Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102

David_Gerard

New chapter!

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 102.

There is 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.)

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

New chapter!

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 102.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Some of these have been explained / fired already. I think most people agree that:

Sirius Black is not Hat and Cloak, because H&C was Quirrel; I think this is pretty definite.
Traps on the third floor are an obvious trap for a Dark Lord foolish enough to try stealing the Philosopher's Stone, which Quirrel is not, because he realizes it isn't there.
What Dumbledore wrote in Lily Potter's potions book was advice she used to help her sister. Which was a risky, stupid, Griffindor / Dumbledorian thing to do. The horrible secret is that not that Dumbledore sneaked into the girls' dorms at night (presumably he found a different opportunity to write in the diary) but that Dumbledore caused Lily to help her sister, which caused Petunia to marry Professor Michael Verres-Evans instead of Vernon Dursley, even though a centaur told Lily doing this would cause the world to end, which is now about to happen. And this caused the HP:MOR universe to branch from the canon Harry Potter universe.
There's nothing interesting left in the Chamber of Secrets, because the Dark Lord killed Salazar's snake and removed any portable artifacts.

I too agree that Quirrel is H&C with the highest probability. However, I would not assign zero probability to Sirius Black either, hence I wrote he was a candidate, not the candidate for H&C.
I think it has already been implied in the text several times that the Philosopher's Stone is in fact still in Hogwarts. Granted, it may not be behind those particular traps on the third floor.

But Master Flamel has said - that even he can no longer keep safe the Stone - that he believes Voldemort has means of finding it wherever it is hidden - and that h

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102

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