Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 114 + chapter 115

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 114, and also, as a special case due to the exceptionally close posting times, chapter 115.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 have a sort of uber-theory that's been hanging over me since Harry heard the whisper to meet Hermione Granger on the train, since he felt irrationally certain that Magic was real back in the very first chapters.

This theory is that Future!Harry, or a friend, Future!Hermione is the one who most fits the bill, is God. Or Root on the Source Of Magic. The things that are inexplicable, that certainty, those prophecies, are just his the future self protecting its timeline, as it remembers doing, just like Harry writing "Don't mess with time" on his paper.

If so, they'll sucessfully take control of reality, and discover that their uber-Time

Pretty sure the Atlantians created the Source. There's probably a dyson sphere in our star cluster providing all the power needed for magic.

5Nornagest11y

I suppose we've already broken one of those commandments, but still, the similarity's amusing.

0Astazha11y

His irrational certainty is explained by the buried memories of Tom Riddle. I imagine Dumbledore steered him towards Hermione.