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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

In some cases, she cared later, and had to work her way around what she'd done.

EDIT: The main example below is WRONG, but you can read on anyway if you want to know what I thought and why I thought it.

A simple but revealing example: If you just read Philosopher's Stone, there is no indication that the Wizarding world is meant to be secret. When Petunia recalls the arrival of Lily's letter, there is no sign that anybody is surprised. The Evans parents are proud, and Petunia is disgusted, but they all think that they know what it means to be a Witch; they have opinions about it, not disbelief. The Dursleys do try to tell Harry that there is no such thing, but they know that they're in denial, and even Dudley isn't sceptical, just horrified (like his mother before him).

It all fits in perfectly well with the style of Philosopher's Stone as a silly wish-fulfilling romp. The sequels are progressively more serious, and Rowling realized right away that it's much easier to build a coherent Wizarding world if it's secret. So she established the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy early on in Chamber of Secrets, dealing with the Weasleys' flying car.

Other things that Rowling didn't know in Philosopher's Stone: Harry's cloak is special, Ron's rat is special, Azkaban exists.

While the Statute of Secrecy was not mentioned explicitly in book 1, it was mentioned many times that the wizarding world is a secret. Just to name two instances:

Chapter 1: McGonagall clearly disapproves of the overblown celebrations of Voldemort’s disappearance (lots of owls, shooting stars), even stating that it would be a real mess if muggles found out about wizards. (No verbatim quote, since I don’t have the english book available right now.)
Chapter 5: Hagrid explains to Harry that the main task of the Ministy of Magic is to keep the existence of wi

... (read more)