It seems that the problem with Tom "Voldemort" Riddle is that, although he was ambitious, he had no ambition. He was Sorted into Slytherin, and was driven by fear and cleverness to grasp at any opportunity for advancement which he could imagine. But there was no great ambition that he was driven to accomplish - at best he could grasp his way upward into the role of a hero, or a Dark Lord, or into personal immortality, or some other position of merely personal success, never breaking the bounds of his own lonely existence.
True ambition was the power that he knew not, and his downfall.
Let's not forget this:
But I knew the Muggles would eventually destroy the world or make war on wizardkind or both, and something had to be done if I was not to wander a dead or dull world through my eternity. Having attained immortality I needed a new ambition to occupy my decades, and to prevent the Muggles from ruining everything seemed a goal of acceptable scope and difficulty.
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 122, which is the final chapter of the story.
Happy once-in-a-century Pi Day! (3/14/15 == 3.1415)
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.)