Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 108

b_sen

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:

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

EDIT 2: The poll indicates a large majority (currently 78%) in favor of one thread per chapter. This post has been edited accordingly.

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.

That could explain the anger. There's still a lot of detail about the bedroom, though you could assume that Quirrel used legilemens on Flamel to find the truth about the stone. That seems really direct and dangerous, but Perenelle may not be an occlumens at all, and from Ch. 86:

"And I'll warn you of this but once. Voldie isn't like any other Legilimens in recorded history. He doesn't need to look you in the eyes, and if your shields are that rusty he'd creep in so softly you'd never notice a thing."

As DavidAgain pointed out above, there seems to be a parseltongue statement against tricking the map as well.

Something is still off about this, though. Suddenly Quirrel is spinning a romance narrative? Also, here is a clever, ambition student, who in her 6th year outwitted the most powerful dark sorceress we know of and obtained for herself an ancient immortality-granting artifact. She sought immortality while still in school, as Tom Riddle did, and with greater success. She leveraged her advantage over greater wizards than herself to obtain more power still. She has shown so many traits that Quirrel would admire, and what adjectives does he use to describe her? Covetous. Black-hearted. If the betrayal were personal, I can make sense of that, otherwise it seems really off.

The Quirrel I know would mostly stick to the facts, perhaps stopping to note the stupidity of Baba Yaga and the cunning of Perenelle.

Maybe his negative view of Perenelle is just because she helped Dumbledore. Maybe I'm reading too much into too little. I'm in love with the theory though; I hope it works out.

My head canon is that Riddle seduced his own DADA professor when he was a 6th year, so when he investigated Baba Yaga's death that narrative rang true to him.