Comment author: ChrisHallquist 18 July 2013 07:41:19AM 13 points [-]

On Quirrell's theory of human nature:

It seems to me that in general, his theory yields pretty accurate predictions, and to see what's wrong with it you probably need to know some evolutionary psychology; Eliezer's Adaptation-Executers, not Fitness-Maximizers. Evolution is going to favor genes for convincingly acting like you care about your friends without incurring too many costs for their sake. Yeah, it's also going to favor genes for seeing through easily faked signals, but to the extent that people can get away with it, it's going to favor genes for seeming to care about your friends without incurring the costs that would go along with that. The twist is that evolution while evolution produces behaviors that tend in that direction, it doesn't produce creatures who follow the strategies exactly, or consciously. The result is people who actually care about their friends... even if they very often don't act like it.

Comment author: gthorneiii 18 July 2013 02:35:26PM 0 points [-]

It's interesting to view these friend roles that Quirrelmort keeps referring to as products of evolution, which Harry is purposefully seeking an escape from by seeking to conquer death itself. It's this perspective that allows him to be willing to disregard the evolutionary shaped roles that Quirrelmort keeps trying to remind him of.

Comment author: fractalman 10 July 2013 07:54:59PM -2 points [-]

someone counted up all the "ticks" that happened and gave the assumption of one minute/tick. I assign way more confidence to the second assumption than to the exact number of ticks, as I didn't count them up myself.

Comment author: gthorneiii 11 July 2013 12:27:48AM 3 points [-]

I certainly didn't get the impression reading the chapter that each tick indicated a minute of time. I'd be more inclined to associate each tick with the second hand moving forward, and only really expressed when Harry reached a break between his disjointed thoughts.

Additionally, Eliezer had posted the following on Facebook:

The cognitive skill taught in Ch. 88 is the insight that I call 'wasted motion'. If you read Ch. 88 closely, a 'Tick' does not occur just because time passes. It occurs after each of Harry's thoughts (or actions) that predictably do not contribute to [resolving the issue successfully].

Comment author: fractalman 09 July 2013 09:59:09PM 1 point [-]

There is other evidence in favor of hypyothesis: harry's mind got tampered with. Namely, the Weasley twins had their minds tampered with regarding the map, and harry went through ~30 minutes without realizing hermione was missing.

Comment author: gthorneiii 10 July 2013 05:31:33PM 1 point [-]

~30 minutes? How do you come to that conclusion?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 July 2013 01:54:55AM 0 points [-]

If that logic worked Hermione wouldn't have died in the first place.

Comment author: gthorneiii 10 July 2013 04:04:14PM 1 point [-]

Except that Harry didn't have access to his time turner prior to witnessing Hermione's death. Once something has happened it cannot be re-written in the self consistent time travel of the HPMORverse.

Harry did ask Dumbledore about ways to create the illusion of death in order to get around this hurdle (essentially allowing the information to be the appearance of Hermione's death as opposed to her actual death), but the Headmaster said he had tried something like that with disastrous results previously.

I know of nothing in the known rules of time travel in HPMOR that wouldn't allow for Harry to plan to swap gems. In fact, he used basically this exact same trick for the Remembrall and Torture incidents.

Comment author: Intrism 08 July 2013 07:48:49PM *  2 points [-]

Remember that Harry had just been hastily awoken long before his accustomed time. It's not unreasonable for Harry to be behaving a little bit awkwardly, and it certainly isn't enough of a tell for Dumbledore to draw any conclusions.

What does seem to be a bit of a tell is his strange behavior around the ring; he seems to deliberately create tension before the ring is verified in order to, apparently, play for sympathy afterwards.

Comment author: gthorneiii 09 July 2013 11:30:45PM 2 points [-]

I suggest that Harry, upon finding himself being interrogated about Hermione's remains, resolves to time turn himself after the meeting back to before he was woken and replace the Hermione gem with the Father's Rock gem. Only after resolving on this course of action is Harry ready to submit the gem to Dumbledore for examination.

He can stow the Hermione gem anywhere non-obvious in the meantime and recover it later.

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