Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 112

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 112.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 112.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 resonance would have to be resolved somehow, unless Harry intends to sacrifice himself, which I doubt would be rational because it now seems that Voldemort's horcrux network is still functional.

I'm reading one of Voldemort's claims in this chapter to be that the resonance, rather than caused by Lily's sacrifice, was caused by Riddle's curse that he put on himself and his descendants, and Voldemort is no longer at risk now that Harry has attempted to end Voldemort's immortality. It could be the case that this is Voldemort's mistake, and love remains the power that he knows not, and there would still be magical resonance if the two came to magical blows, and in canon it's relevant that their wands both have Fawkes's feathers in their core.

I don't think the curse caused the resonance, for two reasons. First, Voldemort never harmed a Riddle. He arguably killed a Potter, but he made no move against the ensuing Riddle. This isn't the type of story to have a race condition bug in the Dark Lord's curse, though that's a great idea for omake.

Second, the don't-kill-each-other curse doesn't explain the feeling of doom or the Azkaban resonance incident very well.

0Gondolinian11y

I wonder if the Elder Wand will come into play. It has so far not been mentioned in the last two chapters, but that doesn't mean Voldemort doesn't have it/hasn't been using it.

4Jost11y

And since this fact is explicitly mentioned in chapter 6 (see quote below), I expect this to play a role in one of the future chapters. (“Law of Conservation of Detail”) [...] (edited for formatting)