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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Half of those would either have prevented Harry for reveling his secrets to LV (paralyze, Imperius) or not changed anything in that case (bind with a rope, remove glasses, horcrux, hostages).

Some are doubtful : confudus I'm not sure it would have worked since Harry is an Occlumens, illusions to hide a few Death Eaters, I'm not sure the remaining hidden Death Eaters would have done anything when seeing all Death Eaters dropping dead and LV collapsing. Death Eaters aren't especially loyal nor courageous, they obey by fear, and a 11 years old boy able to kill a dozen without moving (and who is known to scare dementors, and ...) is as scary as Voldemort.

Now, sure, it's always possible to imagine in hindsight ways Voldemort could have used to save the day for himself. As it is for Dumbledore before, and for Harry earlier (see the lack of recognition code, ...).

But if you nitpick that way, is there any fiction that is satisfying for you ? People do mistakes, even very smart people. The only real mistake Voldemort did was the wand thing, the rest is pretty much nitpicking. And one mistake, which with Voldemort knowledge was very low-risk, can happen without hurting too much the suspension of disbelief.

It doesn't matter so much that Voldemort didn't see the exact means of his downfall coming. What bothers me most is that he was sloppy.

The point of my post is that I am much less intelligent than Voldemort, and vastly less experienced in cunning and subterfuge, yet I was able to think of a dozen relatively practical means of reducing risk from Harry in 20 minutes. How many would Voldemort have thought of and implemented if he'd tried?

Maybe they wouldn't have worked against the actual solution Harry chose. That only makes the story better. It means Harry su... (read more)