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Puzzles don't, and EY has stated that he thinks of HPMOR as a solvable problem.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
Not all solvable problems are puzzles. Real world contains solvable problems, and it's more useful for one's calibration to consider real-world-like problems. I would expect a rationalist story to include some red herrings, because they exist in the real world and people normally underestimate their probability.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
If you don't know where people are, and you don't know where the troll is, then the people are at risk.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
The troll is no more. Assuming there is no second troll or any other shenanigans going on, there is no danger anymore. I'm writing this from the point of view of a reader, not any of the characters.
As for the assumption: http://predictionbook.com/predictions/19871
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
Minor point: It doesn't occur to anyone that Hermione might not be the only student who's missing?
Unless there is a second troll, it doesn't seem important.
Unimportant to who? It might not be important to the main story, but someone might notice that their friend or relative isn't in the protected area.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
I just meant that neglecting additional missing people will likely not put them or anyone else in any danger.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
OK. was the whole thing with the soup? I think it can only be one of two things:
1) A shout-out/reference to another piece of fiction. HPMOR does this a lot, and I would not be surprised if this was yet another one of those. I do not recognise what piece of fiction it is referencing though. Can I get confirmation from anyone on if they recognise it from anywhere?
2) Otherwise, it must be important to the story. Remember, HPMOR is a rationalist story. There there are not meant to be red herrings. You are supposed to be able to figure it out. So, if this is the case, how has this got to do with the events of the story. Perhaps some weird time travel thing? I do not know. I notice I am confused.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
Remember, HPMOR is a rationalist story. There there are not meant to be red herrings.
I don't quite see why. Real world contains a lot of those.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
Harry would learn whatever he had to learn, invent whatever he had to invent, rip the knowledge of Salazar Slytherin from the Dark Lord's mind, discover the secret of Atlantis, open any gates or break any seals necessary, find his way to the root of all magic and reprogram it.
This doesn't sound like mere time-turning.
It might include redesigning death.
Possibly wishful thinking on my part, but I could see it as Harry starts the retrieval of Hermione's soul, and collaboration between them is required to reboot the universe without breaking it.
I'm bewildered at why Quirrel thinks he can get any particular result from Harry by having Hermione killed. Or is Quirrel assuming that Harry is now in a state where he can be manipulated reliably?
Minor point: It doesn't occur to anyone that Hermione might not be the only student who's missing?
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
Minor point: It doesn't occur to anyone that Hermione might not be the only student who's missing?
Unless there is a second troll, it doesn't seem important.
EDIT: Or the student could be involved with the instigator of the whole conundrum (either as a victim or as a not necessarily willing helper)...
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
What happened to Hermione was shocking and has nearly monopolized the posts in this thread so far.
There's aftermath coming, though, and I'd like to talk about that. Harry is probably in a lot of trouble. Here's a short list of rules violations:
- He left the Great Hall when specifically warned that doing so would result in expulsion and when he's not allowed to be expelled.
- He inspired other students to take up arms against their teachers, or their groundskeeper, or against their teachers by way of their teachers' groundskeeper, or something. It probably got even worse after he left.
- He endangered other students, the twins, even before confronting the troll by way of unsafe broom usage. Point three see, and all that.
- He revealed his super-secret patronus that Dumbledore told him to keep secret, a super secret.
- He may have damaged His Father's Rock.
- He transfigured something that burns, specifically so that it would do so.
- He has committed himself to a course of action fundamentally at odds with participating in society in any reasonable fashion.
The transfiguration is probably the worst on the list, really. If Harry is lucid at the end of this chapter I expect there will be some throw away line, possibly post-timeskip, about Dumbledore taking measures to avoid Transfiguration Sickness from the gases escaping the troll's skull.
And, really, why did Dumbledore tell him to carry that damn rock? Did he know? Or has Dumbledore found it so useful to carry a large rock around that "get a big rock, keep it with you at all times" is in the top five things he'd tell his younger self if he ever got the chance? Seriously -- the fuck?
I wonder if this arc will be like the psychological sort of horror movie where there's lots of action in the first twenty minute and the rest of the movie is the people who aren't dead yet being mean to each other. I can see that kind of aftermath, here. It won't be pretty.
On the other hand, if the twins go sufficiently public about Harry's homid patronus then Lucius will find out about it anyway and there won't be any reason for Harry not to use it to communicate with Draco. At least, not until the restraining order shows up.
Seriously, having your stalker's glow-in-the-dark spirit animal bounce in through a wall at the most inopportune moments to remind you that they're still thinking about you and really just want to talk could lead a person to think maybe Azkaban isn't so bad an idea after all. Ugh.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
I wouldn't worry about transfiguration sickness: breathing sulphuric acid is probably worse than breathing atomized(?) troll brain matter, and AFAIK sulphuric acid and its salts are either directly harmful or aren't absorbed anywhere interesting in a human.
Now that you've pointed this out, I'm curious: why sulphuric acid? Hydrochloric is simpler.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
Don't go making that second checkmark yet - we're still within the Time-Turner window here. (I'd put it at maybe 2% that he manages to save her - EY doesn't seem the type for cheap copouts like that - but that's still high enough for a bit of bet-heging)
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
Time turners cannot alter anything the user knows about (for some value of `know'), so it would require reenacting this exact scene. So someone would have to simulate Harry's experiences, including the magical event, confuse Harry's patronus as to location of Hermione (or cause Hermione to actually be on scene, albeit invisible), and control the troll, so that it behaved exactly in the way Harry remembers it to have behaved. Also, Dumbledore would need not to tell Harry anything that he couldn't have lied when he said he was responding to the death of a student.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
Dumbledore saying so
Yes. At this point in the story, Dumbledore knows a lot more than Harry does about how magical people die.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
People believed for a long time that cessation of heartbeat is irreversible. While this is less likely to be such a mistake (wizards have some stasis spells for medical use, so at least sometimes they would have more time to assess whether anything works on such a supposedly dead person), it's still possible.
Also, I'd like to posit this: this is the moment the magic decides the person is no more and from this point on any magic that works on a person won't work on him/her. But, nonmagical intervention and spells that aren't designed to target a person could still reverse it.
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The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You
Why did you put an absolute denial mechanism in my program?
There was once a C compiler which compiled in a backdoor into login, whenever it was compiled, and compiled in this behaviour whenever it was used to compile its original (without the `special' behaviour) source code.
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Why? That was my reading.
I'd expected this to be spoken by Harry under his cloak (thus `a voice') when I read it. I still think it was Harry, because it makes perfect sense for him to say that (he wishes to attend to Hermione as soon as possible) and it's awfully coherent for someone going into shock.