell.
In MOR, though, "green light the exact shade of the Killing Curse" is a spell first-year Draco can cast (ch47).
If Quirrell is lying, then asking the question "Why not use the green stunner in other circumstances where Avadra Kevadra was used?" may lead to that lie being uncovered.
I admit I had not considered Inferius on the centaur. However, I rather suspect that Quirrell is priming Harry here; he does something (hitting a centaur with a green stunner) that looks evil, then demonstrates that it is less evil than it was. In the future, then, Harry will be more inclined to believe that Quirrell has done something less evil than it looks like he has done; he could, for example, use Avadra Kevadra on Dumbledore later (making it look like a green stunner to Harry) in circumstances where a green stunner would not be evil and then rely on Harry to prevent any immediate revenge against himself (long enough to portkey away at least).
On the other hand Quirrell, via the basilisk, has spells that are not shared with any other wizard.
True (probably). The more troubling evidence includes the fact that he acted like he thought Harry would accept his first explanation, and that we saw him Obliviate Bellatrix without ordering her to forget. Plus, Quirrell uses the phrase "stunning hexes", but those don't prevent breathing (unless that really was "her last breath escaping" in chapter 33).
Also, recall that Eliezer hasn't read all the HP books. We can't have 100% confidence that he is aware of any given fact that is true in canon.
But an auror's shields might be able to block a green stunning hex, and might be able to tell the difference between the two hexes prior to that regardless.
Heh, so Quirrell doesn't know what guilt feels like.
This reminds me, if you can make a homing version of the stunning spell, can you make a homing version of the killing curse? Sounds like that would be useful.
The chapter endings for 100 and 101 are a little odd. They stop very abruptly, specially 101. Usually you would get an extra sentence or paragraph to give the chapter a sense of closure.
The reason Quirell and Harry cannot interact magically is supposed to be so Quirrell cannot read harry's mind, memory charm him, confound him, or outright imperio him. But this feels a little weak to me. What's stopping Quirrell from threatening, bribing, tricking, imperiousing, etc... a third party to do it on his behalf?
At no point does Quirrell say "I just used such a spell on this centaur". I'm not ruling out that he killed the thing, and made an inferius in front of Harry. That would explain the unusually (?) sharp sense of doom that Harry felt when he "revived" it.
Also a possibility: memory charming a centaur is a lot harder, since they're only passingly similar to humans, so Quirrel had to draw more heavily on his magic, which in turn resulted in a sharper sense of doom.
Wow, it's amazing how obvious the Inferius seems now that you've said it.
I was reading another comment elsewhere on the page which claimed there must be some magical explanation for how Harry's managed to miss that Quirrell=Voldemort. And my first thought was, "yeah, he sat there with his wand on the centaur for a long time instead of just saying 'Innervate' and then 'Obliviate' and Harry still believed him". That actually seemed to me like an extraordinary thing that needed explaining.
But, then I remembered: I didn't think of it. I read this chapter days ago, I've been talking about it, theorizing, and *I didn't see it. And now it seems so obvious that I look for a supernatural explanation for why Harry didn't see it?
EDIT: As I brought up elsewhere, another reason Quirrell would be drawing heavily on his magic is to read Firenze's mind everything he knows about the future.
This doesn't matter very much, though, since we know Quirrell would not hesitate to utter a direct lie if it served his purposes.
That's true. Quirrell has played the "mislead without lying" game in the past though, hence I'm not ruling it out.
The reason for a fact of the HPMOR universe is narrative convenience for the author?
Maybe so, but I've been wondering if the in universe reason is that Harry is a time turned Quirrell.
In canon, Harry and Voldemort have a complicated magical relationship due to two separate spells placed on Harry due to the events at Godrick's Hollow. Harry and Quirrell's connection in HPMoR appears to be a simplified version of that.
And if the homing version of "Stupify" is "Stuporfy," how ridiculously twisted would AK get? "Averder Kerderber?"
Abracadabra, surely.
He doesn't trust a third party to do this without getting caught?
IDK. Moody suggests that the spell might already be mildly homing or at least very easy to target.
In canon at least, the protagonists do nothing but dodge Avada Kedavras in a number of confrontation scenes. It has to be that way, because no Death Eater would be stupid enough to use anything but Avada Kedavra on a target they weren't trying to take alive, and most characters had enough plot armour not to die in a random firefight.
Doesn't AK use more magical energy than a simple stun ? Or just require longer to cast ? "Avada Kedavra" is longer to say than "Stupefy" or "Expelliarmus", at least.
But it is unblockable and precludes the target being revived in the first case or recovering their wand/grabbing someone else's/running away in the latter. In particular, HPMOR makes a very big deal out of any decent wizard being able to put up a dozen different shields, sometimes all but instantly, so unblockable spells are an extremely big deal.
In HPMOR, it also penetrates at least some thickness of cover, according to Moody, who also suggests that it does need significant mana. (How much mana? I'm getting the impression that Stupify is acceptable for Auror-level combat despite being castable by top first-years.)
It also cannot be countered. We don't see much of countering in HPMOR, but we do see Susan try to counter an extremely powerful bully's spell in the SPHEW.
Rot13 for being partly based on a author's note Eliezer has recommended people not read:
Abg fher ubj gb gnxr guvf hcqngr vagb nppbhag jura svthevat cebonovyvgl Urezvbar ernyyl qbrf pbzr onpx nf na "nyvpbea cevaprff." Ba gur bar unaq, ersrerapr gb "nyvpbea" frrzf gb or frggvat gung hc. Ba gur bgure unaq, V'z univat n uneqre gvzr cnefvat "havpbea ubea cevaprff" guna "jvatrq havpbea cevaprff." Ba gur guveq unaq, guvf.
Premise: Quirrell plays the game one level higher than Harry Potter.
Observation: This entire incident is uncharacteristically sloppy. Why were the unicorn corpses found? Why was Quirrell discovered?
Observation: Harry Potter is now really pissed off that herds of unicorns to slay aren't standard procedure for stable-izing people with life threatening injuries. He has just been given another "if only" to fixate on. It has been brought to his attention in ways that wouldn't trip his "why am I being told this" sense.
Hypothesis: Reminding Harry that there were ways the wizarding world could have saved Hermione was the primary effect. Possible secondary effects may include impressing on Harry just how ridiculously powerful he is. Perhaps implanting the desire to save Quirrell into Harry's mind? Quirrell may not actually need the blood right now, though I suspect it doesn't hurt.
I don't think unicorns are actually kept in stables, despite their horse-like anatomy. ;-)
Related point that I haven't seen: chapter 100 increased the probability that Harry would bring any clever idea for defeating death straight to the Defense Professor.
I like to think that 101 decreased it again, and that Harry might have talked to Draco about those false memories (thereby learning that Quirrell couldn't make guilt feel real). But we'll see.
Hermione was dead before she could have killed a unicorn and drank it's blood.
Depends exactly how it works. Is someone dead when the heart is stopped, but can still be restarted ? What happens if someone is forced fed unicorn blood (and the unicorn dies in the process) just after cardiac arrest, but when no damage is done to the brain yet ?
By the time a capable wizard (Dumbledore) was on the scene, Hermione was dead.
I doubt there's anything unicorn blood can do that phoenix tears can't, so.
I'd think that unicorn blood has unique properties on phoenix tears.
Otherwise Quirrel would be tracking down Phoenixes and... showing them the first 5 minutes of 'Up' or something.
Yes. "Up" was a fairly good movie, but it doesn't hold a candle to the short film that constituted its first 5 or 10 minutes. That should have won an Oscar.
Here it is
I could rewatch Up, except that doing so would require rewatching the first ten minutes.
And I can't do that.
I don't think knowing that unicorn blood has uses which may not be properly exploited by wizarding society changes his opinion of wizarding society much anyway. It's kind of a straw on a logpile.
I think it's more likely that Quirrell's planned reveal to Harry was his impending mortality (which, considering the horcruxes and the spell which can restore him to his original state, is probably not so unavoidable as he implied.)
While he's certainly determined to make Harry believe he's going to die ("this is the last time I will be able to do this for you"), it is likely he is lying for a couple of additional reasons. The man obsessed with not dying, prepared to tear his very soul to shreds to stay alive, has
a) been trying to prevent Harry from seeking a way to bring back the dead, and
b) been doing so purely as part of an effort to save the world - which he has no reason to care about unless he expects to remain in it.
I assume the centaur tried to kill Harry because he prophesied that "the skies will soon be empty" because of Harry. Based on what we know about Harry, the skies could be "emptied" because of Dyson spheres or star-lifting.
Although, if you look at it that way, it would still take thousands of years before the skies appeared "empty," since we're getting light from thousands of years ago. I'm not sure if a centaur would use "soon" in this sense, so perhaps Eliezer has something different in mind.
time turners exist
harry wants to become god
people have died in the past
Inspired by this, I wrote some more of these, summarizing the first five chapters of HPMOR.
You should edit that so that the last line has only five syllables.
"people have died before" "people have died in past"
In the past. You lose elegance points if you have to drop words in order to fit what you want to say in the requisate number of syllables.
Perhaps?
Or:
Eliezer: I got the math joke.
Explanation and implementation (spoiler if you haven't spotted the joke yet): http://tinyurl.com/hpmor100mathjoke
(But this only covers the first half of the joke; I had not heard of the second half before!)
I got about 80% of the joke - I pattern-matched the description to being something like Tbbqfgrva'f gurberz, but I didn't recognize the names Paris or Buchholz.
If you want to play with a (rather tame, since it doesn't always use its regeneration powers) Bucholz Hydra, here's a link for you: http://www.madore.org/~david/math/hydra.xhtml
For my part, I knew about hydra games and had forgotten the name, but the context made it fairly obvious that this was a joke about the hydra being so hard to kill that you can't prove you do it with only Peano arithmetic.
I have defeated the hydra! (I had to cut off 670 heads). Feels like playing Diablo.
670? Lucky. I finally bested it after 1750-ish, yesterday. Once I hit 1000, I thought, "Why am I doing this? What am I proving?" and then I started clicking again.
1750? I forced myself to give up and get back to work somewhere around the 6500 mark.
(I had decided, somewhere around 1000 or so, to try out the strategy of preferring to cut normal rather than dire heads when possible. Maybe that's a bad idea)
I worked top-to-bottom, without change. If a new branch grew higher than my previous cuts, I focused it immediately. I know there's an optimal way, but I'm not quite clever enough to think of it.
Well, for this applet the optimal strategy might depend heavily on how exactly its tameness is executed, which isn't very enlightening.
Edit: Derp, I tried out top-to-bottom and got it in 572. Definitely better than left-to-right or normals-first-ltr.
I got it too, and I think Eliezer was vastly under confident in his estimate of the number of people who would get it: We have a very mathy community around here.
In any case, I am glad Eliezer ended up including it. HPMOR is good enough to make me actually laugh out loud at least once every chapter, and the bit about the hydras was chapter 100's contribution.
I found it jarring. Either the characters were making jokes at a very uncharacteristic time, or just saying things that make no sense; either way this derails them. It seems to be a general problem in fanfic.
Chapter 99?