Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 110

Gondolinian

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 110.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

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 110.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

I think we finally have a good explanation for Harry's Father's rock: Dumbledore's mysterious divination power. He somehow knows the rock will be important, but perhaps not exactly how or why.

I've assumed this for a long while. "Dumbledore does things for no real reason but accidentally gets important long-range decisions right all the time" never made any sense. There were some other possible but unlikely explanations for the rock, but you add in his meddling in Lily's life and other times when he seems to be walking down a known, pre-determined path and it's just too much.

Dumbles is wading knee-deep through prophecies, always has been.

2WalterL11y

The rock was important to kill the troll. That's the sum of its importance.

0Velorien11y

Random wild guess: Dumbledore has the Lost Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw. According to canon, it enhances the wearer's wisdom, and is concealed in Hogwarts (specifically in the Room of Requirement, which either does not exist in this AU or perhaps was kept very secret by Dumledore after he found it). We already know that Gryffindor's Sword exists in HPMOR and has special powers, and Slytherin's Locket has been alluded to, so it's plausible that Ravenclaw's Diadem is around as well.