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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Thanks for keeping me honest, but I don't have the book available to me now either. If you can quote from a different language edition (especially German), that would help.

Without the book to review, what I relied on in my comment[^1] was this: When I first read it, I came away with the impression that there was no secret. I remember reading about Petunia's letter and concluding that the Evanses knew all about Witches and Wizards. (The differing reactions to them are like the attitudes towards Mutants in Marvel comics.)

[^1]: That, and checking the Wikia for first mentions.

Perhaps, primed by this, I missed later references to secrecy. (But that doesn't help with any comments by McGonagall in the prologue.) I do remember being disappointed (but understanding) with the secrecy in book 2.

Regarding Azkaban: No mention in book 1, yes, but it is mentioned in book 2, before it started to play a major role in book 3.

Yes, certainly. In fact, I always thought that Hagrid's trip to Azkaban in book 2 was set up so that we'd know what the title of book 3 meant. (I knew that title before I read book 2.)

Here’s the quote from chapter 5, too:

»Aber was tut ein Zaubereiministerium?« — »Nun, seine Hauptaufgabe ist, vor den Muggels geheim zu halten, dass es landauf, landab immer noch Hexen und Zauberer gibt.«

rough back-translation:

“But what does a Ministry of Magic do?” — “Well, its main task is to keep the muggles from learning that there are still witches and wizards all over the country.”

3fezziwig11y

Here's the passage from chapter 1: [...] My rough, not-a-native-German-speaker translation: [...] I take from that that McGonagall doesn't expect the Muggles to know what it means that there are suddenly a bunch of owls everywhere, but that wizards everywhere nevertheless have a duty to make sure that Muggles don't see those sorts of things.