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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

As I also posted on David Brin's site, I don't think it makes sense for Voldemort to let Harry have the wand just because he believed Harry was unable to use it. Precautions don't work that way--taking precautions means that you have to try to stop some things even if you don't believe they'll happen. Just saying "I don't think he can do X" is insufficient reason to avoid taking precautions against it. Proper precautions depends on the size of the mistake you'd have to make in order for X to be a danger. And "I don't think he can use this weapon" has a lot smaller mistake connecting it to danger than "I don't think he can use this non-weapon as a weapon".