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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

it has recently been pointed out that Harry's Patronus v2.0 is powered by his life as well as his magic and that this (at least according to Voldemort, so obviously it's true) makes it more powerful than it could have been if powered by just his magic
even the small fraction of his life he was able to give up on the spur of the moment was enough to restore Hermione's life and magic, which even Voldemort was unable to do on his own
in canon, central to Harry's ultimate victory is his willingness to die

and suggest that if your prediction is correct, what powers his absurdly powerful spell may be the sacrifice of the whole of his life and magic.

(Hmm. The power of a potion in HPMOR is determined by what went into making its ingredients, a curious and probably important discovery that hasn't been applied yet for anything other than winning playfights. What went into making Harry was, among other things, the power and ingenuity -- and in some sense even the life -- of Lord Voldemort. Maaaaybe.)

One further remark on that last paragraph. "A potion spends that which is invested in the creation of its ingredients". What counts as creation? Ultimately, pretty much everything on earth is made of the remnants of supernovas...

3Val11y

What if he didn't just sacrifice the whole of his magic, but the whole of entire magic? Wow, a "get rid of magic and turn everyone into a muggle" spell would be actually worse than death to Voldemort. Just image having Voldemort living out his last few decades of life as a Muggle. This makes me think about death being the worst fear of Voldemort. I guess being turned into a muggle and dying decades after that, would be much more fearful to him.

3avichapman11y

You may be on to something. Merlin created his Interdict with exactly that sacrifice.