Dumbledore is now a much more interesting character-- what mental resources does he need to have made such a complex scheme work?
Is there plausible magic for increasing intelligence?
He reminds me of the Snakes and Spiders in Leiber's The Big Time. Even with time travel, humans can't change the past because time heals itself-- you need an additional set of senses? computational ability? to make the changes which will make a difference. (See also Leiber's "Try and Change the Past".)
Of course, the other answer is that Dumbledore knows he's in a genre story and is manipulating narrative logic, but that's probably not an interesting answer.
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.)