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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

I felt this way some, particularly about Ch. 108 which was a lot of "tell me instead of show me" exposition, but EY has a lot of promised explanation to get out of the way and I kindof gave it a pass on that basis.

It was unsatisfying that the magical details of the interactions between Quirrell and Dumbledore seemed to come out of nowhere, but I think we need to keep something in mind: we are following this story from Harry's viewpoint. You could fill a restricted section of the Hogwarts library and then some with magical things that Harry doesn't know. It might be unsatisfying to the reader to have these two powerful wizards planning around eldritch magics we've never heard of, but that's how the reality of it would be.

The last few have been a rollercoaster (not in quality, but as an experience), and I'm kindof waiting to see how it all goes to make any judgments. Certainly my expectations have been set high by this series, and I do have a little worry that they might be too high. I don't know if I can think of an ending that would satisfy me, but I'm hoping that EY has.