Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 116

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 116.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 116.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Elevating all of mankind to a posthuman level will be difficult. He'll have to use the Stone around twice per second.

Perhaps he could use some kind of portkey system, where portkeys are set to take people to the Stone and then immediately away, and you need to use transfiguration right before that.

Also, Nicholas Flamel would like to have a word with Harry, as he (she?) kept the Stone for herself specifically to stop a cheap proliferation of its powers.

1Val11y

Indeed, one of the stories at qntm features discovering something like the Fountain of Youth, and describes the organizational nightmare of letting a large enough proportion of mankind use it. Harry Potter, however, if he makes himself immortal, will have a lot of time. Even if a lot of people die of old age or illness before he can reach them, he can still reach a lot of people given enough time. He would also need to figure out some efficient way of space travel and terraforming, otherwise he could cause overpopulation.

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 116

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 116

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