Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 117

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 117.

Plans for next chapter release:

Ch. 118 will post on March 9th, 2015, at 12pm Pacific (7pm UTC).

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 117.

Plans for next chapter release:

Ch. 118 will post on March 9th, 2015, at 12pm Pacific (7pm UTC).

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Honestly I think even the wand thing is way overblown.

In story, there was only a few minute or so between the making of the unbreakable vow (which did require Harry to have his wand) and Harry using it to kill the Death Eaters. Voldemort makes the "You have 1 minute to tell me your secrets or you die" offer immediately after the vow, after all.

Voldemort could have reasoned that he wanted to kill Harry as quickly as possible. Forcing him to drop his wand would have taken time. It also would have shown weakness in front of the Death Eaters. And Voldemort probably couldn't imagine anything Harry could have done. He's way too young for any really dangerous magic, despite his skill. Voldemort doesn't know about nano-wires and all that stuff. It's probably unimaginable for him that so little magic could have such a big effect.

Let's not forget that forcing Harry to drop his wand first is not a proposition without any risk either. Voldemort wanted secrets Harry had. If he had demanded that Harry drop his wand, and Harry had refused, he would have been forced to kill him without learning any of his secrets. It's very likely that Voldemort considered this a significant risk.

And let's not forget that Voldemort is far from perfect. People keep saying "He always plays at one lever higher". But the source of that statement was Voldemort himself! He's obviously quite full of himself, but he's definitely not without flaws. He makes quite a lot of mistakes throughout the story. He nearly died in Azkaban due to his own stupidity (casting a kill curse at an innocent in full view of a vital ally whom you know is absolutely against that in every way).

And let's not forget that Voldemort is far from perfect. People keep saying "He always plays at one lever higher". But the source of that statement was Voldemort himself!

A fine point. It is amusing how, through the reinforcement from the meme's spreading, people have forgotten the reliability of this statement.

22MarkusRamikin11y

This is silly. He'd taken the time to do exactly that before. And now, if he's going to give him a full minute just to think... The whole thing falls to the "plausible excuse" vs "what you'd expect to happen" problem, which Harry explains in Answers and Riddles: [...] If you only knew up to chapter 108 or 110 or so, and someone told you that Voldemort is going to take every precaution to contain Harry's threat that he can think of, running a search of the sort that would generate such ideas as "put up elaborate wards, including ones against timelooping", "keep him naked", "have 36 Death Eaters point wands at him, some of them with different orders than others", "murder him very elaborately and thoroughly", "but first make him take a Vow", "commit to guarding the place for six hours anyway" etc., would you expect one of those items not to be "disarm him"?

12Velorien11y

Not so. At T-20 seconds, Harry starts verbally stalling while he keeps working on the transfiguration. [...] After he's already given them lengthy and detailed instructions about all the many different kinds of spell they must be ready to cast at this naked 11-year old boy at the first sign of trouble? [...] He knows that the Harry is a walking extinction event waiting to happen, and that Harry knows secrets powerful enough to be worth learning (potentially even powerful enough to end him - cf. "power he knows not"). Indeed, these are the two facts motivating his actions immediately prior to his defeat. [...] Why? Surely at least one of his Death Eaters knows Expelliarmus.