So, what is Harry's deepest desire? There are several candidates, but I think a strong contender is a Quirrell who isn't evil.
That's his (currently strongest) instrumental desire. What is his terminal desire? Something about humanity conquering death and reaching towards stars perhaps...
Question is, which desire does the mirror show?
Perhaps neither. Canon Harry originally saw himself surrounded by a family, a desire which was both obviously unfulfillable and outside Harry's known range of explicit wishes (we know he wishes his parents were still alive, but the mirror showed a more extended family of whom Harry had never thought as far as we know).
For more direct relevance, Ron saw himself being popular and successful (terminal desire) but at the end of the book Harry saw himself finding the Stone (instrumental desire).
New long chapter! Since I expect its discussion to generate more than 160 comments (which would push the previous thread over the 500 comment limit) before the next chapter is posted, here is a new thread.
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 108
(and chapter 109, once it comes out on Monday).EDIT: There have now been two separate calls for having one thread per chapter, along with a poll in this thread. If the poll in this thread indicates a majority preference for one thread per chapter by Monday, I will edit this post to make it for chapter 108 only. In that case a new thread for chapter 109 should be posted by whoever gets a chance and wants to after the chapter is released.
EDIT 2: The poll indicates a large majority (currently 78%) in favor of one thread per chapter. This post has been edited accordingly.
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: