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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Hm. To be honest, I'd hoped that this chapter would include a scene of Harry explaining events (or at least a version closer to the truth) to McGonagall, Snape and Moody, since it seemed unlikely they would fall for his melodramatic psychic display. (And because keeping secrets has NOT worked well so far, as Harry recently realized.)

He should definitely tell the truth to Moody. Harry's inexperience has caused him to overlook many things in the past and this is serious enough to get someone with actual experience to look over the facts. Voldemort probably had other plans in motion and other agents carrying out his will.

3kilobug11y

Well, since they did accept that "Voldemort tried to cast AK on a child, boom big explosion", and they do suspect that Harry's scar is indeed connected to Voldemort, I don't see any reason for them to distrust Harry's account of the events, especially since they mostly match what they found there. As for keeping secrets, not speaking about "the sense of doom" and the Azkaban issue to the Order did harm, but keeping secret about partial transfiguration and his ability to transfigure carbon nanotubes allowed him to save the day, so I wouldn't say "keeping secrets has NOT worked well" in general. If I were Harry, I would probably wait a bit until the emotional chaos (both inside Harry and inside McGonagall) lowers a bit before telling them "hrm, you know, I'm the one who killed the Death Eaters". If I were to even speak about it at all.