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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

The thing is, my reasoning doesn't actually depend on the horcrux realization, tough I give it better than even odds they knew that long before he even got the Hogwarts letter. Like, some time around the bitten math teacher or the science fair incident.

The cloak is the obvious counter to the mirror. Using it isn't some super-obscure piece of lore. The mirror has power over things reflected, the cloak removes you from that category. Put yourself in Dumbledores shoes as you are packaging up that thing after spending oceans of time and effort setting up the mirror.

Just No. This is not a plausible mistake. I'm shocked and a bit dubious Voldemort is buying it, but he does think everyone is a complete idiot, so...

If Dumbledore didn't want the cloak to be used against the mirror it would be stashed someplace very obscure. Or if he was feeling smartass, in the mirror itself. Handing it over to Harry was a deliberate move to put it into play.