Here is my best attempt at a delaying tactic, after sleeping on it. Please tear apart/suggest better ways in which LV might tear apart, to replace the poor placeholder responses he has here.
--
"Agree that I musst die, if it ssavess world. But thiss iss not besst way to kill me. Ssee how you can benefit more, given your goalss."
"Explain."
"Believe power you know not doess refer to power to desstroy life-eaterss. Life-eaterss will find you eventually, teacher. Know you. Will hunt you down, ssomeday. Eat all of you, all of world and magic, in the end."
"Sso you will give that magic to me, now."
"You can never reach needed sstate of mind - incompatible with deadly indifference. Sschoolmasster could never casst - incompatible with acceptance of death. Majority cannot casst, and in the tessting, sstandard defence againsst life-eaterss iss ssacrificed. Will weaken your alliess greatly, should I randomly try to teach."
"What do you proposse, then?"
"Take me to life-eater prisson. Allow me to pour out my life and magic there, eradicate them wholly. How I wisshed to do sso, during the resscue! You called me back, then."
".....
Really like that one. My first reaction was "and yet the Gatekeeper can still say no and kill you". After all, Voldemort's trying to prevent untold destruction, a prophecy whose exact paths to possible fulfilment are a mystery. Killing a limited number of Dementors is less important.
But my understanding of the AI box experiment is that it was never just about finding an argument that will look persuasive to someone armchair-thinking about it. It's about finding an opening to the psyche, an emotional vulnerability specific to your current target. Voldemort doesn't seem to have a lot of those, but we do have this:
...Harry asked his dark side what it thought of death.
And Harry's Patronus wavered, dimmed, almost went out upon the instant, for that desperate, sobbing, screaming terror, an unutterable fear that would do anything not to die, throw everything aside not to die, that couldn't think straight or feel straight in the presence of that absolute horror, that couldn't look into the abyss of nonexistence any more than it could have stared straight into the Sun, a blind terrified thing that only wanted to find a dark corner and hide and not have to think about it any more -
(EDIT: I thought about this some more, produced a better solution, submitted it as a review, and also posted it here)
Voldemort knows that Harry possesses an altered version of the Patronus spell, and something else that affects dementors, but not the spell's nature. Harry can buy time by offering to explain how these work, by doing so, and negotiating for more names. Harry can truthfully say that learning certain things about the Patronus and about Dementors will have side-effects that Voldemort may not want, and that this means he needs to think about what to say. Voldemort will surely exert time pressure, but can only speed this up by so much if he wants to fulfill his goal of gaining all of Harry's secret powers. He can also try to convince Voldemort to let him cast his modified patronus; this is very unlikely to work, but should be done anyways because seeming to not try any tricks would itself be suspicious.
A winning strategy should simultaneously disable all of the death eaters present and Voldemort himself. Voldemort will be disabled if their magics touch, especially if that touch can be sustained.
The main weapon at Harry's disposal is partial transfiguration. I spoke
I wrote a version of this up at reddit too, but it seems to me trying to hack the laws of physics is wasted effort when we know very little about how magic works in concrete terms. We don't know what Harry can really do, how fast he can do it, or whether Voldemort would notice.
What we do know are: how Harry thinks how Eliezer thinks * what Voldemort wants
So we should be looking at things Harry could say that would advance his goal of surviving rather than trying to come up with a combination of spells, with the understanding that winning ideas are probably going to cluster around narrative interventions that EY thinks are interesting or important. A few that spring to mind:
Memetic hazard: are there things Harry could say or bring to Voledmort's attention that would pose an existential risk to him if he harms Harry
Let the AI out of the box: is there something Harry can offer Voldemort such that Voldemort goes against his stated agenda
Precommitment / timeless decision theory: are there ways Harry can manipulate the unbreakable vow to force certain conditions in the future
Learning to lose: what if Harry surrenders and agrees to join Voldemort, with a commitment Voldemort finds conv...
Harry hisses "You have missinterpreted prophecy, to your great peril, becausse of power I have, but you know not. Yess, you are sstudying sscience, but, honesstly, you are yearss behind me. It may be that thiss power you know not iss ssomething I have at thiss sspecific time, that you will not know for too many yearss hence.
Before I explain, remember my Vow, and know my honesst intention not to desstroy the world, Vow or no. Now, do you know why I would tear apart the very sstarss? Do you know how? Not to desstroy the world, but to ssave it from whatever threatss require more energy to extinguissh than exisstss in thiss entire ssolar ssystem. There are more thingss in heaven and earth, Dark Lord, than are dreamt of in your philossophy.
I would usse sstar lifting to do it ssafely. In a way, I really would end the world to ssave it, ssince once humanss are out of the cradle, sspread through... er, let uss ssay 'heaven' in Parsseltongue, to mean well beyond thiss planet, why not add the masss of the Earth itsself to the sstuff of the sstarss, to yield that much more energy? And sso, if you avert thiss prophecy, there iss sseriouss rissk you doom yoursself! Are you willing to take...
I posted a longer form of this as a review / solution. Here's a condensed version:
Partial Transfiguration works through a deep understanding of physics. It allows Harry to to create any physically valid state of the universe, as long as he can hold it in his mind.
What this means is that you don't need to Transfigure a gun in order to fire a bullet. You can just Transfigure a bullet in the state of having been fired.
This is what the ability to Transfigure any physically valid configuration really means. You don't need to make a bulky laser weapon. Just make a laser pulse: an arbitrary amount of high-energy photons, aimed in the right direction. Instead of a shaped explosive charge, make a shaped explosion. Instead of antimatter, make gamma rays. Instead of a black hole, dangerous to everybody near it, make a bunch of gravitons and aim them at your enemy.
So given all that, how should Harry kill his enemies?
Lasers are messy weapons. Even black robes are reflective in some wavelengths. Use too much energy and you'll get a fireball back in your face. Release the energy too quickly and it will create an explosion instead of steadily boiling away your target.
Kinetic energy is safer. Tra...
If you can think of any trick that I have missed in being sure that Harry Potter's threat is ended, speak now and I shall reward you handsomely... speak now, in Merlin's name!"
Voldemort forgot a very basic ”trick”: disarming Harry first.
At the end of chapter 112, we wondered about that, too. It turns out that Harry needed to have the wand to perform the vow. With that out of the way … why does Harry still have his wand? Is this just because Eliezer wants to make sure that Harry still has a way out? Or is there some in-universe reason for Voldemort to allow this?
(Not a serious suggestion)
Using the Axiom of Choice and partial transfiguration, Harry divides himself into two exact copies, one of which is killed by the Death Eaters and the other of which escapes.
If you can tell me exactly how to do something, Harry is allowed to think of it. But it does not serve as a solution to say, for example, "Harry should persuade Voldemort to let him out of the box" if you can't yourself figure out how.
Mathematical progress ground to a standstill in March of 2015, when thousands of researches abandoned their work to search for a constructive proof of the Banach–Tarski theorem.
Here is my tentative submission to FF.net. Please comment.
I decline to help Harry out of the box.
Harry no longer has Harry-values; he has unbreakable-vow-values. He is smart, and he will do whatever he can to "not destroy the world." In the process maximizing the probability of "not destroying the world," he will likely destroy the world.
If you would allow me, I would like to appeal to Voldemort's rationality and cast Avada Kedavra on Harry before he says or does anything.
I do not think I will be able to stop other people from getting Harry out of the box. I expected people to believe me when I tried to explain why we should not let Harry out of the box. They did not. It was frustrating. You have taught me a valuable lesson about what it is like to be an FAI researcher. Thank you.
EDIT: I have posted it.
(Edited to remove less interesting solutions)
Harry can tell Voldemort that Harry's death has an unknown chance of hijacking Voldemort's horcrux network, and neither of them have enough information to push that probability below 5%. As far as I can tell, that's simply true. We know that Voldemort hasn't done any tests of the improved horcrux spell until now, and has been mistaken before about its working. The Voldemort described in this chapter would not accept a 5% risk on this particular plan, so he will carry out some experimental tests before killing Harry. That seems to allow Harry to evade immediate death, which is what Eliezer asked for.
Harry's death burst will very likely interact with Voldemort's magic anyway, like the wards Voldemort placed around the spot, or the dark marks on minions' hands. That changes the whole plan. Now Voldemort must get himself and the minions far away at the moment of Harry's death, and also lift the wards. That buys some time as well, and is compatible with the previous idea.
Voldemort has just taught Harry how to un-transfigure stuff wandlessly. If Harry's glasses are some sort of transfigured distraction that could be used to buy a couple
Is Voldemort familiar with logical syllogisms? If not, it should be possible for Harry to trick him by saying something that seems to imply something else, without actually confirming the second thing as true, a la Chapter 49:
Harry kept his face steady. "I was looking up some facts about the Patronus Charm earlier," he said. "According to The Patronus Charm: Wizards Who Could and Couldn't, it turns out that Godric couldn't and Salazar could. I was surprised, so I looked up the reference, in Four Lives of Power. And then I discovered that Salazar Slytherin could supposedly talk to snakes." (Temporal sequence wasn't the same as causation, it wasn't Harry's fault if Professor Quirrell missed that.) "Further research turned up an old story about a mother goddess type who could talk to flying squirrels. I was a bit worried about the prospect of eating something that could talk." (emphasis mine)
One possible example proposed in a review on fanfiction.net (and the one that set me on this train of thought in the first place) is, "If you kill me, the world will end." Since the world will end no matter what, the consequent is guaranteed true, making the content of the antecedent irrelevant due to contrapositive shenanigans... but Voldemort doesn't know that, and it sounds like the end of the world is dependent on Harry's death.
"All your servantss will die if they fire at me. They will die if you do not command them to sstand down NOW."
I really like "Parseltongue 'if' is material implication", but if this were true I'd expect Voldy to know about it and request clarification, e.g.,
"Explain exactly how they will die, or I will shoot you in five seconds."
I have noticed many descriptors of the time, sky and moon in the story recently. I think they might be a clue.
At the Quidditch match:
"June in Scotland meant plenty of daylight; sunset wasn't until ten."
"As the sun set and Harry started using Lumos to read his books"
"And as the stars began to come out"
"Harry glanced at his watch - eleven-oh-four at night. Harry was now reading a sixth-year Transfiguration textbook; or rather he'd weighted the book open, illuminated by a Muggle glowstick,"
At the graveyard:
"The moon above was over three-quarters full, already seeming bright with night not fully fallen."
"gleaming darkly beneath the fading twilight sky"
"A tall form rested upon the altar, and even in the dimming twilight it looked too pale."
"Red eyes gleamed beneath the fading twilight,"
"on a twilight-lit stone altar."
"The twilight sky had dimmed further"
"but the moonlight was too faint for certainty"
"Harry saw by the moonlight that they all now lay in another heap by the altar"
"The gibbous moon riding higher in the cloudless sky, the
I don't care if it's a mistake or a clue. Writing a book of this sort, and then dropping this test on us, makes him 100% fair game for treating all mistakes as clues, poking at them, and generally getting any advantage we can out of their existence.
I doubt Eliezer - champion of truth and science - would permit himself artistic license with this sort of thing. I think it is more likely that this is a genuine mistake on his part.
In a sense, the story as of chapter 113 is an easier task than a standard AI box experiment, because HarryPrime has so many advantages over a human trying to play an AI trying to get out of a box.
Almost this exact scenario was discussed here, except without all the advantages that HarryPrime has.
1) He has parseltongue, so the listener is required to believe the literal meaning of everything he says, rather than discounting it as plausible lies. So much advantage here!
2) Voldemort put the equivalent of the "the AI in the box" next to a nearby time machine! Any predictable path that pulls a future HarryPrime into the present, saving present HarryPrime, and causing him to have the ability to go back in time and save himself, will happen. He could have time turned to some time before the binding, and not intervened because his future version is already HarryPrime and approves of HarryPrime coming into existence so HarryPrime can fulfill HarryPrime's goals.
Now that this has happened, HarryPrime, in the moment of his creation, can establish any mental intent that puts him into alignment with HarryPrime's larger outcome. There are limits, as there were when he escaped from...
Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line... (black robes, falling) ...blood spills out in litres, and someone screams a word.
I'm relatively confident that this quote is a part of the solution. Maybe Harry partially transfigures a monofilament blade and starts cutting down everything.
Just finished reading. Wow! This story is so bleak. I suspect Voldemort just "identity raped" Harry into becoming an Unfriendly Intelligence? Or at least a grossly grossly suboptimal one. Harry himself seems to be dead.
I'm going to call him HarryPrime now, because I think the mind contained in Riddle2/Harry's body before and after this horror was perpetrated should probably not be modeled as "the same person" as just prior to it.
HarryPrime is based on Harry (sort of like an uploaded and modified human simulation is based on a human) but not the same, because he has been imbued with a mission that he must implacably pursue, that has Harry's identity (and that of the still unconscious(!) and never interviewed(!) Hermione) woven into it as part of its motivational structure, in a sort of twist on coherent extraplotated volition.
"if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together"
Versus how "old Harry" and "revived Hermione" were "#included" into the motivational structure of HarryPrime:
...Unless this very Vow itself is somehow leading into the destruction of the worl
"Write what you know" is pretty good writing advice. What's really curious is whether anyone will be able to conclude from the True Ending how EY broke out of the box the first time.
I expect that the collective effect of 'everyone with more urgent life issues stays out of the effort' shifts the probabilities very little
Perhaps, but it shifts the ability of some of us to participate much more.
We've been waiting months for the latest round of chapters - giving the "final" a couple of weeks would have been more fun for me.
For the best experience, if you have not already been following Internet conversations about recent chapters, I suggest not doing so, trying to complete this exam on your own, not looking at other reviews, and waiting for Ch. 114 to see how you did.
If we wish to win, and not merely play the role of students getting a grade, we will of course collaborate.
It's strange how the student role seems to last and last and last beyond school. I see people doing it at work all the time. Though it's hard to blame them, in an institutional culture where others see your grade on the quiz as more important than getting things done. It's really odd being somewhere that asking someone who knows is considered cheating on your quiz, instead of being productive.
(Plausible) Harry can stall for time by explaining his discovery of Mendelian magical inheritance, and the implication that magic is not a property of Wizards but rather bestowed upon them, possibly by the Atlantean Matrix lords. This is a power, or at least knowledge, the Dark Lord knows not, and it gives him time to do his Partial Transfiguration attack, while also not giving Voldemort any kind of immediate strategic advantage.
(Implausible) This would then segue into a discussion of whether Voldemort is just seeing his CEV, and simulated-Harry trying to break it. Somehow, they end up breaking the Mirror's illusion, thus destroying this "world".
I've seen it on a couple of other comment threads, but I think that Harry's understanding of time-causality is key here. If the lesson of the Comed-Tea is learned, it seems that efforts to defy prophecy are useless from the get-go.
But then I'm not practiced at arguing time-travel mechanics - can anyone else elaborate on this question?
EY has previously stated that HJPEV is only knows some of the content of the Sequences, because if he knew all of it he'd be too powerful to write an interesting story around. EY has also stated that Harry is now allowed to come into his full power as a rationalist, presumably meaning he can deduce anything remaining in the Sequences.
So, what things are in the Sequences that Harry hasn't yet invoked? The answer may lie there.
Posting write-only. EDIT I am no longer write-only
Recall Harry's transfiguration power:
...Last week, when the graduating Ravenclaws were discussing their N.E.W.T. scores, Harry had overheard that upper-year Transfiguration practice involved several 'shaping exercises' that relied more on control and precise thinking than raw power; and Harry had promptly set out to learn those, whacking himself hard on the forehead for not trying to read all the later-year textbooks earlier. Professor McGonagall had approved Harry doing a shaping exercise that involved controlling the way in which a Transfiguring object approached its final form - for example, Transfiguring a quill so that the shaft grew out first, then the barbs. Harry was doing an analogous exercise with pencils, growing out the lead first, then surrounding it with wood and finally having the eraser form on top. As Harry had suspected, focusing his attention and magic into a particular part of the pencil's ongoing transformation had proven similar to the mental discipline used in partial Transfiguration - which could indeed have been used to fake the same effect, by partially Transfiguring only the outer layers of the object. This
Important: QQ's earlier parseltongue-spoken plans for Harry to become ruler of the world were said before he heard the 'tear apart the stars' prophecy. So it appears V changed his mind after hearing the prophecy.
Dear Eliezer,
For the best experience, if you have not already been following Internet conversations about recent chapters, I suggest not doing so, trying to complete this exam on your own. . . .
Although you've requested an individual exam format, two mathematicians aren't "the same smart" as the smartest of the two of them.
The Polymath Project got off to a slow start. . . Jozsef Solymosi from the University of British Columbia posted a comment. . . over the next 37 days, 27 people wrote 800 mathematical comments. . . Just 37 days after the project began Gowers announced that he was confident the polymaths had solved not just his original problem, but a harder problem that included the original as a special case. Link
You spend many chapters teaching Harry the importance of collaboration.
"Anyhow," Hermione said. "Captains Goldstein and Weasley, you're on duty for thinking up strategic ideas for our next battle. Captains Macmillan and Susan - sorry, I mean Macmillan and Bones - try to come up with some tactics we can use, also any training you think we should try. Oh, and congratulations on your marching song, Captain Goldstein, I think it was a big plus for esprit de corps."
So I'm afraid I urge everyone to do the opposite of what you've suggested and collaborate. Sorry.
Harry can test the limits of Parseltongue's truth detection properties. "I am plugged in to your Horcrux network and will not be stopped by killing me now."
Harry could start by saying "Not sssure if I should ssspeak. Mussst asssk friend firssst." He will won at least fime, at best an ally.
One bit of information that I haven't seen anyone bring up before, is about the original prophecy (the Harry vs. Voldemort one).
Voldemort claims it is already fulfilled. But in an earlier chapter Snape claims that as the one for whom the original prophecy was meant, he will know when it is fulfilled, and it hasn't yet. So assuming Snape isn't either lying or mistaken (and Dumbledore is also present, bringing down the chance of Snape being mistaken), then that particular prophecy is still in effect.
Snape makes another very important claim in that passage. He claims that the 'Power the dark lord knows not' is not just a power that the Dark Lord doesn't know, but one he can't know. He explicitly rules out Harry's knowledge of muggle science as this power.
As far as I can tell, this pretty much leaves 3 candidates for "Power the dark lord knows not"
Harry's assets:
Foreshadowing / prior hints of resources:
We know that previous attempts by Voldemort to thwart a prophecy have backfired horribly. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that prophecies in HPMoR (as in canon) are self-fulfilling. (Warning: TVTropes-link!)
I therefore predict that Voldemort’s efforts to thwart this prophecy will counteract that intention and lead to the fulfillment of that same prophecy.
After 5 minutes of thinking about it, the only thing I could come up with concerns:
"HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN. HE IS HERE. HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD."
Bellatrix and Sirius are stars, and also Death Eaters. Voldemort has already torn apart Bellatrix to use the Dark Mark, and Harry can tear apart Sirius with the Partial Transfiguration trick people are talking about. How do we know Sirius is present? Because there is a Death Eater named "Mr Grim" who is stated to have known the Potters.
Hang on, isn't Sirius in Azkaban?
"I'm not serious, I'm not serious, I'm not serious..."
The "he" refers to both Tom Riddles, as they are branches of the same person.
Troubles with this suggestion:
The "HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD" part remains unresolved.
Narratively unsatisfying.
I think the literal physical stars are referred to. The centaur also thought the stars would go out:
"So the wandless have become wiser than the wizards. What a joke! Tell me, son of Lily, do the Muggles in their wisdom say that soon the skies will be empty?"
"Empty?" Harry said. "Er... no?"
"The other centaurs in this forest have stayed from your presence, for we are sworn not to set ourselves against the heavens' course. Because, in becoming entangled in your fate, we might become less innocent in what is to come. I alone have dared approach you."
"I... don't understand."
"No. You are innocent, as the stars say. And to slay something innocent to save oneself, that is a terrible deed. One would live only a cursed life, a half-life, from that day. For any centaur would surely be cast out, if he slew a foal."
Literal stars. Literally torn apart. The sun must be tamed. And more distant stars are also dangerous.
Here is my stab at a solution (already posted at ffnet):
First Harry tells V. that Dementors are death, Patronuses work by not thinking about death and the true Patronus works by using a diferent mindstate which V. probably cannot attain (without specifics). Second Harry states that as long as Dementors are around every person including V have in each moment a small but finite probability to be kissed by one. Over an indefinite timeframe the aggregate probaility that V. is kissed approaches one. How this would interact with V's Horkruxes is unclear but he may easily suffer a fate worse than death. Therfore he should keep Harry around at least until the dementors are dealt with.
Then he points out that given what he knows about the ambiguity of prophecies the prophecy V. heard has probably not clearly identified that Harry and not V. is the threat. Thus V. killing Harry might easily doom the world. This is especially likely as V. is not bound by the vow. Thus V. should keep Harry around to guard against his own mistakes and probably take a similar vow. He himself may offer more vows to further Vs goals in exchange for V. vowing to further Harry's goals and so on. This should be benefi...
Another possible solution path:
"There iss already in motion a power which will desstroy world if left unchecked. [entropy] If you kill me, trap me, incapacitate me, or otherwisse hinder me, I will be unable to take necesssary possitive actionss to try to sstop it and ssave world. Am sstill bound by vowss, will not take any action I think will make desstruction worsse or more likely."
Haven't seen this solution elsewhere: I think it's actually strong on its own terms, but doubt it's what Eliezer wants (I'm 90% sure it's about AI boxing, exploiting the reliability granted by Unbreakable Vows and parsetongue)
However, this being said, I think Harry could avoid imminent death by pointing out that if a prophecy says he'll destroy the world, then he presumably can't do that dead. Given that we have strong reasons to think prophecies can't be avoided, this doesn't mean killing him is safe, but the opposite - what Voldemort should do is make him immortal. Then the point at which he destroys the world can be delayed indefinitely. Most likely to a point when Voldemort gets bored and wants to die, after the heat death of the universe.
This isn't a great solution for Harry, because the best way to keep him alive would be paralysed/imprisoned in some fairly extreme way. But it should hit the criteria. The one really big point against it is that all this info is very available to Voldemort, so not sure why he hasn't come up with it himself.
I am the only one quite upset about this and thinking it's mean from Eliezer ? There are at least three kind of reasons that makes me upset :
It breaches an implicit contract between readers and authors. Especially when it's such a long work, each reader has invested literally hundred of hours to get to this point. Asking us to do something to get the real ending, that's already written, at this point is a kind of blackmail. And the only long-term answer to blackmail, as Dumbledore explained in HPMOR, is to not comply.
What purpose does it serve, apart doing harm ? The purposes of HPMOR, in my understanding, are : 1. Bring awareness (and therefore, among other things, money/donations) to MIRI/CFAR. 2. Show people that rationality is awesome so they'll read more about it (ie, the Sequences, books, ...) and therefore "raise the sanity waterline". This undermines 1. by pissing off part of the reader base and making the story suboptimal, and this greatly undermines 2. if the super-rational Harry still fails.
It's not a fair nor fun game at all, because there is so much we don't know about the laws of the settings, so we are reduced to blind guesses. We don't know how fast
I don't think it's unfair at all, but your comment made me rethink something that may be relevant. Quirrel set a surprise exam, and it was surprisingly easy and everyone (except Hermione) passed. I think probably the worst thing that you can do in the face of a surprise exam is not attempt to answer, and maybe that's part of the lesson EY is trying to convey here :-)
I also note that Quirrel failed Hermione in the knowledge that he would be resurrecting her, and this is either very mean, or a very good lesson for resurrected Hermione, or both.
Harry is allowed to solve this problem any way YOU would solve it. If you can tell me exactly how to do something, Harry is allowed to think of it.
This is not quite phrased correctly. While I know less magic than the protagonist (having not attended Hogwarts for a year), I know far more physics and mathematics than he does. I am also privy to world-building knowledge that he isn't. For example, we know about major artefacts:
We also know little trivia:
In conclusion: it's not enough for us to think of a solution, we also need to explain how Harry can think of it. There's no point in simulating Harry's smarts on my hardware, I can use my own smarts. But I do need to simulate Harry's knowledge.
Not a solution, but should the Death Eaters be discounted as not good for much of anything?
I don't just mean that Voldemort has shown them to be fairly incompetent, but that they may be too shaky to use whatever remains of their skills.
As an orthodox Discordian, I would be very pleased if it turned out that one of the Death Eaters has an idea which would be very useful for Voldemort, but is too afraid to say it.
IMPORTANT:
This is your final exam.
You have 60 hours.
Your solution must at least allow Harry to evade immediate death, despite being naked, holding only his wand, facing 36 Death Eaters plus the fully resurrected Lord Voldemort.
If a viable solution is posted before *12:01AM Pacific Time* (8:01AM UTC) on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2015, the story will continue.
Otherwise you will get a shorter and sadder ending.
There are more details and suggestions at the end of the chapter.
Question for Eliezer: Would a post to a LessWrong HPMOR discussion thread count as a solution, or must all solutions be posted to fanfiction.net?
Its possible that the solution will have multiple steps, such as:
1) Stall for time by giving information on useful powers
2) Demand that vow requires Hermione is awakened so Harry can discuss the probability of him ending the world.
3) Hermione causes a distraction by slitting her wrists and running round shouting "Look at me! I'm bleeding silver blood everywhere but I'm not dying! How can it be?"
4) Harry triggers resonance cascade
5) Harry transfigures weapon
6) Harry kills everyone
7) Harry, badly wounded, drinks Hermione's unicorn blood to save him from death, killing Hermione in the process
8) Hermione comes back from the dead because of the Horocrux
9) Hermione uses the philosophers stone to permanently transfigure them both into unicorns
10) HPMOR turns into Harry Potter/MLP:FiM crossover fanfiction
Now, my question is this: does one review have to get every step absolutely correct? Or is it ok if ten reviews each get one step correct? What if a review starts "first stall for time - many other people have submitted excellent ideas for this, which I shall defer to."?
I can think of a solution, but may not be the solution because it relies on untested extensions of previous mechanisms having to do with "Dementers" which HarryPrime knows to be magical incarnations of death, that obey people's expectations about death. Critically, it depends on how much play he has in the distance and plasticity of dementer control.
My plan probably requires him to have put it into motion during the text we already read. Imagine that when he was surrounded at the end of chapter 112 at this moment, he put his plan into motion:
You know, said the last voice within Harry, the voice of hope, I think this is getting pretty bad even by my standards.
Right after that, he could have started expecting 40 dementers to arrive at his location without disturbing or being seen by anyone while traveling, so it doesn't change anything already known about the world before he time turned already.
He expects them to arrive in a group, and to kill everyone but him and Hermione, even if he himself has already been killed (this last clause might not work, depending on how the magic about dementer expectation control works). He expects the dementers to travel at a poetica...
Oh, interesting. EY just asked his readers to solve an impossible problem. I wonder how many will feel they have enough at stake here to actually pay the mental and emotional tax involved in solving impossible problems, to maintain that awful tension. I mean, at the end of the day, it's a fanfic on the Internet.
I sure hope the problem looks easier to some smarter readers than me, because it's gonna be silly from a promotion-of-rationality angle if the addition of rationality to Harry Potter changes the outcome from "hero wins" to "hero dies and people he cares about get horribly tortured to death".
Thought some more, and I have some ideas.
One of the realizations I think I had is that magic recognizes divisions where there are none. PT being the prime example, but also the ability of armor to block spells. PT relies on removing the caster's understanding of divisions; what if there is a way to add divisions? If Harry can convince himself that his skin is not part of himself, will it block spells the way thick leather does?
Conversely, are there other divisions that open possibilities if removed? Like between people and the ground, or people and people?
Most thinking I'm reading about uses PT to create a weapon with which to attack, but attack is not the goal. Escape is. Means of escape fall into a few categories, I think: Figuring out something like Apparition on the spot, quantum tunnelling, or Newtonian. Right now I'm just going to think about "newtonian" - It's just as ridiculous for transfiguration to not include velocity as it is for it to only effect "discrete" objects. Can Harry simply add enough velocity to himself to escape? (Adding acceralation doesn't work, as enough to escape fast enough probably squishes him)
Here are crazier things:
There's good
Can we each propose a non-transfiguration solution? Even if it's just a rough idea. I feel like we're getting stuck on transfiguration, and a bunch of those require very precise handling of things 10 feet away (such as death eaters) or significantly big things (Harry's body parts). Hermione struggled to get the stunning hex right on the first try, and I feel Eliezer will categorize "transfigure this very precise, remote thing" as a "new magical power".
The Parseltongue statement must be a critical part of the upcoming solution, I think. Simply killing the Death Eaters will not do; they are, as Voldemort puts it, useless. (That is, a solution that disables the Death Eaters but not Voldemort is not a solution.)
The text of the boundary conditions suggests that Harry can't change Voldemort's values, but the lesson suggestion makes clear that he can change Voldemort's beliefs.
I think the first thing for Harry to suggest is that the prophecy is being misinterpreted. The trouble with this is he needs to hear t...
Question for EY:
In the chapter, you wrote:
If a viable solution is posted before 12:01AM Pacific Time (8:01AM UTC) on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2015, the story will continue.
Does this mean that the reader-suggested solution will in fact be used, or will the story simply continue with the solution you originally had in mind?
How many months do you want to wait until Eliezer rewrites the story to match the reader-provided solution?
Pessimistic Assumptions Thread
"Excuse me, I should not have asked that of you, Mr. Potter, I forgot that you are blessed with an unusually pessimistic imagination -"
– Ch. 15
...Sometimes people called Moody 'paranoid'.
Moody always told them to survive a hundred years of hunting Dark Wizards and then get back to him about that.
Mad-Eye Moody had once worked out how long it had taken him, in retrospect, to achieve what he now considered a decent level of caution - weighed up how much experience it had taken him to get good instead of lucky - and h
Eliezer gave a hint of the solution in chapter 5:
"You triumphed over the Dark Lord by being more awful than he was, and survived the Killing Curse by being more terrible than Death."
Observation: If the purpose of this exercise is to run an AI box experiment, with EY as gatekeeper and the internet hivemind as the AI, then the ability to speak in parseltongue is problematic: It appears to make the game easier for the AI, thereby preventing the results from being generalized to a standard AI box experiment.
So why did Eliezer include the parseltongue constraint?
Maybe parseltongue is meant to introduce the concept of provability in a way that everyone can understand. To speak in parseltongue in real life, you just speak in logic statements...
Planning thread over at /r/HPMOR for centralized discussion. It's probably better to have segregated groups working on this, but I don't really think that'll be a problem.
If you have any remotely good idea, post it as a fanfiction.net review. The currently extant ones are awful. Most don't even make sense.
I regard fighting as futile (can't speak magic without death eaters attacking, can't cast worldess magic without Voldemort sensing through resonance and shooting). Harry must lose.
Voldemort is only killing him because of the prophecy. Harry should ask to hear the prophecy, so that if he is ever reborn somehow he can avoid it. Voldemort will probably tell him, hard to think how giving information about the destruction of the world to Harry could hurt it, since he's taken the Vow and now can only threaten the world through ignorance.
Once Harry hears the p...
Why hasn't Voldemort suspended Harry in air? He floated himself into the air as a precaution against proximity, line of sight problems, and probably magics that require a solid substance to transmit through. If Harry were suspended in air partial transfiguration options would be vastly reduced.
Why hasn't Voldemort rendered Harry effectively blind/deaf/etc. - Harry is gaining far more information in real time than necessary for Voldemort's purposes?
Also, it seems prudent not to let Harry get all over the place by shooting him, smashing him, etc. without...
Posted on ff.net: Harry realizes that his true power the Dark Lord knows not is his ambition to master the fundamentals of magic, in contrast with how proud of himself Voldemort was for developing one original ritual. Harry cannot explain this to Voldemort-that would go against his Vow. However, he can drop some very juicy teasers in Parseltongue; in particular, he can imply that his secret holds the cure to Voldemort's ennui. It might go something like (in Parseltongue):
"Though you are ambitiouss, you have no ambition. That iss true power Dark Lord k...
Harry needs to lose. He needs to drop his wand, kneel down, and say in Parseltongue, "I loosssse." Quirrel has already set up several tests that Harry has failed by refusing to lose. By proving that he can indeed lose, instead of continuing to escalate the conflict until the stars themselves are at risk, he may be able to pass LVs final test.
I have a way of escaping that uses an item that has been established.
A: In the interest of keeping it simple the thing the most obvious answer for something Harry can do that he in theory could teach Voldermort/keep him talking is partial transfiguration.
B: Once Harry tells Voldermort that he can partially transfigure things, Voldermort will want to know the words/motions. Harry can say that he can teach Voldermort (he can't teach him how to cast a Patronus due to Voldermort's lack of love and he can't teach him how not to fear the death the way Harry doe...
Voldemort is going full Bond villain and talking when he should be killing. I figure I'll have to sleep on this problem, but here are some observations:
Harry can't speak with the Death Eaters. We haven't been told of a secret Parselmouth among them, so any conversation will be intelligible only to Harry and to Voldemort.
Voldemort can periodically ask in Parseltongue whether Harry is doing anything to try to escape, and a refusal to answer would likely result in a swift death.
It has been pointed out in canon that a good Legilimens can detect when some
I shall take no chances... in not destroying the world...
Oh my... did Voldemort just magically imbued Harry to do his best to put the whole world into time-frozen stasis in the Mirror?
Though revealing this to LV would not do any good - there is a failure safe mode, namely killing Harry, and if LV learns what he did (apart from pointing out his own stupidity), he has all the motivation to kill Harry right now.
Skimming over (part of) the proposed solutions on FF.net has thoroughly destroyed any sense of kinship with the larger HPMoR readership. Darn, it was such a fuzzily warm illusion. In concordance with Yvain's latest blog post, there may be few if any general shortcuts to raising the sanity waterline.
I don't see how there could possibly be a real solution. No matter what Harry offers Voldemort -- for example even if he offers to make an Unbreakable Vow to devote himself to serving Voldemort's purposes -- Voldemort will still worry that the prophecy will mean that Harry will end up destroying the world. So he will simply kill him anyway, like an AI Gatekeeper who doesn't listen but simply says "AI DESTROYED" immediately.
Harry obviousely needs to buy some time, so he'd better start speaking. Patronus V2.0 grants only the "good" kind of power and feeds on caster's maxHP, so it could be revealed easier than partial transfiguration. Some meaningful amount of time is going to be acquired (while explaining HPJEV's viewpoint) that way, because HPJEV and LV oppose death in entirely different ways (one wants to fight it and the other one flees). But that's too easy and either is not in the solution at all or is followed but something more clever.
By the way, nobody said t...
Lets see..
Notes: EY didn't say that noone was aware of what was happening, just that anyone who would help Harry think he is at the game. Given the prophecy about Harry, this has disturbing implications.
Anyway: Obstacles: 39 minions in not-defensively enchanted blacks. One dark lord who can't use magic on you, but who can shoot your ass, An absolute prohibition on moves that could escalate to world threatening levels.
Assets: Naked pasty english lad. Wand. Parseltongue.
.. You know, normally in this sort of situation I'd recommend talking. Parselton...
I'm so confused about the wand. Why does Harry still have the wand? Obviously Voldemort should have demanded that Harry drop the wand before giving him 60 seconds to speak.
Harry can do a lot of things, but V already knows many of them. His strongest options are things he's sure V has no idea he can do, like the swerving hex he used on Moody.
EDIT: His strongest options for ways to outwit LV, not things to tell LV to save friends.
Let's discuss that mirror in a bit more detail. A fantastically powerful artifact that's trying to avoid the destruction of the world shouldn't be outside discussion when you (or Voldemort) are trying to avoid the destruction of the world.
First let's get away from suggestions like "Harry should convince Voldemort they're in the mirror". If Harry believed that were true, he wouldn't want to make Voldemort aware of it because Voldemort being trapped inside the mirror is good. If Harry believed they were not in the mirror, he couldn't claim he belie...
I have just realised that the 'partial transfigureation to create a steel monofilament' idea probably doesn't work. The problem is that in general, it doesn't actually require partial transfigureation - one could simply transform an object into a steel spike which pushes (rather than transfigures) its way through the soil, going under the shields and then up into your enemies' brain. If this worked, someone would have figured it out by now, because this requires no special knowledge. Therefore, there is some defensive shield which would prevent this attack, and presumably the Death Eaters have shields raised, unless they want to run the risk of a sudden attack wiping them all out at once.
Thinking about AI boxing - note that it is Harry who represents humanity, his core values and goals were not changed that much by the Vow, they were just formalized.
It is LV that has goals that are mostly what we'd agree about (`ensure the continuous existence of the world'), but he has very different values and no moral constraints. In short, dealing with him is like dealing with an Unfriendly AI or an Alien mind (like Sorting Hat).
So this is more like a clash between Unfriendly (or better, Indifferent) and a Friendly AI, where the goals are more or less...
Here is a suggestion that I haven't seen yet. I don't think it constitutes a full plan by itself, but it fits the form of an AI box experiment with Harry as the AI.
Harry and Voldemort's discussion about testing his horcrux 2.0 spell by offering immortality to one of his friends (read: minions, in his case) revealed a weakness, that Voldemort is heavily biased against certain ways of thinking. Harry should remind him of this in the context of the Patronus 2.0 spell. The fact that Harry was able to discover a new (and incredibly powerful, as we have seen) fo...
Regardless of other differences in utility function, Harry and Voldemort both want the world to not be destroyed, and consider this of the utmost priority.
Aumann's agreement theorem means that as they are both rationalists, they should be able to come to the same opinion on what the best course of action is to prevent that. Harry was willing to sacrifice himself earlier to save others.
The case for thinking seriously about Partial Transfiguration:
1) Partial transfiguration is wordless, but wanded.
2) it's a power Riddle doesn't know as per the prophecy.
3) Harry still holding his wand is a Chekov's Gun for a wanded spell such as transfiguration.
4) Yes, that does seems too obvious, but I don't think Eliezer wants to end the story here so he wouldn't want an extremely subtle puzzle.
5) The only evidence against is that Quirrell might have ripped it from Hermione's mind...but he wouldn't know what to look for, would he? And Dumbledore may w...
Thoughts:
Also,question. Do our suggestions need to be posted on fanfiction.net, or does this thread count?
I remembered I have a PredictionBook account that I registered some years ago and forgot about, so I might as well get started with this whole "calibration" business.
The true solution involves time travel: 50%
The true solution relies on Partial Transfiguration: 80% (this isn't in contradiction with #1 - it can involve Partial Transfiguration (e.g. as a threat, or a demonst...
Working backwards is a standard strategy for solving puzzles like this. Let's imagine Harry having gotten out of the predicament. How does the situation look? Where is Harry? Where is Voldemort? Where is Hermione?
Edit: TL;DR I made equivalent problem. It is sufficient and necessary. Prove: p(H causes destruction | H is Alive) < p(H causes destruction | H is Dead)
I have exams so I don't have enough time to do the whole process, as it should be done. I wanted to donate my thoughts and hope for someone else to do the job.
If you remember, we are not supposed to give solutions at once, we should talk about problem first. This includes gathering fair knowledge about all the mechanisms mentioned.
I see some people listed available objects, which could be used in open c...
Random lines of thought to explore:
Can we figure out how sacrificial magic works from available evidence(we've seen a lot of it recently) and could Harry use that new knowledge to solve his predicament? A principle similar to the potion making principle perhaps?
Harry had to go all the way down to timeless physics in order to do partial transfiguration. I know very little about the theory but could Harry apply that knowledge to somehow partially transfigure time itself or transfigure something not in his present?
If Harry can convince Voldemort to allow him...
ROT 13ed Final Exam suggestion:
Va Cnefyrgbathr "Jung cebonovyvgl qb lbh nffvta gb gur cbffvovyvgl gung V nz fhssvpvragyl Gbz Evqqyr gung V jvyy or pbcvrq vagb lbhe Ubepehk argjbex?"
Re-reading the story, this made me smirk in light of recent revelations:
Harry scowled at her. "Fine, I won't bite anyone who doesn't bite me first."
It occurs to me that, given the philosopher's stone is around, any superweapons Harry could create and conceal with it in slightly under an hour could exist in the clearing, provided that they're enough to let Harry survive another hour, access the time turner, and create said superweapons.
Also, since prophecies are self-fulfilling and Voldemort prefers a world that won't end to a world that will and Harry has already made the appropriate unbreakable vow to do everything to prevent the end of the world, Harry could argue that expected universe where Voldemort lets Harry live is far superior to the one where Harry dies.
"Expecto Patronum", at which point Death-Eaters will fire an utterly futile barrage of AKs. Voldy still can't fire directly at Harry due to resonance. Gun is not as much concern if you move fast enough and considering Voldy is some distance away. Gives Harry enough elbow room to get to his nearby (?) Pouch, Cloak and Time-Turner with 1 more hour on it. At this point we're sorta free of any serious constraints.
This is very similar to a solution I published earlier, except that when I first proposed it, I had forgotten that Harry hadn't got his wand at that point in time (but why hasn't he been disarmed now?).
The one plausible power Harry has is transfiguration, seeing as there are no dementors nearby, it seems unlikely that the patronus 2 can be used as an offensive weapon against anything apart from dementors.
Harry should transfigure some exotic matter with density far in excess of normal matter, and use it to slice through all the death eaters and Voldiemort. ...
Here's another object-level tactic I haven't seen mentioned yet. (Assume LV will not just kill Harry for speaking of non-magical powers. I have a way of increasing the likelihood of this assumption being true)
Harry could explain the Power of Expected Utility Calculations and subtly attempt a Pascal's Mugging on LV, convincing him that LV can't possibly assign a probability of less than one in twenty that killing Harry will indeed avert the prophecy, or for that matter cause it, and that the rational action to take is to not kill Harry. He can present it as...
Ssome livess I have already promissed you, but otherss I did not. . . For each unknown power you tell me how to masster, or other ssecret you tell me that I desire to know, you may name one more of thosse to insstead be protected and honored under my reign. Thiss alsso I promisse and intend to keep.
Is Harry permitted to name himself as a person to be protected? It doesn't seem to say that he cannot. I believe partial transfiguration would buy him a life. It's an unsatisfying solution, as it only saves Harry. But then again, the exam only requires Harry to survive.
Transfiguration requires the caster's wand to touch the target. However, Harry's understanding of partial transfiguration was based on his understanding of the underlying quantum field nature of reality. This means that Harry's wand is touching everything all at once. He should be able to Transfigure anything in the area that he wants, and based on the Azkaban sequence, he could think or speak while doing so.
I have read several reviews on fanfiction.net, and posts here, that say Harry will transfigure a very thin knife out of the tip of his wand and cut off all the Death Eaters' heads, perhaps while distracting Voldemort with words. While that could happen, I think it would be better for Harry to go for their arms. No arm means no mark, and no pointing wands, but is much easier to survive, especially with magic medicine and the Philosopher's Stone right there!. Actually, Harry could transmute enough phosphorus to burn so bright as to blind everyone behind him ...
This solution does not prevent Harry's immediate death, but seems much better than that to me anyway. I haven't been following conversations before, so I can only hope that this is at least somewhat original.
Assumptions:
-Lord Voldemort desires true immortality. Alternatively, there is a non-zero chance that he will come to desire true immortality after a long time of being alive. While he is a sociopath and enjoys killing, achieving immortality is more important to him.
-Lord Voldemort does not dismiss things like the Simulation Hypothesis out of hand. Sinc...
I am actually reluctant to think of ways for HP to escape, because I am kind of rooting for LV in this fic. Sure, he is ruthless and stuff, but he seems to be way less dangerous than Harry, who is prophesied to destroy the world. LV just hates stupid people. Plus he has all but made Hermione immortal, and she the only voice of reason in the story. And he likes gazing at stars, and is against nuclear weapons. A competent ruler is such a rarity. As kings go, he would be considered cute.
Didn't V see at least the results of a Partial Transfiguration in Azkaban (used to cut through the wall)? Doesn't seem like something V would just ignore or forget.
Voldemort might be failing to anticipate partial Transfiguration that has no visible effects (although it's unclear why Harry is allowed to hold the wand after the Vow is done). It might be Transfiguration of the tip of the wand or of a patch of own skin. Transfiguring it into carbon nanotube wires (Ch. 28) or something else super thin that's good at cutting things might make the result both deadly and invisible, while keeping the amount of stuff small in order to be able to complete the process in reasonable time (as with cutting the wall in Azkaban, Ch. ...
Harry can also dispel any of his transfiguration wandlessly and wordlessly. So any toxic substance he creates he can dispel as it reaches him.
But it does not serve as a solution to say, for example, "Harry should persuade Voldemort to let him out of the box" if you can't yourself figure out how.
It's a shame that nobody's going along this line of thought. It would be cool to see a full, successful AI-Box experiment out there as a fanfiction.
(I'd do it myself, but my previous attempts at such have been.... eheh. Less than successful.)
I think a big question here is "what kinds of magic, if any, are available?". Answer might be "none". Partial transfig takes too long, everything else requires motion.
That seems to leave to possibilities:
In other words, no known magic is useful in this situation.
Does that seem reasonable? Does anyone remember a form of magic that doesn't require motion or time?
"Having made the Unbreakable Vow, it is impossible for me to engage in motivated reasoning which would put the world at risk, while it is entirely possible for you to do so. I am convinced that you are more likely to fulfill the prophecy by killing me than by letting me live. Since my reasoning is not and cannot be motivated in such a way as to put the world at risk, while yours can be, it is more likely that I am right, and it would be to your advantage not to kill me."
Posted-
This is a two step solution. The first part succeeds or fails deterministically. If the first part fails the fallback comes into play and that succeeds or fails probabilistically, so you may need to generate a pseudo random number to evaluate this proposal.
Part 1: this part uses partial transfiguration and his newly practiced skills from the 6th year textbook.
Harry must transfigure something touching his wand, so the object transfigured is a small patch of skin touching his wand. He will probably lose that bit of skin when the transfiguration wear...
I make the following prediction : the transfiguration exercise of ch. 104 foreshadows the possibility of safely transfiguring a certain kind of explosive, that relies on containing several components that will explode upon contact. The ch. 104 exercise tells us that containment chambers can be formed first, and their contents afterwards, such that the bomb will not accidentally explode during transfiguration.
Voldemort has promised in Parseltongue:
"For each unknown power you tell me how to masster, or other ssecret you tell me that I desire to know, you may name one more of thosse to insstead be protected and honored under my reign."
1) If Harry was able to give Voldemort an infinite number of powers, through the use of recursion or some mathematical trick or something - some way that Magic Itself will consider to be a large/infinite number of separate but related powers, and
2) If Harry was able to enunciate in some way an infinite number of being...
Can people who have posted their solutions to FFN state as much in their comments so we don't have to wade through the FFN reviews?
Harry is allowed to convince voldy to keep him in a coma to kill later. He just has to "evade immediate death", even if there is no hope of survival afterwards
Challenge accepted.
I've already got the seed of a solution which I'll be fleshing out and posting formally, later.
(And it took me half an hour after coming up with it, to get here, register, and figure out how to post.)
A transfigured port key in his glasses does seem possible, or some kind of explosive device hidden in the transfigured ring.
EDIT: Fawkes is also a way out here, if Harry can delay an enemy attack for several seconds
Second edit (the serious one): The ring contains some kind of binding device. This could be the blinding potion Harry used in battles, a set of flash-bang grenades, or (most likely) a seventh-year variant of the blinding potion Harry bought off a student. This countermeasure will blind the unwarded death eaters which allows Harry to immediately fall to the ground and call Fawkes. Fawkes teleports Harry out and allows escape.
V's giving his gun to one of his followers (who are blood purists, not muggle technology experts, and probably haven't ever fired a gun) suggests that he is still unable to "raise hand or wand against" Harry, for whatever reason.
If Harry can cause himself to appear to be V, the Death Eaters will presumably be confused enough to give him time to act (given that V cannot disable Harry himself). Harry can then use magical resonance to cause V to turn into a snake and/or explode, convincing the Death Eaters that he is really V.
The hole in this plan i...
Might get around to posting a solution. Here's the direction I'm headed:
I think I have a reasonable timetable that can be found in this post. I figure there's at most an hour and a half left until Harry leaves the Quiddich game. I don't expect the cavalry to save the day, but it imposes a time restriction.
Cedric is a wild card here. If he were to accompany Harry then we probably would have learned of it by now. Otherwise, he may have been asked to raise the alarm should Harry fail to return in a timely manner, so I think it's safe to suppose that the time...
There are all sorts of ways to fight using partial transfiguration. Many of the obvious ones mentioned so far are too slow (tunneling through the ground, nerve gas), suicidal (micro black holes, antimatter, unununium, critical mass of enriched uranium, nitroglycerin, etc.) or too complicated.
only a fool would attempt a plot that was as complicated as possible, the real limit was two.
On the other hand, Dumbledore took the shotgun approach to plotting. Let's take the best of both worlds.
Then the obvious answer is chain lightning! Transfigure the air into...
Maybe Harry is wearing transfigured 'goggles that make everything you look at green' (which he has seen on his trip to buy school things), and can cast light of just the right intensity and wavelengths to heat Death Eaters up without burning himself?
Assuming there is a viable plan to disable all opposition Harry can just state this fact in parseltongue and buy time with that. The dark side of Harry surely can come up with one along the lines of partial transfiguration threads of say Iridium ("Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver"..."). Enough approaches that seem conceivable have already been posted.
Actually he has to state this before executing it because that reduces the risk of the intervention as required per the vow. On the other hand he cannot protect earth when...
1) Cancel the Transfiguration on his father's rock, use it as a physical shield to block Death Eater attacks.
2) Patronus 2.0 to block Voldemort's attacks - we only know for a fact that it blocks Avada Kedavra, but it is an instance of Harry's magic, which seems to interact poorly with any of Voldemort's magic. If he's got sufficient control, put the Patronus coincident with Voldemort's body - at minimum it'll prevent him from doing too much with magic, and with luck it'll actuaolly cause some sort of resonance that disables Voldemort.
Those two together b...
Best answers I've heard or devised so far:
Leonhart's suggestion below. Probably the best rhetorical move Harry could possibly make.
Harry's portkey is transfigured into a tiny chip implanted under his own skin. It would be totally in character for him to do that.
If he has the range, transfigure long, thin tendrils that overlap with Voldemort and the death eaters' spinal cords at the neck level. Thin so that he doesn't have to work with as much mass/volume.
Transfigure the air around him into a carbon nanotube shell, buying himself time for another spell.
Okay, so I like everyone else's comments, but they feel complicated with what I came up with:
Harry convinces himself of #2 enough to say it in parselmouth.
Harry says "I think I understand the prophecy you're trying to avoid, and I believe killing me makes it happen. I would say more, but you'd probably use it to kill me" in parselmouth.
Harry stays silent.
Maybe Harry needs to solve the nature of magic. Magic acts on human expectations: things happen the way they are expected to happen, within certain rules. Psychological features like intention, emotion, and desire have real effects on the outside world. It seems magic only makes sense in a "human-designed" universe. So the likeliest scenario to HP should be that his universe is a simulation. The limits of Time Turners could be viewed as rules imposed by the simulation-keepers to keep the simulation computable. The Mirror of Erised seems to sugges...
Partial transfigure air at wand tip into Sarin gas (which I'm sure Harry knows the chemical structure of). Heating it will help it diffuse faster. Hold breath. But not before telling Voldemort something true put possibly useless (like the special power is "love" or something). I'm fairly certain that voldemort would feel the need to respond to this, explaining why it is a stupid answer. You have to inhale to talk. After that, make for the time-turner I guess?
Here's a flawed solution, but maybe someone can fix it.
Harry performs partial transfiguration on his brain, to transform it into a state where he thinks that he's booby-trapped the universe (for example, by transfiguring some strangelets along with a confinement field that will expire before the strangelets do). Then he just explains honestly to Voldemort why the universe will end if he dies.
How about simply telling Voldemort that he doesn't have a complete model of time, and give him a bunch of examples of things until one is found which voldy wouldn't have predicted. Suggest to voldemort that he should keep harry in a coma until he has done more experiments with Time to derive its nature, and then kill Harry without waking him up.
I made my suggestion.
Assuming you can take down the death eaters, I think the correct follow-up for despawning LV is... massed somnium.
We've seen somnium be effective at range in the past, taking down an actively dodging broomstick rider at range. We've seen the resonance hit LV harder than Harry, requiring tens of minutes to recover versus seconds.
LV is not wearing medieval armor to block the somnium. LV is way up high, too far away to have good accuracy with a hand gun.If LV dodges behind something, Harry has time to expecto patronum a message out.
... I think the main risk is LV apparating away, apparating back directly behind harry, and pulling the trigger.
Obvious potentially useful moves:
Buy time with discussion of secret powers (partial Transfiguration and true Patronus), since we're optimizing primarily for surviving the immediate situation and not for preventing Voldemort from knowing useful powers.
Partially Transfigure himself in some useful way, depending on subsequent access to PStone to avoid T. sickness.
Cast Patronus centered on himself to blind and to block AKs. (Problem: doesn't block other curses. But if he moves, Death Eaters might fire at the shiny thing instead of at him.)
Un-Transfigu
Harry might not be able to transfigure air into solid objects, but he can still transfigure air into other gases, right?
Even if the Death Eaters' masks had some kind of air filter enchantment on them, they likely don't anymore:
We... we were not fighting in them, Master, with you gone... so I did not maintain their enchantments...
So perhaps Harry could partially transfigure the air around the semicircle of Death Eaters into some highly toxic invisible gas while leaving enough normal air between the gas and himself that it would be slow enough to propagate that he would have time to deal with Voldemort and get away and/or diluted enough that it wouldn't incapacitate him?
I really do like dxu's "If you harm me greatly, the universe will end" or something similar in Parseltounge, though. (Since it will end with or without Harry's intervention, this is still true.) It seems the most elegant solution and would buy time to implement some other solution. hm. This system ate my previous post.
I'll have to rewrite it.
While this might be a little deus ex machina for Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry can create a doppleganger of himself. He's recently learned more complex transfigurations. Dumbledore had access to the Philosopher...
Thoughts:
If knowledge of the True Patronus can prevent people from being able to cast Patronus 1.0, is there a way for knowledge of the True Patronus to harm Voldemort?
"Your goal seems to be to achieve a desirable state of mind. Power and chaos don't seem to be terminal values to you. Muggles have made some progress in manipulating the mind. Perhaps this little thing called wireheading would interest you?"
I may be missing something here, but the way Voldemort is acting doesn't make sense to me. He's demonstrated that he thinks there's things Harry knows that he would like to learn. It also seems reasonable that he'd expect Harry to continue to learn useful things that Harry could teach Voldemort. So is giving Harry 60 seconds to do this really the most use he could get out of Harry? Indeed Voldemort might know this and be bluffing.
Playing this card may buy Harry time, maybe a lot of time. With this time, I see a variety of possible outs:
Sorry if it's been clarified before, but do we know who the Weasley twins got to Reverse Memory Charm Rita Skeeter?
I kind of wish I had a better visual imagination or spatial awareness. I tend to have trouble keeping track of the environment in novels. As such, even after going back to the story, I'm not entirely sure where exactly Harry is.
The reason I bring this up is that we are told, explicitly, that the Death Eaters will kill Harry if he stops pointing his wand toward the floor.
But 1 G gravity is FAST, and they might be too surprised to react in time if Harry suddenly falls THROUGH the floor. Which may or may not be an option available to him, depending on his location, by using partial transfiguration to turn a thin section of the floor around him into sand.
My apologies if I'm repeating anything that's already been said; I've been isolating myself from the online discussion to attempt the Final Exam by myself. So here's what I've got:
I'm pleased with myself for coming up with the first two solution classes I've listed (and vague ideas about the third, which I later separated into its own class) within 60 seconds, but I didn’t come up with the full Obvious Solution in that time. More work to do...
Solution Class 1: Transfiguration
We know that Harry can Transfigure acids nasty enough to instakill when used to r...
Skip to the bottom for personal context on the following ideas: ALSO I RAN OUT OF ROOM ON THIS POST and the formatting is making my numbers and spacing look doofy.
Part A: Transfiguration bridges
Getting started: Partial transfiguration is the most immediately useful thing besides talking, and as I understand it requires wand contact. Harry transfigures a part of his own finger, on a contacting part of the wand blocked from view, and extends the transfiguration slightly to get access to his blood flow. The blood is transfigured into a channel with a cover
"You see, while we're having our nice little chat, someone out there might be building another Harry right now, and that one isn't even bound by an Unbreakable Vow. Prophecy happens, everyone dies. I offer you the end of the world on your terms. Are you really sure you wish to terminate me?"
Variant of a suggestion from Reddit: the original is to transfigure the Earth into gold for a nanosecond, along with a trail that reaches out to the Pioneer probes. The goal being to hit all horcruxes at once, and at the same time transfigure the death eaters and LV to kill them horcrux-less. This is supposed to 'work' because it's for a short amount of time.
Bearing in mind that the magic cost is dependant upon target size, I'd like to suggest another option: transfigure the cubic kilometre below them into a small diamond, or better yet, transfigure it int...
Let's see. First off, let's consider the problem as thoroughly as possible without proposing solutions. Harry is surrounded by Death Eaters with orders to fire should he move, speak in any language other than Parseltongue (and probably if he makes any sound other than a hiss), raise his wand, and presumably if he does anything else suspicious (such as casting a visible spell without raising his wand or speaking an incantation). Lord Voldemort will presumably order his death (and likely shoot at him) if he does not appear to be complying with the instruc...
Okay, so far as I can see, this is a relatively new avenue of attack, but I haven't got a clear idea yet.
Firstly, assuming Harry can tell LV about some power he knows not (does simple knowledge count as a power? Harry could explain calculus or imaginary numbers real quick...), who do we save? One presumably banned option is to ask for Harry Potter (or Tom M. Riddle) to be saved. Who else is there? Obvious suggestions like Mad-Eye, McGonagall and others don't actually help Harry in his present situation as far as I can tell. Dumbledore?
Secondly, is there a...
Retracted because I accidentally posted twice.
Here is my tentative submission to FF.net. Please comment.
I decline to help Harry out of the box.
Harry no longer has Harry-values; he has unbreakable-vow-values. He is smart, and he will do whatever he can to "not destroy the world." In the process maximizing the probability of "not destroying the world," he will likely destroy the world.
If you would allow me, I would like to appeal to Voldemort's rationality and cast Avada Kedavra on Harry before he says or does anything.
I do not think I w...
Here's my idea, which I've posted as a review on FF.net. Harry has advanced transfiguration. The Philosopher's Stone can make transfiguration permanent. Harry can bring life to dead things. This is very close to Harry being able to create copies of himself, which would surely be attractive to Harry. The question, then, is; when did Harry first realize this capacity?The possibility of creating a body double might very well have been enough to have persuaded Dumbledore to let Harry use the Philosopher's stone, which he seems to have access to. Or Harry might...
I would execute a magical script programmed in advance. You think about script's number and it implements many magical actions for example paralising anyone except Harry faster than anyone makes a move or even understands anything.
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 113.
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.)
IMPORTANT -- From the end of chapter 113: