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If you tell them the whole riddle ("what is most scary, unkillable etc"), then give the answer, I'd say there's a good chance that it would cast enough doubt for the animal patronuses to fail, at least temporarily. Also, Harry could improve his credibility by casting his human patronus.

oliverbeatson13y10

True, especially on the last point. It still feels like there's a large philosophical knowledge-set to convey before their Patronus fails reliably for the right reason. I see what you mean though. Maybe the habit (mental) necessarily built into the Patronus charm would be harder to override more than temporarily due to the strength in habit, or at least without genuinely shifting how that person conceptualises all the relevant stuff.

See in context

4 Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84

by FAWS

11th Apr 2012

1 min read

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The next discussion thread is here.

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 84. The previous thread has passed 500 comments. Comment in the 14th thread until you read chapter 84.

There is now 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.)

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.

As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84

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[-]Percent_Carbon13y680

I had this idea about Tom Riddle's plan that I appreciated having criticized.

Tom Riddle grew up in the shadow of WWII. He saw much of the Muggle world unite against a threat they all called evil, and he saw Europe's savior, the US, eventually treated as the new world leader afterward, though it was somewhat contested, of course. That threat strongly defined it's own presentation and style, and so that style and presentation were associated with evil afterward.

Tom didn't want to be Hitler. Tom wanted to actually win and to rule in the longer term, not just until people got tired of his shit and went all Guy Fawks on his ass. He knew that life isn't easy for great rules, but thought that was worthwhile. He knew that life was even harder for great rulers who ruled by fear, so that wasn't his plan.

So Tom needed two sides, good and evil. To this end he needed two identities, a hero and a villain.

I guess he didn't think the villain didn't need to have any kind of history. Maybe he didn't think the villain would matter much or for long. Voldemort was just there for the hero to strike down. That was a mistake, because he lacked a decoy his enemies were eventually able to discover ... (read more)

[-]Nominull13y210

That's a really good explanation for how Dumbledore's recollection of the purposeless evil of Voldemort can be reconciled with the clearly purposeful evil of Quirrell.

3Anubhav13y

And why Voldie'd lay low for TEN YEARS waiting for a hero. (Still... see Chris Halquist below. '73 to '81? He must've had some plan going.)

3Percent_Carbon13y

Yeah. He did. And yeah, that's odd. There's probably something else going on there that we don't know about.

2buybuydandavis13y

He's patient? I believe he intends to upload into Harry after arranging for Harry to "kill" Voldemort and take power. He showed up just in time for Harry's first year at Hogwarts - first year in public. Then creates the whole army business which propels Harry to leadership. Also, even though he "was winning" the war, finishing off Dumbledore, holder of the Elder Wand, is non trivial. Much better to become Harry and have Dumbledore pass on his power to you.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y190

Right now this post has 53 points. WHY?

The post where put down the theory this grew from only has 2 points. Don't go voting it up just because I mentioned that. I don't want anything 'fixed' I just want an explanation.

This isn't written any better than my other posts, which commonly stay under 3 points and go negative often enough. Those other posts are totally contributions to the conversation. Some of them are even helpful.

I left points hanging. I didn't defend what I was saying. I just told a story. That's what you want?

I'm not even the first to revisit this speculation since my low vote theory post. Chris Hallquist was saying pretty much the same thing and he didn't get over 40 upvotes.

What are you upvoting?

[-][anonymous]13y380

I left points hanging. I didn't defend what I was saying. I just told a story. That's what you want?

Why hello there! We are called humans, have you met us before?

[-]Alsadius13y100

Because votes come more from the location in the thread than from quality of the post - sheer numbers of people reading it swamp a better post made 400 spots downthread. Also, it puts down in decent fashion a thesis that's getting kicked around a lot and that is rather appealing.

7Benquo13y

Maybe the illusion of transparency doesn't let you see how much clearer this comment [EDIT: I mean the parent comment] is.

[-]loserthree13y130

Did you just get burned by the Illusion of Transparency while referencing the Illusion of Transparency?

Well. Done.

3Percent_Carbon13y

You're probably right. I have no fucking clue what you're thinking.

6Vladimir_Nesov13y

One factor is that it's a top-level comment to a popular post, and once a top-level comment outcompetes most others it's shown more prominently and read by more people.

5ArisKatsaris13y

I don't think your current post "deserves" as many upvotes as it got, but that other post is just bad. Badly written, badly argued, makes lots of unsupported random claims, like "Voldemort killed Narcissa".

5CronoDAS13y

Well, I thought it was!

2Eponymuse13y

I downvoted the previous post because it was a needlessly complicated, poorly justified plan. Crucially, there was little indication of why Voldemort would want to pretend to lose, when he was already winning the war. By contrast, your more recent post is a good analysis of the new insight into Voldemort's history and motivations provided by the latest chapter.

1kilobug13y

I liked the story you told, I found it interesting so I upvoted (but your post was like at 5 or 6 when I upvoted it, I wouldn't have upvoted it if it was already above 30, I tend to avoid upvoting posts which are already too high, unless they are really wonderful). I didn't see the first one - I don't read all the comments, depends of my schedule. Maybe since you posted your new one earlier in the thread, when it wasn't too bloated, more people saw it ?

[-]loserthree13y160

I guess he didn't think the villain didn't need to have any kind of history. Maybe he didn't think the villain would matter much or for long. Voldemort was just there for the hero to strike down. That was a mistake, because he lacked a decoy his enemies were eventually able to discover his identity.

Perhaps not so much. We may believe Voldemort to truly be Tom Riddle for the following few reasons.

The Order of the Phoenix thinks Voldemort is Tom Riddle.
Voldemort is Tom Riddle in canon
In Chapter 70, Quirrell, who we are to understand is Voldemort, talks about a witch taking advantage of a muggle man, which is part of Tom Riddle's tragic backstory in cannon.
He just can't seem to help himself from punning his damn name, between the references to 'riddles' and his godawful anagram.

But canon doesn't count, this fic diverges strongly in places.

And knowledgeable, otherwise competent characters are wrong about things.

And, most tellingly, we now know that Voldemort in his Quirrell mask has been dropping hints that he is actually your Scion X (or David Monroe or whomever). He could just as easily be falsely hinting at the Riddle identity.

Yes, I am suggesting that the studen... (read more)

3Percent_Carbon13y

That sounds unsolvable with only the information we've been given. If it was another kid in Hogwarts that opened the chamber then why haven't there been any hints in the text to this man behind the man who is also the man behind the other man who is pretending to be the man behind yet another man. And if it was an adult then also who because there are not hints and how did they get into Hogwarts and the Chamber and I don't think you mean it was someone who was already grown up in 41.

[-]Desrtopa13y150

When Tom realizes that his plan has failed and cannot be made to work in the intended fashion, he exits his hero, stage left. At that point, 75 or so, he doesn't have a good plan to leave the stage as his villain, so he kind of kicks it for a few years, tolerating the limits of his rule and getting what meager entertainment he can out of being a god damned theater antagonist.

This strikes me as the least characteristic part of your idea. Quirrellmort doesn't seem like someone who would have taken a few years kicking it around trying to come up with a new plan.

ETA: I think that for the most part this seems like a pretty likely outline. I think the evidence stacks up in favor of the new character being a dupe of Voldemort, and this strikes me as the most plausible motivation for him to be playing both sides. I think his plan would probably even have been workable in the sense of making the heroic identity the de facto leader of the country, but he called it quits when he realized that the prize for heroism was not being lavished with adulation, but being treated as responsible for being a hero all the time, whereas the prize for being a Dark Lord was fawning obedience. There are a... (read more)

3Percent_Carbon13y

Yeah, I get that now. I've amended my suspicion to be that Riddle enjoyed himself in the Voldemort role, for maybe a little less than eight years. I still think he intentionally left the stage and didn't somehow end up on the losing end of a Nuts roll vs.. infant. Tom Riddle bites it in a cutscene? Lame.

2Desrtopa13y

My primary hypothesis is still that getting cindered by Harry was the consequence of some unknown unknown, some event that Voldemort wouldn't have been able to predict in advance by being really good at planning.

[-]knb13y140

I've been thinking along the same lines, probably because I watched Code Geass not too long ago, and this is basically the "Zero Requiem" gambit employed by Lelouch. He creates a totem of pure evil as a target of the world's hatred, then publicly destroys it, establishing a hero as savior-king. Riddle, like Lelouche, is portrayed as a "Byronic hero"--mysterious, cynical, cunning, arrogant, and brilliant. If this interpretation is correct, Harry might not be his future meatpuppet, but actually the "chosen one", who will fulfill the role of the hero and unite the world as savior-king after destroying the risen Voldemort.

But of course it could have just been a "Palpatine Gambit". In this version, Riddle was using his Voldemort persona to create fear, which his other persona takes advantage of to turn Magical Britain into the Empire, consolidating all power to himself. But in this version, much to the consternation of Tom Riddle, the "Republic" actually doesn't give up power to the obviously qualified hero (due to diffusion of responsibility, political maneuvering, etc.) So instead he decides to just seize power as Voldemort, but by bad... (read more)

[-]thomblake13y100

Tom Riddle grew up in the shadow of WWII. He saw much of the Muggle world unite...

Tom didn't want to be Hitler...

In case it's relevant, remember that Hitler was just a muggle pawn of Grindlewald, and the Holocaust existed to fuel Gindlewald's dark rituals.

7ChrisHallquist13y

I think this is right in broad strokes, but what you call "a few years" is '73 to '81, kind of a long time to "kick it" because your plan went astray. Furthermore, Quiddle also often talks about his motives in terms of what he found "amusing," "felt like," or "pleasant" (in conversation with Hermione). Then there's this: I think he's not quite so given to long-term planning as you imagine.

8LucasSloan13y

There's a difference between using long term planning to develop a power base, and being willing to use your power base to indulge your desires.

1ChrisHallquist13y

So the quote is not the best illustration of Quiddle's character. But does seem to have abandoned the "hero" plan (at least in its initial version) on the basis of what was "more pleasant."

2Percent_Carbon13y

He had to wait for his exit. He could kill off the hero at any time, that's easy. Heroes just die. But villains need to be vanquished.

2LucasSloan13y

You think that someone as competent as Voldemort couldn't have created a faster exit strategy?

5Percent_Carbon13y

The world was not offering him an opportunity to be vanquished in a fashion that would allow him to escape. Moody and Dumbledore would be too thorough, and everyone else wasn't good enough to touch him. Or maybe he had reasons for staying Voldemort until he heard about the 'prophesy' and decided that was a good opportunity.

3LucasSloan13y

I can think of ways to be vanquished much quicker than he did, especially if he's willing to be reverted to horcrux. Challenge Dumbledore to a duel and lose. Be seen doing some dark ritual, which then goes out of control, killing him. Hell, I'm sure someone as competent as Voldemort could have faked a prophecy about his doom. I don't see why you think that Voldemort wasn't willing to use villainhood to achieve total dominance - he was winning, he would have gotten what he wanted.

2Desrtopa13y

If I were Voldemort, I wouldn't have waited on that prophesy until I needed to make an exit.

1somervta13y

Love it!

4gwern13y

So in this scenario, why is he dying? Before, we were unsure that his cataplexy was getting worse; I pointed out that on-screen he seems as active or more active than ever. But Bones says: "And you seem to be resting more and more frequently, as time goes on." and she would know. Are we speculating that whatever dupe's body that Riddle stole is breaking down 60-odd years later after Albania?

3Percent_Carbon13y

That is a good question. I don't know why he appears to be dying. Maybe Riddle was put Scion of X's body on ice when he put an Albania with a nail through it up side his head. Then he trotted it out for a few years in the seventies, then put it back on ice. And it turns out that's not good for a body and so it's kind of falling apart or something. Maybe Quirrell wants the appearance of weakness, for all the right reasons. Maybe Scion of X has been alive the whole time, imprisoned in his own usually motionless flesh. And since the only thing he could do was wait there, motionless, he practiced being lethargic. And he became strong and wise in the ways of lethargy, so that Voldemort must ration his own strength and only force Scion of X to action when absolutely necessary. Maybe when Quirrell is 'resting' he's actually busy in the Dream Place leading the Crunch Rebellion against the Evil Empire of Sogg.

1DSimon13y

I will definitely have to put that in my General-Purpose Excuses File. :-)

3LucasSloan13y

Quirrell's body is in its 30s.

0trlkly13y

My interpretation of the book is that the Defense Professor looks just like Quirrell. If this is the case, then maybe it takes more and more out of him to maintain the illusion that he is someone else. Or maybe he actually inhabits the body Quirrell, and Quirrell is slowly fighting back. Then again, I still have a hard time reading the DP as actually being Voldemort, so take my instincts with a grain of salt.

2cousin_it13y

I really like your theory of what happened, but have a different idea about Tom's motives. When the hero disappeared, people were already speaking of him as the next Dumbledore. He had two easy paths to world domination. Put yourself in his place and his personality, what would you do? I'd probably get bored and set about creating the only thing I don't have: a worthy adversary. This also explains why Harry Potter is so overpowered.

[-]Desrtopa13y140

Put yourself in his place and his personality, what would you do? I'd probably get bored and set about creating the only thing I don't have: a worthy adversary.

I wouldn't. Sign me up for unworthy adversaries all the way.

[-]gjm13y100

set about creating ... a worthy adversary

Just to put slightly differently what others have already said: We're talking here about a version of Voldemort who has read the Evil Overlord List (or written his own version or something of the kind). It is hard to reconcile either half of that with taking considerable trouble and risk to raise up a "worthy adversary".

2Percent_Carbon13y

Asking for a worthy adversary is asking to lose. Quirrell taught his 'worthy adversary' Harry to lose as an attempt to weaken him, not to make him stronger. Harry is just too caught up in his Quirrell worship to see that.

8Viliam_Bur13y

Pretending to lose can be a good move, and if you are able to play it at the right moment, it makes you stronger. Did Quirrell ask Harry to accept some unrepairable damage? No. It was only about signalling, and temporary pain (any resulting damage is guaranteed to be healed magically later). Quirrell taught Harry that signalling defeat is not the same thing as being defeated. Just like Voldemort, pretending to be killed by a baby, is not really dead. (I agree that asking for a worthy adversary is suicidal. Having a sparring partner can be useful, but you should be able to destroy them reliably, when necessary.) EDIT: Though, you have a good point. Willingness to simulate defeat may reduce emotional barriers against (real) defeat, which in some circumstances could weaken one's resolution to fight. Humans are not perfectly logical; when we do something "as if", it influences our "real" behavior too. That's the essence of "fake it till you make it" self-improvement... or perhaps, in this specific situation, self-weakening.

1[anonymous]13y

This is remarkably internally consistent and consistent with the evidence available to us.

[-]Eneasz13y400

Am I losing my mind, or was there a change made to Chap 16? I recall this section:

" No, there is exactly one monster which can threaten you once you are fully grown. The single most dangerous monster in all the world, so dangerous that nothing else comes close. The adult wizard. That is the only thing that will still be able to threaten you."

However now it reads:

" No, there is exactly one monster which can threaten you once you are fully grown. The single most dangerous monster in all the world, so dangerous that nothing else comes close. The Dark Wizard. That is the only thing that will still be able to threaten you."

If it was changed... why the change? The original was better, and (perhaps more to the point) more in keeping with Quirrell's character. He wouldn't distinguish between adult and Dark wizards when it comes to threat-to-his-students assessment.

[-]buybuydandavis13y180

You're right. I search the PDF version, and have been told it doesn't receive edits in it's build (currently - though that's the plan for the future).

"The adult wizard." pg. 226

And I agree. I don't like the change either. Thinking that other adult wizards aren't a threat to you unless they're Dark is a horribly mistaken bias in more ways that one.

[-]drethelin13y130

Definitely not insane. Do not like this change.

[-]ChrisHallquist13y100

Yeah. I dislike this change. "Dark" makes sense for Quirrell to say for purposes of not sounding too evil, for not sounding like he's encouraging being dangerous. But at that point in the story, it was pretty clear Quirrell thought it was a good thing to be dangerous, and saying "adult" wizard is more consistent with that. It's also more consistent with his decision to call "Defense Against the Dark Arts" "Battle Magic."

[-]gjm13y100

If you're losing your mind, then either I am too or the nature of your mind-losing is a hallucination about what the chapter says now. I remember the same original text as you do (or, at any rate, the words "the adult wizard" and certainly not "the Dark wizard"). And I strongly agree that the original version is better.

4ArisKatsaris13y

It used to say "adult wizard" yes -- I just confirmed it with an old pdf.

2[anonymous]13y

Maybe it's phrased that way in order to be similar to the bit several sentences down: That instance of "Dark" makes sense (since they're Dark Arts and not "Adult Arts") and so there is a reason to use "Dark Wizard" throughout.

[-]75th13y140

Best rationalization I can think of, but I still don't approve of the change. Let us remember that Quirrell intends to help Harry become a Dark Wizard, in which case, since Harry is in the classroom, he should include Light Wizards in the class of people who can threaten the students present.

It also makes more sense to say "the adult wizard" since that sentence is the conclusion of a list of species that are dangerous, and "adult" sounds more biological.

Maybe there's an important reason for this change, but otherwise I think this is too much like a composer making inane changes to a piece after it's already written, or like George Lucas messing with the original Star Wars trilogy.

0HonoreDB13y

I think Quirrell is working with an unconventional definition of Dark. Something like "in violent opposition to you."

0LKtheGreat13y

That passage, of course, ties into what the Defense Professor says in the latest chapter: "You cannot use the Killing Curse, so the correct tactic is to Apparate away." If I had to work from the premise that the revision is actually related to that, I'd assume it's emphasising the Defense Professor being, in fact, a Dark wizard. But I agree that from a point of view outside Eliezer's head, it appears to have at best neutral impact, and at worst negative impact on the effect of the passage.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y390

Assuming evil people will be susceptible to such arguments

I didn't say evil people will be susceptible to such arguments.

I was naming three reasons that good people have to not be evil, not three arguments that would cause evil people to stop being evil.

[-]Xachariah13y370

Eliezer, in an edit, just reminded me that Tom Riddle is 65 years old. And from there I got to looking that other ages. Dumbledore is 110. Bahry One-Hand and Mad Eye Moody are each at least ~120. From chapter 39, I got the impression that 150 years old is uncomfortably old (maybe 90 in muggle years) and 200 is unthinkably old (110+ for muggles). So now I'm confused again.

Where are all the old people? What would family trees look like if people really lived to be 120+ regularly? If you're a child you've got two parents, and 4 grandparents, but what about the 8 great grandparents...and the 16 great^2 grandparents...32 great^3 grandparents...64 great^4 grandparents... 128 great^5 grandparents...256 ...512 etc? Plus, imagine the number of children each couple would have if people jumped from 40 fertile years to 80. I could buy that with older ages, people would wait longer to have kids (In canon they mention that it was slightly unusual for people to be having children at 20 years old). That would explain why there aren't 7-10 generations of family at the reunions, but on the other hand, I wouldn't expect Wizards to be big fans of birth control or abortion. Plus, that doesn'... (read more)

[-]FiftyTwo13y220

In recent history they've had two devastating wars. Plotting and infighting seems perpetual. Most adults spend a reasonable amount of their time using dangerous magic (there was some mention of wizard specific diseases like 'dragon pox' in canon). And everyone in the world can kill you instantly with their wand. So even if their notional life expectancy is high the number of dangers that reduce the population is enormous.

Actually given how easy deadly curses are I'm surprised there are any wizards left... Possibly explains why age correlates with magical power/skill.

[-]Eugine_Nier13y220

Actually given how easy deadly curses are I'm surprised there are any wizards left... Possibly explains why age correlates with magical power/skill.

Probably for the same reason the existence of guns hasn't resulted in human extinction.

5DSimon13y

On the other hand, I don't carry a gun on my keychain, but a wizard's wand is used to do everything from insta-death to turning on and off the lights in a room.

2Desrtopa13y

In canon, not only is casting the killing curse extremely illegal, it's probably beyond the abilities of most wizards anyway. It's said to take powerful magic, and most adult wizards aside from professors and aurors are implied to be inept at even the basics of defensive magic. I thought it added verisimilitude to the setting, that rather than being on a level far above teenage students after decades of honing their skills, most witches and wizards are fairly incompetent and don't remember most of what they were made to learn in school, much like how most of our population can't win Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader

[-]Desrtopa13y180

Plus, education for 7 years makes no sense if you expect to live another hundred; muggles spend 1/5-1/6th of their life in education, but wizards only 1/15th

This, at least, does not confuse me. It's not like this is a historical constant, for most of human history most people have spent less.

Anyway, it's implied that vocational training exists after one is finished with one's mandatory education.

[-]NancyLebovitz13y160

I wouldn't expect Wizards to be big fans of birth control or abortion.

Are you assuming vaguely medieval tech = Catholic = opposed to birth control and abortion?

The Catholic Church didn't declare that all abortion was murder until the Renaissance, and I don't think there's any reason to think that wizards are generally Catholics. ETA Nor is there any reason to think that Catholics are reliably obedient to Popes.

The simplest explanation might be that wizards (like Tolkien's elves, but less so) just aren't very fertile.

5Percent_Carbon13y

Church of England, surely. As an American I can tell you confidently that the wizards and witches of magical Britain have one quality above all others: they are British.

3Velorien13y

This would explain why religion never comes up in canon.

6gjm13y

It does, a little bit. I think there's one church service, seen from the outside, and some important grave -- Harry's parents? -- has a quotation from the New Testament on it. ("The last enemy to be defeated is death", which of course plenty of not-at-all-religious people would have much sympathy with.) But yes, religion in the UK tends to be rather less conspicuous than in the US.

[-]loserthree13y150

I wouldn't expect Wizards to be big fans of birth control or abortion.

Why not?

There are only thirty hours in a day and every child means greater demands on your time. It's not like they can hire muggles to raise their kids, like affluent muggle families might hire less-affluent folk to look after theirs. And we don't hear about anyone being raised by house elves.

Why wouldn't they want sex without conception?

5moritz13y

Which is much less of an issue if your own parents and grandparents (and maybe even another generation) are around to dote on your children.

6loserthree13y

Except they'd also be around to dote on your nieces and nephews (who are also their grandchildren) and the children of your first cousins (since those children would be their great-grandchildren just as much as your own children would be). In fact, because they're subject to multipliers as they go further up the family tree, they have even less time for each child. This does not make any stronger argument against desiring sex without conception, not does it weaken my "only thirty hours in a day" argument for sex without conception.

4faul_sname13y

Particularly since there's almost certainly an easy spell for that.

9loup-vaillant13y

Which seems to be unknown to 7th year students of Hogwarts. Sigh. Magical education is seriously lacking.

5HonoreDB13y

Or you cast the spell after doing the deed, and that one time they were too busy fleeing/claiming this wasn't what it looked like/getting castigated/getting dressed. ...just how many pregnancies has McGonagall caused, anyway?

5moritz13y

Or maybe they simply wanted a child? That can happen at that age, even if it's not all that common in our societies.

1faul_sname13y

True. It's not like having a child at that age will prevent them from going to college or have any particularly negative effects in the HPMORverse. Edit: I accidentally a word there. Edit 2: And then I the put word in the wrong place.

1Percent_Carbon13y

Perhaps it still has a drawback. This being a Potterverse it wouldn't be something straightforward like the way a condom insulates against body heat or decreases sensation. It'd be that the semen is magically transported into a nearby container. If you don't have a proper container prepared it ends up somewhere inconvenient like someone's pocket, or outer ear, or mouth. Or that both parties must spend a moment beforehand concentrating on a blue sphere, or the smell of vomit, or the sound of breaking celery. Or maybe it just makes a lady's feet numb. So some people in some situations skip the contraceptive because they aren't prepared or don't want to deal with the complication.

2Alsadius13y

More likely, parents got offended by the thought of that spell getting taught officially, and the (edit)Davises just missed out on the unofficial version?

1Percent_Carbon13y

Have we heard of magical Britain being remarkably prudish in either MOR or canon?

1pedanterrific13y

(Davises.)

1Alsadius13y

Edited.

8Benquo13y

1) The war 2) Some wizards are more equal than others.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y180

1a) Also that other war before that one

3) Dumbledore uses his Time Tuner all the time. If he received it in his teens there could be almost twenty five extra years on that airframe.

5linkhyrule513y

Might be a Baby Boom effect, combined with high death rates from the wars. Basically, WWII still has visible effects.

5NancyLebovitz13y

Considering how poor the Weasleys are, most wizards might well use birth control and abortion. Both seem like they should be magically feasible, and wizards might actually know whether fetuses are conscious.

[-]TheOtherDave13y270

(nods) And the Fetusmouths were driven into isolated seclusion in the early 1200s due to ethical concerns, and also they were really annoying at baby showers.

6[anonymous]13y

And thus did the nine Ancient and Most Noble Houses of Britain become eight.

4Bluehawk13y

Fetusmouth sounds to me remarkably like a synonym for "babyeater".

[-][anonymous]13y120

The Weasleys do seem to be more cosmetically poor than anything else. I mean, we're told they're poor, and that they wear shabby clothing and have hand-me-down wands, but they own a big house and land and broomsticks and a car(!) and everyone of age in the family is gainfully employed, often in reasonably respectable and lucrative jobs. Makes you wonder where the money's going.

4NancyLebovitz13y

I'm not sure, but it could be that while they're hardly desperate, they can't quite run with people who are upper middle class or better. They're getting by, but they don't have much to spare.

2LauralH13y

Speaking as the middle of 5 kids - having a bunch of kids close to the same age like that can get expensive, and Molly didn't work.

0Sheaman377313y

Beyond what has already been said by other posters, they take vacations all the time. I get that it was probably a narrative technique, to get them out of the way and either keep Ron around or move him away, but it was unbelievably frustrating that they would choose to all go out and have fun before getting Ron a wand that was actually attuned to him, considering how central to their lives wands are. I'm probably biased both in my love of (the idea of) magic and in my enjoyment in being a homebody, though I'm not sure what that might be called at the moment.

1bogdanb13y

I think I’ve actually seen something on the lines of “interesting potions for girls if you know what I mean”—but though I don’t remember if in canon or MoR.

4Alsadius13y

Yeah, but even with birth control our families are bigger than that. Perhaps it's just Voldemortality?

3bogdanb13y

Well, the Weasleys have a somewhat larger family, despite participating in the war, and they’re somewhat low-status among the magic users. It might be a semi-unconscious cultural thing. Most Slytherins concentrate on building status, or on grooming a heir worthy of it if they have status (and have little love to split), the Ravenclaws are busy reading books, Griffindors are busy heroing like Dumbledore, and Hufflepufs have to pick up all the slack. But yeah, war is probably the main reason, the older parts of family trees have more branches. (Well, out-of-universe it’s probably just how writing works: you initially concentrate on a few characters, and they have to be diverse so you make them from different backgrounds and families, so you have mostly only-children, but later you need to build up the relationships so you get more complex family trees in the past.)

3maia13y

Nitpick: Why would you think that would happen? Women already regularly outlive their fertile periods in real life. Unless you're also proposing some magical mechanism of fertility increase (and if so, why?), you wouldn't expect fertile periods to increase. Of course, wizards would have longer fertile periods, but you still bump into the hard limit of how many children witches are willing and able to have.

3Percent_Carbon13y

Maybe he is thinking of fertility the way a gamer thinks of health. Wizards are just healthier. There isn't a solid, hard science fiction explanation for why they heal faster and shrug off harder hits. They just do. Likewise no attention needs to be paid to the nature of the end of fertility or the resources that run out or the way the odds of viable offspring and safe childbirth start ramping down around in the mid to late twenties in normal females. They just don't in a witch's life.

3thomblake13y

I'd always assumed canon Dumbledore had limited access to the Philosopher's Stone.

[-]buybuydandavis13y340

EY doesn't seem so fond of Rand, and it's like he's building her up as the great bugaboo of the story. That whole talk with Hermione was one of those "Gault Recruits a Striker" speeches.

If you live in a world where you are punished for what was called Good:

And yet it was as if they tried to do everything they could to make his life unpleasant. To throw every possible obstacle into his way. I was not naive, Miss Granger, I did not expect the power-holders to align themselves with me so quickly - not without something in it for themselves. But their power, too, was threatened; and so I was shocked how they seemed content to step back, and leave to that man all burdens of responsibility. They sneered at his performance, remarking among themselves how they would do better in his place, though they did not condescend to step forward."

And rewarded for what was called Evil:

"And it was the strangest thing - the Dark Wizard, that man's dread nemesis - why, those who served him leapt eagerly to their tasks. The Dark Wizard grew crueler toward his followers, and they followed him all the more. Men fought for the chance to serve him, even as those whose lives depende

... (read more)

[-]Percent_Carbon13y120

You should break up your quote blocks with an extra line so they look like separate quotes..

7oliverbeatson13y

I find some of the most relatable parts of the story to be the vague hero-against-the world / morality allegory, particularly in the dialogue quoted here. I think as much of the micro-morality of the story is Randian in a way that as much of the surface dialogue might paint Rand as a negative colour (if only by showing how ugly her beliefs on the surface, but revealing their purer roots). Harry is basically saying "Yes, everyone is incompetent; woe that they didn't have the luck to be not, and let's try and change that without getting too annoyed". With greater intelligence comes greater ability (and in a sense perceived moral obligation) to restrain or make productive one's hatred towards that which can't be changed or that can't be changed easily. Harry is taking morality as being the extent to which a strength can compensate for weakness in the spirit of creating future strength. The Randian 'strike' is a utilitarian way to achieve Randian values, and not an inherently Randian way or whatever. I don't think it's immediately obvious Harry isn't aiming for Randian values, if perhaps narratively in a way that Ayn Rand would not have imagined - i.e. strength and weakness are much more complexly intertwined. (It's not obvious either that I'm disagreeing with the parent post.)

2buybuydandavis13y

Definitely. For me, EY hits some of the exact same buttons that Rand does, though maybe a little harder. In Rand's terms, the Sense of Life is the same. EY's money shots, Harry's internal dialogues, are practically interchangeable with the money shots in Anthem and We The Living, also internal dialogues of the main characters. It's a Nietzschean Yes! to life. I can't think of anyone more similar to either in that respect. The same sense of life, but they part ways on ideological conclusions. Quirrell as the Big Bad, is busy giving the No Duty to others, free to be an Egoist speech. I don't think we're intended to sympathize. Then EY makes a package deal of an egoistic love of life and it' opposite - Despite, the contempt for life because of it's "imperfections". Reminds me of It's a Wonderful Life, where a different kind of package deal is used to recommend the squashing of George's youthful egoism.

5wedrifid13y

Oops.

0Percent_Carbon13y

It's taken me three passes over the newest posts to figure out that you meant you sympathize with him. Upvoting for (delayed) chuckle. Do you sympathize with Randian protagonists, too?

2wedrifid13y

I doubt it. I'm not familiar with any Randian protagonists but if they act in accord to what I understand of Randian philosophical agenda then their attitude would be gratingly incompatible with my sympathy. From what I understand Randians are have their options artificially constrained in the direction of a particular interpretation of 'selfishness'. Quirrel can do whatever the heck he wants and care about whatever he wants. Doing whatever the heck he wants gets my sympathy and also a certain kind of trust.

2RobertLumley13y

I was thinking of Rand through this entire chapter too, but I dismissed that as a cached thought because of the recent "In Defense of Ayn Rand". Perhaps I shouldn't have.

1Alsadius13y

I think the "I quit and did something more fun" bit was very Rand, the rest much less so.

[-]knb13y310

I took it as Ron approving of killing Malfoys. That doesn't seem unreasonable considering their families were on opposite sides of an extremely bloody war within recent memory.

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky13y290

And that he's twelve.

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky13y310

I've edited the birthdate of the person Amelia refers to, to be 1927 - too many people were interpreting that as "She thinks he's Tom Riddle" despite the House incongruence, an interpretation I'd honestly never thought of due to Illusion of Transparency.

[-]Vaniver13y150

I recommend checking out what your hints mean in canon, because that's what we have to go off of. The first thing I did when I saw 1926 was head over to the Harry Potter wiki and figure out who was born in 1926. It's Riddle and three of his Death Eater pals, all from Slytherin, of which the obvious option is Riddle. Riddle fits the biographical details you give, with minor modification consistent with the upgrades people get from canon (a MOR Riddle might decide to not murder his family while still in school, for example). The canon rules for Houses appear to be "only Black is Noble and Most Ancient," and so we really don't have any idea which houses are the seven mentioned by Bones, and what the eighth missing house could be. Gaunt is a way better option than, say, Lestrange (where we know Lesath is alive).

In a fanfic, you should expect people to suspect that new characters are canon characters rather than completely new characters, which the person Bones is describing now appears to be (no canon births in 1927).

4Paul Crowley13y

Thank you - I assumed it was a canon character, and came to this thread to find out who it was.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y150

I think you're underestimating how quick people are to latch onto a detected pattern at the tiniest bit of evidence, and highly overestimating how quick they're to let go of the pattern they (brilliantly) detected when evidence to the contrary appears.

Any date at around that era will keep making people think she identified him as Tom Riddle, no matter any other evidence to the contrary, unless you explicitly have her mention a different name for him by chapter's end.

If you don't want people to have that confusion by chapter's end, just edit the chapter to have her name him with whatever non-Tom-Riddle name she thinks him to be.

3DeevGrape13y

Said by Quirrell, but appropriate to the question of EY publishing the name of the hero: "it is clear he does not wish the fact announced, and has reasons enough for silence. "

3ArisKatsaris13y

Whether true or false, it isn't clear to me. Eliezer has edited chapters in the past for the purposes of clarity/removal of red herrings.

7ChrisHallquist13y

Facepalm Of course, if Riddle wanted to create a hero persona for himself, he wouldn't use his real name, especially not when his villain persona's name was an anagram of his real name. So to create his hero persona, he looked for a dead scion of a Most Ancient House who he could impersonate. In his Voldemort persona, he orders the kidnapping of the Minster of Magic's daughter, then rescues her in his hero persona, &c. Also solves the problem of why doesn't Bones know Riddle became Voldemort.

[-]gwern13y220

especially not when his villain persona's name was an anagram of his real name.

I don't think that's an issue. It's a really long anagram - 'I am Lord Voldemort' to 'Tom Marvolo Riddle'. You need his middle name, you need to use 'Tom' rather than 'Thomas', and how many would think of prepending 'I am Lord' to 'Voldemort', especially when 'Lord' is mostly (exclusively?) used by Death Eaters. (Did anyone in the entire world besides Rowling get that anagram before it was published in Book 2? No one in canon but Harry seems to know.)

Remember that folks like Hook would publish hash - I mean, anagram - precommitments to their great scientific discoveries. Against humans without computers, anagrams are pretty effective trapdoor functions. (And that's when you know there's an anagram in the first place.)

EDIT: For 'Tom Marvolo Riddle', the AWAD anagram server says 74,669 possible anagrams. Some are quite ominous, eg. 'Dread Mil Volt Room'.

[-]faul_sname13y110

That, and an anagram that long can become almost anything. Exapmles: Armored doll vomit, odd immoral revolt, and my favorite, devil marmot drool. So even with the "marvolo", and even with the knowledge that it anagrams to something you're not going to spontaneously make that association unless you have prior reason to suspect voldemortiness.

[-]gwern13y100

odd immoral revolt

Of course - it's so obvious in retrospect! And it even encodes a hint about Quirrel's future activities too:

devil marmot drool

(If you squint, his resemblance to a devil marmot is clear.)

[-]gjm13y110

In fairness, I think the first anyone heard of "Marvolo" as Riddle's middle niddle -- er, I mean name -- was when he anagrammed it for Harry in the Chamber of Secrets. So it's not a big surprise that no one else guessed the anagram.

4HonoreDB13y

Yeah, it was a total cheat. That's why I put my anagram in the Dramatis Personae.

2gwern13y

Incidentally, what's happened with that play since I left my comment?

2HonoreDB13y

Most of the stuff I was hoping for hasn't panned out thus far. The ebook gets a few downloads each week, mostly as referrals from the HPMoR fan art page.

2gwern13y

That's too bad. Maybe you should just re-release it for free so you at least get some readers?

2hairyfigment13y

The American version definitely says in the flashback, "she lived just long enough to name me -- Tom after my father, Marvolo after my grandfather." (And the book introduced him as T.M. Riddle.) I have no reason to think the British version lacked this info.

2gjm13y

Am I misremembering? Isn't that after the point where he anagrammatizes it for Harry in the CoS?

2hairyfigment13y

Definitely not. First Riddle uses the diary as a Pensieve-style flashback machine and gives Harry this info, then Ginny steals the diary back, then we get to the CoS climax.

2gjm13y

Oh yes, you're right. So, yeah, a sufficiently ingenious reader might have noticed the (apparent) throwaway comment about the names, noticed that the letters of "Voldemort" are contained in "Tom Marvolo Riddle", and worked out the rest before the big reveal fifty pages later. I remain of the opinion that it's no big surprise if no one did.

2ChrisHallquist13y

Ah. And checking the Harry Potter wiki, I see I had forgotten just how far the "pureblood" house of Gaunt had fallen in canon.

[-]ChrisHallquist13y260

It's dawned on me that one of the biggest themes of this fic may be the importance of being able to notice flaws in one's models of other people. Virtually every time something has gone wrong in one of Voldemort's plans, it is because he is weak in this area:

Failure to predict how Harry would react to seeing him (as Quirrell) trying to kill an Aurour in Azkaban
Failure to predict that Hermione would be suspicious of Mr. Incredibly Suspicious Person
Failure to see how far Harry would go to keep Hermione out of Azkaban
Failure to talk Hermione into leaving Hogwarts of her own free will
The initial failure to predict that people would not treat him very well in his hero role

Then there's Lucius, seeing everything in terms of self-interested plots, and concluding Harry is Voldemort because of it.

And finally, the bit in chapter 81 about how Harry is wiser than either Dumbledore or Voldemort, because he realizes he's able to realize when he doesn't understand people.

[-]pedanterrific13y100

(I think one of those Azkabans should be a Hogwarts.)

There's also the two miscalculations in the speech before Yule- Harry's wish (which I think genuinely caught him by surprise) and Harry's publicly disagreeing with him (likewise).

1ChrisHallquist13y

Fixed the Azkaban/Hogwarts mistake. And yes, the Yule speech belongs there as well.

7Xachariah13y

Not that the theme isn't present, but I almost consider that a general theme of fiction. Romeo and Juliet is enabled by the authorities on both sides not having accurate models of their respective scions. Of Mice and Men is about Lenny's inaccuracy in his model of George. Die Hard always ends because the villain does not have an accurate model of John McClane. I'm sure you could write a whole book about Death Note. etc. While it is present in HPMoR, it doesn't strike me as especially significant any more so than other fiction, compared to the many more overtly rationalist themes already present.

3trlkly13y

I think you are erring when you assume that these are Voldemort's plans. They might be, but I don't think they have to be. The story seems to have deviated quite far from the original story. In fact, my reading is that Quirrell may actually be some good guy, destroying our expectations from the story. I mean, has his turban even been mentioned?

5pedanterrific13y

Chapter 12 (the Welcoming Feast):

2ChrisHallquist13y

The the first omake in chapter eleven, combined with the "philosophy of fanfiction" in the "more info," at HPMOR.com, strongly suggests that Voldemort is possessing Quirrell, but Quirrell isn't wearing a turban because Voldemort found some smarter method that wouldn't be trivially easy for Rational!Harry to figure out. Other major clues that something is up with Quirrell are: * His mysterious illness * Chapter 20 strongly hints that he turned the Pioneer Plaque into a horcrux. And those are just the clues we got in the first 20 chapters. In another comment in this thread, I made a rather long list of clues restricting myself to thinks Harry knows about.

3ygert13y

My idea for this is that Voldemort is on the back of Quirrell's head, but then the Quirrellmort composite polyjuiced himself back into Quirrell, so that he doesn't have the huge vulnerability of having a face on the back of his head. (This explains the mystery of why he blocked the polyjuice detection spell that was cast at him at the ministry.)

2Richard_Kennaway13y

On the other hand, Dumbledore and McGonagall both know some reason that Quirrell's nature is absolutely not to be inquired about by anyone. Dumbledore even evaded the Aurors' question on the subject. If the secret that they are guarding is that Q=V, then either they're all on V's side or they've been jinxed or blackmailed in some way. I don't find any of those possibilities credible. That implies that there is some other secret in play about Quirrell's nature. I don't think there's room for two such secrets, the other one being Q=V. More likely, Q contains a fragment of V but Q remains in control. Q's lapses into zombieness are a side effect of what it takes to stay in control. Inquiries are dangerous because of the possibility, as with Harry under the Sorting Hat, of awakening the fragment to self-awareness. Q is valuable to Dumbledore and the forces of light because of the insight he can provide into Voldemort's history and how Voldemort thinks. Perhaps control over that piece of V will also be useful for magical reasons.

3Normal_Anomaly13y

This is a better interpretation of that bit than I've seen before--I approve.

[-]MarkusRamikin13y260

In the spirit of making people flee screaming out of the room, propelled by a bone-deep terror as if Cthulhu had erupted from the podium:

One thing I really enjoy about HPMoR is how it likes to show intelligent people taking unreasonable-seeming ( = actually reasonable) precautions. Amelia Bones in chapter 84, and also in the Azkaban arc, Dumbledore and Snape and even Minerva on various occasions... not quite sure why but I really enjoy reading that sort of a thing.

9Psy-Kosh13y

Interestingly enough, that's also why I liked the older seasons of Mythbusters. You'd see much more of the planning/preparation for their tests, including all the safety considerations. ie, they'd do the usual "don't try this at home", but then you'd actually see just how much planning/etc it takes to do such things properly and safely.

0DSimon13y

Hm, yeah, I hadn't noticed that. They do still show the engineering and problem-solving process (where they laboriously set up an experiment, run it, and its results turn out to be completely useless), but not really the safety stuff that goes along with it anymore. Maybe it's because they are running more myths per show now that the build team pretty much does their own separate thing?

[-]Scott Alexander13y250

Nicholas Flamel (born 1340) could be almost as good a source of ancient spells lost to the Interdict of Merlin as Slytherin's Monster (exact creation date unknown, but Godric Gryffindor was alive in 1202 and Slytherin was a contemporary). He also seems to be dependent on Albus Dumbledore for protection; maybe it's time Dumbledore called in some quid pro quo if he hasn't already?

[-]ArisKatsaris13y290

Nicholas Flamel (born 1340) could be almost as good a source of ancient spells lost to the Interdict of Merlin as Slytherin's Monster

From Chapter 77:

A single glance would tell any competent wizard that the Headmaster has laced that corridor with a ridiculous quantity of wards and webs, triggers and tripsigns. And more: there are Charms laid there of ancient power, magical constructs of which I have heard not even rumors, techniques that must have been disgorged from the hoarded lore of Flamel himself.

So Dumbledore's already using some of Flamel's knowledge in his efforts against Voldemort.

4gwern13y

If Dumbledore had that kind of leverage, he would have used it to either move or destroy the Philosopher's Stone.

[-][anonymous]13y240

I'm experimenting with reproducing the sound of the really horrible humming in Mathematica. I haven't changed the duration of notes yet, but I've experimented with trying to make things sound as horribly off-key as possible. I've started out with just changing the pitches of the notes by adding normally-distributed noise. So far the main discovery I've made is that for greater effect, the magnitude of the change should be proportional to the length of the note. Any ideas for things to try?

I'm using MIDI sounds, which are the simplest to set up, but also have the drawback that every pitch must correspond to an integral semitone, which limits how horrible things can sound. Also, what is a good standard MIDI instrument for simulating humming?

[-][anonymous]13y210

After several hours of experimentation, I have figured out what the trick is. Quirrell did nothing except hum the same song for four hours. The Auror's mind filled in the rest. After four hours of listening to the same fifty-one notes over and over again, I'd be calling code RJ-L20 too.

4loserthree13y

On the one hand, I once listened to "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" for three days straight. I had not stopped enjoying it when I stopped listening to it. (My roommates and guests did not share my enthusiasm, but I don't think they ever liked the song.) On the other hand, while attempting to transfer a customer to the appropriate party I once listened to "Unchained Melody" for almost an hour. I didn't snap (it was a mill of a call center, so public nervous breakdowns were not unheard of), but the piece gained the ability to infuriate me even without the extra hours and fuck-with-your-brain inconsistency.

[-]thescoundrel13y170

I would think the real key to horrible humming would not be to have it be uniformly horrible, but so close to brilliant that the horrible notes punctuate and pierce the melody so completely that it starts driving you mad- a song filled with unresolved suspensions, minor 2nds where they just should not belong, that then somehow modulate into something which sounds normal just long enough for you to think you are safe, when it collapses again, and the new key is offensive both to the original and to the modulation. This is not just random sounds, this is purposeful song writing, with the intent to unsettle- in my mind, something like sondheim at his most twisted, but without any resolution ever.

7[anonymous]13y

Well, first we're dealing with variations on a specific tune. The reason I suspect that random variations might work well is that if the probability of a change is sufficiently low, it would have exactly the effect you suggest: mostly the original "Lullaby and Goodnight", but with occasional horrible. Of course, if I were actually a cruel genius, I could do better, but it would be foolish of me to admit to being one. Another reason random changes might work well is that they are by definition unexpected. If I did something purposeful, it would have a pattern; the real Quirrell might break that pattern by observing his victim's reactions, but not having a pattern at all might also be an interesting thing to try.

1Percent_Carbon13y

My music theory is rusty and anyway underdeveloped. But I don't think individual notes can be disturbingly off key. It is the relationship between notes that takes them out of key. A single note of any frequency will produce harmonics with anything in the environment that is capable of responding, and thus create its own meager, on key accompaniment. I think MIDI keeps you from even approaching the kind of terrible close but not quite right tones you want to reproduce.

375th13y

Changing one individual note in a monophonic tune absolutely can be horribly off key. Melody is harmony, and harmony is counterpoint; even with a single voice humming, if the tune is "classical" enough your brain understands intuitively where the chord changes are and what the bass line should be. You don't need microtonal pitches to violently defy people's expectations. (EDIT: Though you almost certainly do need microtonal pitches to precisely mimic the effects described in the text. But I think you certainly could do something horrible without them.)

1David_Gerard13y

See, I'm the sort of person that reads that and wants to buy that record. Probably from the small ads in the back of The Wire. (Breaking musical rules sufficiently horribly is a well-established way to win at music, even if you're unlikely to get rich from it. Metal Machine Music actually got reissued and people actually bought it.)

[-]75th13y120

I'm not sure how much music you know, and I'm not sure how much music Mathematica knows, so if this is all Greek or too hard, disregard it all:

Try different diatonic modes and different scales altogether. Switch from Major to Phrygian in the middle of a phrase. Switch to different sets of keys depending on whether consecutive tones are ascending or descending. Use a lot of Locrian mode, it is generally wrong-sounding. Try mapping diatonic scale degrees to octatonic ones somehow, and switch between the two octatonic scales at random. See if you can produce a portamento between two notes, and use it a lot when two notes are separated by only a semitone.

0Bill_McGrath13y

Additionally, switch tunings at random. This would be extremely difficult, but I'd imagine the disorientation caused would be related to how difficult it is. Switch from 12-ET to Pythagorean to Arabic to some obscure Baroque tuning, and base them all on different pitch centres.

1gjm13y

When what you're listening to is purely melodic (like humming) I think such differences would either be unnoticeable or indistinguishable from just humming out of tune, to all but the most expert listeners. A whole Pythagorean comma -- i.e., all the out-of-tune-ness you can get from Pythagorean tuning, crammed into a single interval -- is only about a quarter of a semitone. A quarter-comma meantone "wolf fifth" is actually even worse than this, but it's still only about 1/3 of a semitone. If you have a computer with Python on it, you could grab the code from my discussion elsewhere in the thread with thescoundrel and experiment; I think you'll find that the sort of tuning-switching you describe would be altogether too subtle to be very effective as psychological warfare. [EDITED to add: in particular, I found that to my ears a quarter-tone error is quite often obtrusively unpleasant but a quarter-semitone is generally no worse than "a bit out of tune".]

0Bill_McGrath13y

Hmm. You're probably right. I've experimented with different tunings but I didn't play anything purely melodic. The effect is probably a lot more apparent when you're dealing with intervals rather than just pitches. That said, changing the central pitch that the temperament is based around makes the differences bigger again; but that's not too useful as a tool for actually creating this melody. I think it'd be noticeable for the arabic tuning system too; that's extremely different to Western temperaments.

8buybuydandavis13y

EY is one hilarious fellow. He should do standup. The Horrible Humming was just too funny. And interesting too, because you wonder if it could work.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y140

Tolerance for rejection is a much harder qualifier to meet for success in standup than being funny is. Just, you know, so you know.

[-]David_Gerard13y130

I am reminded of the first time Australian musician Lester Vat did his famous show Why Am I A Pie? (there's audio and video there.) He got up on stage at a rock'n'roll pub - it was a "What Is Music?" weird noise festival, but no-one expected this - went up to the microphone, and for forty-five minutes, just repeated the words:

"Why ... am I ... a pie?"
"Why ... am I ... a pie?"
"Why ... am I ... a pie?"

After fifteen minutes people didn't even have the energy left to tell him to fuck off. By twenty minutes people were slamdancing to it.

Repetition. It's powerful stuff.

2kilobug13y

The Horrible Humming was great in itself, but it felt a bit artificial to me : why didn't the Auror just cast a Quietus charm ? Silencing prisoners with a gag is not that unusual in the Muggle world, and I would definitely except the wizards to use a Quietus charm or equivalent if a prisoner started to bother the Aurors with sound. It's not like Wizard Britain is very respectful of human rights of prisoners and that gags (mundane or magical ones) would be felt a non-acceptable behavior.

[-]loserthree13y100

Quirrell would probably have sneezed it away, again.

6buybuydandavis13y

Listening and watching - monitoring - appears to be part of the job. Because of the humor, I'm willing to suspend belief a little on realism. It's not a fundamental plot point. But it is funny.

3Velorien13y

To cast the charm would be effectively to admit defeat before an unarmed prisoner (in a way that calling in a replacement according to standard procedure wouldn't), and also to be roundly mocked by other Aurors if they found out. Or so the Auror in question presumably thought.

1gwern13y

Casting the charm is also an admission of defeat.

4q4-g03olf13y

You might check out a program called Max/MSP if you want to get really deep into this stuff. It handles conversions between MIDI and audio signal pretty elegantly. Other ideas.. You might try making notes that change pitch continuously You might try putting the breaks in parts of the music where we expect it to continue. MIDI "doo" or other synth voice instruments tend to sound pretty maddening on their own without much special effort. Maybe layer in helicopter sounds or applause to simulate breathiness?

1David_Gerard13y

The FluidSynth sound fonts are quite nice within their instruments' usual range, but do try going up or down a bit far for great lulz.

2Bill_McGrath13y

This is might be my favourite comment thread on all of Less Wrong. Terrible pity that the poster left! EDIT: Semi-relevant. EDIT 2: I have a great love for some technically awful music that I find still entertains me loads. I inflict The Shaggs on my friends in college every excuse I get.

2Bill_McGrath13y

When I was reading that part, all I could think was "Man, I have to try do that..." There are ways around this: a program called Scalar allows you to build microtonally tuned scales and set them up to be controlled by MIDI. Also, Native Instruments' Kontakt allows you to change the tuning of instruments and map the new tuning to a keyboard. Scalar is free but hard to use: I was never actually able to figure out how to set it up to hear the scales I'd built - but my laptop seems to have a grudge against MIDI devices anyway. Kontakt is a lot easier to use but costs a couple of hundred euro.

[-]Eneasz13y240

I've always had a soft spot for Quirrell. It's made me blind to a lot of his flaws, so I've tried to actively focus on his evil actions and how much I would hate someone doing that to me. But this latest chapter made me love him all over again. Even though I realize it probably contains huge amounts of misrepresentation if not outright lies.

I'm worried I may be turning Bad.

OTOH, this may just be superb writing, to make the villain so completely relate-able. Either way, every time a chapter goes Quirrell-heavy I swoon. Glad we got one in the current arc so I don't have to wait longer.

[-]anotherblackhat13y270

I'm worried I may be turning Bad.

You need not trouble yourself. Examining Quirrell's actions has merely made you realize how much you would like to have his power. "Bad" is just a label applied by those too weak to seize that power.

Do not fear the dark side - we have cookies!

6NancyLebovitz13y

Is he actually loyal to his students or Up To Something?.

[-]gjm13y200

Could be both. In any case I think it's a fair assumption that Quirrell is always up to something.

3Paulovsk13y

This is driving me crazy. I never know when he's doing evil or not. This chapter, for example, led me to believe he was doing good at some point of his life. Although my rationalist-beginner-side is screaming at me he is Voldemort or something, I can't help but sympathize with that point.

8Eugine_Nier13y

Um, his "good" deed consisted of attempting to set up a fake ultimate hero and getting really pissed of when people didn't fall for it.

2Velorien13y

We don't actually know that yet. It's only a popular fan theory.

2Sheaman377313y

Velorien should not be downvoted. He asked himself the fundamental question of rationality: and the fact of the matter is, we don't know that that's true, it is a falsifiable theory with supporting evidence and multiple proponents but we don't know yet. Upvoted.

9buybuydandavis13y

I think he takes his responsibilities seriously. His evil comes from his condemnation of the weakness, stupidity, cowardice, and irresponsibility of others. He lives up to his standards, but others don't.

[-]loserthree13y180

I'm confident that is how Quirrell is meant to appear. But the villain's real face may be a bit of a riddle.

4Alsadius13y

Groan.

7loserthree13y

You know you love it.

3Alsadius13y

I do, that's the worst part.

1ChrisHallquist13y

I agree that he takes his responsibilities seriously. But I think his evil comes more from the fact that he almost certainly had some plot in mind when he freed Bellatrix, and the fact that he tried to get Hermione fed to Dementors because he didn't like the influence she was having on Harry.

3buybuydandavis13y

Who doesn't have plots in this book? I hardly think that's a test for evil in this book - more like a test for intelligence. And we don't know that he tried to get Hermione fed to the Dementors. When I try to read his mind on that point, I think his main goal was to get Harry to turn against the government of magical Britain - and it seemed like a fine success in those terms, at least in the moment. See previous comment http://lesswrong.com/lw/bfo/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/68tv Assuming that it was all a Quirrell plot - which I do at this point - he could also have redeemed Hermione at the last minute with some evidence after she was condemned, and his point with magical Britain had been made. And he could get some Good Guy points with Harry for saving Hermione. Maybe not too, but it's hardly certain he would have allowed her to die.

3Normal_Anomaly13y

I don't think Hermione plots, at least not outside the wargame. Also, Quirrell would want her influence to be removed from Harry. Much as I hate to admit it, this would probably have extended to allowing her to die.

2Percent_Carbon13y

Not the best test. Ron is intelligent. Ron does not appear to plot, only form and employ strategy. Like he did with Harry against the Dementor. Like he claimed he intended to do with the auror he threw an AK at. Like he did in the Draco the Drop Lord Theatre incident. We should be suspicious of that one, as well. Like he did as Voldemort when he set his Forces of Evil up to self destruct after he left the game, thereby sparing the rest of the world.

8ChrisHallquist13y

Remember: Quirrell can care about his students any time he likes, because he's not Good.

8Alsadius13y

Or perhaps it's more accurately phrased as "I can show up the good guys any time I want to make them look bad, because I'm not constrained by the same fear of ill consequences that they are".

2loserthree13y

Upvoted for letting me know I'm not the only one.

[-]FAWS13y240

"But I -" Her excellent memory helpfully replayed it for the thousandth time, Draco Malfoy telling her with a sneer that she'd never beat him when he wasn't tired, and then proceeding to prove just that, dancing like a duelist between the warded trophies while she frantically scrambled, and dealing the ending blow with a hex that sent her crashing against the wall and drew blood from her cheek - and then - then she'd -

This seems to suggest that her memories of the duel are a fabrication (or the "Draco" she was fighting was someone else under the influence of polyjuice). Draco has no particular reason to further provoke her and was genuinely unsure whether he could beat her. It doesn't seem obvious why anyone would do that if there was going to be a genuine duel anyway, though. Maybe the the genuine memories were just touched up a bit? Alternatively, why might Draco behave as in that memory when there's no one else around? (the behavior would have made more sense for the second, public duel)

[-]pedanterrific13y130

I notice that the only thing we're told about Hermione's appearance in Chapter 78 is that she has bags under her eyes, no mention of a cut on her cheek.

2Vaniver13y

That seems like the sort of thing wizards would heal as a matter of course.

3pedanterrific13y

Not first-years. (I'm referring to the scene at breakfast before the arrest.)

2Vaniver13y

Ah, okay. I was thinking at the trial. A slight cut could heal up in the ~eight hours between the fight and breakfast, especially if she managed to sleep, but that does seem like a clue that the memory is fake.

3Percent_Carbon13y

Really? Papercuts bother me for a couple days at least. Something about a witch's constitution, perhaps.

[-]SkyDK13y110

I suggest you reroll. I heal paper cuts in a couple of hours.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y170

I suggest you reroll.

Thanks, but nah. I'm a healthy white male American with a middle class background and an intelligence greater than one standard deviation above the mean. Slow healing wounds are not enough to reroll in the face of the great risk of a less privileged life.

1thomblake13y

Both statements are true of me, depending on what's meant by "heal". Depending on where the papercut is (sensitive place, callus, etc) it might stop bothering me long after it's any risk of bleeding. Upvoted for this suggestion.

[-]Nominull13y230

I needed chocolate to recover from reading this chapter. ;_;

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky13y250

You warm my terrible heart.

[-][anonymous]13y220

Harry MUST triumph over Quirrel, and he must do so by being more moral, not more intelligent.

That doesn't sound right. If you're looking for ways Harry could win, why not take Harry's advice and draw up a list of his relative advantages? He does have them - knowledge of superrationality, knowledge of science, ability to empathize with non-psychopaths, to name three - and they're likely to be part of the solution.

[-]LucasSloan13y220

I will say this much, Mr. Potter: You are already an Occlumens, and I think you will become a perfect Occlumens before long. Identity does not mean, to such as us, what it means to other people. Anyone we can imagine, we can be; and the true difference about you, Mr. Potter, is that you have an unusually good imagination. A playwright must contain his characters, he must be larger than them in order to enact them within his mind. To an actor or spy or politician, the limit of his own diameter is the limit of who he can pretend to be, the limit of which face he may wear as a mask. But for such as you and I, anyone we can imagine, we can be, in reality and not pretense. While you imagined yourself a child, Mr. Potter, you were a child. Yet there are other existences you could support, larger existences, if you wished. Why are you so free, and so great in your circumference, when other children your age are small and constrained? Why can you imagine and become selves more adult than a mere child of a playwright should be able to compose? That I do not know, and I must not say what I guess. But what you have, Mr. Potter, is freedom.

[-]DavidAgain13y210

No one seems to be commenting on the way that dumbledore identified quirrel to the wards. It seemed to me to be a very clear hint that someone else was somehow within that circle and so is also recognised as the defence professor, has top level Hogwarts permissions etc. Possibly Mr hat and cloak?

9Nominull13y

It's possible, but not everything that's possible is true. You'd think there'd only be able to be one Defense Professor, especially if that position was referred to with the definite article, and so properly coded wards would throw an exception if his identifier did not uniquely pick out an individual.

9Percent_Carbon13y

It means that he won't show up as Tom Riddle or Voldemort or Quinirius Quirrell or Jeffe Japes or Scion of X on the Marauder Map. He'll show up as The Defense Professor.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y200

I wonder how long it'll be till everyone in Hogwarts realizes that the whole recent attempted-murder plot was designed by Quirrel for the sole purpose of having both Slytherin and Ravenclaw win the House Cup at the same time (because when Slytherin and Ravenclaw lose students mid-terms, the school rules are ambiguous about whether the points earned by those students should be counted towards winning the House Cup)

I'm expecting the plot to have also contained as a crucial component a Golden Snitch with a delayed-action memory charm, which will cause the Ministry to overreact by banning Golden Snitches on school grounds, thus fullfilling Harry's wish of Snitch-less Quidditch as well.

I'm only half-joking with the above.

9Lavode13y

Quidditch really nags me, because the team you are playing with has nearly zero relevance. And it is so unnessesary, even if Rowling desired a position on the team of key importance, the way the snitch works is still wrong - If it was worth zero points, but catching it ended the game, then seekers are still key, they just cannot win entirely on their own anymore, and the job would require more than just "flies fast",

[-][anonymous]13y180

Or if catching the snitch gave you the option of ending the game or of having it re-released after a short random time. That way a seeker of the losing team could still engage in snitch denial other than trying to crash his counterpart into the ground.

1kilobug13y

To be honest there is still a small impact of the rest of the team on the game : the Beaters can use the Bludgers against the seekers (so they do interact with seekers and affect their chance of catching the Snitch), and there are occasional cases in which the Quaffle point difference is high enough so the Snitch doesn't decide the game (the final of the World Cup in cannon). But yes, since the first time I heard about the rules of Quidditch, I was "gah, that just doesn't make sense - make the Snitch worth much less, like 30, at the very least".

6Velorien13y

Hypothesis: Once upon a time, the wizarding world had no popular sport of its own, and Quidditch was more akin to aerial dueling, a one-on-one contest of skill. Then, someone realised all the various benefits/opportunities offered by popular sports (perhaps by watching the Muggle world), and added extra rules and a team element to give the crowds something to watch while the Seekers continued their long periods of boredom interspersed with sharp bursts of activity. Quidditch today generates a massive market in terms of matches, merchandise, contracts, celebrity culture etc. - a market that benefits the economy as a whole and certain key segments of it especially. It also serves various other purposes common to team sports, such as channeling the volatile energy of young people, and creating a harmless outlet for tension between countries (harmless in theory, anyway - we don't have riot statistics for the wizarding workl). Whoever shaped Quidditch into its modern form didn't need a balanced game - they just needed something to fill the sport-shaped gap in wizard society. Such a hypothesis would explain why Quidditch is so poor in game design terms - unbalanced scoring, disproportionately high risk of injury and matches of unpredictable length don't matter quite so much if your goal is to pander to the audience rather than make a fair test of the competitors' skills.

[-]mjr13y100

Canonically the situation was quite reversed, the Snitch (or rather it's predecessor, the Snidget) having been introduced to the already existing Quidditch game by a noble's quirk. I doubt this is different for MoR.

8Velorien13y

Alas. I have not read any of the follow-up works, and did not realise that they would persist in demolishing any attempt to inject credibility into the Potterverse.

0Normal_Anomaly13y

I think the canon explanation is about as credible as yours, and they're both pretty good. "A typical competitive ballgame got merged with competitive bird-hunting" is a decent way it could have happened.

[-]Velorien13y190

Harry is totally schizophrenic in MOR though. He's got all of the Founders in his head.

You seem to be working from a unified view of the mind in which there is one single personality with one single voice, and deviations from this structure are pathological. I don't think this is accurate.

Even if it was, it is common for people to hold internal dialogues, and not unusual for patterns to develop where certain kinds of thought are given certain labels. I don't think this says anything special about Harry, except that he has a rich and vibrant inner life.

Also, a Public Service Announcement: "schizophrenia" is an umbrella term for a long list of possible symptoms whose main common feature is disconnection from reality or warped perception of it. You are thinking of Dissociative Identity Disorder (commonly known as Multiple Personality Disorder), which is a completely different thing altogether.

[-]buybuydandavis13y190

Yay!

"Not this again!" Minerva said. "Albus, it was You-Know-Who, not you, who marked Harry as his equal. There is no possible way that the prophecy could be talking about you!"

The old wizard nodded, but his eyes still seemed distant, fixed only on the road head.

This is another brick in the wall of the Prophecy and Potter massacre being a setup by Dumbledore.

6[anonymous]13y

Not a nail in the coffin? Evidence for and against Dumbledore and Voldemort as authors of the prophecy: +Dumbledore * Was the apparent beneficiary of the prophecy -Dumbledore * Seems to have a world model that includes such entities as "heroes" and "evil", and is ripe for exploitation * Gives every outward sign of believing the prophecy is genuine * Gave Trelawney a magical clock that's probably a listening device +Voldemort * Was the actual beneficiary of the prophecy, if he pretended to lose * Suddenly has a history of setting up both sides of a conflict (My reaction to Ch. 84 was: ...really? You waited until you were half a million words into the fic before introducing this? Really?) * Has a history of creating orphaned heroes of destiny * Would have been the one who sent Snape to overhear the prophecy * Chose Harry and not Neville as his target, then allowed Snape to learn the meaning of the prophecy and that he intended to attack the Potters -Voldemort * Reacted strongly to a mention of prophecy once, possibly because he takes prophecies seriously * Could have defeated Dumbledore by conventional means * Should not be trying plots as complicated as this one Quirrell has indicated that he plans to go to war with the Muggles and rule the entire world. If Percent_Carbon is right, and "Tom didn't want to be Hitler. Tom wanted to actually win", he may think that conquering Britain as Voldemort would cost him the larger war. He needs a hero, and his first hero failed. So for eight years afterward, he continued to build up the legend of Voldemort, slowly grinding down the opposition, and then, when all hope seemed lost, a prophecy struck like a bolt of lightning and Voldemort was defeated by a baby in his crib. On the evidence so far, I've switched to Team Voldemort. You were right the first time. Dumbledore could still be responsible for the Potters being betrayed, because he expected Voldemort to be blindsided by Lily's sacrifice, since "evil ca

[-]see13y110

Suddenly has a history of setting up both sides of a conflict

Hmm? We have no good evidence to distinguish between the following two hypotheses:

Voldemort was playing both sides of things up until 1973, when he dropped one side for some reason
When Voldemort embarked on the Quirrell deception, he knew investigation would reveal that he wasn't actually Quirrell, so he deliberately dropped hints that would deceive investigators into believing he was a hero who, in reality, died back in 1973.

All we know is Quirrell has let hints drop that he was the hero who disappeared. There is no reason to expect that any of his hints are anything other than deliberate lies. If a competent investigation would discover that Qurrell's not really Qurrell, then the deception absolutely requires a second layer to last the year, so people like Bones can feel satisfied that they've discovered "the truth" about Quirrell without suspecting he's Voldemort. The existence of this second-layer deception now does not provide any evidence that the same deception existed eighteen years earlier.

[-][anonymous]13y140

There is no reason to expect that any of his hints are anything other than deliberate lies.

Quirrell certainly talks about the need to act exactly as the person you're impersonating would act. His speech to Hermione would be no evidence at all if it were delivered by someone who practised what Quirrell preaches.

But that isn't Quirrell. Far from putting up a perfect facade, Quirrell's mask is constantly slipping. He "makes a game of lying with truths, playing with words to conceal his meanings in plain sight." His dialogue is peppered with hints to his identity, his past, and his intentions. Almost everything he says about himself is a clue.

His love of the killing curse and his intent to kill. His childhood ambition to become a Dark Lord. The Muggle dojo. The Pioneer plaque. His intention to crush Rita Skeeter. Repeated use of the word 'Riddle'. His willingness to be identified as having eaten 'death'. His wish for Britain to grow strong under a strong leader. The story of Merope's enslavement of Tom Riddle Sr. His theft of Quirrell's body using incredibly dark magic.

I think you've confused the actual character of Quirrell with the master of deception that he claims to b... (read more)

4Percent_Carbon13y

Yeah we do. When EY writes that the heroic Scion of X vanished while traveling Ablania in 45 he is telling the readers that Voldemort took him by making a shout out to what happened to Quirrell in canon. The Ablanian Shuffle is good evidence.

0see13y

I guess it depends on your definition of "good". Care to quantify yours?

3Percent_Carbon13y

I guess you should quantify your own definition of the word, perhaps in the same post in which you ask someone else to quantify theirs, since you used it first. I'd say p>0.95 that "Went on a graduation tour abroad and disappeared while visiting Albania." is meant to communicate something to the readers that it does not communicate to the characters. I'd say p>0.75 that the thing it is meant to communicate is that the hero was compromised by Riddle, like Quirrell was in canon. I don't expect it to be the same. Voldemort's shade in canon may have had possession capacity that young Tom Riddle did not. I'd say p>0.5 that the hero was replaced, that Tom Riddle physically played both roles in his own flesh. Your turn.

3see13y

(I asked you to quantify what you meant by "good" because I was suspecting you were treating a probability of, say, 30% as "good", and we were getting our terms crossed. Obviously not.) Whereas I'd put that at roughly p=0.25. I mean, sure, it might be trying to communicate that, but, I've got: "Reader! She's about to undercover the Defense Professor is Voldemort!" as a message intended to be sent to the reader but not the characters at about p=0.25. "The heroic Slytherin discovered something about Riddle in Albania in 1945, and spent his time trying to follow up on it. When Voldemort came back openly to Britain, so did he. What the hero learned in 1945, or in the years between 1945-1970, is going to be important to Harry's defeat of Voldemort, and here's the hint that keeps it from coming entirely out of the blue" (or variations of the theme) as about p=0.15 "The 'heroic' Slytherin died in 1945 in a confrontation with Riddle/Voldemort. In 1970, an ambitious person unconnected to Voldemort then tried to exploit the Voldemort's rise as a chance to make himself leader of Britain under the dead man's name, and died or quit in 1973. Voldemort then found it useful to try the same con as a backup for Quirrel." at roughly p=0.15 And, "Eilizer is planning to do something else with it, that I haven't thought of" at about p=0.2

1Percent_Carbon13y

Fantastic. I dismiss the bait and switch because the passage does not seem to lay down that tease; p0.8 he would clean out other things that only exist to support his ill conceived tease. There isn't a WHAM paragraph with few words surrounded by white space. It's just not built like a bait and switch shocker. While reading, I thought that Scion of X did fight Riddle and did as Hermione suggested: And after Voldemort killed him he kept the identity close because things like that can be useful. But I know that I am gullible and literal (p>0.2 that I under value literal interpretations after an alternative is available), so I dismissed that as soon as I thought up an explanation that worked on a more in character plot. p<0.01 I dismiss the unknown, unrelated, unremarked third party because of Conservation of Detail. p<0.01 I don't have any other speculation worth mentioning, so "something else" gets p<0.25.

2see13y

If 1970-1973 was a con by Voldemort, why was it given up in 1973? Surely he expected it to take longer than a couple of years to begin with, didn't he?

5Percent_Carbon13y

I don't know how long he thought it would take, but it sounds like he had no idea how hard it would suck.

0pedanterrific13y

What other things? That is, if the bait-and-switch was intended, he would've had to come up with an actual character that fit all those facts as well, and it seems like "he spent seven years sleeping in the same room as Voldemort" is a non-trivial detail to change.

1Percent_Carbon13y

The Albanian Shuffle. See says there is a real chance that it is mentioned just to string the reader along and make us think Bones is about to say that Quirrell is Riddle. I dismiss this because EY changed the date, which comes at the top of the passage, just so readers wouldn't jump to think Bones is talking about Riddle. If EY took such a step to prevent the tease that Bones was about to name Riddle, then I would expect EY would not leave things in that were only there to build up that tease. So the Albanian Shuffle is dismissively unlikely to be referenced for the sake of making the reader think Bones was about to name Riddle. I really don't know how you could think that in the first place unless you first read that paragraph after already thinking that Bones was going to name Riddle.

0Random83213y

Before the date change, there was a legitimate chance that the reader would come away from the discussion thinking that the person Bones was describing actually was Riddle, and that both Bones and Quirrell understood her to have been talking about Riddle. Which if unintended is a far greater problem than "thinking Bones was about to name Riddle, then it turns out no". This was, in fact, my reading when I was actually going through the chapter. (tl;dr: It's not a "tease" that Bones was about to name Riddle that's the problem, the problem is that it wasn't resolved with a clear indication that they're not talking about Riddle) Changing the date fixes this because the reader can go look it up and realize that it can't be Riddle after all.

0Percent_Carbon13y

"OhmygodohmygodOHMYGOD! Bones is going to figure out Quirrell is Voldemort! OHMYGOD! What's he going to do?!?! He's surrounded by aurors, he's in DMLE headquarters!... Oh my GOD! Those aurors are so screwed!!" looks up Tom Riddle online because that's totally what all readers would do "Oh, hm. That's not Riddle then. I wonder who it is?" ... Are you really suggesting that EY means the reader to do this? He said he wasn't going to lie to us anymore. See's low-probability theory of tease and WHAM involves EY lying to his readers, but your take on it that they were supposed to be totally tricked until the look it up online (?!?!) is turns that up to ridiculous levels.

0Random83213y

The fact that the conversation doesn't end with her actually saying Riddle is what would prompt readers to look it up. Are you saying that readers that are still with the fic after eighty chapters haven't learned enough about rationality to take two minutes to verify an assumption after noticing they are confused? If that meant he couldn't ever make a conversation that seems to be going one way but turns out to be different a few paragraphs later, it would lead to a VERY boring story. P.S. My point was that the problem that EY fixed was that the obvious thing to check (looking up canon!Riddle's biography) leads to an apparent confirmation.

1FAWS13y

That would only have changed if the year he started Hogwarts changed, which it did not. The birth date didn't change by a whole year, just from late enough in 1926 to enter Hogwarts in 1938 to early enough in 1927 to enter Hogwarts in that same year.

0pedanterrific13y

Yes. Exactly. That's my point. (Not sure why you said this.)

0FAWS13y

(I lost track of what you were trying to argue, and the comment in isolation seemed to suggest that the non-trivial change had happened. A clause like "so the fact that this was carefully kept constant is evidence in favor of ..." would have helped. )

4loserthree13y

On the contrary, the reference to Albania is almost certainly a clue to the reader that the hero was replaced.

2buybuydandavis13y

So let me follow along. It seems like one extra level to what I've been thinking in terms of plotting. The whole Voldemort Dark Lord war is just part of a bigger plot. First he creates the Villain of Voldemort. Then he creates a prophecy about a child destined to kill him - the eventual Hero. Dumbledore walks right into it by trying to use the prophecy as a trap to kill Tom, with Lily sacrificing herself in a dark ritual as the trap. So Tom gleefully takes the bait to create his Hero, and either is really diminished, or just goes on vacation for a few years waiting for Harry to get older. But clearly he also does something to Harry - creating the ultra resourceful Dark Side which itself contributes to the Harry Legend. And then Dumbledore grooms his hero as well, because he believes that he is destined to be the Hero because of what Voldemort has done to him. IN the end, he'll lose to Harry again, once Harry is well on his way to being the Light Lord, but he'll upload into Harry and become the Hero ruler instead of the Dark Lord, until he uses up Harry's body. The end. Another point in favor of this is Quirrell's talk with Harry after the bully climax, where he said Harry has everything Quirrell had ever wanted - the love, fear, respect, and admiration of everyone in school. This is exactly what he is after again - to rule and be feared, loved, respected, and admired. You may or may not be going for the Upload bit. That's a little bit of an evolution for me. I considered taking over Good Harry as a target of opportunity for Voldemort. That even the Voldemort persona is part of the scheme is new. But I've got a new shiny toy. Evil for the Sake of Evil. In his contempt for the stupidity and weakness of people, I have a hard time seeing him even wanting to be the Hero anymore. He's now the Joker. He's Lord Foul - Corruption. He wants to corrupt Good. Corrupt Dumbledore into things like killing Narcissa. Corrupt Harry into being a Dark Lord. Corrupt Hermione and t

7Viliam_Bur13y

I think it's the other way: he wants good people to be seen as fallible and fallen. My model of him is like: "So when I tried to be the hero, people disrespected me, but for some reason the same people respect Dumbledore, Hermione, Harry. Why?! Oh, they are probably better at signalling. So let's manipulate them into difficult situations where even if they choose good, it will either ruin them or send bad signals." He does not want to redefine the words with capital letters. That's a fool's game. He is just jealous that other people succeeded in having a good image, where he failed despite his cool plans. He wants good people to have bad image, so that he can become a person with the best image, which is his preferred way to rule the world; probably because it seems safer in long run than being an evil overlord. I believe his frustration at his inability to become a credible hero. But at least he is learning. He has learned that "a single super-heroic action" is not a good plan, so now he is trying "a child with magical destiny" plan. He cynically believed that he could fool all people; now he is even more cynical, because he believes that he cannot fool them by something that makes sense (killing a few Death Eaters and saving a princess? meh.), but could do it by a superstition (to kill Voldemort while being a baby? cool, and nobody suspects anything!).

5loserthree13y

Some time after Chapter 38 showed us that Lucius thinks HJPEV is Voldemort, I took his position seriously and looked over the rest of the story. If Voldemort is the hero, what is Quirrell? I figured he was the Basilisk. And if Quirrell was not the antagonist, who was? I figured it was Dumbledore because the opposite of rational is insane, not stupid. I now think Quirrell is Voldemort and Dumbledore is not especially insane, but I wish I had thought to reinterpret the prophesy without Voldemort as the obvious bad guy back then. There is so much potential there.

[-]mstevens13y180

I don't actually go to meetups, but Harry's comments about anti-conformity training made me wonder if it'd be worth trying.

You could retest the original experiment, see if lesswrongians can avoid it through knowledge of the effect.

You could mock obviously true statements to practice withstanding opposition.

You could practice the ability to do harmless but nonconformist things to gain the ability to do so if the situation called for something unusual, but you might otherwise be too conformist or embarassed. (each meeting attendee shall order a coffee whilst wearing the ceremonial tea-cosy!). I suspect some of this overlaps with PUA a little and easily veers into general confidence building.

I don't know if rehearsals would do any good, but you could go through the motions of not complying with the Milgram experiment, making people handle little fake emergencies...

You could wonder if EY is planning things like this for the Center for Modern Rationality.

[-]Spurlock13y140

I don't know if rehearsals would do any good

Really, this is how I feel. I'd be really surprised if a setup like that actually worked. I'm not sure Harry is supposed to actually believe (with any confidence) that it works for Chaos. Ultimately you know and everyone else knows that it's just a charade, and that really your "nonconforming" is just conforming one level below surface: You stand there and take abuse that you know to be insincere, and then get a pat on the back about it later, just like everyone else did on their turn.

Hopefully CMR has a better exercise in mind. A really good anti-Asch training tool seems like a great thing to have.

You could mock obviously true statements to practice withstanding opposition.

The danger with this seems to be that you'll also be developing skills for attacking correct positions. It's training you to develop tactics for entrenching yourself in incorrect beliefs. Also it seems to lend itself to the view of arguments as status conflicts rather than group truth-investigation (though I suppose we do need to at least practice how to handle arguments with people who do perceive them this way).

[-]Xachariah13y140

I disagree. I think it would have a very good chance to work.

To a perfect Bayesian, the importance of an act is not what it looks like on the surface, but the state of the world that makes such an act possible. Unfortunately (or fortunately in this case), human minds are not perfectly Bayesian.

To the human mind, merely resembling another thing is enough for the mind to form connections and associations between the two. This is why public speaking courses can improve people's abilities and lessen their fears of public speech. Even though people know they're just speaking in front of a class who is obligated to receive the speech well, their mind naturally reduces the anxiety they feel for any future speaking engagements. The mind says "eh, it's close enough. I can do this," just like how anti-conformity training should fool the mind into considering it 'close enough' to real disagreement. Speech classes don't not work perfectly, just like chaos training (I assume) doesn't work perfectly, but it's pretty good.

Anti-conformity training seems practically identical to a proven training method, and thus I rate it highly likely to work.

[-]Spurlock13y130

Well, I guess it's just an empirical question where we differ in predictions. Personally I don't think the analogy with public speaking is very strong, because public speaking classes are actually public speaking. People stand up and speak in front of lots of people, that's just what it is.

Upon reflection though, it does seem like there's one way that it might help, which is that it might help you figure out how to go about non-conformity, what exactly you can do or say in such a situation. So even if your mind doesn't buy into the charade, roleplaying with good partners might help you figure out ways to navigate a non-conformity situation. Having those methods worked out in advance might make you less hesitant to speak out in real world situations, but only to the extent that your hesitation is about not knowing what exactly to say or do (as opposed to fear of social punishment, the usual explanation for Asch's results).

What I've always wondered about with Asch's experiment is how much of a difference a small monetary incentive (say, $1 per correct answer) would make. It seems like the experiment is odd in that there is no incentive to give correct answers, but at least a potential or perceived social incentive to give conforming ones. This seems like it would be relevant to our disagreement because it's a question of whether the situation becomes different when something is actually on the line. Unfortunately I can't seem to google up any examples of variations like this.

4Solvent13y

I would be really interested in the result of this experiment.

2[anonymous]13y

There is a difference. Even if the class (during a public speaking course) is obligated to receive the speech well, you know that their approval might be insincere and that's still scary. In the proposed nonconformity exercise you would be sure that the other participants don't really disapprove.

[-]NancyLebovitz13y140

I think that if you've got a deeply habitual inhibition against firmly disagreeing with people, even a known-to-be-simulated experience of breaking the inhibition can help quite a bit.

[-]Desrtopa13y110

Based on my own experiences being a lone dissenter, the main thing that has allowed me to stand up and maintain my position consistently in the face of uniform opposition and derision, was not expecting much of everyone else in the first place.

For example, in an introductory logic course, when the professor made a mistake, which everyone else in the class agreed with, and I was the sole person to disagree, and attempt to explain it in the face of the entire class brushing me off and laughing about how I thought I knew better when the answer was so obvious to everyone else, it didn't seem weird to me at all that every other person would make the same mistake and I would be the only one to notice it. It wasn't confusing to me, and my success in showing the professor in a couple minutes after class that she had been mistaken after all confirmed for me that my expectations were on track.

Conforming to the beliefs of the crowd is perfectly sensible behavior, in domains where you have no reason to expect yourself to be more accurate than anyone else. Learning to disregard conforming instincts completely is a bad idea, because a lot of the time, it really will be everyone else who's right,... (read more)

6Viliam_Bur13y

Having an experience of being right where everyone else is wrong, is good for breaking the fear of nonconformity. When I was a child, I participated on a science olympiad and on one question I gave an answer that seemed trivially wrong, but in fact it was correct. (There were two objects of different size, made of same material, balanced on a lever, then both immersed in water. How will the balance chance?) Everyone thought I was wrong, and the official solution confirmed it. Then the organizers realized they made a mistake, and confirmed my solution. Since then I knew (also on emotional level) that it is possible to be right, even if everyone else disagrees. Sometimes it is wise to keep quiet, because the social consequences of nonconformity are real, but being alone does not make one automatically wrong. It was a good lesson.

3Percent_Carbon13y

On the other hand, the fact that you were comfortable being the lone dissenter while untrained in resisting conformity may indicate that your social wiring is atypical. Some people in some situations may interpret that difference as a socioemotional flaw.

2pedanterrific13y

From www.hpmor.com/notes/82/:

2mstevens13y

Hmm, interesting. I may well have read that and forgotten the Harry reference, I knew he was working on exercises.

1TrE13y

I doubt whether it's good to do actual anti-conformity training because it might make you too non-conforming (i.e. sticking to wrong positions). Instead, maybe it'd be better to do training on how to use others' opinions as evidence, similar to calibration training. The approach of anti-conformity training sounds good, but I'd stray in some statements which are actually false, the goal here is to actually get to the right conclusions whether the rest of society is right or wrong.

[-]DavidAgain13y180

Given that places can be made unplottable, I'd guess identities can be made unknowable. Uncertainty in potterverse can be a quality of the thing itself...

[-]FAWS13y180

Harry nodded. " At least nobody's going to try hexing you, not after what the Headmaster said at dinner tonight. Oh, and Ron Weasley came up to me, looking very serious, and told me that if I saw you first, I should tell you that he's sorry for having thought badly of you, and he'll never speak ill of you again."

"Ron believes I'm innocent?" said Hermione.

"Well... he doesn't think you're innocent, per se..."

Ron approves of trying to murder Draco Malfoy?

[-]thomblake13y320

Ron approves of trying to murder Draco Malfoy?

I'm pretty sure even canon Ron would at least say he approves of killing Draco.

9taelor13y

If I recall correctly, canon!Ron has admitted to fantasizing about murdering Draco on several occasions. The one that comes most readily to mind was in book 4, when they were discussing Durmstrang's location in the far north, and Ron comments wistfully about how easy it would be to push Draco off a glacier and make it look like an accident.

1trlkly13y

He does hate him very much, remember. And your idea makes a lot more sense than min: Ron alone was smart enough to be scared of Hermione-the-murderer that he wanted to get on her good side.

0Bugmaster13y

Either that, or he's just in love with Hermione, and wants to support her in any way he can.

[-]FAWS13y180

Why wasn't one of the first things Harry did when returning from the trial exposing Hermione to the light of the True Patronus while she was still unconscious (it looks like it didn't happen at least)? He already knows it restores recent Dementor damage, has a plausible reason to know in that he experienced it himself under Dumbledore's eyes and could have told Dumbledore to secure his cooperation. Is his anger at Dumbledore getting in the way?

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky13y410

Since I don't anticipate getting a chance to point it out inside the fic itself, and the hint is unreasonably subtle:

When Hermione woke the third time (though it felt like she'd only closed her eyes for a moment) the Sun was even lower in the sky, almost fully set. She felt a little more alive and, strangely, even more exhausted. This time it was Professor Flitwick who was standing next to her bed and shaking her shoulder, a tray of steaming food floating next to him. For some reason she'd thought Harry Potter ought to be leaning over her bedside, but he wasn't there. Had she dreamed that? She couldn't remember dreaming.

Harry didn't think of it instantly, but given a little time...

5Merdinus13y

Possibly a rubbish first post, but this highlight draws attention to something rather misleading: she was more exhausted? Reading that originally rang bells in my head at the same pitch as Hermione being memory-charmed. Then, I played with the idea that Harry taught her the True Patronus then obliviated her, for all of two seconds. Mind circles.

3MixedNuts13y

Seeing this before the parent, I thought you meant kissing, which worked on Harry when he was demented, and references fairy tales.

5buybuydandavis13y

And I hope the next thing he does is to teach her how to cast the True Patronus.

1MarkusRamikin13y

How confident are we that it's even teachable? Perhaps the thing she should be taught is Occlumency, for both her own sake and so that she can keep secrets. Though I'm not sure that would be possible at her age and with her disposition...

2buybuydandavis13y

Harry's sure. EDIT: I think he also believed he could teach Malfoy.

[-][anonymous]13y170

This chapter significantly increased my probability estimate that Quirrell was entirely behind the plot to > 90%. Also, the humming torture was awesome, but not helping his case.

Also, who the hell was Bones' story referring to? That whole section heavily confused me.

[-]Bugmaster13y200

The humming torture sounds similar to Vetinari's clock, only taken to the next level. I liked it too.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, the memetic attack is also similar to "The Book" in Anathem, though the delivery vector is different.

[-]NihilCredo13y130

Same. The part about disappearing in Albania is from canon-Quirrell's backstory - that's where he ran into Voldemort's wandering ghost, so it's interesting that in MoR he supposedly went there before the war. The rest of the background recounted by Bones and by Quirrell himself don't really ring a bell with me, the closest thing I can think of is him needing "reconciliation" with the Lady of the House being reminiscent of Sirius Black and his spat with his family, but Sirius already exists in MoR and had a different history.

It might be possible that in MoR the house of Gaunt (the one canon!Voldemort is from) did not fall into poverty and retained their household and Wizengamot influence? If the general 'powering up' of characters can go that far back it would be plausible. And now that I think of it, Quirrell initiated talk about witch-on-Muggle magical seduction during the SPHEW arc, which could suggest that that part of his family background was carried over from canon.

(One of the things that annoy me about HPMoR is that when I can't quickly figure out what a certain passage might be hinting to, I have to assign a frustratingly high probability to the event that it's simply a reference/homage/in-joke to one of the myriad HP fanfictions.)

2[anonymous]13y

My concern is largely that Bones seems to be hinting that Quirrelmort is someone else, who was believed to be dead, someone who was thought to be a powerful enemy of Voldemort who went missing, which meshes with his spiel to Hermione. Presumably the person Bones thinks he is isn't Quirrel, since he's publicly known to be that person. Who on Earth is she referring to?

4FAWS13y

Thomas Marvolo Gaunt-Riddle, hero of wizarding Britain? Though since Dumbledore knows that Tom Riddle is Voldemort that seems like quite the narrow escape; his game would be up if Bones and Dumbledore talked openly to each other.

7Anubhav13y

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky

3FAWS13y

Wait, that doesn't work, for Voldemort being a known parselmouth to allow Hagrid a retrial after discovering the charm on the Sorting Hat Tom Riddle and Voldemort have to be known to be the same person. EDIT: Eliezer jossed heroic Riddle in the mean time anyway.

[-]LKtheGreat13y160

How many instances can y'all remember where Eliezer has repeated himself in an oddly specific way?

Chapter 17, when Harry picks up Neville's Remembrall: "The Remembrall was glowing bright red in his hand, blazing like a miniature sun that cast shadows on the ground in broad daylight."
Chapter 43, when Harry has a Dementor-induced flashback of the night... something happened in Godric's Hollow: "And the boy in the crib saw it, the eyes, those two crimson eyes, seeming to glow bright red, to blaze like miniature suns, filling Harry's whole vision as they locked to his own -"

That really sets off my deliberate-hint senses - so much is repeated that it's got to be intentional. (My apologies if this was already discussed to death in the considerable time since #43 was posted.)

Likewise the basilisk, which I know was discussed at some point:

Chapter 35, H&C speaking: "Salazar Slytherin would have keyed his monster into the ancient wards at a higher level than the Headmaster himself."
Chapter 49, the Defense Professor speaking: "or by some entity which Salazar Slytherin keyed into his wards at a higher level than the Headmaster himself."

I'm sure I could find more if I put my mind to it, but that's all I've got for now.

4Benquo13y

I have no idea how to interpret the first clue. Are Voldemort's eyes Remembralls?

3LKtheGreat13y

My interpretation was that we're meant to connect the two incidents and conclude that Harry's (seemingly numerous) forgotten memories are something to do with Voldemort, whether specifically memories of that night or something wider.

3bogdanb13y

Well, the fact that he remembered the night of Voldemort’s attack (I have 80%+ confidence it was a real memory, though I’m not sure of what), it’s clear that there was at least one thing that he had forgotten at the time he held the Remembrall. I hadn’t made the connection until now. Previously I thought the crimson eyes were a hint pointing to Moaning Myrtle’s recounting of her encounter with the basilisk. Now I wonder if it’s just a coincidence because the “blazing sun” simile works well for a bright Remembrall, or if Eliezer is giving us a three-way hint. A basilisk being present at Godric’s Hollow had a lot of awesomeness potential, but it does seem like the less likely hypothesis. On the other hand, pretty much everyone has forgotten most of their infancy—presumably, Dementors don’t bring such memories back because they’re almost never as traumatic as Harry’s—and Remembralls don’t start glowing like mad in everybody’s hands, so something is still missing there.

3gwern13y

Much more than infancy - apparently everything before 10 is suspect, and everything before 4 especially so according to Wikipedia on childhood amnesia.

0Normal_Anomaly13y

The basilisk has yellow eyes in the movies, and probably in book-canon as well. Are they explicitly stated to be red in MOR?

3thomblake13y

Yes. The basilisk hasn't been mentioned by name in MOR, aside from Moody suggesting it as a poison. Slytherin's Monster was mentioned as possibly-not-real in Chapter 49, but without physical description. So no, there's no reason to think it has red eyes.

0bogdanb13y

Yes, you’re right. Turns out my memory over-dramatized a bit Myrtle’s words. She said only “I just remember seeing a pair of great, big, yellow eyes.” For some reason I thought she had also said something like “blazing suns”.

0ArisKatsaris13y

After the escape from Azkaban, I thought that the most likely thing for the Remembrall to have been referring to, must have been the Newtonian physics that Harry was mentioned to have forgotten about in regards to broomstick flying -- but am not quite sure that makes sense anymore. At the time the Remembrall lit up, Harry hadn't spent any time steering/accelerating the broomstick, and had barely seen anyone else fly at all.

2thomblake13y

I prefer "Time turners are supposed to be a secret, don't flaunt it".

0chaosmosis13y

That was my interpretation also.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y160

Regardless of them getting explicitely identified to the wards, so it must get its names independently.

If it must, then Dumbledore overrode it.

He did so specifically to prevent himself from learning the Defense Professor's identity, because that was the term stipulated by Quirrell.

Those lines were specifically included to keep the story from prematurely reaching its climax as soon as Quirrell returns to Hogwarts. I think you will enjoy stories more if you accept that sometimes things happen for story reasons.

[-]pedanterrific13y150

Wizarding police have to allow for the fact that some possible prisoners (Dumbledore, Grindelwald, Voldemort) are capable of beating up the whole police department put together. When someone displays surprising power, it makes sense to back off, at least until you're sure you can take him.

2kilobug13y

Hum, in canon at least, when they try to arrest Dumbledore at the end of tome 5 (HP and the Order of the Phoenix) they don't seem that hesitant to arrest him, as soon as they have proof he's doing something illegal, and they seem quite surprised he escaped. But that could be a point of divergence between canon and HP:MoR, especially if the head of the Auror is very intelligent in HP:MoR, she could know about not escalating conflicts too easily.

[-]pedanterrific13y150

Yeah, MoR has a much more well-thought-through concept of what it means to be a powerful wizard, and the difference between that and a normal wizard.

And even in canon, I'm not sure it makes sense for them to be surprised he could escape- everyone thinks of Dumbledore as the most powerful wizard alive- but they could have conceivably been expecting him not to attempt to resist arrest, because he's generally more law-abiding than that.

[-]pedanterrific13y140

Two things: one, that first downvote was mine, not ArisKatsaris's. It's still there, someone else just upvoted you.

Two: Quirrell's not stupid. He went through that whole Groundhog Day Attack rigmarole to avoid leaving detectable Legilimency traces; he would be a fool to try it now, after Dumbledore's specifically warded her against "hostile magic [...], or any spirit".

[-]Xachariah13y140

Alternatively, the Arresto Momentum spell is quite instantly deadly if you use the right frame of reference.

6Jonathan_Elmer13y

Ha, another magical weapon of mass destruction. Hop on a broom and repeatedly cast Arresto Momentum on the Earth.

3chaosmosis13y

Genius. Just arrest the momentum of, say, their head while they are flying on a broomstick. Or stop their heart from beating. Assuming that partial Charming is possible which it probably is because of the same reasons partial Transfiguration is.

8Xachariah13y

I was actually thinking that the surface of the earth relative to the core rotates at 1040 miles per hour. Also that the speed of the earth relative to the sun is 67,000 miles per hour, though that could be too deadly. (Edit: Since I was curious, casting arresto momentum with the sun as a frame of reference on a 50kg person would release 22 gigajoules. IE, you'd turn them into a kinetic kill weapon with destructive force equal to 5 tons of TNT) But you're right, arresting the momentum could be brutal in a lot of different ways.

[-]Velorien13y110

Presumably, you'd need some kind of conceptual shift like with partial Transfiguration before you could do this. It seems like an implicit rule of Potterverse magic that it works according to the laws of physics you instinctively expect (or perhaps the ones the designer expected), so you have to "jailbreak" the spell before it can work in an updated, relativistic model.

1drethelin13y

The same thing would happen with Apparition, floo travel, etc. I'm pretty sure you just aren't allowed to manipulate momentum that way.

[-]NihilCredo13y140

Incidentally, are there no Author's Notes for chapter 84?

[-]DavidAgain13y140

I'm not sure canon Ron was good in the sense of regarding slytherins as people. Harry potter has a rather jolly tendency to rank getting people into detention on a simular scale to getting thwm savaged by a hippogriff, particularly in the early books.

[-]Velorien13y180

I recall that when Harry discovers curses of unknown effect in the Half-Blood Prince's book, the first thing he does is go and try them out on Slytherins to see what they do. In fact, Eliezer references this.

2DavidAgain13y

Yup. One of several stabs at canon!Harry. And Ron is probably even more extremist anti-Malfoy than Harry. Trying to remember what he says at the point when they end up having to try to save Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle in the Deathly Hallows.

1wedrifid13y

Couldn't agree more.

[-]thomblake13y130

An interpretation of the revelations of Chapter 84 that is almost surely wrong, but was first to rise to my attention:

Quirrell's description of the War to Hermione was an honest description of the conflict between Voldemort and Dumbledore from Voldemort's point of view. Voldemort, like Draco's father and his friends, thought Dumbledore was an evil wizard who needed to be stopped at all cost. But even as people shored up support for Dumbledore, they reviled Voldemort.

And Dumbledore has realized he was the bad guy. When he says:

There is evil in this world which knows itself for evil, and hates the good with all its strength. All fair things does it desire to destroy.

he's referring to the darkness he saw in himself, when he began to "resent Harry's innocence", and looking back on the way he's lived his life.

As I said, this interpretation is almost certainly not true; Amelia was clearly talking about someone the public would think of as a hero, so didn't mean Voldemort (and it's not supposed to be Tom Riddle's story).

4thescoundrel13y

Just for fun, consider this: Quirrelmort is more likely to be able to produce a true patronus than Dumbledore, as Quirrelmort understands that death should be avoided. Patronus 2.0 as the power the Dark Lord Knows not?

5thomblake13y

Obviously all the good guys are anti-death and bad guys are pro-death.

[-]thescoundrel13y100

“People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.” -- The Grim Grotto

9Velorien13y

I suspect Voldemort is less likely to produce a true Patronus. The Patronus 2.0 comes from facing death and rejecting it. Voldemort certainly rejects death, but it doesn't seem like he's faced it the way Harry has. Voldemort: "This 'death' thing is horrible, get it away from me! I'll tear apart my very soul if that's what it takes to escape death!" Harry: "You dare threaten me and the people I feel responsible for, you pitiful little leftover of the evolutionary process? I will end you if it's the last thing I do." Admittedly, this is based more on a canon portrayal of Voldemort, since MoR!Voldemort's views on the subject have yet to be made explicit (and he seems altogether more emotionally healthy than the canon version).

[-]pedanterrific13y130

I thought this bit was interesting:

And felt a distant, hollow echo of emptiness radiating from where Death waited, washing over Harry's mind and parting around it, like a wave breaking on stone. Harry knew his enemy this time, and his will was steel and all of the light.

"I can already feel the Dementors," said the gravelly voice of the Polyjuiced Quirrell. "I did not expect that, not this soon."

"Think of the stars," Harry said, over a distant rumble of thunder. "Don't allow any anger in you, nothing negative, just think of the stars, what it feels like to forget yourself and fall bodilessly through space. Hold to that thought like an Occlumency barrier across your entire mind. The Dementors will have some trouble reaching past that."

There was silence for a moment, then, "Interesting."

[-][anonymous]13y120

I'm wondering if EY is going to come through on this whole "Dumbledore is the Dark Lord and Quirrelmort was in the right all along" approach that he has hinted at recently. There's a precedent here which raises my probability estimate of this slightly, [rot13 for spoilers from another EY story] va uvf fgbel "Gur Fjbeq bs Tbbq" gur gjvfg jnf gung gur ureb'f pubvpr orgjrra tbbq naq rivy jnfa'g n pubvpr bs juvpu bar gb sbyybj (gung jbhyq or boivbhf, pyrneyl) vg jnf gur zhpu uneqre pubvpr bs juvpu jnf juvpu. Gur "tbbq thlf" ghearq bhg gb or rivy naq gur "onq thlf" ghearq bhg gb or tbbq.

So from recent chapters it seems like we're supposed to at least be considering the possibility of that Quirrelmort has been playing some colossal super-villain gambit this whole time in order to set up the rise of Light Lord Harry and defeat death once and for all, and that the Dark Lord prophesied to oppose all this is Dumbledore, who has marked Harry for his equal by nominating him as the future leader of the people he mistakenly believes to be The Good Guys and who wants us all to embrace death when it comes.

This concerns me a little bit, not because I do... (read more)

2Jonathan_Elmer13y

I don't think the guy who doesn't think twice about torturing or murdering anyone who slights him will turn out to be in the right all along.

2[anonymous]13y

That the only death Tom is opposed to is his own.

1chaosmosis13y

My viewpoint is essentially opposite yours, lolz. I don't really think it's probable that Dumbledore will become the next Dark Lord. The only thing that has happened so far to suggest this is the one line by Dumbledore in Chapter 84 (there might be other evidence but it would help if you would explicitly point it out). And I suppose there's an argument to be made that Voldemort couldn't have "marked Harry as an equal" since Harry was a baby who Voldemort expected to easily kill (which is why Voldemort didn't bring reinforcements). And there's probably some people on here who think Narcissa was burned alive (but I am almost certain that Dumbledore faked her death and that she is living in a secret OOTP base somewhere). But I think the counter evidence is stronger. It's too late in the story to suddenly change the villain, and Dumbledore probably wouldn't have the opportunity or motive to cause mass death. Those points seem simpler and like stronger arguments than the above. Consider that, in canon, Voldemort attacking a baby was apparently enough to mark Harry as an equal. Also consider that Dumbledore was completely hysterical when he mentioned the possibility that he would become the next Dark Lord. It would help if we actually knew what some of the unheard prophecies say. Maybe Dumbledore was misinterpreting one of them, and he doesn't have to be a Dark Lord at all, but Harry would still fight him. That's not a great solution and it's actually less probable than anything above, but it does represent a kind of middle ground based on details and possibilities not yet made known to us. And, I actually like the idea of Dumbledore being a Dark Lord who was corrupted by his power. I really don't think it would be sad, because I'm not attached to canon Dumbledore very much. I actually don't really care about any of the Canon!Harry Potter main characters, I just realized that. I only care about the minor characters, and thus far HPMOR has only improved those character

2[anonymous]13y

As far as evidence in the form of plot hints, I'll have to go do a proper search when I'm not about to go to bed, but in the mean time... IMHumbleO, there's a strong case that Quirrel could be trying a supervillain gambit in order to make the world a better place. We know that there's a Dark Lord >somewhere<, and if it's not Quirrelmort then I think it can only be Dumbledore. Of course there is a whole spectrum of possibility here - maybe Quirrel is supervillain gambitting but is STILL the Dark Lord, maybe he isn't but Dumbles is the Dark Lord anyway, &c, &c. Also relevant is the fact that Dumbledore seems to have access to the Philosopher's stone but is not using it to save lives. I don't understand why that is, and as a result it feels like there's some major aspect of the Dumbledore-Voldemort dynamic that we're in the dark about. Anyway, without going through and marshaling all the evidence I'm not prepared to make a bet either way on how it's all going to pan out. I do think the Dark Lord Dumbledore scenario is one that would have to be weighed in order to make such a bet, though, which is why I brought it up for discussion. I agree that that sort of ending could be done cool-ly. Whatever happens, I have a baaaaad feeling that Harry is going to find out that the world is a very, very ugly place pretty soon and I hope he comes through that without being irredeemably darkened.

0Strange713y

There's this, from chapter 80:

[-]bogdanb13y120

It was labeled as made by them, which isn’t necessarily reliable information, considering the incantation you use to activate it. And at one point it’s shown to locate and identify people under the True Cloak of Invisibility, which seems like powerful magic. (It could also be “made” in the sense that they found some sort of magical ingredient or component, ancient and much more powerful than they could make, which the integrated into the map, or even just that they customized an existing map with their silly “access code”.)

And in MoR, Dumbledore himself needed to use the map. Which suggests it was much more powerful than what four of his students could have made.

5Desrtopa13y

Rowling probably hadn't even decided that Harry had the True Cloak of Invisibility yet.

2taelor13y

Alternately, they found some way to tap into the castle's existing security systems.

[-]Username13y120

Eliezer has retracted that comment, and has stated that such retractions should be spoilered as they are no longer common knowledge.

We can't force you to ROT13 your original comment as well as this one, but you're not being fair to the spirit of the fanfiction and you should expect to take a karma hit if you don't.

5wedrifid13y

Eliezer does not have the power to declare what is common knowledge. Common knowledge is an objective element of the world, not directly subject to authority. What he can exert power to enforce is that all repetitions of said common knowledge are censored.

[-]pedanterrific13y120

The rot13 policy indicates your third sentence should be in cipher, in case you weren't aware.

2NihilCredo13y

V guvax ur jebgr vg va gur grkg rdhvinyrag bs fubhgvat va fbzr rneyvre Nhgube'f Abgrf, npghnyyl.

5pedanterrific13y

Yes. And then he retracted that statement.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y110

A very minor mistake at ch.84

It was only expected that you should save bullies.

This of course should be something like "save them from bullies" or "save people from bullies".

5pedanterrific13y

It's disturbing that I read that like three or four times without once noticing.

[-]gwern13y110

A question not on the latest chapter but ch4:

McGonagall shook her head. "Your father was the last heir of an old family, Mr. Potter. It's also possible..." McGonagall hesitated. "Some of this money may be from bounties that had been placed on You-Know-Who, payable to his ki-" McGonagall swallowed the word. "To whoever might defeat him. Or those bounties might not have been collected yet. I'm not sure."

Did we ever find out whether the bounties were collected? I was wondering whether 40k Galleons was a reasonable sum for last heir of ancient family + entire wizarding world's bounties on Voldemort, but I can't remember the question ever being answered in the first place.

7Velorien13y

The Davises have 300 Galleons in their vault, and they do not seem to be especially poor or especially wealthy. If Harry has 130 times the wealth of an average family, that sounds like a reasonable sum for the circumstances stated. It's worth noting that we don't really know to what extent bounties would have been placed on Voldemort. For one thing, it seems like the international community couldn't give a toss about the fate of Britain, and British wizards seem to have spent their time cowering in terror and believing that Voldemort was invincible, rather than financing mercenary warfare.

5gwern13y

It's hard to compare, yes. But if you want to compare with the Davises and Potter fortunes, it doesn't sound like 40k is all that much. For example, if we wanted to compare bounties, we could compare Voldemort to Osama bin Laden's federal bounty of $25 million; googling, the median net worth of an American household is something like $90,000, which gives us a Muggle multiplier of not 130x but 277x. If the Davises really are average (median) then with a Muggle multiplier the bounty on Voldemort might be as high as 113k galleons*. Then presumably you'd have the Potter family fortune of unknown thousands but let's round to 7k and then 120k total - that's 3 times what Harry actually has. Of course, one can make assumptions which would erase a difference of 300% but you see why I might wonder if Harry did actually receive the bounties. * Which if anything sounds low to me - Lucius shocks people by demanding 100k for Hermione just for attempting to kill Draco, but it seems plausible they would not be shocked by something like 10k - and Voldemort doesn't just attempt to kill one person, he kills dozens, hundreds, thousands, and multiple Noble House members. The Order, a subaltern organization unapproved of by Magical England, is able to raise 100k all on its own for its own operations. And so on.

8Alsadius13y

Muggle America is also some hundreds of thousands of times more populous than wizarding Britain. That does change some things when it comes to ratios of that sort.

0Rejoyce13y

Also, is that $25 million in 1991 dollars (year the book's taking place) or 2011?

1Alsadius13y

The reward was posted in 2001, and was unmodified for inflation until it was taken down in 2011.

0gwern13y

My median income figure was from ~2009; combined with the bounty not being inflation-adjusted, this implies this nominal ratio is an underestimate of the real ratio.

6loserthree13y

That muggle net worth includes property values that would not be reflected in the Davis vault.

7gwern13y

Wizards are specifically described as not engaging fractional-reserve banking, which implies that any real estate is bought without debt with saved-up funds; hence, we would also expect to see savings reflected in wizard vaults and the Davises in particular unless we think they already bought a property (in which case the 300 galleons would then become a massive underestimate, yes).

[-]Random83213y100

No fractional-reserve banking does not imply this - there could be lenders (whether goblins or wizards) with a large supply of their own gold which they use to make loans. Or landowners could sell property with a "rent to own" payment plan. Fractional-reserve banking is only necessary if you want to lend someone else's gold.

8gwern13y

I was not using implies in the logical deduction sense. Not having fractional-reserve banking eliminates a massive source of capital which could be used for mortgage lending and ceteris paribus will reduce such lending, does it not?

3thomblake13y

It's probably worth comparing it to "the entire war chest" of the OOTP, 100k galleons. Edit: ah, you did that.

0Desrtopa13y

Well, so far as the international community consists of other governments. There may have been plenty of concerned foreign citizens.

2thomblake13y

No. It's still possible he's got some money down the pipe.

[-]TheOtherDave13y110

Why do you find repeated condom malfunction more plausible than wanting a big family?

4taelor13y

Alternately, they just wanted a girl and kept trying until they got one.

3DavidAgain13y

Because it's the only large family mentioned and the only family that relies on Muggle technology over superior magic (e.g. stitches). Wasn't deadly serious: I don't know if it's mentioned directly, but it can't be a mistake that it's a family of six boys, then a girl, and then no further children. I've seen that pattern before. Oddly, that implies that (some) wizards can't/won't sex-select their kids.

2wirov13y

Well … Arthur's the one who's fond of Muggle technology. Molly didn't really approve of the flying car in the second book and she definitely didn't approve of the stitches, so it's rather unlikely that she'd approve of some Muggle invention made from rubber which Arthur suggests for contraception.

0DavidAgain13y

True, that. I refer you to my 'not deadly serious' point. It's not that it stands up to scrutiny so much as it's a neat parallel

1JoshuaZ13y

Minor note- condoms date as a technology from the 1600s. The wizarding world has taken many muggle technologies from well after that (such as door knobs). Wizards would likely have had time to not only make and adopt reliable condoms but use magic to improve them.

0pedanterrific13y

You don't think the stitches were Arthur's idea, do you? Cause they weren't.

2DavidAgain13y

The book says him and the healer agree on them: not sure if he came up with the idea but they got his support. Interesting, the next generation got a more rational form: Fred+George's lockpicking is a great idea, not just for underage magic reasons but because you suspect wizards would cast complex locking charms on things to protect from Aloharama but not actually make the lock itself very secure from a mundane angle. Which has parallels to the sadly rare RPGs that allow you to get round complicated locks that frustrate you rogue by smashing the chest to pieces with a two-handed hammer.

[-]MarkusRamikin13y110

But at least I know now what true evil would say for itself, if we could speak to it and ask why it was evil. It would say, Why not?"

A brief flare of indignation inside her. "There's got to be a million reasons why not!"

"Indeed," said Dumbledore's voice. "A million reasons and more. We will always know those reasons, you and I.

Anyone care to name three?

[-]Percent_Carbon13y380

you will be scolded
your parents would be so very disappointed with you
this is certain to go on your permanent record

[-]thomblake13y120

Surely "You've broken at least 3 school rules" belongs at the top of Hermione's list.

3loserthree13y

I thought you were being an ass. And I thought what you said was funny.

2Percent_Carbon13y

I can't tell if I'm being upvoted for my sarcasm or for mistaken impressions of sincerity, but 18 seems like a lot of points for snark. Either is okay, I guess, but there is some conflict. Until thescoundrel's reply I didn't take the question seriously. It seemed to me that Dumbledore and Hermione were self righteously congratulating themselves for how not evil they were, and that MarkusRamikin was fishing for participation only for the sake of socializing.

9thomblake13y

I took ArisKatsaris's and yours to be Dumbledore's and Hermione's answers to that question, respectively, and was amused. Humor gets highly upvoted. 18 upvotes doesn't mean person X thinks your comment is better than a comment with 10 upvotes; it means that on net 18 people thought to upvote it. And lots of people upvote for humor.

8wedrifid13y

I evaluated your response relative to the question, not your intent (and would have put the intent down as 'satire'). Those are actually two of the most powerful reasons real people don't 'be evil' and would even serve as a non-trivial component of what a description of 'evil' would reduce to if we wanted to break down how the cognitive algorithm works.

5[anonymous]13y

Your response basically is why I'm not "evil". I up voted because of that.

[-]loserthree13y100

People like you worry me.

I identify as 'evil' when it's safe to do so, because it's apt. I worry about people who think they're not evil but act evil when they think no one could ever know, or who think they're outright good but may one day be faced with a traumatically delivered realization of the fiction that is the ordered, punishment-delivering universe their parents conditioned them to act as though they believed in, or who surrender their judgement of right and wrong to the mob.

Those sorts of people tend to not be very good at being good, and to be even worse at being bad. They can't be depended on to either follow a system of laws or their own self-interest to the best of their ability. They are difficult to model and surprisingly volatile.

Of course, my problem with this might be my fault. I'm not sayin'; I'm just sayin'.

6[anonymous]13y

I don't think I ever claimed to be "good". Most people do. Feature. Not bug.

2Alsadius13y

Speaking practically, I suspect that indoctrination is responsible for a surprising percentage of the good attitudes people have. Society putting up a giant wall of opprobrium to bad acts in children is in all likelihood a major factor in why we are good - habits are wonderful things.

1loserthree13y

Is there an amount of external modification of behavior that you'd allow as child-rearing without calling it indoctrination? Or can you tell me precisely what you mean by that word? Or, for that matter, the word 'society'? Aren't 'parents' enough? Does it really take a village?

2Alsadius13y

It's a word that's often used negatively, but it's not necessarily bad. Embedding a doctrine into a child is a pretty necessary part of parenting, I'd say. And it doesn't "take a village", but parents are not generally the only influences a child has - school, friends, TV, extended family, and the like all exist, and most of them do a decent job of trying to pound certain important things into kids' heads.

0loserthree13y

Thanks. I'd still like to know if and how you differentiate indoctrination from non-indocrtinary child-rearing.

3Alsadius13y

You spend way too much time worrying about how you're getting too much karma, man :p

2Percent_Carbon13y

Curiosity is a virtue. These two posts make up about a quarter of the total karma points I have. They are outliers beyond my outliers. The reasons people give for upvoting them are entirely worth investigation.

3MarkusRamikin13y

I asked seriously, but I upvoted you for making me smile.

3pedanterrific13y

thescoundrel's list seems more like things Quirrell or Harry would come up with than Dumbledore or Hermione. Also, I thought your comment was hilarious, so there's that. Maybe it's because I read it in 11-year-old Emma Watson's voice.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y210

Anyone care to name three?

Because evil causes people to feel pain.
Because evil causes people to feel grief.
Because evil causes people to feel fear.

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky13y170

Because I grew up watching Thundercats as a kid and it's not what Liono would do.
Because it would look terrible on my TV Tropes page.
Because the part of me that handles abstract reasoning vetos producing negative utilons and this part actually gets quite a lot of voting power over anything I have time to think about - it's even the part I call "me".

There are many parts of Eliezer that are casting votes for good and against evil, for quite widely separated reasons ranging from the silly to the extremely approvable, and once I realized that instead of thinking that there had to be "the" reason, I understood myself a lot better.

But not a million reasons, though. Hermione is severely exaggerating.

[-]faul_sname13y110

1) In most situations, it is not the most efficient means to an end (interestingly, in Voldemort's case, it may have come close).

2) A reputation for defection in PD-like situations means nobody will ally with you. Unless you are in an undisputed leadership position, this is a very bad thing.

3) People are likely to try to kill you.

8Incorrect13y

1. Because it's boring if you aren't a sadist 2. Because there's more fun stuff to do 3. Because you may prefer to think of yourself as a sort of person who is not evil.

3MixedNuts13y

Self-modify to be a sadist. Actually, do that regardless, it's fun and non-evil sadism is easy to come by.

1khafra13y

It does seem like a good idea. One of the big surprises for me, when I was first exposed to people of alternative practices, was how much easier it was for the dom/sadist types to find a partner than the sub/masochist ones.

7thescoundrel13y

1.Unless you have supreme power over everyone, you are very likely to need help from other people, and evil inhibits your ability to gain that help. 1. Evil causes cascade ripples with consequences that are very hard to see- large numbers of people you don't know about having personal vendettas against you, etc. 2. It is hard to inspire people to your cause with evil- they people you are using must at least think they are acting in accordance with good, and at some level have what we would consider a "good" set of rules for how they deal with each other.

5buybuydandavis13y

* Why bother? * Idiots and cowards are sure to take care of it for you. * Akrasia.

3[anonymous]13y

* Because evil must be alone, as it cannot be trusted. * Because your plans will not all succeed, and it is more harmful to be revealed as everyone's enemy than as someone's friend. * Because caring about other people provides an additional source of motivation. (I know ego depletion causes a reduction in acts of altruism, but I thought I remembered that engaging in acts of altruism could counter ego depletion. Now I can't seem to find any research supporting this, so perhaps not.)

2Paul Crowley13y

Her, him, and me.

[-]arundelo13y100

FYI, in the tuning system commonly used for western music, all notes except A are irrational frequencies in hertz. Example: A below middle C is 220 hertz, and middle C is

(220 * (2 ^ (1/12)) ^ 3) hertz ~= 261.6255653006 hertz.

(To go up a half step, you multiply the frequency by the 12th root of 2.)

4Alsadius13y

At risk of derail, how the hell did they ever get a twelfth root into music?

8[anonymous]13y

We think of intervals between tones as being "the same" when there is a constant ratio between them. For instance, if two notes are an octave apart, the frequency of one is twice the other. Thus, if we want to divide the octave into twelve semitones (which we do have twelve of: C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B) and we want all of these twelve semitones to be the same intervals, then we want each interval to multiply the frequency by 2^(1/12).

3Alsadius13y

Every part of that makes sense except for the lack of E# and B#, and why x2 is called an octave. Thanks for the info, and for reminding me why musical theory is one of three fields I have ever given up on learning.

4[anonymous]13y

The reason we avoid E# and B# is to get nice-sounding chords by only using the white keys. This way, the C-E chord has a ratio of 2^(4/12) which is approximately 5/4; the C-F chord has a ratio of 2^(5/12) which is approximately 4/3; and the C-G chord has a ratio of 2^(7/12) which is approximately 3/2. In fact, before we understood twelfth roots, people used to tune pianos so that the ratios above were exactly 5/4, 4/3, and 3/2. This made different scales sound different. For instance, the C major triad might have notes in the ratios 4:5:6, while a D major triad might have different ratios, close to the above but slightly off. There's also the question of whether the difference between these makes a difference in the sound. There's two answers to that. On the one hand, it's a standard textbook exercise that the difference between pitches of a note in two different tuning systems is never large enough for the human ear to hear it. So, most of the time, the tuning systems are impossible to distinguish. On the other hand, there are certain cases in which the human ear can detect very very small differences when a chord is played. To give a simple (though unmusical) example, suppose we played a chord of a 200 Hz note and a 201 Hz note. The human ear, to a first approximation, will hear a single note of approximately 200 Hz. However, the difference between the two notes has a period of 1 second, so what the human ear actually hears is a 200 Hz note whose (EDIT) amplitude wobbles every second. This is very very obvious, it's a first sign of your piano being out of tune, and in different tuning systems it happens to different chords.

4[anonymous]13y

and only 12 notes per octave. With more notes per octave you can distinguish between F# and Gb without losing much accuracy in the most common keys. Nitpick: I'm no expert in historical tunings, but AFAIK medieval music used pure fifths, where near-pure major thirds are hard to reach. This became a problem in Renaissance music so keyboard instruments started to favor meantone tunings with more impure fifths, to make 4 fifths modulo octave a better major third in the most common keys. (The video demonstrating the major scale/chords generated by a fifth of 695 cents shows this rationale.) As soon as people began to value pure major thirds in their music the fifths in keyboard music became more tempered. Keyboard tunings with both pure 3/2s and pure 5/4s were not widely used, because of the syntonic comma. In Renaissance music 12-equal was used for lutes for example, which shows that even though people knew about 12 equal temperament and could approximate 2^(1/12) well they didn't like to use it for keyboard instruments. The tuning of the keyboard gradually changed to accommodate all 12 keys of modern Western music as the style of music started to call for more modulations in circa 18th century. But you are overall correct that different keys in the twelve-tone keyboard sounded different. (even in the 18th century.) I find it hard to believe this. If these differences were mostly not significant there would be no reason for the existence of different tuning systems. What kinds of differences between tuning systems are you talking about?

3gjm13y

Actually it's the amplitude that wobbles, and more than slightly.

0[anonymous]13y

Thank you, edited.

0Alsadius13y

And I suppose that "the white keys", defined some centuries ago, are a more difficult standard to change than the underlying mathematical assumptions. Right.

1gjm13y

Also, the white keys are far from being an arbitrary set of pitches. Very roughly, they're chosen so that as many combinations of them as possible sound reasonably harmonious together when played on an instrument whose sound has a harmonic spectrum (which applies to most of the tuned instruments used in Western music). I don't mean that someone deliberately sat down and solved the optimization problem, of course, but it turns out that the Western "diatonic scale" (= the white notes) does rather well by that metric. So it's not like we'd particularly want to change the scale for the sake of making either the mathematics or the music sound better.

3Eugine_Nier13y

Notes sound good if they're approximately simple rational multiples of each other. Hence you want your scale to contain multiples. Since the simplest multiple is x2 we use that for the octave. As for why we break it up into 12 semitones, the reason is that 2^(7/12) is approximately 3/2 and as a bonus 2^(4/2) is a passable approximation to 5/4.

2Benquo13y

Look up "equal temperament." There are 12 half-steps in an Octave, after each octave the frequency should double, and the simplest way to arrange it is to make each step a multiplication by h=2^(1/12) so that h^12=2. Many people report that "natural" intervals like the 3:2 and 4:3 ratio, sound better than the equal temperament approximations, though I don't hear much of a difference myself.

0thomblake13y

It's really obvious if you expect any decent math to invoke exponents of 2.

[-]Desrtopa13y100

then EY would be conceding that morality is a weakness, or at the very least that strength and strength alone will determine which AI will win.

I'm pretty sure that he does believe that if an AI goes FOOM, it's going to win, period, moral or no. The idea that an AI would not simply be more preferable, but actually win over another AI on account of being more moral strikes me as, well, rather silly, and not at all in accordance with what I think Eliezer actually believes.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y100

We downvote bad jokes now?

As one of the downvoters, haven't we always downvoted bad jokes?

This was a bad joke, not in the sense of inappropriateness (a similar but better joke at http://lesswrong.com/lw/ams/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/61ew was heavily upvoted), but in the sense of being strained, weak, and largely unfunny.

[-]Normal_Anomaly13y90

Please stop talking about your karma. I am tired of seeing these huge long threads arguing with you about your karma and whether lesswrong has groupthink and whether other people are being rude or disingenuous or whatever. You have singlehandedly lowered the quality of my experience reading LW this past week, and I am earnestly requesting that you stop it.

[-]JoshuaZ13y90

Can you explain what part of the comments by ArisKatsaris that you found disingenuous? I'm not seeing it at all.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y90

the instant she decides he's responsible he echoes her thought

No, he echoes her thought the instant she physically reacts to move away from him. NOT the "instant she decides". Keep the facts straight, please.

We've already been told that common sense is often mistaken for Legimancy. This event doesn't require reading her mind, it just requires reading her body language.

, and her eyes start burning (maybe she's not blinking or something, or EY is adding that as a side effect of legimancy, or it's just to draw our attention to the eye contact

... (read more)

[-]jaimeastorga200013y90

Can somebody explain to me why Harry was so into House points before Azkaban recalibrated his sense of perspective? It makes sense why most people seek them; you take several dozen kids, split them up into different groups, and soon enough you hear them talking about how they can't let those Gryffindor jerkasses win the House Cup and so on. But it seems to me like you need to identify with your House to an unhealthy degree to take so much pleasure in earning points for it. Hermione obviously has that problem (cf. her speech about House Ravenclaw in ch. 34)... (read more)

4Xachariah13y

In order to be an effective incentive system, house points would necessarily need to be awarded in social circumstances were other students can track them. And in practice that's usually how they're awarded. Points are given out in front of the class so all of the student's classmates can see them instead of privately. Some of this may be because teachers primarily interact with students in classes, but even private events which earn house points are announced publicly later. Functionally, in canon, the house point system physically updates as soon as anyone authorized says "10 points to Gryffindor." Since it's auto-updating I'd be surprised if they don't track the reasons why as well in a magic ledger or something. When teachers were in strong contention for the house cup, they would give out house points on the flimsiest excuses, but they'd always have a reason for it, which implies that it's tracked. Otherwise teachers would subtract 50 points because 'potter looks stupid' when they're alone in the lavatory instead of taking 10 points for backchat while in class to unfairly win the house cup.

3ArisKatsaris13y

Who's the person who've deleted their account, and may I ask why? It's always sad/confusing when we lose someone and we can't even know the reason.

9pedanterrific13y

This was jaimeastorga2000. I think Misha deleted their account today too.

8cousin_it13y

I regret that Misha is gone, he was one of the smarter commenters on mathy decision theory posts.

4Eliezer Yudkowsky13y

(blinks in surprise) How odd and sad...

1Nornagest13y

Well, for whatever reason he chose to unperson himself, so I'm not sure if I should be saying this, but that was jaimeastorga2000, I believe. I don't know why he decided to leave.

3Nornagest13y

Sure. By earning house points, Harry and Hermione are essentially doing a favor for their houses independently of whatever they did to earn those points. It's a favor that's absolutely useless in functional terms (at least, I don't remember the House Cup granting any substantial perks), but that doesn't matter too much to the psychology involved; you're well above the 20 karma threshold but you still get a little spike of satisfaction when someone upvotes you, don't you? Same mechanism at play. This is complicated slightly by the fact that House standing is zero-sum, but I still think in-house status gain would outweigh out-of-house status loss thanks to a number of considerations. Point allocations tend not to be announced to the entire school, for one thing.

2ArisKatsaris13y

Hermione is less passionate about Ravenclaw than Harry is -- e.g. Hermione in January thinks that she should have gone to Gryffindor. Harry is very clear about wanting to go to Ravenclaw, and belonging to Ravenclaw. Either way it's clear that it's marked how many points each student gets -- Dumbledore in Hermione's trial mentions she has earned 103 points for Ravenclaw so far, and even in canon it seems to be known who cost them/won them points (e.g. in Harry Potter & the Philosopher's stone, the protagonists are ostracized at some point for costing Gryffindor 50 points each)

[-]Lavode13y90

Dumbledore explicitly warded her against mental interference as soon as he got her back - Which is presumably why Quirrell didnt use the groundhog day attack again. He only got one try to sway her this time, and while his mental model was more accurate based on the data from the last go.. nope, fail.

2[anonymous]13y

You're right.

[-]FAWS13y90

The edit to 53 recently mentioned seems to be here:

"Your wand," murmured Bellatrix, "I took it from the Potters' house and hid it, my lord... under the tombstone to the right of your father's grave... will you kill me, now, if that was all you wished of me... I think I must have always wanted you to be the one to kill me... but I can't remember now, it must have been a happy thought..."

8ArisKatsaris13y

A very disappointing change for me. The previous version had seemingly been a very major clue -- now that clue is nullified and replaced with the standard and uninteresting "some Death Eater salvaged Voldemort's wand from the Potters' House" which is the excuse every HP fanfic out there gives to cover this obvious plot hole by Rowling... Also does anyone think that Bellatrix could have stood over Harry's crib and not finished the task that Voldemort seemed to have wanted accomplished?

5[anonymous]13y

We do not yet know the task Voldemort wanted accomplished that day in HPMOR. For all we know it could have already been completed when Bellatrix salvaged the wand.

5ArisKatsaris13y

Yeah, yeah, but Bellatrix knew about it? But Bellatrix had been ordered to wait, retrieve the wand if anything interesting happened to Voldemort, and not interact otherwise with other enemy survivors? But Bellatrix didn't burn down the whole Muggle town when she saw Voldemort's burned body? The fact remains that what seemed to me an intentional clue, is now replaced for all intends and purposes by what seems to me an unintentional plot-hole. I don't have to like it.

1Sheaman377313y

Firstly, if the wording was changed to nullify a clue, then it was probably a false clue to begin with, and he changed it so that it wouldn't cause confusion. Secondly, why do people assume that whichever Death Eater took the wand showed up while Harry was still sitting in his crib? I hardly think that Hagrid spent a great deal of time--or any, really--searching through the rubble for Voldemort's wand. It's completely reasonable that he could have shown up, taken Harry, and only then was the wand retrieved. If Bellatrix in canon refused to believe that Voldemort was dead, it's quite likely that this Bellatrix would have too, regardless of whether a "burnt hulk" of a body was there or not.

0ArisKatsaris13y

That doesn't make it less disappointing; also I think it's actually more likely that it used to be a real clue, but the author changed his mind about how the story went -- that's also disappointing. There's the third possibility, that it used to be a real clue, and it is still relevant in how the story is going to go; but that Harry himself, the character, shouldn't have heard about it so early, or he'd wonder inappropriately over it. I'm having trouble imagining that in a HPMoRVerse with an actual competent Dumbledore, Hagrid went alone to retrieve baby Harry.

1Sheaman377313y

Alright, granted, those are possibilities. I'm not certain that you're correct, but they are valid. Hm. Okay, I understand that, but I would not expect anyone, really, to spend a great deal of time searching through the rubble when Harry still needs to be taken care of. Yes, they could Summon it (assuming it was Summon-able) but only if they were looking for it specifically, if they thought it wasn't destroyed in the explosion, etc.

[-]FAWS13y90

As of last week Eliezer didn't have any plans to include an allegory to FAI, and expected any such allegory to work very badly in story terms ("suck like a black hole").

4Percent_Carbon13y

For the reference of other readers

2vali13y

Oh. I feel a little silly now.

[-]Nornagest13y90

If you'll all forgive me a few moments of horrible nerdiness, and the attendant fictional evidence, I've said before that MoR's construction of heroic effort makes a good deal more sense once you've played Fate/stay night. This chapter certainly hasn't given me any reason to doubt that, but after Quirrell's speech with Hermione I think I might need to add watching Revolutionary Girl Utena as another prerequisite. The early parts of that exchange could have been lifted wholesale from Utena's princes and witches, and the world's expectations of them.

4V2Blast13y

You are certainly not the only one who was reminded (eerily so) of a part of Fate/stay night that I won't discuss here for fear of spoiling the visual novel for anyone who hasn't yet played it. Quirrell's talk with Hermione made me think of a certain character from FSN immediately as I was reading.

1Nominull13y

I was reminded of it, but I'm reminded of it when I read basically any work that has heroes paying a price for their heroism, so I didn't find it quite so eerie.

1V2Blast13y

Guess I just haven't read enough.

4Eliezer Yudkowsky13y

...I don't know if I can back you on that one, I mean, I've seen Utena, but it wasn't my primary source material for Quirrell's bitterness (and neither was Atlas Shrugged). I don't suppose you have the FSN comment handy? That sounds a lot more plausible (w/r/t heroism).

5Nornagest13y

Unfortunately, no. I'm not even sure it was here; it may have been over at TV Tropes when I still posted there. I'm not accusing you of deliberately riffing on either work, though. It's just that FSN is all about a certain way of thinking about heroes -- you wouldn't be far wrong if you called it a character study of the "hero" role -- and Utena is largely (it's a more thematically complicated work) about the way non-heroes respond to heroic effort, and I'm seeing reflections of both here. Although there's more than a bit of the latter in the Unlimited Blade Works route and in Fate/zero, too. I watched Utena first, though, so it has the benefit of primacy effects in my head.

[-]pedanterrific13y80

You would need to always have a shield up.

Yes... this is a fact of combat. Not sure why you said this.

For example?

"Accio frontal lobe."

Or "Imperio, kill yourself."

Or for that matter "Obliviate."

Edit: Actually, I'm pretty sure Somnium is invisible. It doesn't kill immediately, of course, but that's easily rectified.

3gjm13y

Might have the same sort of problem as partial Transfiguration has for everyone other than Harry: only works on a Whole Object and not on parts thereof. Your frontal lobe, or even your brain, might not be considered a separate object by whatever is responsible for making magic work.

1pedanterrific13y

Personally, I doubt that Charms and free Transfiguration are alike in that sense, but even if they are we have Word of McGonagall that it's possible to Transfigure just your skin or hair. Apparently human bodies are subdivided, according to the idea of Forms.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y80

When I awoke, I had lost half my karma and I was ready to fight about it.
[...] and I am sure as hell not going to change what I wrote now, rules or no rules.

Too bad, agreeing to follow the rules of the thread, even if that means editing/rot13ing past comments, would have been the easiest way to get your karma back.

Edited to add: Some Quirrel-type lesson about learning when to lose, and the costs of needless escalation, seems appropriate.

6pleeppleep13y

The initial shock of having lost so much karma was the only time I felt I really "lost" here. I notice that karma loss does more to infuriate than actually punish, and that it has the potential to hurt the site more than me, by nullifying my ability to reach a larger audience when I have something important to say. When I see a rule I don't like, I tend to ignore it, not that doing so was my intention here. My problem wasn't that I lost karma, it was that I was accused of wrongdoing which I did not believe myself to have committed. (That said, you are probably right about learning to lose. One of my biggest problems has been that I find escalation of conflict fun after it reaches a point where I cannot possibly win. I'm very popular with authority, as you could probably guess.)

5TheOtherDave13y

I would also guess that many of your peers don't much care for the escalation of conflict for its own sake, either.

1Random83213y

As far as he knew it was gone. I wouldn't have predicted that you (presumably) and thomblake make a habit of monitoring posts you downvote for changes, and I'm not sure if you're not being too optimistic to expect it of the others who downvoted.

2Percent_Carbon13y

When I started here I went back and changed posts, hoping that downvotes would be replaced with upvotes. There was little reaction and I think it really wasn't worth the time. Near as I can tell, the easiest way to get your karma back is to make a top level post repeating what other people are already saying in storytelling way. That may fall out of fashion at some point, though, so don't over invest your time in developing your storytelling and other people repeating skills, or whatever.

[-]NancyLebovitz13y80

My comment from fanfic.net:

I loved the chapter- there was nothing wrong with the previous two, but this the mixed bag of very good stuff pointing in multiple directions that I hadn't realized I was missing. I'm talking about psychological/philosophical/emotional material more than the potential plot twists.

I've suddenly realized that this is a chapter in which almost nothing happens in terms of physical action- it's all talk and thought and emotion (and a bit of humming), and it's incredibly engrossing.

Is Hermione's inability to think that she might have b... (read more)

[-]Velorien13y180

Is Hermione's inability to think that she might have been bespelled part of the spell, or normal psychological reaction? Would fake memories have the same kind and amount of detail as real memories?

I would hypothesise that, to an ordinary person who has not learned about the fallibility of memory in general, the idea that something that feels like a completely real memory would be false is a very challenging one. Thinking "have I been memory-charmed?" is like thinking "I could be wrong about absolutely anything I remember" for the first time. It would be very difficult, and exactly the kind of thought one flinches away from.

From personal experience, I remember recalling a very emotionally charged MSN conversation months later, and thinking about an agreement I'd made with someone in it. But searching through the logs (and I logged everything), I could find no mention of any such agreement ever. It was pretty traumatic to discover that my memory was so fallible on something so important, and I'm not sure I could have accepted it without such firm evidence.

In regard to detail, I'm not sure people ever go through their memories and say "huh, this memory lacks detail so something must be off". Unless some key feature is missing (say, Hermione being unable to recall the words of the curse she used), I imagine any given detail's absence could be easily rationalised.

8fubarobfusco13y

Beliefs don't feel like beliefs. They feel like how the world is.

8Alex_Altair13y

And it's especially surreal to Hermione, because she has eidetic memory.

3Velorien13y

I don't think it's quite eidetic - she says as much herself. It's just ridiculously good. I think if she had literally perfect recall of all her experiences, rather than merely amazing recall of information she consciously tried to absorb, she would be less of a normal 11-year old girl. For example, she'd have perfect recall of every mistake she'd ever made, and every time anyone had ever hurt her. I imagine she would be much warier of doing anything with the potential to leave traumatic memories. With that said, it's worth noting that no-one has ever proved having long-term eidetic memory in repeated scientific tests, so all our speculations on the subject must rely on anecdotal evidence and fictional examples.

2tadrinth13y

It takes her a few seconds to remember the Asch Conformity Experiment and that was a long enough delay to be frightening.

1Percent_Carbon13y

Perhaps she is only ridiculously exhausted, low on brain juices. She is not used to being low on brain juices because she has never been either undernourished or pushed so hard. It is a novel experience, which can be frightening.

2tadrinth13y

Yeah, memory is fallible as hell. This is why I love having conversation logs and why I have contemplated trying to figure out a way to log my entire life (so I could do that for real conversations as well).

2SkyDK13y

It'd be illegal in most countries, but getting very small mics is not that hard. I've used it myself for testing if I had a better idea generation state of mind while running/doing sports than when penning.

[-]loserthree13y120

Harry saying that the first year girls should put their reputations on the line about Hermione is so perfectly Harry...

I'm pretty sure he was inviting everyone in Ravenclaw.

[-]gwern13y80

Actually, maybe this is the glitch in the Marauder's Map? 'the Defense Professor' is a little unusual a tag opposed to 'Minerva McGonagall' or ordinary names. (Although yes, it could also be reading 'Tom Riddle' or whatever, and Dumbledore wouldn't notice because IIRC he only grabs the Map from the twins to check for Riddle in Hogwarts after Quirrel goes to the Ministry.)

7RobertLumley13y

Yeah. p > 0.6 that this is the constant error in the marauders map for me. That's exactly what I thought when I was reading this.

5gwern13y

The glitch in the Marauder's Map is * Quirrel appearing as 'the Defense Professor' * Quirrel appearing under another name (eg. 'Tom Riddle') * the spirit of Voldemort or Riddle

3RobertLumley13y

You might want to edit those to clarify the constant glitch as opposed to the intermittent. Since I made it, I'll estimate this, but I'm really hesitant to flood my predictionbook with HPMOR predictions. We really need categories there.

1gwern13y

Done.

0hairyfigment13y

The intermittent error could also be a pet snake, though I don't know if that would count as "standing" in the circle. Does Voldemort have a house-elf?

[-]pedanterrific13y80

Thank Donny for noticing this, but apparently there's a distinction being drawn between 'Noble' Houses like Potter and 'Noble and Most Ancient' Houses like Malfoy, Longbottom, Greengrass and Black.

3Vaniver13y

Indeed. I count 18 families 'related to' the House of Black, and if all of those are Noble or Noble and Most Ancient we could quickly round out the list. Both Rosier and Lestrange show up on that list, so that raises my estimate that Bones thinks Quirrel is one of those classmates instead, but both of them were Death Eaters. Since so much is diverging from canon here, I suspect I should stop trying to predict based on canon and just wait to see what's changed. (I couldn't resist, some more research: the Peverell family is extinct in the male line, suggesting that they might have been Noble and Most Ancient and the Potters, descended from them in the female line, are just Noble. That would mean that Riddle is just Noble, rather than Noble and Most Ancient, though, but who knows.)

[-]Bugmaster13y80

Also, I'm slightly confused at how he's being portrayed in this chapter.

I'm not. It's easy enough to say that "character X is Y", but what does that mean ? The motivations of character Y in HP:MoR are very different from what they are in canon. Merely knowing the label "Y" tells you very little; the greater mystery is not what label we should apply to X, but what his goals are, and what actions he has already taken, or is planning to take, and what his overall grand design looks like. Everything we observe the character saying or doing is evidence that can help us expose this design. His canon counterpart's actions in the original HP books, on the other hand, are not.

[-]drethelin13y80

He acts as different people in Azkaban, as Hat and Cloak (and/or Ghost Lady). He has a different face to every person he interacts with, from Snape to Harry to the public at the ceremony, and in this chapter presenting an entirely new, almost caring face to Hermione.

[-]Bugmaster13y210

and in this chapter presenting an entirely new, almost caring face to Hermione.

Which makes perfect sense, since, via his dictionary attack (that took place in earlier chapters), he'd already learned that this is the easiest way to manipulate her.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y70

Wanting a child does not necessitate responsibility.

[-]pedanterrific13y70

IIRC, neither Quirrell nor Dumbledore have pre-cast shields in TSPE, which (IIRC) is the only piece of serious action by competent people in MoR.

Funny thing about the combat in TSPE, we get this little digression:

The Auror was protected by a blue shimmer, it was hard to see the details but Harry could see that much, the Auror had shields already raised and strengthened.
Crap, thought Harry. According to the Defense Professor, the essential art of dueling consisted of trying to put up defenses that would block whatever someone was likely to throw at you

... (read more)

[-]iceman13y70

I wonder if Quirrel simply had a bad model when he tried to play the hero:

"I was not naive, Miss Granger, I did not expect the power-holders to align themselves with me so quickly - not without something in it for themselves. But their power, too, was threatened; and so I was shocked how they seemed content to step back, and leave to that man all burdens of responsibility. They sneered at his performance, remarking among themselves how they would do better in his place, though they did not condescend to step forward." (84)

The theory about Qu... (read more)

[-]gwern13y160

Hm, so to rewrite the ending...

There were a certain few of the Wizengamot who wondered why Voldemort's lieutenant had made a attempt on the life of the Minister's daughter rather than the Minister, done so publicly rather than privately, and why a recluse was there that day. They had already marked the Miracle of Diagon Alley as an anomalous and important event; they have wondered why it happened, if it did, or if not, why Voldemort is colluding in the praise.

[-]pedanterrific13y70

Look. It's very simple. The only response necessary is a gesture toward the main post:

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).
If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or

... (read more)

[-]ArisKatsaris13y70

No, Flamel and his wife were mentioned as the users of the elixir.

[-]Vaniver13y70

So, it seems more likely that Quirrel was behind the plot.

The thing about there only being seven houses seems big, though, and as far I can tell isn't from canon. (The list of purebloods, for example, doesn't include Jugson, though 500 years old might not be enough to be Most Ancient. I think we have HPMOR confirmation of Malfoy, Potter, Greengrass, and Longbottom, and I think in canon the only ones that get that description are Malfoy, Black, and maybe Potter (really, Peverell).

The 1926 hint narrows it down to four canon characters (though, of course, Bon... (read more)

[-]Nominull13y150

We know Dumbledore thinks Tom Riddle was Voldemort, because when he's looking for Voldemort within Hogwarts he tells the map to find Tom Riddle.

8gwern13y

And all the other occasions Phoenix members speak of Tom Riddle or poison his father's grave.

[-]ChrisHallquist13y140

Tom Riddle wasn't a hero. He was a villain whose villainous plot was to create a fake villain named Voldemort for him to defeat. He arranged for there to be a kidnapping attempt on the daughter of the minister of magic so that he could save her and be propelled into herodom. But things did not go according to plan:

"Long ago, long before your time or Harry Potter's, there was a man who was hailed as a savior. The destined scion, such a one as anyone would recognize from tales, wielding justice and vengeance like twin wands against his dreadful nemesis." Professor Quirrell gave a soft, bitter laugh, looking up at the night sky. "Do you know, Miss Granger, at that time I thought myself already cynical, and yet... well."
The silence stretched, in the cold and the night.
"In all honesty," said Professor Quirrell, looking up at the stars, "I still don't understand it. They should have known that their lives depended on that man's success. And yet it was as if they tried to do everything they could to make his life unpleasant. To throw every possible obstacle into his way. I was not naive, Miss Granger, I did not expect the power-holders to align themsel

... (read more)

6Vaniver13y

The reason I think this is odd is because, in canon, Voldemort was a name change, not a new person. So instead of Tom Riddle getting together with his Slug Club friends and saying "hey, maybe we should run this country, and by the way I never liked my old name," Voldemort is some external actor that managed to get the loyalty of a bunch of Britain's nobility.

5ChrisHallquist13y

Really? In canon I thought Voldemort = Riddle was a pretty well-kept secret. But as per Eliezer's comment elsewhere in the thread, it looks like Riddle's hero persona wasn't called "Tom Riddle," he impersonated (possessed?) a descendent of some more respectable house to create that identity.

2Vaniver13y

That could be- I haven't read the books since the last one came out. This is what I'm seeing on the HPWiki: That suggests to me that the early Death Eaters grew up with him as Tom Riddle, and it was just a name change. If the "Voldemort = Riddle" thing is poorly known, it's probably because no one has reason to know that his name was Riddle (like, for example, most people have heard of Stalin but haven't heard of Dzhugashvili).

5drethelin13y

Remember that Quirrel is NOT Riddle. He's Riddle in the body of someone else. It's pretty damn voldemorty to come back in the body of one of your enemies, too.

1buybuydandavis13y

I've been peddling the scheme of uploading into Harry when Harry supposedly defeats him. It makes sense too that he has more power through Dark Rituals. He uses up the host body through the costs born by the host, and then moves on to another.

1[anonymous]13y

Upload Vohaul to the computer, then beam him back into your son's body. (BEAM UPLOAD, BEAM DOWNLOAD) Well, that's just great! Now Vohaul's on the loose again, disguised as your SON! You lose 3 out of 2.

1Vaniver13y

The only canon character that matches Bones's description is Riddle (though he only does so partially, having murdered his family before his graduation in canon). So either EY stuck in a Mary Sue who just happens to have Tom Riddle's biographical details, or Bones wants Tom Riddle to take up the Gaunt seat in the Wizengamot.

4pedanterrific13y

Or maybe there's a third option you haven't thought of. How confident are you?

4Vaniver13y

I thought of three other options, and dismissed all of them. Riddle gets over 98% of the 'canon character born in 1926' probability mass, and so I intend to spend a comparable amount discussing him over other options.

[-]pedanterrific13y130

Hmm. It seems it was supposed to be obvious it wasn't Riddle. How odd.

1Desrtopa13y

It strikes me as simply bettter writing, or at least, better fanfiction writing, if this new, extremely skilled and competent and apparently original character, can be explained by the original divergence between HPMoR and canon, and the most obvious way for that to be the case is if Voldemort controlled or impersonated him in some way, making his competence a consequence of Voldemort's competence.

4dspeyer13y

Way back in chapter 7, Draco refers to "the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black". That's a fifth noble house. JKR said Nott was ranked as highly as Malfoy. Doesn't necessarily apply in MOR.

4Vaniver13y

I was going to say the Blacks are all (supposedly) dead in HPMOR at this point, but then I remembered that Sirius is (supposedly) just in Azkaban, not dead yet, and if he's counting the female line (like he would have to for Riddle to count) then there's also Bellatrix.

3ygert13y

There's also Draco, Tonks, and Andromeda. (Andromeda is Tonks' mother, Bellatrix's and Narcissa's sister.) This is all assuming that the female line counts, which it more or less has to.

2Percent_Carbon13y

Maybe Andromeda Black-Tonks can to revive the house even though she was disowned if all the other members are dead or Azkabaned.

3pedanterrific13y

My hypothesis is stated here, by the way- the thread goes on to include discussion of Noble Houses.

2Anubhav13y

Eliezer has jossed this. Page 118 or so of the TVTropes discussion.

9Vaniver13y

A link would be very helpful.

1loserthree13y

It's elsewhere in the thread, now. But here it is, anyway.

1ArisKatsaris13y

House Potter is not "Most Ancient". In HPMor, we have Malfoy, Black, Greengrass and Longbottom declared explicitly as "Noble and Most Ancient".

[-]ArisKatsaris13y60

I evaluated your arguments, I precisely showed how you were wrong in one case (his words didn't exactly echo her thought), how her eyes burning can't be treated as evidence of Legimancy if burning eyes are never correlated with Legimancy.

At this point the only specific argument you got left that I didn't address was that Quirrel is mentioned staring at her. So here, let me address that one as well: In chapter 70 (one of the Self Actualization chapters) Quirrel is again mentioned to be looking at her:

Then Professor Quirrell’s gaze shifted away from Trace

... (read more)

[-]pedanterrific13y60

Hostile magic is obviously not the same as Legilmancy

It's also not the same as the sort of LifeAlert wards Quirrell (claims that he) put on Draco, which we know (that Quirrell claimed that) Heh specifically forbade.

Why would Dumbledore care and what would Dumbledore do differently if Dumbledore found out that Quirrell had looked into Hermione's mind?

Well, for one thing, he might look at the Map again. (He suspects Voldemort is trying to influence Hermione's mind; the Defence Prof is caught trying to read Hermione's mind; it doesn't take a genius.)

... (read more)

[-]wedrifid13y60

I think you're confused about the meaning of Sword of Good.

No, Argency summarized it well. It isn't a treatise on moral relativism.

2[anonymous]13y

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that one of the premises behind both of these stories is that there is one objectively correct morality, given that a few basic definitions are shared. "If we agree that suffering is bad and that ~suffering is good then humanist, rational utilitarianism should follow directly," or something. I can definitely agree that acting in a way that fails to optimally minimise suffering is >bad<. I can even agree that in a lot of cases, punishing bad people will minimise further suffering. The problem is (and this is the message that I got from The Sword of Good) no one sane actually thinks of themselves as the bad guy of the story, and it takes an Act of Rational Intellect to make a justified choice about which side is actually right about being right. The upshot is that I balk at the "evil" label. People are bad and good, only cartoon characters are evil because they do bad for bad's sake. I guess in my head I think that to be a Dark Lord requires being Evil and not just bad. That might be a silly definition, since it means I'm essentially defining Dark Lords not to exist, but then again we only hear about them in children's stories and HPMoR. Sometimes (not every time) I get a twinge of subconscious worry when EY primes his argument-cannon with rational powder but emotional wadding. It makes for incredible chapters - I get fully body pins and needles whenever Harry does something amazing with a dementor - and when the emotion is humanist triumphal awe then it's probably safe. I know the argument: there's no reason why rationality and emotion have to weaken one another; emotion aimed by rationality can work to good ends. I just don't want to confront a situation where Dumbledore ends up being the Dark Lord despite wanting to be a good guy and trying very, very hard - because there's the risk there of sending the message that we should not only fight against powerful bad people, but hate them because they are Evil for not quite being smart enough. I

1chaosmosis13y

A form of relativism does follow from naturalism, as does a moral system which favors ones own gains above the gains of others. See: the babykillers story. Egoism and relativism are actually pretty powerful arguments. "Good" does not exist external to perception or experience. I cannot experience the "good" of anyone else's experience, except in an extremely diluted way through empathic networks, so in order to maximize the amount of good that exists I must try to maximize my own pleasure and achieve my own values. This doesn't preclude helping others, we can be helpful to others if we enjoy or value being helpful, etc. Everyone accepts relativism on a small scale, like with favorite colors. It's not very different on a large scale, either. If someone is genetically modified to have a passionate drive to eat children, and has a burning desire to do so and sees nothing wrong with doing so, I think they should eat children. It's not justifiable to hold people to obligations that they don't internally recognize as correct, for the same reasons that "because God said so" is not an actual moral argument. There's an important difference between this kind of relativism and other kinds, though. The kind of relativism I'm trying to defend here doesn't say that nothing is wrong and that all paths lead up the same mountain, or whatever. I'm trying to say that because morality is derived from inherent values, where those inherent values change we will get different moral answers for different people. But most humans share a lot of values, so this kind of relativism really doesn't open itself up to the kind of gut-level criticism that most people throw at it, like the argumentum ad consequentum "but then everyone would murder everyone!" which is so popular. I personally don't follow any form of relativism, although I'm fairly selfish and egoist (yay rationality!), but that's because my ethics are totally ad hoc and disorganized. I personally use a sort of story based virtue

7[anonymous]13y

Well, that's the difference between hard relativism and soft relativism. Hard relativism holds that there is no "right", and that's the one I think has to go. Mind you, I think the relativism you describe is still a bit hard for me - I'd argue that whilst what is right is relative in the sense that it's contingent on the situation at hand, within a given situation rightness is fixed and not at all dependent on one's viewpoint. I certainly don't agree that a relativism with any hardness to it follows from naturalism. I say this only to identify my position relative to your own, since this probably isn't the right place for me to start trying to debate against your ethics. Plus it's 2am and I spent all day at uni arguing ethics. I'm burnt out. I read the baby-eaters story a while ago - I think I disagree with EY on that one, although it's possible I misread it. I share his apparent belief that the baby-eaters had to be stopped: the babies were suffering and suffering=bad. I don't see why the first, "fake" ending was the sad one, though - to me the second, "real" ending was the horrible one and the fake one was close enough to what I would have tried for if I'd been there. I am warning you now, if I ever meet super-intelligent aliens who want to raise the human race up from perdition and erase the need for suffering, I'm going to be on the side of the angels until humanity sorts it's shit out.

[-]TheOtherDave13y60

Hm. If we were using physics here, I'd observe that a usable time turner has to be tied into things like the rotation and movement of the earth, because traveling back in time without taking those things into account somehow leaves one stranded in interplanetary or interstellar space. Given that we're talking magic, well, who knows. But sure, I agree that it's suggestive but inconclusive.

[-][anonymous]13y60

The dark side is ridiculously afraid of death, which we know to be a Voldemort trait. It's also very much separate from Harry.

2chaosmosis13y

I see fear of death as more of a universally human thing. I think that makes more sense than saying Voldemort's soul is inherently more fearful. I think people are attributing things to the dark side that don't really belong there. Why do you think the dark side is any more separate from Harry than Hufflepuff?

3[anonymous]13y

Harry says it is, in Azkaban.

9Velorien13y

I think the difference there is that Hufflepuff is a voice representing some of Harry's thoughts and attitudes, running in parallel with the voice that Harry thinks of as himself. His dark side is a different state of consciousness - while it's "on", Harry processes emotions differently to normal, as well as thoughts, and the difference is big enough for him to perceive a separation between the dark side and his usual self.

0Normal_Anomaly13y

Anecdotal evidence: I have a mental separation in my own inner life between "modules", things like Harry's house avatars that interject thoughts into my ongoing thought process, and "other personalities," only one of which can be running at once. So the structure isn't totally unrealistic.

[-]gwern13y60

I don't think he really believes in magic... he just points out that belief is not necessary since it can be tested:

"Then you don't have to fight over this," Harry said firmly. Hoping against hope that this time, just this once, they would listen to him. "If it's true, we can just get a Hogwarts professor here and see the magic for ourselves, and Dad will admit that it's true. And if not, then Mum will admit that it's false. That's what the experimental method is for, so that we don't have to resolve things just by arguing."

Although... (read more)

5Desrtopa13y

You know, if it weren't for everyone else taking it so seriously, I would have (and did, before I started following discussions) dismissed Harry's so called dark side as a perfectly normal personality quirk which he makes a big deal of because once he's told he's a prophesied hero he feels he ought to have something dramatically appropriate like a mysterious dark side. In his place, I wouldn't be thinking "My mysterious dark side is good at X," I'd be thinking "I'm good at X when I put myself into the right frame of mind." Well, actually, in his place, I might be thinking "my mysterious dark side is good at X," but that's because if I were in his place, I'd be eleven.

1wedrifid13y

Sometimes I'm all simplistic and think to myself "I'm good at X when I get pissed off." Combined with a little emotional regulation with respect to pissed-off levels it amounts to much the same thing.

0DavidAgain13y

Especially if the 'frame of mind' has lots of other stuff going on as well: the implication is that he can't get the competence without the rest of the baggage. So it's like 'slightly drunk me is good at pool (but it also wants to drink more and thus become very bad at pool), rather than 'thoughtful me is good at understanding where other people are coming from'.

1chaosmosis13y

Okay, that makes sense. But I disagree that the dark side is part of Voldemort's soul. The dark side is the one that wants to protect his friends, and calling it dark isn't really fair. Voldemort is pretty selfish so this doesn't seem like it applies to him. It's also been stressed in MOR that Harry's dark side isn't giving him access to any of Voldemort's powers. I think it's just a part of his psychology and lonely genius personality and that "the normal explanation is worth considering", even in the wizarding world. I just thought of something, and I'm not sure what the connection is to this but I feel like there is an underlying connection. Is EY emphasizing Snape's history for a pragmatic plot type reason? Maybe there's a secret reveal coming up, about Lily or something? This is purely intuitive so it's probably crap. But sometimes my intuition is smarter than my active thoughts.

5gwern13y

I would have thought Parseltongue was an obvious example.

8Velorien13y

It also allows him to master the preparatory Occlumency exercises with extreme speed and ease. Which makes sense since the heart of Occlumency is assuming whatever personality you want at a given time, a gift Voldemort claims to have in abundance. My guess is that he's filling in Snape's character background to give him the full complexity he deserves as one of the major players. Although Dumbledore doesn't seem to think twice about him, Harry treats him as an obstacle, and Quirrell dismisses him as an opponent, it's been made clear that Snape is running his own multi-stage plans (such as his manipulation of Hermione), which interact and interfere with everyone else's. Perhaps his role is due to expand.

[-]Desrtopa13y60

In canon, Snape was able to shut down everything Harry tried against him in combat in the sixth book, because as long as Harry hadn't mastered occlumency or silent spellcasting, his attacks were all sufficiently telegraphed that a superior duelist and leglimens like Snape could simply counter them all before he could fire them off.

4gwern13y

Indeed. I'm reminded of martial arts - in a sparring match between a very fit beginner and a creaky master, the master still just toys with the beginner because their movements are so predictable. I've seen this in fencing, taekwondo, and karate, and it's a mixture of hilarious, impressive, and sad all at once.

2Desrtopa13y

If you're really good, you can toy around like that even with people who're quite proficient. I haven't seen it myself, but my sifu said that his teacher, grandmaster Al Dacascos, who's a first generation martial arts hall of famer, really is that good in his sixties, and on the wikipedia page of Kenshiro Abbe, it says that he recalled how his own kendo instructor, a 75 year old tenth dan (back when tenth dans in kendo actually still existed) couldn't be touched by any of the students or younger instructors.

[-]loserthree13y60

You should probably cipher a bit of that. This part, specifically:

jub Dhvevahf Dhveeryy npghnyyl vf

I mean, unless you intend specifically to not follow a rule while criticizing the rule. You might notice that seems to attract disapproval.

[-]loserthree13y60

I also really doubt that any police force would let a prisoner resist them that way again and again, they would call reinforcement and break him.

It happens they did not. We know that, because he isn't broken and there's no sign they tried, other than the mention that he has apparently sneezed more than once. Also, he's not under arrest.

The Defense Professor of Hogwarts was being detained, not arrested, not even intimidated.

Magical Britain has a history of exceedingly powerful individuals that the muggle world just doesn't. It is not unreasonable that law enforcement developed differently as a result.

[-]pedanterrific13y60

“There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it."

-Lord Voldemort

[-][anonymous]13y60

In Methods of Rationality, the Weasley twins refer to the Map as being part of the Hogwarts security system. So it probably gets the information from the wards.

My interpretation of the quote is that the Headmaster overrode the usual process of identification (which is automatic) in order to protect Quirrell's privacy; in that case, the Map would also know nothing beyond "The Defense Professor".

An alternative interpretation, however, is that the circle-drawing bit was only meant to key Quirrell into the wards as a professor. Normally, I suppose, ... (read more)

2fubarobfusco13y

Yes, but how do the wards get people's names? It's not like the name "Ron Weasley" is tattooed on every molecule of the boy's body. True Names are a feature of some systems of magic — Earthsea comes to mind — but not of the canon Potterverse, nor of MoR as far as I can recall. In canon, the name "Voldemort" has unusual power because of specific spells keyed on it, and it's an adopted name. Real-time Legilimency? If so, we would expect the map to display whatever name matched a person's self-image; and a sufficiently potent Occlumens could be expected to fool it by sufficiently good Method acting. On the other hand, there's a subsystem of Hogwarts Castle that does get told the name of every student on their first day, and has a close-up chance to read it from them by what resembles Legilimency: the Sorting Hat. Possibly a similar system is in place for professors and others ... which involves the Headmaster drawing a circle ...

2gwern13y

Yes; remember that they speculate it was made by Salazar himself, and remember in ch43 Quirrel independently says: The twins never mention in canon seeing the Basilisk on the map. (Salazar seems to have specialized in security - one of his other talents was being a Legilimens.)

6Desrtopa13y

That would have borked the plot, and it's entirely probable that Rowling hadn't even come up with the Marauder's Map by then. In MoR canon it probably makes more sense if it doesn't show up on it though; the whole Chamber of Secrets certainly doesn't.

[-]aleksiL13y50

Here's a vote for not-mind-reading. This seems deliberately written to suggest Quirrell's reacting to body language, not thought:

Without any conscious decision, she shifted her weight to the other foot, her body moving away from the Defense Professor -

"So you think I am the one responsible?" said Professor Quirrell.

[-]LKtheGreat13y50

How likely is it that the outcome of the Defense Professor's talk with Hermione was genuinely not what he wanted? Surely he has to have realized by now that Hermione is the sort of person who'd act like that, however incomprehensible it may be to him. I am reminded of the passage in the LotR omake that reads:

"If the Enemy thought that all his foes were moved by desire for power alone - he would guess wrongly, over and over, and the Maker of this Ring would see that, he would know that somewhere he had made a mistake!"

Maybe he truly doesn't un... (read more)

[-]ArisKatsaris13y170

Hermione came very very close to agreeing with the Defense Professor, and we see him using all the ways and mannerisms which cause her to trust him a little bit more -- not to 'acquire extra suspicion'.

So, no, I think Quirrel made a very very good attempt at what he wanted -- getting Hermione away. He simply failed.

2gwern13y

He knows Hermione is suspicious of him. Why did he not let Harry - whom IIRC we previously saw saying that Hermione ought to be sent to Beauxbatons - beg Hermione to leave, or failing that, order her? Why did he make the blatantly manipulative hard-sell tactic of 'buy now, this is a limited-time offer only!' to someone whom he knows distrusts him, has read literature on manipulative tactics, and without giving a convincing Inside View explanation for why it's genuine and not what the Outside View says it is (manipulation)? Is this all reverse-psychology?

[-]ArisKatsaris13y120

Why did he not let Harry - whom IIRC we previously saw saying that Hermione ought to be sent to Beauxbatons - beg Hermione to leave, or failing that, order her?

"Why did he not let"? I don't see any place where Quirrel isn't "letting" Harry do these things. Perhaps your question should be better phrased why he didn't ask Harry to do these things?

I think a simple enough answer is that he feels he has a better chance of convincing Hermione to leave, than to convince Harry to force Hermione to leave against her will. Since Bellatrix, Harry has learned to inquire about what is in it for Quirrel when Quirrel asks him to do things. And he'll see that wanting Hermione to leave may be to the advantage of whomever wanted to frame her in the first place, as both events lead to a Hogwarts without Hermione in it.

Is this all reverse-psychology?

I don't understand your usage of the term. It's me who's saying he wanted her to leave (aka non-reverse psychology), it's LKtheGreat and you who seem to be saying he was applying reverse-psychology and that he really wanted her to stay.

Why did he make the blatantly manipulative hard-sell tactic of 'buy now, this is a limited-t

... (read more)

6Desrtopa13y

It's particularly worth considering that if Quirrel's last success in manipulating Hermione came at the end of a long obliviation cycle, then that was achieved when she was already in a state of mental exhaustion.

2LKtheGreat13y

Excellent point about Harry. The Defense Professor virtually certainly knows Harry's opinions on the subject, whether by his mental model of Harry or by observing him telling anyone who'll listen that Hogwarts is dangerous. On the other hand, I believe we've seen Harry failing to convince Hermione of something she was morally set on, much like this. (Anybody remember the specific incident, or am I imagining things?) Once Hermione had refused Harry's entreaties for her to leave, it would have been much harder for the Defense Professor to change her opinion. And finally, there's this: Which supports your argument that he's being a little too over-the-top. The Defense Professor is above all, subtle - this kind of all-out effort is not like him. Maybe there's some time constraint, though, and he doesn't have time for "subtle?" Aargh.

[-]DanArmak13y50

We cannot privilige the human experience, and therefore the length of the earth day cannot be a physical constant.

The length of an earth day is part of all Earth life experience, not uniquely human.

[-]jaimeastorga200013y50

This attempted murder was well-planned to evade detection both by the wards of Hogwarts and the Headmaster's timely eye.

Quirrell sure loves his stealth puns. Is there any reason he is not openly telling Hermione about Dumbledore's time turner?

The Defense Professor turned his head down from the sky to regard her; and she saw, in the light of the doorway, that he was smiling - or at least half his face was smiling.

Is Quirrell's half-smile a reference to Robin Hanson's picture?

1pedanterrific13y

Why would it benefit him for her to know about it? If the light's coming from the doorway, it's one side of his face that's illuminated, not the bottom. Edit: ...that is a pretty creepy picture, isn't it?

[-]pedanterrific13y50

The dark side isn't even a personality, as such, which implies strongly that it's not a soul.

I was originally going to put a quote here, but it turned out to be pretty much half the chapter, so... Chapter 56. In particular, when you read

a blind terrified thing that only wanted to find a dark corner and hide and not have to think about it any more - [...]
Visualizing himself cradling his dark side like a frightened child in his arms.

Think back to Deathly Hallows, Chapter 36: King's Cross, specifically the bit

He was the only person there, except for

... (read more)

[-]loserthree13y50

Clearly

Not so, good sir. Do you call me a liar? I would challenge you on the field of honor, had I any.

For what it's worth, I hadn't read the Rowling books when I first read MoR, and finding out who Quirrell was was actually somewhat of a shock. I'm the target audience for this rule, so far as any such exists, and I think it's pretty dumb.

Is anyone logging anecdotes? We've got one here!

I wouldn't just slap it on as a chapter title if I was the editor, but if you're reading this forum thread, certain things are assumed of you.

Okay. That's coo... (read more)

[-]Random83213y50

He said "responding to unmarked edit" as though there was something wrong with failing to mark a simple addition made 10 seconds after the original post. I was confused, since it was not my experience that anyone considered this a problem anywhere.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y50

That said, even the sort of people who go to such events probably have some limits.

Yes. It sounds like it takes them twenty minutes to start making the best of things.

[-]thomblake13y50

I hadn't realized that Eliezer retracted the statement or that I was I was violating the rules.

In general, when someone says something is a spoiler and should be put in ROT13, the polite thing to do is to comply. You can then argue that it shouldn't be necessary, after the damage control is done.

If you're failing to do that, then the only recourse the rest of us have is to downvote the comment several times so that it is by default hidden from view. I will generally check back in a day to see if the spoiler has been ROT13'd, and reverse my downvote if... (read more)

6pleeppleep13y

I have never posted a spoiler before, nor had I intended to. I was not aware that confidence was to be given to the accusing party. I will keep this in mind in the future.

3ArisKatsaris13y

It's not about who's the "accusing party", it's about limiting potential damage. It would have cost you only a few seconds to edit in order to rot13 or remove something you were told was spoiler -- an action which would have been of positive utility to us, of hardly any cost to you -- instead you preferred to spend a hundredfold times that amount of time in a negative-sum game, where we lose because the damn spoiler is still up, and you lose by losing all your karma, and we ALL lose by wasting time debating this back and forth. Why don't we instead trade utilities, you by editing to remove/rot13 the spoiler, and I by removing my own downvotes of you? As could have been done from the very first post?

5Percent_Carbon13y

Not everyone is losing. For example, I've been enjoying this. I doubt I'm the only one.

4Viliam_Bur13y

First time it can be amusing, but if such situation would repeat often, the amusement would fade and the costs would stay. So I cooperate with my future selves by resisting to act on my amusement.

7Percent_Carbon13y

I can't tell if you're telling me I don't actually enjoy this or if you're threatening me with promises that time will deliver retribution. Things like this are why I can't convince my friends that you guys aren't a "system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object." I don't know what you're saying but I'll bet p>0.75 there's a way to say it without sounding like a fucking time traveler. EDIT: I mean to say that you use phrases that reference something common to some group you belong to, but uncommon to the public majority. I could say you sound like you come from fairy land or a phyg or outer space, but saying that you sound like you come from another time seemed the most apt until I noticed the phrase I criticized said something about your future selves. Maybe that's why I thought of time travel. I wasn't taking you literally. EDIT II: Son of Edit: Phyg

3Viliam_Bur13y

I'm threatening you that time may deliver more discussions about whether we should or shouldn't rot-13 the spoilers, how exactly the spoiler is defined, etc... and that can become rather boring. And by the way, I am a time traveller, I just always move in the same direction with a constant speed. Point taken, though.

3pleeppleep13y

I actually agree, Although it is rather exasperating to argue against a larger group of people.

2Random83213y

A post only needs a score of -1 to be hidden. The post currently stands at -12 points, in addition to ongoing punitive serial-downvoting of his (and my) further posts on the issue (most of which both did not mention the spoiler and were hidden under the hidden post).

1thomblake13y

By default, posts with -2 or less are hidden. (I just created a new account to check). I'm pretty sure the default used to be -4. That is not relevant to anything I said. People can downvote for whatever reason they want, and should generally do so to mean "I want to see fewer comments like this one".

2Douglas_Knight13y

By default, comments with a score of -2 are visible and with a score of -3 are hidden. The preferences page is confusing because it uses "below" as a strict inequality. I believe this was the original default, though there may have been something else in the middle.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y50

Are you suggesting there's some rule about what a post 'deserves' in terms of votes?

The actual mechanic is that scores or hundreds of individuals read each post. If they like it, they hit upvote. If they don't like it, they hit downvote. Some voters may think "this has enough upvotes already" and not upvote even though they like a post. Some voters may think "this has enough downvotes to collapse and I only get a limited number of downvotes myself so I'll save them for things other people aren't downvoting." But in the end it is mo... (read more)

8pleeppleep13y

I wasn't suggesting any rules, I was pointing out that this case seemed less than fair to me. In any case I suppose you're right.

[-]Incorrect13y50

It was like a glass of warm water thrown into her face.

What exactly is this supposed to evoke?

3knb13y

It was a surprise, but a "warm" (i.e. emotionally positive) surprise.

1gwern13y

It's... um, oversteeped lukewarm tea!

[-]nohatmaker13y50

The prophecy (at least canon - I remember MOR having a slightly different one, but cannot find it offhand) could point to two identities of Tom Riddle. The hero and the villain. Neither can (truly) live while the other survives.

3Normal_Anomaly13y

Unfortunately that's one of the phrases that isn't in the MOR version. It's "either must destroy all but a remnant of the other, for those two spirits cannot exist in the same world."

2[anonymous]13y

That part could still fit. Certainly Voldemort and Noble Hero cannot (simultaneously) exist in the same world. "The one with the power approaches" seems anachronistic, though, and "Born to those who have thrice defied him" doesn't make much sense unless we assume the defying happened after he was born (even then, it doesn't quite fit). Finally, "He will have power the Dark Lord knows not" is virtually impossible if they are the same person.

[-]pedanterrific13y200

That part could still fit. Certainly Voldemort and Noble Hero cannot (simultaneously) exist in the same world.

For more than six hours a day.

[-]NancyLebovitz13y50

Not that Rowling did impeccable world-building, but is it possible to put together a plausible history of muggle influences on wizarding culture?

9Velorien13y

In the first place, I realise that you're probably going for an understatement, but I think it's worth noting that Rowling's world-building, in terms of thinking through consequences and implications, is actually atrocious rather than merely inferior. I'll never forget the moment when I realised that DISINTEGRATING LIVE KITTENS is standard spell practice for schoolchildren in the Potterverse, and no-one bats an eyelid. I sometimes ponder whether Rowling herself places an unnaturally low value on any form of life that can't speak a human language, or whether the themes evoked in the last books (that wizards are overdue to pay for their appalling record on non-human rights) are deliberately woven into the Potterverse at an extremely deep level. That aside, could you give some examples of what you would consider such influences? Given that senior wizards in canon need to have guns explained to them, and that Muggle expert Arthur Weasley struggles to even pronounce "electricity", wizard obliviousness to Muggle society would seem to run so deep that I struggle to imagine one much influencing the other.

6Alsadius13y

What's wrong with disintegrating kittens? They're not much different than chickens, and we slaughter a billion of those(literally) every week. Also, if you didn't realize by book 7 that wizarding Britain is actually a pretty terrible place, you weren't paying much attention.

6Velorien13y

Wizarding Britain is a pretty terrible place - my contention is that I don't think Rowling realised how terrible it was when she was writing the books. Actually, as an ethical vegetarian, I find plenty wrong with that too. But that's besides the point. The point is that, in our world, the slaughtering is still done * In specialised places away from the public eye * By professionals who have chosen to work as farmers * On animals which are culturally designated as food animals The average teenager does not kill animals unless they've been brought up on a farm or in a context in which certain species have been firmly categorised as pests/vermin in their minds. They especially do not kill animals they categorise as pets unless they are psychologically disturbed. Here we have a classroom of average teenagers who unhesitatingly follow instructions to kill kittens, in spite of the fact that some of them have pet cats and that there is no higher purpose for doing so (the goal is apparently to be able to Vanish higher-level animals still). Not one of them is described as objecting or showing distress (which even Milgram's subjects did).

3Alsadius13y

There is no way that any citizen of a modern democracy could have written the courtroom scene in Order of the Phoenix and thought well of the society that produced it. That's when I started to really see how rotten the country was. Similarly, look at the utter incompetence of the politicians - they're worse than ours, and that takes some doing. There's enough other examples scattered throughout that I cannot believe that they were placed there unconsciously. And yes, slaughtering is done in slaughterhouses...because it's messy, smelly, and requires some pretty specialized sanitation measures. The average teenager doesn't assemble cars either, for similar reasons, but they wouldn't object to auto shop. You're right that the pet/food distinction exists, though it's not universal - horse, for example, has commonly been treated as both. The fact that they use cats is odd for the muggleborn, even if wizards put them into a different category(assuming that they do die). And re Milgram, remember that they were zapping humans, not animals. Even most vegetarians I know feel there's a pretty important difference there.

7Velorien13y

I agree that the politicians are deliberately incompetent/immoral, but overall my perspective on Rowling's world-building is opposite to yours. There are so many gaping flaws and inconsistencies in the Potterverse as a whole that I have trouble believing that a specific minority is deliberate while all the others are accidental. Also, Rowling isn't exactly subtle with her villains. With the possible exceptions of Snape and very late Draco, Potterverse evil is morally unambiguous and obvious to the reader. This inclines me to believe that if an act is in no way condemned within the text, explicitly or implicitly, this is because it is not intended to be seen as wrong. You seem to imply that, if it could be done in a suitably clean and convenient fashion, the average teenager would happily slaughter their own cows, chickens, lambs etc. for dinner on a daily basis, without a preceding process of desensitisation (which the majority do not go through). I disagree. Definitely, but I think it's quantitative rather than qualitative. A human's suffering might have 500 AU of emotional impact whereas a cat's has 50, but when an animal's pain or distress is obvious, there will still be emotional consequences for the one causing it (unless they have succeeded in fully objectifying the animal, the way a psychopath objectifies other humans).

7Alsadius13y

World-building: Plot holes are a lot easier to make by mistake than atmosphere for the average author. Most of the "this place sucks" seems atmospheric to me - Rowling may not have thought as poorly of her world as I do, but I doubt she thinks it'd be a great place to live after the wonder wore off. Unambiguous evil: I disagree entirely. Yes, the Death Eaters and Dementors are unambiguous, but Snape drove back and forth across that line so many times that it's ridiculous("possible", really?), Grindelwald was appealing enough to draw Dumbledore in, Hagrid was criminally stupid half the times we saw him(literally), Lockhart/Slughorn/every politician were some combination of pathetic and loathsome, Percy Weasley was an utter git and a massive enabler, and I could go on. Admittedly, most of those weren't big-E Evil, but they certainly did not lack for human flaws and ill consequences. Don't let the unambiguousness of Voldemort or Umbridge fool you. Slaughter: It wasn't that long ago that's precisely what happened. And even today, I spent the last few days with the part of my family that's farmers, and all of them have been hunting since childhood. Perhaps that's "desensitization", but if so it's an utterly common sort in the right cultures. Death being locked away is a modern innovation, not the natural order of things. Milgram: Yes, people react extremely poorly to animals suffering - sometimes worse than to humans suffering(which can be funny or just, depending, not necessarily simple torture). But Vanishing is not suffering, it's simply death, as odd as that sounds. That's a lot easier to handle when it's applied to animals.

3Velorien13y

Yet the "this place sucks" atmosphere doesn't actually kick in for real until Book 5, when the protagonist finds himself on the wrong side of the barricades for the first time (and also when Rowling leaves the teenage angst tap on). Until then, the dominant theme is that of a marvellous, whimsical magical world that's so dazzling with its uniqueness that you don't stop to question the holes and contradictions. It seems likely that touches such as Vanishing kittens are meant to be seen in this context rather than the negative one of the later books (which in any case focuses heavily on formal structures such as law, politics and media rather than day-to-day social practices). That's exactly my point. Apart from Snape, the reader never has to stop and think "is this person good or bad?" Grindelwald is charming but proto-evil even in his youth (based on his views), Hagrid is unambiguously well-intentioned even at his stupidest, Lockhart and Slughorn are clearly low-grade evil (though at least by the time we get to Slughorn, Rowling is learning to make bad people slightly sympathetic), and Percy Weasley has no redeeming features until he actually gets redeemed. You never have to think in order to tell good from bad (apart from Snape). And this leads me to believe that if something is not portrayed as bad in the least, then you're not meant to think it is, because it seems foolish to save all your subtlety for details of world-building and use none in characterisation. That's not relevant in this context, though. We're not dealing with people from cultures elsewhere in the world, or from a different time period. We're dealing with modern British children, some from Muggle society and some from wizard society, engaging in practices that contradict at least the norms of Muggle society and possibly the wizard one as well. Yup, and that would certainly reduce the psychological impact of Vanishing Charm practice to some extent. Of course, there are also other spells practi

0Alsadius13y

I find your impressions of good and evil rather amusing. Grindelwald is basically a utilitarian, something that most people are, he just doesn't do it very well. Slughorn was specifically introduced to be a good guy Slytherin, if a bit weaselly, so I disagree with you there as well. And Percy's a tool, but he's not actually evil, he's mostly just self-important and clueless - ditto Lockhart, for that matter. It's nowhere near as morally arguable as MoR, but it's hardly a world of cardboard either. Re Vanishing, that's a fair point. But to counter - what do the kids get told about where the cats go? Regardless of the truth of the matter, if they're told "Oh, we just bring them back after class", then they'll be fine with it.

5pedanterrific13y

Lockhart mindwiped a bunch of people to steal credit for their good deeds. He ended up attempting to mindwipe Harry and Ron. He's evil.

0loserthree13y

Evil, perhaps, but also correct about some important points. If you compare his back story to Harry Potter's interactions with the public in the remainder of the series, Lockhart does handle fame better and if he'd taken credit (and if there hadn't been a series of additional threats waiting in the wings that he had no reason to expect) it would have been better for Harry to have been ignorant of his own involvement. Lockhart's fame-sink argument may well have been just as correct for all those other, earlier people he swindled. But I agree that Rowling meant him to be irredeemably evil.

1pedanterrific13y

What does the EV stand for in this case? Edit: He tried to mindwipe them before they actually killed the basilisk. And I always read as indicating a complete mindwipe, of the sort that (not coincidentally) happened to Lockhart when his spell backfired.

2loserthree13y

Gah! Thank you. I'll excuse myself by saying I just got up, it's early 'morning' for my graveyard shift. That would quite exactly undo the entire reason I use that name. How embarrassing. Reply to Edit : You're right. It's been too long since I read the original and I've allowed certain fanfiction to cloud my judgement.

0Alsadius13y

'E's Very habitual when it comes to writing names in acronym form, clearly.

2DanArmak13y

Up to a few hundred years ago, almost all teenagers lived in a rural context and did just that. A big part of the world population still does. The necessary desensitization occurred simply by growing up there - being aware of it and considering it to be a normal part of life. Maybe if normal young children (11yo) are placed in an environment where their peers, upperclassmen and instructors all do it and act like it's perfectly normal, then they'll get used to it in a couple of days and it'll be normal for them too. Why do you expect otherwise? I agree that killing species preconceived of as pets rather than food, pests, etc. could require more desensitization for some children.

1Velorien13y

You seem to argue that the majority of teenagers would act in the way you suggest if it were a natural part of the culture they were brought up in. I agree. However, I don't think we have evidence to believe that British wizarding culture is such. And even if it were, this would not account for why Muggleborn students (including pet cat owner Hermione) act no differently to their pureblood counterparts.

3DanArmak13y

They routinely have children kill (vanish) animals in class to learn a spell. Their parents presumably did the same when they were in school. Isn't this pretty much the definition of it being a natural part of the culture? As for Hermione, I agree with the interpretation "Rowling is a bad writer" over "she is making a subtle point here".

0Velorien13y

Circular argument, I think. "It's presently OK to kill animals in class, therefore it must have been the same in the past, therefore it must be part of the culture, therefore it's presently OK to kill animals in class".

1DanArmak13y

Read "is OK to ..." to mean a cultural norm, not a judgement made by my or yours real values. My argument is then: It's presently OK (in their culture); therefore (all else being equal) it's likely to have been OK in the recent past, and is not a recent innovation; therefore it matches the definition for being a part of their culture. The last link to "therefore it's OK" that you propose is simply not necessary, I have already reached my conclusion. Now if you read "it's OK" as meaning I, User:DanArmak, think it's OK for wizards to kill kittens, that would be a circular argument, and also a wrong one (because I don't think so). But that's not what I was saying.

3TimS13y

Politics and litigation are almost totally incomprehensible to the average citizen. Therefore, it seems very plausible to me that Rowling thought she was depicting something analogous to what actually happens. Maybe not what happens frequently, but happens occasionally in a country the size of Magical Britain. I think she's wrong to think her depictions were realistic, but that's a separate issue.

2pedanterrific13y

I don't know, Magical Britain is the size of a small town. It doesn't seem unreasonable that small towns with no higher authority to answer to would devolve into that.

3NancyLebovitz13y

Yes, understatement. I'm not sure what probability you should have attached. They celebrate Christmas. It's possible that they invented scrolls for themselves, but I'm not counting on it. IIRC, they use the Roman alphabet, or at least I don't remember British muggle students having to learn a different alphabet. Their spells show an influence from Latin. Hogwarts resembles a British public school. They speak English, even if words relating to technology and science are absent. They use a train. Faint memory: didn't they have a statue in plate armor?

8loserthree13y

Clothing. Crockery. Shelters, both portable and permanent (masonry, carpentry, and textile) Prepared foods (despite divergence). Eye glasses. The custom of men shaving their faces The custom of women being more likely than men to have long hair (not actually sure about this one for adults, but it seems to apply to the children) Theater. It is a difficult thing to make a complete list. Days later I'm sure I'll have twenty more if I didn't hear of a better puzzle.

5Velorien13y

Yup. For that matter, Sir Cadogan is fairly unambiguously described as a mounted knight. On the other hand, I'm not sure how this project is to be reliably carried out without knowing what wizards could have invented for themselves - or, indeed, how far back the separation between the two societies goes historically. I'll give you the train, certainly, but on the other hand: Early Christianity may have existed before Muggle and wizard societies separated. It may have had both wizard and Muggle worshippers (Rowling is silent on the matter of religion, but resurrection would be just as miraculous to wizards). For that matter, Jesus could have existed in the Potterverse, in which case odds of him being a wizard are extremely high. The Muggle and wizard communities are tightly bound enough to maintain the same language (they share the same geographical territory, and intermarriage is not uncommon). Assuming that, at some point in the past, wizardry emerged from a Muggle population, there's no reason why the two should not share the same linguistic evolution. Which suggests the existence of Roman wizards, supporting the above point. Fair point. Although I struggle to come up with a mechanism by which nearly-modern Muggle teaching practices should come to be adopted by a school founded nearly a millennium earlier by wizarding purebloods, and maintained in a highly conservative fashion. If anything, one might speculate that British public schools are influenced by Hogwarts. See above. No contest. Ditto the printing press. I think our best bet may be to look at technologies which wizards would not have developed on their own (e.g. in that no other standard wizarding form of transport we know remotely resembles a train, or something which could evolve into a train). But that's a much more limited list.

[-]EchoingHorror13y230

Jesus in Potterverse, as a wizard who experimented with turning squib-disciples into wizards so he could eventually do the same with all muggles and be their king. His blood in wine-potions and flesh in bread-potions only gave the recipients as much magic as went into creating those body parts, allowing the occasional "miracle".

Decades after this story, Draco and his Science Eaters isolate and replicate the magic genes and start making potions that turn muggles and squibs into wizards (but also marks them in a way they can't see, for ... research, and to give them extra power), and use their huge army of new wizards and noble and blood purist allies everywhere to conquer the world. Hermione leads a resistance force of the best trained wizards alive to stop them. Harry discovers that Draco's mark sets in too soon before the transformation to wizard is complete, becoming fatal within a few years in ~90% of cases, which Draco considers an acceptable risk to become a wizard. And that it bends their will to Draco's. So Harry, the elite Bayesian Conspiracy, and the Chaos Legion, formed from anyone/anything else that would fight, fight to remove the mark, stop Hermione's people... (read more)

4thomblake13y

Upvoted for this part.

1EchoingHorror13y

Thanks. The middle paragraph was far too predictable and mundane to exist without the proper punchline.

0LauralH13y

Wow, now I sorta want to write this... well, the first paragraph anyway. BIBLE/POTTER CROSSOVERS!

1taelor13y

Early Christians did not have a tradition regarding a fat, bearded man commemorating the birth of their savior by giving gifts to good children.

3cultureulterior13y

Personally, I think Eliezer keeping the train- qua train- is a mistake. It shows too much influence from the muggle universe. I mean, what did Hogwarts use as soon as 200 years ago? Why would they change it given their extremely conservative world-view? A Eberron-style lightning train would be more plausible.

[-]thomblake13y120

Eliezer also has magical pop-top soda cans. I think he's just keeping it as random and nonsensical as canon, which to me accurately maps the way cultures bleed into one another.

2NihilCredo13y

Which spell would that be?

7Velorien13y

In one of the middle books, the Transfiguration class is practising Vanishing Charms on mice (I think). Hermione, being Hermione, progresses to practising on kittens by the end of the lesson. In Book 7, it is explicitly stated that a Vanished object disappears from existence. I guess, strictly speaking "annihilating" is more accurate than "disintegrating".

[-]kilobug13y110

Doesn't seem worse to me than dissecting mice as it was done in biology lessons at school not so long ago here. Well, for the vanishing charms of mice at least. For the kitten it sounds more scary to us who have cats as pets, but the "this is a pet that you can't kill"/"this is a farm animal that you can eat" categorization is very depend of culture.

6Velorien13y

I think we had frogs - once - and I opted out of that class. But I imagine those would be already-dead mice? You wouldn't have to kill them yourself? Also, maybe it's just me, but I think that the more intelligent an animal is, the harder it is to objectify and kill. Stepping on insects is easier than killing mice because insects seem alien and thus easier to objectify. Killing mice is easier than killing cats or dogs because the behaviour of cats and dogs is closer to our own in complexity (or seems to be) and thus it is harder to dismiss them as "not really alive the way we are alive". To be sure, the taboo on killing kittens is very much culture-dependent - but Hermione, who apparently has no problems with it, comes from "our" Anglo-Saxon culture. in which kittens are beloved household pets as well as common symbols of innocence and various other positive features. Which edges me towards "Rowling doesn't think" rather than "Rowling is very subtle in showing us the darkness of the Potterverse".

[-]thomblake13y180

But I imagine those would be already-dead mice? You wouldn't have to kill them yourself?

Until very recently, vivisection was also a staple of biology classes.

You could cut open a frog while it was still alive and watch its heart stop beating as it wished for the faculties necessary to cry for mercy.

3RobertLumley13y

Almost downvoted for bringing me to the verge of tears. But I can't actually justify that downvote since you definitely added something to the conversation.

3Velorien13y

facepalm at reality So the upside for Rowling is that Vanished animals presumably don't suffer (at least for more than an instant). The downside is that the children are practising killing for no higher purpose than to practise killing (in that if they just wanted to learn how to Vanish inanimate objects, they're much more easily available than animate ones).

1Desrtopa13y

Not that I think this was good class practice, but I rather doubt that frogs have the faculties to formalize such thoughts. The nearest equivalent in human terms would probably be something like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!"

1DanArmak13y

So a teacher killed them all the day before and put them in the freezer. How is that better? We'd have to hire biology teachers who score lower on empathy than the cultural norm.

2Velorien13y

Experienced, (hopefully) emotionally stable adult with a full understanding of the purpose and benefits of the process, versus emotionally developing child with a narrower perspective. Our culture has a firmly grounded principle that some experiences are traumatic for children but not necessarily for adults, such as sex and violence. It seems odd that it should apply to, say, video games, but not to hands-on animal killing.

3DanArmak13y

I feel this point is less correct than your original one. Is there evidence that sex or violence depicted in video games are traumatic to children (and not to adults)? In cultures where real-life sex between children is or was the norm, is there evidence that it was often traumatic to them? (What is the definition of 'children' in this context? Pre-pubescent? What age?) Finally, as for real-life violence, it often leads to (physical) trauma so if's obviously dangerously traumatic in at least that respect. But if we put that aside, what makes you suppose it's any more traumatic to children than to (average, not specially trained) adults?

1Velorien13y

You misunderstand. I'm not proposing that said principle is correct. I'm far from convinced that it is. However, it is a foundation for our culture's treatment of children, and I find it dubious that it should be suspended for convenience's sake in cases such as this one, yet fiercely maintained elsewhere.

0DanArmak13y

It appears, however, that this principle is not aligned with the magical culture's approved treatment with children. If we allow examples from MoR, we have Draco not having any moral problems with raping another child, and most of the Hogwarts faculty and students see nothing wrong with physically violent bullying between students. In canon, I understand that Harry tested out unknown (potentially deadly) curses on random (stranger) Slytherin children (instead of, say, kittens), and wasn't told off by anyone. Etc etc. In our world, where it is against cultural norms, posters in this thread report that dissecting live (and recently killed) animals in class has indeed been diminishing. (Personal anecdata: I was in highschool in Israel 10-15 years ago and we witnessed a dissection of a single dead frog for the entire class, and only once.)

0fubarobfusco13y

As initially presented, Draco's habits of moral thinking — I wouldn't say "principles" — seem to have been trained to the expectation that might makes right; and that doing something that you want to do, and that can't be held against you, can't be sensibly objected to. Draco is probably not typical. This was, until relatively recently, a pretty typical attitude in the real world.

1DanArmak13y

He's atypical mostly in having the 'might' to get away with things other can't. Can you give examples of non-Muggleborn wizarding children in MoR (I am less familiar with canon, but that would still be valid) who are opposed to violence on principle? Gryffindors who speak out against hurting Slytherins for fun, or vice versa, because of moral considerations, or a universal principle that everyone has the right not to be hurt? Someone who would have tried to stop Canon!Harry as he (apparently) tried out unfamiliar Dark curses on random Slytherins? And still is in many places. Which supports my point that it's plausible to believe Potterverse magical society is not opposed to violence between children and certainly no more than between adults.

1[anonymous]13y

Hermione also has a pet cat, Crookshanks.

3[anonymous]13y

I think there's a point of philosophical contention here. I gather you're talking about Professor McGonagall's answer to the Ravenclaw Tower door? The riddle is, "Where do vanished objects go?" to which she responds, "Into unbeing, which is to say, everything." To me this implies that in canon "existence" is a predicate (common metaphysical opinion is that it isn't in the real world), which means that whilst vanished objects lose the property of existence they keep all their other properties and can be re-substantiated just by magically restoring their quality of existence. So killing someone leaves them existent but changes them irreversibly from alive to dead, whereas vanishing them changes them reversibly from real to not-real. This, of course, doesn't make sense, which is why not many people think existence really is a predicate.

1Velorien13y

The other thing is that on the occasions when we are explicitly told a Vanishing Charm is being used, it is being used on objects that one does not expect to want back (such as failed potions). This suggests that its purpose is to get rid of things permanently rather than suspend their existence temporarily. Come to that, if Vanishing Charms worked as you propose, they would surely see much wider use in the books in the many instances when an object must be temporarily concealed from a searching enemy.

3[anonymous]13y

In canon we also see Bill Weasley use the spell on several parchments that look like building plans to Harry in order to stop Harry reading them: these turn out to be Order of the Phoenix business. So from that, it seems like vanishing probably doesn't destroy the target and does get used to hide things you don't want seen. I actually can think of another example of vanishing being used in canon to hide an object from the enemy: there exist vanishing cabinets that will vanish you if you step inside and close the doors, and then re-conjure you inside the cabinet's twin, wherever it happens to be. These are useful as a means of escape in case of Death Eater attack. Notably, if the twin cabinet is non-functional you get stuck in a limbo that sounds very much like non-being.

7Velorien13y

Bill explicitly using the Vanishing Charm on valuable documents is stronger evidence for your interpretation than McGonagall's statement is for mine. I hereby change my belief. (this weakens my original point, that of casual cruelty to animals in the Potterverse as a sign of poor world-building, but doesn't falsify it since we have plenty of other examples, especially from Transfiguration)

1gwern13y

It is? That surprises me, given that the only other guaranteed fatal spell is an Unforgivable which the teacher has to fight to demonstrate or teach. (Also, I see nothing on the HP wikia about fatality, and it's usually good with the details; the article on Vanishing mentions multiple examples of non-fatal Vanishing-related things, and speculates that it is non-fatal. Perhaps the staff economize on expenses by re-conjuring all the animals back from Vanishment.)

1Velorien13y

2DanArmak13y

Would wizards would react differently to disintegration of live snake hatchlings?

9Velorien13y

Probably not - Parseltongue is an extremely rare gift. I specify speaking a human language, incidentally, because mandrakes act like humans to a limited but recognisable extent (they throw tantrums when young, become moody and secretive as teenagers, and attempt to move into each other's pots as young adults), but are still chopped up and used as potion reagents as soon as they achieve maturity. On the other hand, centaurs and goblins are at least recognised as intelligent beings with their own thoughts and feelings to be trampled over.

[-]pedanterrific13y100

For those who haven't been keeping up with Eliezer's favorites list on ffnet: Mandragora.

2LauralH13y

Ooooh, and Tied for Last! (well, that's just a Riddle/Granger ship fic, but very well done, WITHOUT time travel.)

3DanArmak13y

Because the goblins have got a nation-level army, and everyone's gold in their vaults, and possession is nine points of the law and all of it in case of war. I don't know what the centaurs have, not having read that part of canon, but I predict they too are respected because they are feared.

2Alsadius13y

Hell, would they react differently to disintegration of elves? For that matter, a good percentage of them were okay with mass murder of humans.

7gwern13y

Yes. Elves are valuable and useful - recall Lucius nearly had a stroke when he realized he lost his House Elf. It'd be like casually shooting your stable's prime stallion.

1Alsadius13y

Clearly you don't kill your own elves. You do it to somebody you don't like.

3Eugine_Nier13y

They might sue you for destruction of valuable property.

4DanArmak13y

For that matter, a good percentage of humans have been OK with mass murder of humans. The whole discussion is not very well grounded. Why make a big deal out of kittens but not of chickens etc?

0Sheaman377313y

It's possible that the kittens were Conjured, and thus due to fade away in time regardless of what happened to them. I'm not saying that's what it was, for all we know they had to be real for it to effectively practice Vanishing, but it is possible.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y50

Ron was not a target of interest. Hat and Cloak wanted both Hermione and Draco out of the picture.

[-]JacekLach13y50

It's from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havelock_Vetinari

Lord Vetinari also has a strange clock in his waiting-room. While it does keep completely accurate time overall, it sometimes ticks and tocks out of sync (example: "tick, tock... ticktocktick, tock...") and occasionally misses a tick or tock altogether, which has the net effect of turning one's brain "into a sort of porridge". (Feet of Clay, Going Postal).

[-]Quirinus13y50

A problem with Quirrell's heroic alter ego being Tom Riddle, even if the only ones who know Tom Riddle is Voldemort are the inner circle of the Order of the Phoenix, is, why wouldn't madam Bones tell Dumbledore that Tom Riddle is currently inhabiting Quirrell's body?

Quirrell said that he "reported to the headmaster" by which I interpret Dumbledore wants to know in what ways the defense professor was involved in this whole debacle, from which we can infer that he will have or has had Bones report to him as well. The fact that a war hero that was a... (read more)

9ChrisHallquist13y

Riddle appears to have convinced Bones that he's a genuinely good guy who's dying, and wants to live out the final months of his life without his true identity being known. She will likely respect his wishes because, hey, he was a real hero once. Or Bones will tell Dumbledore and this will lead to a climax suitable for the end of a Hogwarts school year. But unfortunately, it seems that in this fic even smart people are capable of shooting themselves in the foot not sharing information freely enough. I mean, if Dumbledore and Harry sat down and shared all the information they have, they'd have identified Quirrell as Riddle/Voldemort by now.

3Spencer_Sleep13y

Or it's not Riddle at all. I was writing out a whack of reasons for this, but there is no need: Eliezer has spoken:

8LucasSloan13y

It seems perfectly in keeping with the foresight and planning we've seen from Quirrell that he killed off a classmate soon after Hogwarts in the event that he needed an identity to assume later. It seems equally plausible that Quirrell would have tried, to the extent he could do so costlessly, play a person on both sides of the conflict he created. It is worth noting that this supposed hero used Avada Kedavra on the Death Eaters, a signature of Quirrell. This hero also failed to kill Belatrix Black, a major pawn of the other side. I do not think that the name of this supposed hero is Riddle, given that Dumbledore knows that Voldemort and Riddle are one and the same, but it seems very likely that Quirrell was playing this man.

6Quirinus13y

Well, the theory of this identity being Riddle has been jossed by Eliezer. And you're right, I was thinking in terms of Riddle manipulating this other person into being Voldemort's nemesis since the start of his Hogwarts education (given how apparently magically talented this person was) but now after reading what you wrote I realize there is no information regarding this person's magical talent or political alignment while he was attending Hogwarts. So Riddle/Voldemort murders this person when he is travelling after graduation. He assumes his identity in 1970 and gives this person a solitary life so he can manage his time better better between identities, and also to avoid commiting mistakes that would give away his impersonation in front of his family. A year later he jump-starts Britain's wizarding war setting this other identity as a prominent player in the anti-voldemort side in a single move. Beautiful. I think most of the confusion surrounding this new character stemmed from the assumption that given his importance in the war, he would have an analogous in canon, and Tom Riddle seemed to fit pretty good (or maybe he is a modified canon character, but I can't really think of any). Now I'm curious about the details of this impersonation. Amelia Bones mentioned that there was no explanation for his absence, so why did they just assume it was him? Surely someone would have tried a Polyfluis Reverso as soon as they saw him, so it's possible there are darker magics involved, which is totally justifiable with Voldemort. But perhaps it's not that uncommon for wizards seeking power to disappear for a few years and then reappear with a better mastery of magic and a more jaded personality. After all, travelling to exotic places is normal for wizards in canon too.

2Desrtopa13y

This was the primary conclusion that I came to as well. Quirrell has already demonstrated a propensity for playing multiple identities. Plus, if I were in his place as a professor needing a fallback secret identity, I would want it to be someone who nobody would find me suspiciously incongruous with on account of it actually also being me. Also, the fact that the unnamed person lived in isolation, and was estranged from his family and friends, is evidence for this hypothesis. If he's under Imperius, being impersonated with polyjuice, or otherwise being magically replaced, Voldemort wouldn't want people around him who would notice any sort of incongruous behavior, or force him to play a role full time.

[-]ChrisHallquist13y50

1926 is the date Amelia Bones gives for what she suspects to be Quirrell's true identity. It is also the date of Tom Marvolo Riddle's birth in canon. This and other details suggest that Bones believes Quirrell is Riddle. But for that to be true, it must be that during Voldemort's first campaign, Riddle was still appearing as Riddle until, apparently, 1973

Bones must not know Riddle is Voldemort, or she would be behaving very differently towards Dumbledore. Dumbledore, on the other hand, appears to believe Riddle is Voldemort, because just a few chapters ago... (read more)

2Alsadius13y

That makes a lot of sense, really. Nobody does things "For Teh Evulz!", they do them either because they think it's good or because they think it's awesome.

3Eugine_Nier13y

Well, some people confuse Teh Evulz with awesome.

[-]pedanterrific13y50

The Author's Note you refer to has since been retracted. You're ruining the twist for the people who haven't figured it out yet. As are all those other people, yes.

1MarkusRamikin13y

Am I the only one who thinks this is all silly? The cat it out of the bag, good luck pushing it back in. On the Internet, too.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y40

You've completely conceded that your initial argument was total crap.

No, I haven't.

Now you're making a completely different argument.

Since you then made a completely separate and different error, of course I'll make a completely different argument against that completely separate and different error.

and your initial argument was wrong

I've not made a wrong argument against any of your positions.

My imprecision led to no flawed conclusions. And you just stole that argument from pedanterrific, you didn't even think of it yourself, that's patheti

... (read more)

3pedanterrific13y

Out of curiosity, have I identified myself as male on this site? That is, I do that sometimes, I just hadn't thought I did here.

3ArisKatsaris13y

Not to my knowledge. Apologies -- I just wrongly tend to use the male pronoun as default in some cases. Edited to fix.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y40

This is the first legitimate counterargument that's been made and we're seven layers in, that should tell everyone something.

It tells me that you see far fewer counterarguments as "legitimate" than you should.

I think textual clues outweigh extratextual extrapolation, too. The fact that the eye contact was specifically mentioned seems important, it was probably mentioned for a reason.

As I mention in a comment above, Quirrel's intent gaze is also mentioned in ch. 70, in a situation where we're pretty sure no Legimancy occurred.

Even if I wa

... (read more)

[-]ArisKatsaris13y40

and the negative karma you gave

I didn't downvote you - please don't assume that a criticism is always accompanied by a downvote.

That she stepped away from Quirrell in no way mandates that she's distrusting Quirrell, it could be many other things.

Name three.

Quirrell is an idiot if he jumped to the conclusion that she thought he was responsible just because she stepped away from him, that conclusion only makes sense in the context of the information in Hermione's mind.

When her first reaction to his sight was "Are you here to kill me?"

... (read more)

[-]Velorien13y40

But here's the thing - his portrayal has pretty much no redeeming features. He's not even "nice unless you get in the way of his ambitions", he's just low-grade nasty all the time, except when he's being blatantly patronising. Whatever the big picture view of his personality, at any given time he is either 100% unpleasant or actually redeemed.

I think that goes for most of the other characters as well. They aren't portrayed as, say, positive 10% of the time and negative 90% of the time - instead, every single thing they do conforms to the same moral level. Someone like Lockhart couldn't pet a kitten without it being a PR move (or possibly without accidentally hurting it to demonstrate his incompetence).

1Alsadius13y

Granted, but it's possible to be unpleasant without being evil. In fact, that was my original point - you said "we never need to think about who's evil", and then went through my list and sorted 2/5 into the wrong box. Yes, Percy's a jerk and Slughorn's a single-minded social climber, but neither of them actually means ill any more than Hagrid does. That doesn't make them evil.

2Vaniver13y

Wrong box? I think you might be giving your interpretation a bit too much credit, especially with Lockhart.

0wedrifid13y

'Evil' isn't a synonym of 'malicious'. Indifference combined with the aggressive seeking of a particular incompatible goal can well and truly result in fitting the description of 'evil' so long as the judged remains sufficiently socially near that making a moral judgement makes sense. "Actually meaning ill" is not required.

3Velorien13y

Maybe "evil" is a word with too many connotations. Let's try "bad". If a character is "bad" in the Potterverse, then they will be the same level of "bad" 100% of the time, whether that level is "being obnoxious and sucking up to authority" or "casual murder of anyone who gets in the way". They will never display moral complexity unless their name is Severus or Draco. I'm reminded of the attribution fallacy. The protagonists act well or badly in response to the circumstances they're in. The antagonists have "badness" of one sort or another as an integral feature of their character, and all their actions reflect it.

[-]Viliam_Bur13y40

It depends on a few assumptions:

there will be a Singularity, the human race will survive and greatly expand through the universe;
some of those future humans will be interested in history;
LessWrong site and HP:MoR will be among the important historical artifacts, and their contents will be preserved.

Of course each of these assumptions is open to discussion, but if you give non-zero probability to each of them, the inevitable logical conclusion follows.

(Also, I am joking.)

0pleeppleep13y

Wouldn't transhumans with sufficiently modified minds probably have the cognitive ability necessary to guess the spoiler?

[-]Barry_Cotter13y40

Well it's been five days now so as a newly minted ex-tobacco smoker: There are plenty who can and will honestly say "My will is not strong enough". I was 21 before I ever smoked a full cigarette. Believe me when I say that there are people who know in their bones how stupid smoking is, who make no defense based on reasons they will own, they will stand behind, but who keep smoking nevertheless. Nicotine may not be heroin (and I'm not going to find out) but it is truly some good shit.

Don't start smoking kids.

7TheOtherDave13y

Yeah... smoking kids is seriously frowned upon by your neighbors.

[-]Multiheaded13y40

your parents would be so very disappointed with you

Yes. Don't know about the other two, but seeking the approval of various authority figures as they appear in my mind, consciously or not, is definitely one of my most frequent motivations when I act altruistically.
Not too troubled about privacy or immortality, though; I view both as more or less inevitable if a half-decent singularity does come, unless it's incredibly weird, not just Eliezer-level weird. That is, I want to want both, and don't currently worry too much as to whether I want either one in my heart of hearts.

2[anonymous]13y

The thing is that as awful as this sounds authority figures you care about dying is a source of freedom for people. I would never want my parents to die so I have say more "freedom" in defining my morality (or perhaps in ways my model of them in my head would disapprove of), but we would be locked into our socially defined roles much more than we are today. Also an erosion of privacy makes normative feedback from your social group basically instant, people are pretty conformist, so a reduction of privacy means society wide greater conforming to social norms. Which obviously can be a good thing by say much reducing murder or rape, but again is pretty much a big step towards say political totalitarianism and the domination of one human value system (that happens to be favoured by such an envrionment or happens by pure chance to be the dominant one when the transition happens) over others.

0Eliezer Yudkowsky13y

...thanks. I think.

[-]pedanterrific13y40

Harry explicitly says earlier that he'd say he could be trusted with a secret, even if he couldn't be, because it was never helpful to be ignorant of it.

I'm going to need a direct quote. The only thing I can think of similar to this is

"All right," Harry said slowly. It was hard to see how having a conversation and being unable to tell anyone could be more constraining than not having it, in which case you also couldn't tell anyone the contents. "I promise."

Not to mention

A secret whose revelation could prove so disastrous that I

... (read more)

[-]pedanterrific13y40

But hey, he's already employing a scatter shot approach towards their weirdness training so if this one idea doesn't work out it doesn't cost him much more than the time it took him to plan the exercise.

There's almost certainly a way to do this sort of thing that would function quite well as a morale and team-building exercise even if it didn't work at all on the conformity level.

Not that the Chaos Legion needs more morale.

[-]Velorien13y40

True. But that would have to be an extreme amount of acceleration, whereas in MoR it takes several casters just to fully counter the effect of gravity on one teenage boy. Also, it seems unlikely at best that the Hover Charm can accelerate people downwards - and if you lift someone high enough for a fall to kill them, you give them time to react while they fall.

Also, it's possible that the Hover Charm could be blocked by a pre-cast shield - in fact, this seems likely, otherwise people could just get around non-spherical shields by lifting the target and then shooting them from underneath.

3VincenzoLingley13y

Several first-year casters. Quirrell stuck 50 people to the ceiling. You might say that he has better ways to use his power - but the killing curse is not one of them. His killing curse is little better than anyone else's. There's got to be a spell for that, and it it likely to work similarly to the hover charm, i.e. instant effect. If by a specific anti-hover shield, then one needs to always keep up a large number of shields against various spells. If by a generic shield, well, that isn't in my mental model of shields, but I guess it's possible. In which case I agree that the killing curse is superior agains a raised shield, but it is still inferior against an unsuspecting enemy.

5Rejoyce13y

Ah. Hundreds of girls Summoning a Harry Potter into their arms?

3pedanterrific13y

I imagine SPHEW's battles vs. the bullies would have looked different if Protego didn't protect against telekinesis.

2ahartell13y

An unsuspecting enemy can apparate when they realize they are being affected by the hover charm. When they realize they are being affected by Avada Kedavra... they're dead.

[-]Alsadius13y40

I see no reason to believe that Godric could cast the True Patronus. Even if he knew enough to ruin his ability to cast the traditional one(and knowing that it was literally hiding from death would likely be enough to make him disdain it), that doesn't mean that he could take the necessary leap to using the True Patronus.

[-]Vladimir_Nesov13y40

"Bad" in the sense you mean is a label placed on behaviors by individuals or groups who wish to discourage those behaviors, usually for selfish reasons. I have to say 'usually' because sometimes they do so for stupid reasons instead of self-interest.

"Selfish" is a wrong word in this context, for what you mean is person's (idealized) goals/values, which are probably not purely selfish.

4loserthree13y

I am unsure that I understand your objection to the word, but I will replace it with a complicated phrase to try and be more clear. And thank you for that link; that is an interesting article. The choice between stubbing my toe and a complete stranger being tortured for fifty years without my knowledge is especially interesting. I experience empathy, so I expect that amount of suffering by another when linked by the petty intimacy of being the person to allow/make it happen will create more suffering for me than would stubbing my toe. If I would never know, though, if it were wiped from my mind that it happened or that I played a part, then the right choice is the other's torture, not stubbing my own toe. But it is difficult to say so, it is difficult to separate myself-deciding from myself-living-with-it. Or maybe the suffering-by-empathy at the very point of deciding to sentence the other to the fifty-year oubliette of torture is greater than the direct suffering of stubbing my toe. Curious.

8Eliezer Yudkowsky13y

The right choice? Who is it telling you that you've got to have the other person tortured, if you just happen not to feel like it?

0loserthree13y

I may not understand what you're asking. Is this an internal family thing? There is only me in here, even if I talk to myself in thought. The problem I have with the dilemma is that it expects me to separate myself-as-I-answer from myself-as-I-live-with-my-choice. If I had a realistic example, that might help Scenario 1 me-who-answers : "I empathize with the fifty years of as yet hypothetical suffering of a stranger, and choosing that causes me more pain than I expect to feel from stubbing my toe, so I will choose to stub my toe." me-who-lives-with-my-choice : "Ow! What the fuck did you do that for?" me-who-answers : "So a stranger wouldn't suffer torture for fifty years." stranger : "Yeah, thanks for that. You don't know how much that means to me." me-who-lives-with-my-choice : "Yeah, you're right. I do not and cannot ever know, so he did not decide that for my sake. He decided it for himself. So, me-who-answers, how's that working out for you?" me-who-answers : "Oh, I don't exist anymore." me-who-lives-with-my-choice : "Well fuck you, toe-stubber!" Scenario 2 me-who-answers : "Despite empathizing with the fifty years of as yet hypothetical suffering of a stranger, I recognize that I am ephemeral and my discomfort with this decision is less important than lasting effects on my successor." me-who-lives-with-my-choice : whistles ignorantly stranger : "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

1NihilCredo13y

Just because your memory is going to get wiped afterwards does not mean that your on-the-spot preference is worth any less than post-memory-wipe-You's. If you had a choice between being memory wiped, then stubbing your toe; versus taking a powerful kick to the balls now, then being memory wiped, I doubt you would sigh and spread your legs. If you are gifted (or, in this particular case, cursed) with enough empathy that the very act of deciding to condemn a stranger to torture causes you pain, then I'm not sure you can concoct a hypothetical scenario wherein you can ignore said empathy while retaining your agency and/or identity.

1loserthree13y

It really does, though. post-memory-wipe me lasts a lot longer. On-the-spot-me only exists until he decides. Whoa, hey now. That's not just pain, that's an indignity. But you're right. (Apples-to-apples I'd take the worst headache I've ever had if I wouldn't remember it and knew there'd be no long term damage over stubbing my toe in a conventional fashion.) I wouldn't call it "pain," but it is an unwelcome experience. Beyond a the risk of retribution or similar consequences, isn't that why you don't hurt the people you can hurt? Aren't there experiences you would not call pain that you'd choose pain over? I get the feeling that I'm missing something obvious, here. I've got an idea why I was hesitating instead of taking the easy answer in the first place. I think it felt like a trick question and I fixed on the not-remembering part. It was so out of place, so wild that it just had to determine the answer. Like, why would you put that in the question if it wasn't what the question was about? Acting without remembering has to be irrelevant, it's just too damn far out of scope. I'm never going to appreciate it on a meat level and don't need to plan for making decisions with that caveat. Fuck that noise. Some skills aren't especially useful outside of the environment that spawned them.

2loserthree13y

I would like to learn why this comment has been penalized..

1NihilCredo13y

Upon further reflection, I think the question of "how much of the pain/suffering/unpleasantness/etc. from a given even happens on the spot, and how much lingers on in the memory?" has an answer that wildly varies, even for the same individual. The worst physical pain I ever felt involved a certain surgical operation, but it causes me no discomfort whatsoever to remember it; conversely, I once got stung by an unknown insect while still half-asleep, and the thought still makes me twitch and clutch at my neck. On a more mental level, there are a few seemingly random subjects that make me flinch and feel burning shame whenever brought up, because almost a decade ago I happened to make a fool of myself in conversations that involved them; yet those were by no means the most sorrowful moments of my life, or even the most embarrassing. So I would consider the question "would you take X pre-memory wipe, or Y post-wipe?" highly dependant on X and Y. And yes, I find myself agreeing that X='condemn a stranger to torture' would be exactly the kind of event that inflicts the majority of its suffering through memory and regret.

3loserthree13y

Regret management seems to get more important with age. The fuckers accumulate. One thing I do is remind myself, "I want to be the kind of guy who's cool with having done that." And, if possible, "It was an inexpensive lesson that it was good to learn." Do affirmations like that have any impact on your regrets?

[-]ArisKatsaris13y40

Your whole argument seems to be "if someone might potentially get spoiled, then by golly everyone should be".

We realize the rule can't prevent all spoilage. But it can reduce it, and (it being simple and specific) it's extremely easy to follow for anyone who is a non-jerk.

[-]thescoundrel13y40

The vast majority of humans don't have perfect pitch, so the specific pitch of the note is far less important than the relationships to the notes surrounding them. I agree that he is rather showing off, but unless you spend a very large amount of time ear training, you likely cannot tell when a note is a quarter tone sharp or flat. However, just like there are cycles of notes that always sound amazing together when you run them through variation (see the circle of 5ths), there are notes that sound horrible and jarring. Furthermore, the amount of time it ta... (read more)

1gjm13y

Even without a lot of ear training, you can quite likely hear if a note is a quarter-tone out relative to its predecessors and successors.

4thescoundrel13y

Here is a quarter tone scale. While the changes are detectable right next to each other, much like sight delivers images based on pre-established patterns, so does hearing. When laid out in this fashion, you can hear the quarter tone differences- although to my ears (and I play music professionally, have spent much time in ear training, and love music theory) there are times it sounds like two of the same note is played successively. Move out of this context, into an interval jump, and while those with good relative pitch may think it sounds "pitchy", your mind fills it in to a close note- this is why singers with actual pitch problems still manage to gain a following. Most people cannot hear slightly wrong notes. However, none of this approaches the complexity of actually trying to sing a quarter tone. The amount of vocal training required to sing quarter tones at will is the work of a master musician- much like the the person who can successfully execute slight of hand at the highest level is someone who spends decades in honing their craft.

[-]gjm13y100

I just tried some experiments and I find that if I take Brahms's lullaby (which I think is the one Eliezer means by "Lullaby and Goodnight") and flatten a couple of random notes by a quarter-tone, the effect is in most cases extremely obvious. And if I displace each individual pitch by a random amount from a quarter-tone flat to a quarter-tone sharp, then of course some notes are individually detectable as out of tune and some not but the overall effect is agonizing in a way that simply getting some notes wrong couldn't be.

I'm a pretty decent (though strictly amateur) musician and I'm sure many people wouldn't find such errors so obvious (and many would find it more painful than I do).

Anyway, I'm not sure what our argument actually is. The chapter says, in so many words, that Q. is humming notes "not just out of key for the previous phrases but sung at a pitch which does not correspond to any key" which seems to me perfectly explicit: part of what makes the humming so dreadful is that Q. is out of tune as well as humming wrong notes. And yes, the ability to sing accurate quarter-tones is rare and requires work to develop. So are lots of the abilities Q. has.

(Of ... (read more)

3ircmaxell13y

Here's a tweak I made that I think keeps to the spirit. import random, time, winsound timebias = 0.2 pitchbias = 0.7 changebias = 0.75 current = [(4.,1.),(5.,1.),(7.,3.),(None,1.), (4.,1.),(5.,1.),(7.,3.),(None,1.),(4.,1.),(7.,1.),(12.,2.),(11.,2.),(9.,2.),(9.,2.),(7.,1.),(None,1.),(2.,1.),(4.,1.),(5.,3.),(None,1.),(2.,1.),(4.,1.),(5.,3.),(None,1.),(2.,1.),(5.,1.),(11.,1.),(9.,1.),(7.,2.),(11.,2.),(12.,4.)] timeshift = 1; while 1: timeshift = timeshift + timeshift * random.uniform(1 - timebias, 1 + timebias) if timeshift > 1.0 + 2.0 * timebias or timeshift < 1.0 - 2.0 * timebias: timeshift = random.uniform(1.0 - timebias / 2.0, 1.0 + timebias / 2.0) key = random.randrange(0, len(current) - 1) if random.random() > changebias: if current[key][0] is not None: current[key] = (current[key][0] + current[key][0] * random.uniform(-1.0 * pitchbias, pitchbias), current[key][1]) else: current[key] = (current[key][0], current[key][1] + current[key][1] * random.uniform( -1.0 * timebias, timebias)) time.sleep(random.random()) for (p,d) in current: if p is None: time.sleep(0.2*d * timeshift) else: winsound.Beep(int(440*2**(p/12.)), int(200*d*timeshift)) Basically, each loop it tweaks the song slightly from the one before it, randomly. The three different bias settings on the top dictate how the song evolves. But besides just changing the song, the rate of any play varies randomly (according to the timebias as well). The timebias applies to changes of timing. So the tempo of the play, the rate of change of the length of a note and the length of pauses are all shifted by the timebias randomly. increasing this number will create more dramatic swings in time changes from run to run (as well as the overall bounds of the tempo). The pitchbias applies to pitch changes. Increasing it will let the algorithm drift from the normal song much faster. Too high will cause obvious swings in notes. Too low, an

3Schroedingers_hat13y

I couldn't help myself. I had to have a go at making it, too. http://jsfiddle.net/GVTk2/ Didn't check it on anything other than chromium, and I can't guarantee it won't eventually use all your memory and crash. It's horrible in many ways: switches key, misses the frequency of notes, changes from 2^(1/12) ratio between semitones, pauses at random and changes note length. Take a listen, there's always a chance it'll stop :D /edit ambiguity. Come to think of it, skipping notes is the one thing I didn't do. Note that it starts reasonably close to being in tune and slowly degrades.

0LauralH12y

This is pretty awesomely horrible, all right! ::applause::

1David_Gerard13y

I can't get this to work in Wine. Could you please put up a recording? Thank you :-)

[-]gjm13y140

Try this instead; it should work on any OS and generate a .wav file you can play. (It's better than putting up a recording because you can play with the parameters, put in your own tune, etc.)

import math, random, struct, wave
from math import sin,cos,exp,pi
filename = '/home/dgerard/something.wav' # replace with something sensible

def add_note(t,p,d,v):
    # t is time in seconds, p is pitch in Hz, d is duration in seconds
    # v is volume in arbitrary (amplitude) units
    i0 = int(44100*t)
    i1 = int(44100*(t+d))
    if len(signal)<i1: signal.extend([0 for i in range(len(signal),i1)])
    for i in range(i0,i1):
        dt = i/44100.-t
        if dt<0.02: f = dt/0.02 # attack: 0..1 over 20ms
        elif dt<0.2: f = exp(-(dt-0.02)/0.18) # decay: 1..1/e over 180ms
        elif dt<d-0.2: f = exp(-1) # sustain: 1/e
        else: f = exp(-1)*(d-dt)/0.2 # release: 1/e..0 over 200ms
        signal[i] += f*v*(sin(2*pi*p*dt)+0.2*sin(6*pi*p*dt)+0.06*sin(10*pi*p*dt))

def save_signal():
    m = max(abs(x) for x in signal)
    d = [int(30000./m*x) for x in signal]
    w = wave.open(filename, "wb")
    w.setparams((1,2,44100,len(signal),'NONE','noncompressed'))

... (read more)

7gjm13y

This is quite Quirrellicious: signal = [] t=0 for (p,d) in [(4,1),(5,1),(7,3),(None,1), (4,1),(5,1),(7,3),(None,1), (4,1),(7,1),(12,2),(11,2),(9,2),(9,2),(7,1),(None,1), (2,1),(4,1),(5,3),(None,1), (2,1),(4,1),(5,3),(None,1), (2,1),(5,1),(11,1),(9,1),(7,2),(11,2),(12,4)]: if p is not None: add_note(t, 440*2**(((p+random.choice([-1,0,0,0,1]))+random.random())/12.), 0.3*d+0.1, 1) t += 0.3*d*math.exp(random.random()*random.random()) save_signal() It (1) displaces 20% of notes up and 20% of notes down by one semitone, (2) detunes all notes randomly by about +/- a quarter-tone, and (3) inserts random delays, usually quite short but up to a factor of about 1.7 times the length of the preceding note or rest. [EDITED to add: actually, I think it distorts the pitches just a little too much.] [FURTHER EDITED: really, it should be tweaked so that when two consecutive notes in the original melody are, say, increasing in pitch, the same is true of the distorted ones. I am too lazy to make this happen. A simpler improvement is to replace the two pitch-diddlings with a single call to random.choice() so that you never get, e.g., a semitone displacement plus a quarter-tone mistuning in the same direction. I also tried making the timbre nastier by putting the partials at non-harmonic frequencies, which does indeed sound quite nasty but not in a particularly hummable way. This doesn't introduce as much nastiness as it would in music with actual harmony in it; one can make even a perfect fifth sound hideously discordant by messing up the spectrum of the notes. See William Sethares's excellent book "Tuning, timbre, spectrum, scale" for more details, though he inexplicably gives more attention to making music sound better rather than worse.]

3[anonymous]13y

For further fun, get the code to play the lullaby, wait an exponentially distributed time with mean, say, 30 seconds, and then start again with 99% probability. If you were using this on someone else, starting again would be mandatory. But the only way to build up hope that it will stop in yourself, when you know how the code works, is to add a small chance of stopping. Edit: upon further consideration, the distribution should be Pareto or something with a similarly heavy tail.

2Alsadius13y

Please post a recording, for those of us who don't want to have to set up whole programming environments to watch a Youtube video.

5fgenj13y

I've made a recording with SuperCollider using almost the same algorithm as in the Python script above, here's the link /watch?v=wjZRM6KgGbE.

1Alsadius13y

It loses much of the impact when you intentionally seek it out, I think. The lullaby loop midi I found to be more annoying than the errors. Still, thanks for posting that - it's certainly interesting.

1Percent_Carbon13y

Listening to something is not at all the same as listening to something for seven hours.

0fgenj13y

Personally, I find random changes a little disorienting even if I'm expecting them (like a deceptive cadence in a familiar piece). Though this feeling of disorientation is not unpleasant, so a simple loop would be more annoying for me too.

0zerker200012y

"unavailable": what gives?

1Incorrect13y

Oh well, I guess bad music isn't actually so annoying... I tried it and it didn't bother me at all.

0[anonymous]13y

I didn't find the result all that unpleasant. Probably because the sound file was still pretty close to what the intervals/notes were "supposed" to be, my brain categorized them into the right categories. It would have been worse if I perceived them as "completely wrong" intervals (as in a seventh instead of a fourth) rather than just "out-of-tune" intevals.

1gjm13y

Just to add: (1) The pointless "1*" is because I experimented with other sizes of error too. (2) A slight modification of this lets you, e.g., have the pitch drift downward by 1/10 of a semitone per note, which for me at least is very noticeable and unpleasant even though each individual interval is OK.

0mbrigdan13y

While all of the evil credit of course goes to you, I feel that I have made some neat* modifications: signal = [] t=0L pscale=5 pexp=2 transpose = 0 iterations = 10 for ii in range(1,iterations): for (p,d) in [(4,1),(5,1),(7,3),(None,1), (4,1),(5,1),(7,3),(None,1), (4,1),(7,1),(12,2),(11,2),(9,2),(9,2),(7,1),(None,1), (2,1),(4,1),(5,3),(None,1), (2,1), (4,1),(5,3),(None,1), (2,1),(5,1),(11,1),(9,1),(7,2),(11,2),(12,4)]: if p is not None: add_note(t, random.choice([440*2**(((p+transpose)+random.choice([-1,0,0,0,1]))/12.),440*2**(((p+transpose)+random.random())/12.)]), 0.3*d+0.1, 1) t += 0.3*d*math.exp(random.random()*random.random()) transpose = random.choice([-14, -9, -7, -4.5, -2, -1, 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 4.5, 7, 9, 14]) #transpose up or down t += 5*(pexp*((pscale**pexp)/((random.randrange(200,600,1)/100)**(pexp+1)))) #wait a while before repeating save_signal() *Where neat is, of course, a synonym for evil

[-]ArisKatsaris13y40

Two passages I see changed so far:

“My... Lord... I went where you said to await you, but you did not come... I looked for you but I could not find you... you are alive...”

became this:

"My... Lord... I waited for you but you did not come... I looked for you but I could not find you... you are alive..."

and this:

“Your wand,” murmured Bellatrix, “I hid it in the graveyard, my lord, before I left... under the tombstone to the right of your father’s grave...

became this:

"Your wand," murmured Bellatrix, "I took it from the Po

... (read more)

[-]pedanterrific13y40

Is that more satisfying than the normal kind?

2gwern13y

As long as I don't try to eat it or make use of it in any way.

[-]Desrtopa13y40

I suggest that Voldemort was intentionally turning Harry into a Horcrux. There are at least two reasons for the burnt-out husk result. (1) Using a human as horcrux was probably experimental, and prone to disaster.

Seems like a really good reason not to be the first to try it then.

[-]tadrinth13y40

Wizarding society likes to let people figure out the dangerous secrets for themselves. You don't tell people the dangerous secrets until they have proven themselves on the easier ones, you don't tell people the secret of potion invention because they might get turned into cats, etc.

Of course, Harry can violate that as he pleases if it is just a social convention, and Harry's guesses at principles seem\ to hold up far better than it seems like it should.

[-]Velorien13y40

I suggest that Voldemort was intentionally turning Harry into a Horcrux.

For the central premise on which your theory is founded, you skip over this without giving any reason to privilege this possibility over others (such as "Voldemort wasn't intentionally turning Harry into a Horcrux"). It's hard to take a theory seriously when it skips straight from a central premise to discussing implications, without considering the state of the evidence first.

As an example problem, all other Horcruxes, both in canon and MoR, are nigh-indestructible magica... (read more)

5[anonymous]13y

Another reason to remove Harry's friends is to get rid of anyone that might be suspicious if Voldemort were to take Harry's place through possession or Polyjuice. Compare this to Noble Hero's behavior after returning from Albania: he avoids family and former friends, presumably to avoid being identified as Voldemort.

2drethelin13y

Huh, this is actually super plausible and Harry is unknowingly making it far easier than it could be. By acting in adult-like and weird ways all the time, if Quirrell takes his place far fewer people would realize than if he was a regular boy. Though I think a form of possession is probably more likely than polyjuice based on the hassles inherent in polyjuicing someone for long periods.

[-]Username13y40

I agree that we should have a spoiler tag.

One data point in favor of rot13 however: The extra effort it takes to decode is an incentive to try and figure things out on your own.

EDIT: I mean this in general, not just for HPMoR.

[-]loserthree13y40

why should new readers get a twist we don't get?

Because the author wants to give it to them.

He made his decision ... so he should live with it.

It is commonly held that making friends is easier when you keep judgements about what people should do with their lives and their possessions to a minimum.

[-]thescoundrel13y40

Prediction: Harry's investigation to clear Hermione's name leads him to Quirrlemort's true identity.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y40

so why should new readers get a twist we don't get?

Why shouldn't they? Eliezer has edited lots of things in the past in order to improve the story according to his judgment -- e.g. removing a mention of the Philosopher's Stone at chapter 4, or editing Draco's words at chapter 7 to make them less vulgar.

What meta-ethical theory is your objection supposed to be indicative of?

2Random83213y

For one thing, there is a difference between editing the text of the story (and we don't seem to be forbidden from mentioning in cleartext what those edits were) and (EDIT turns out this part is wrong) --deciding that a scene is no longer meant to be the big reveal without (as far as I know) changing a word of the text.-- A general norm in forums discussing fiction is that all material published through normal channels (or all but the most recent) is treated equally in regards to the spoiler policy. This would include the entire fic and all authors notes, and not allow for any "retractions" to make something "no longer common knowledge" My objection was also specifically to the use of the phrase "no longer common knowledge". Stuff cannot be removed from common knowledge by decree, it can only be removed by actually being forgotten by people. I was surprised by this subthread because as recently as this week it was mentioned on IRC with no-one saying anything about it being retracted. Is there a list somewhere of all edits and retractions?

6ArisKatsaris13y

Even granting that this is indeed the "general norm" in such forums (I wouldn't know), don't you think that when a thread in some forum states different rules, then it ought be respected? Or do you feel that no thread, anywhere in the internet, should be allowed to utilize different rules than what you consider the norm?

4thomblake13y

There is one relevant retraction. It comes up about once per discussion thread, and it is referred to obliquely in the header of every discussion thread. I know that you already know what it is. Perhaps we should ROT13 the actual spoiler and stick it in the standard MOR discussion header, so that people stop missing the point. It is a better story without that spoiler. People are very annoyed when it gets spoiled, with good reason. Sure, the cat's out of the bag, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily clawing your face yet.

6pedanterrific13y

It's mentioned explicitly in the "more specifically" link to the original spoiler policy.

2Alsadius13y

What retraction are you referring to? I've heard of several, with none seeming more relevant than any other.

2pedanterrific13y

It's mentioned explicitly in the "more specifically" link to the original spoiler policy. Why am I repeating this?

1loserthree13y

Because you're aptly pedantic?

3pedanterrific13y

It's a blessing and a curse.

2pedanterrific13y

The text was changed; a short scene at the end was deleted for being too obvious. The scene still means exactly what it did, it's just that a lot of people came away from that scene without figuring out the thing that was stated in the (now deleted) Author's Note, and as I understand it they expressed annoyance at having it thrown in their faces like that.

[-]thomblake13y40

I've been here since the beginning, and yes, good jokes get upvoted, bad jokes get downvoted. 'good' and 'bad' are of course highly subjective.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y40

It looks like EY just took any pure-blood family and decided to make it a Noble House

This is lazy of you, downvoted.

The Crabbes and Goyles have not been declared noble. The Parkinsons and Montagues and Boles have not been declared noble.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y40

That doesn't seem to follow.

Doesn't it?

The old witch sighed. "What does Dumbledore think of this?"

The man in the detention cell shook his head. "He does not know who I am, and promised not to inquire."

The old witch's eyebrows rose. "How did he identify you to the Hogwarts wards, then?"

A slight smile. "The Headmaster drew a circle, and told Hogwarts that he who stood within was the Defense Professor. Speaking of which -" The tone went lower, flatter. "I am missing my classes, Director Bones."

[-]pedanterrific13y40

Aw, I just noticed Auror QQQ got renamed. Here I was wondering how Bones managed to pronounce that, and how he avoided getting stuck with "Mike".

[-]pedanterrific13y40

Then how could the destruction of one cause their numbers to fall from eight to seven? If it's just a matter of who can trace their roots back the farthest, surely the next-oldest would be bumped up.

9taelor13y

Possibly there's some cutoff point, with only houses founded before that point given the Most Ancient label; whether this comes with any official privileges beyond just being old and respected remains to be seen.

8LucasSloan13y

It seems like the obvious cut-off point would be the original houses founded when Merlin created the Wizengamot.

8[anonymous]13y

By now the Most Ancient label has shifted from being descriptive, to just part of the name

[-]Incorrect13y40

Does Quirrel have cataplexy?

[-]Nominull13y40

If you understand that such a ruse would further his goals, what's left to be confused about? What is he supposed to do, not further them?

2pleeppleep13y

Don't get me wrong, it makes for excellent storytelling and fits the character, but the effect is really weakened by the fact that we've been told the punchline. The chapter is written so as to give the reader the impression that Quirrell could turn out to not be Voldemort, which doesn't make any sense when its been made perfectly obvious that he is Voldemort. Of course Eliezer could go back on his word not to intentionally give false information regarding the story and have Quirrell really be just a misguided good guy, but that doesn't seem like something either the character or the writer would do. I love how Quirrell seems genuinely saddened by Hermione's apparent innocence while trying to manipulate her like a chess piece. He's about as complex a character as you could find in fiction and serves as a perfect antithesis to Harry's rational optimism. It would be a shame for that to be ruined.

[-]drethelin13y210

A large part of the point of Quirrel/Riddle/Voldemort in HPMOR is that he can assume any identity he wants to. His behavior being at odds with what you imagine a Voldemort would do is simply his deception going to a much higher level. He doesn't act like a Voldemort because he was never actually Voldemort any more than he is actually Quirrel.

4Nominull13y

When the audience knows something that the characters do not, this is known as "dramatic irony". HPMOR is not technically a play but I think the general principle still applies; we can enjoy watching Quirrell fool the other characters even as we are not fooled.

2pleeppleep13y

That is the best answer, but the way its written makes it look like its trying to fool the reader. Otherwise there wouldn't be clues like the fact that Quirrell never actually admitting to being the person Bones suspects him to be.

[-]bogdanb13y160

but the way its written makes it look like its trying to fool the reader.

Eliezer might be aiming further than just us. Future readers will probably not read the notes and LessWrong threads in parallel with the book, and he knows from past reactions that the Voldie hints are interpreted more ambiguously by readers than he intended to. So the style might be intended to be ironic for us and mysterious for future readers.

[-]pedanterrific13y40

In 1971, while visiting Diagon Alley, he fended off an attempt by Bellatrix Black to kidnap the daughter of the Minister of Magic

Is this a reference to A Black Comedy?

3ygert13y

Vg frrzf yvxr vg vf. Ryvrmre unf vapyhqrq bgure ersreraprf gb bgure snasvpf va gur cnfg, naq guvf svgf irel jryy jvgu gur gurbel gung Evqqyr jnf onfvpyl gelvat gb chyy n "Qnivq Zbaebr" naq chg uvzfrys (be na nygreangr vqragvgl bs uvzfrys) nf gur ureb svtugvat Ibyqrezbeg. (Gur qvssrerapr jbhyq or bs pbhefr, gung va N Oynpx Pbzrql ur vf abg va pbageby bs obgu cnegf ("Qnivq Zbaebr" naq Ibyqrzbeg), ohg engure gur gb cnegf bs uvz ernyyl ner svtugvat. Vg vf cbffvoyr gung gung vf jung vf unccravat urer nf jryy, ohg V svaq gung engure hayvxryl.)

3pedanterrific13y

I was trying to avoid spoiling A Black Comedy, but whatever.

4ygert13y

Hmm... that makes sense. Rot13'd.

[-]pedanterrific13y30

Groupthink triumphs again.

I've been looking at it, and I really have no idea what part of my comment you are referring to here. Which is mildly concerning. Could you clarify?

[-]ArisKatsaris13y30

His first comment capitalized "NOT", which was kind of rude. He also chided me in a paternalistic manner "keep the facts straight please".

Rudeness isn't the same thing as disingenuousness. I was probably rude. But I wasn't disingenuous.

it's kind of odd that he would go around following all my comments and pointing out their flaws.

I don't expect you to believe me now, since you didn't believe me before, but since I was honest before, perhaps you'll hopefully have updated the level of my trustworthiness upwards: I didn't "fol... (read more)

[-]wedrifid13y30

and in my mind downvoting should be used for punishing (or expressing disapproval of) immoral things

Fuck that (ie. I viscerally disapprove of and hold in honest contempt this asserted social norm.) Moralizing gets annoying.

That's not a good thing for people purportedly trying to promote rationality.

ie. Not trying to promote moral purity.

People should probably be more laid back about downvoting.

You're the one getting worked up about it. Really, getting voted down isn't that much of a big deal and even if it was directly challenging it is a tric... (read more)

[-]Percent_Carbon13y30

I had sex ed at that age. I think it was a remarkably unproductive use of time for most of the people in there. But there was a least one girl who was pregnant the next year, so it's possible that it prevented further pregnancy.

Sex education does not prevent all pregnancy any more than driver's education prevents all accidents. Kids both fuck and fuck up.

[-]Xachariah13y30

and (at least in MoR) the exact durations of the vowel sounds in "oogely boogely" are essential for conjuring glowing bats

In canon you have to pronounce it Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa and can't cast it unless you make the 'gar' nice and long. (In the movies, it's "Levi-o-sa, not levio-sah").

[-]ArisKatsaris13y30

It isn't a very complex plan -- it just required that he play two roles; this gave him two avenues of success (if resistance to Voldemort is strong, take over as the hero -- if resistance to Voldemort is too weak take over as Voldemort). And it fits in perfectly with the plan that he has already suggested to Harry Potter (find an actor to play Voldemort, have him cast Avada Kedavra at you, block it with Patronus, be hero), so it's perfectly consistent with Quirrel's way of thinking.

When we talk about too complex plans, we talk about plans with multiple points of possible failure. You call this complicated because it had multiple points of possible success.

[-]chaosmosis13y30

I'm curious why the spell has to be shot out from the wand, rather than from a completely different direction or appearing spontaneously in the middle of the target. There's an underlying assumption that magic is like lasers and wands are like guns in much of Canon!HP and in MOR, but that doesn't really seem justified. Maybe this is just another conceptual limitation?

1Velorien13y

You're right, no hint of an explanation why wands are necessary has ever been given. Spontaneous underage magic, as well as high-level wandless magic, would be evidence in favour of the "conceptual limitation" theory. On the other hand, this wouldn't explain why Bacon, who apparently lacked this conceptual limitation, was severely held back in his research by lack of a wand. Also, it doesn't explain why high-level wizards continue to use wands for the overwhelming majority of their spellcasting.

1Rejoyce13y

Maybe it's not that wands are needed to cast spells, but that they amplify magical power (and perhaps adds focus to a target). While the magically powerful are able to cast high level wandless magic, most are unable to. Hence, they have to use wands to make their spells powerful enough to have an effect. Children have spontaneous magic but they can't cast as much as adults normally can with wands. Perhaps Roger Bacon just wasn't magically powerful. -shrugs- Not all great thinkers have to have tons of strength. Er, wasn't he Muggleborn? If the "Muggleborns-are-weaker" theory is true, then it makes sense. My hypothesis for the reason why high-level wizards continue to use wands is that they've simply grown dependent. If they've been using magic-amplifying wands ever since they were eleven, then they would be used to being assisted by the wand. I think this matches my mental model of Quirrell, who is seen doing a lot of wandless magic (stopping spells midair, spontaneously combusting inkwells). He seems like the kind of person that would train himself to use his wand as little as possible. And even if he can't duel without, his magical ability is certainly very impressive.

3Velorien13y

However, the spells they do cast are fully as powerful as those of adults with wands. Pretty sure this theory has been unambiguously dismissed both in canon and in MoR. Otherwise your hypothesis is credible, though I still don't accept it as I can't see all the high-level wizards we know being dependent on wands when there are so many advantages to wandless magic (and when high-level wizards tend to be ones with strong, independent personalities).

0Random83213y

I think both have been silent on the question of whether there is any notion of inherent "power levels" at all, let alone whether it is heritable or whether it is correlated to being a "muggleborn". EDIT: It's clear in MoR that - if Harry's hypothesis on magic heritability is true (a big if), then other non-binary factors seem unlikely to be correlated to being a "muggleborn". However, I felt that Harry very strongly anchored on that hypothesis, which was one of my reasons for being annoyed with him and eventually stopping reading (to pick it back up later on, obviously)

0pedanterrific13y

In fact more powerful than most adults; there's a line in Chapter 78 that "If [Mr and Mrs Davis]'d been children young enough for accidental magic they probably would've spontaneously Disillusioned themselves.", which we know requires significantly above-average power in MoR. (Assuming that line from the narrator isn't exaggeration.) If you accept the hypothesis, wanded magic has the not-insignificant advantage of being more powerful. What's the advantage of wandless magic?

4Rejoyce13y

I thought it was obvious. What if you're without a wand?

0pedanterrific13y

If you're in battle without a wand, it seems to me that either 1) you've been ambushed, or 2) you've been disarmed. I don't really see that the ability to cast understrength spells helps all that much in either situation.

0Alix13y

That depends on how creative you get. Even understrength spells, especially if unexpected, could tip the balance in your direction - especially if all you're looking for is, say, an opportunity to escape. Even if you lose your gun, a rock can still be useful.

0pedanterrific13y

Yeah, thinking about it a little more, even just wandless Apparation would be pretty useful.

2wedrifid13y

Even just wandless Apparation? Wandless Apparation! Of all the defensive magic options available that don't involve time travel that's quite possibly the first pick. I'd take it over the ability to cast Avada Kedavra (at all). I'd consider taking it even if it meant sacrificing my ability to cast any offensive dueling spell ever. Once that is in place it is time to research as many alertness and general paranoia spells as possible.

0pedanterrific13y

Do we have any indication how difficult it is to cast Anti-Disapparation Jinxes, in canon or MoR? The fact that Quirrell ends his spiel about how the correct tactic is usually "Just Apparate away!" with the fact that Dark Wizards can still reliably threaten even people who can do that indicates it's at least possible in combat time (i.e. doesn't require a day to cast it on a house, say). Edit: But yeah, that's obviously the best single choice (though I think you're selling the AK a little low). Number two would be Accio, I guess.

0Velorien13y

Non-reliance on wands is a big one, since watching the movements of an opponent's wand, or disarming them, are combat fundamentals. Being able to cast spells unnoticed is another one (consider the powerful effect of the mid-interrogation Memory Charm in the Order of the Phoenix). Also, it's presumably better training in terms of building up power and skill to cast spells without a crutch. Besides, many spells don't really need extra power to work, as they have a binary effect (like the Quietus Charm) or typically target objects that can't resist (such as the Vanishing Charm).

3alex_zag_al13y

Nitpick, but Quirrell cast a Quieting Charm on the rocket in the Azkaban escape, but Harry's ears were still ringing enough afterward that he couldn't hear Bellatrix shouting. So it's not a binary effect; there could be Quieting Charms that are capable of silencing louder noises than others.

[-]cultureulterior13y30

How Magic Works, Some Facts, Inferences, Conclusions, and Speculations

The Facts:

Wizards did not have clocks before muggles did.
Time turners are limited to 6 solar hours.
Therefore time turners were limited after the invention of Equinoctal hours, in 127CE.
The Aurors are planning a jinx to stop opposite reaction effect rockets, but they don't understand rockets.
There was a significant flux in children's spells, but children did not seem to use more or fewer spells in the past.
Brooms work via Aristotelian physics.
It's easier to put together spells to

... (read more)

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply

6TheOtherDave13y

Can you expand on the reasoning here? I don't see how you conclude that the limitation on time turners is somehow dependent on someone thinking in terms of equinoctal hours. It seems just as plausible that the (length of day)/4 limit (which happens to equal six equinoctal hours) is based on the physics of time turning and has applied all along.

3Velorien13y

Would you mind giving your evidence for the following points? We don't actually have any general comments on what kind of animals and plants don't exist. We only know which ones exist in the vicinity of Hogwarts, plus a limited sampling of foreign ones (such as Veela). Isn't this the opposite of what it does? I thought its sole effect was to prevent the impersonal transmission of spells (and thus the rediscovery of old powerful spells from books). Example, please? This is Draco's opinion, IIRC, and apart from the fact that he's an 11-year old boy of limited education, we know that his information sources on wizard power over the ages are strongly biased and unreliable.

2pedanterrific13y

Chizpurfles appear to be canon.

0ArisKatsaris13y

You don't distinguish your facts from your inferences well enough. Your list of "facts" seems to contains inferences like "Therefore time turners were limited after the invention of Equinoctal hours, in 127CE.", speculations like "Wizards seem to spend most of their time in pocket universes, otherwise you'd spot dragons and hogwarts trains on satellite imagery." and assumptions like "Children have unconscious magic, but not to the extent that OT Harry did."

6cultureulterior13y

I admit all the above flaws.

[-]Random83213y30

Eight notes: C D E F G A B C. (People used to not know how to count properly.* I think it comes from not having a clear concept of zero.)

* One can argue that this counting system is no worse than ours, but to do so, one would have to explain why ten octaves is seventy[one] notes.

2gjm13y

Similarly, other musical intervals -- i.e., ratios between frequencies -- have names that are all arguably off by one. A "perfect fifth" is, e.g., from C to G. C,D,E,F,G: five notes. So a fifth plus a fifth is (not a tenth but) a ninth.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y30

He means that Tom Riddle isn't connected to any noble house but Scion of X was. So it is incongruent that people would just to think that Scion of X was Tome Riddle.

Born or married house, not sorted house.

[-]pedanterrific13y30

You'd lose. Canon!Quirrell was possessed by Voldemort in Albania.

4see13y

Canon!Riddle got Ravenclaw's diadem out of a hiding place in Albania circa 1945. Thus the inclusion of all four details — 1926, 1945, Albania, and 1970 — can all be explained as part of the same "Oh no, is she about to identify Riddle/Voldemort?" fake-out that was then deliberately blown up by the inconsistency with the Gaunts. None of them need a separate cause to explain why Eliezer included them; all of them are explained sufficiently by the author-confirmed fake-out without adding the hypothesis "The hero who showed up in 1970 was a trick by Voldemort." But if you're so sure I'm wrong, how about I put up my $5 against, say, your $500?

6pedanterrific13y

It would be more like your 1¢ against my empty instant ramen packaging, so no. If you're that eager to lose money, loserthree can have it.

8loserthree13y

Thank you, Pedant One. I will make three excuses for not taking the gracious offer of $5.00 (pre-tax) from the Holy See of Whereever, then I will give you a real answer. * I'm acclimating to your subculture too fast for my taste and don't care to speed things along by participating in your quaint rituals of sacrifice. * Five bucks is sufficiently low status that winning would set me back from taking the offer. * I have butter on my face. I kind of lied: the status matter is totally part of the issue. But the real reason is that I have been conditioned to overvalue losses to gambling. I can only play poker by convincing myself it isn't gambling. Really, though, isn't that gauche? Does it feel right to taunt a stranger with two-thirds of a fast food meal?

1see13y

Is that really it? Would you have been happier with, say, $20 against $400? I generally think of "almost certain" as indicating p≥0.95; the $5 was driven by the math of keeping your potential loss down. And, not that I'm asking for you to actually answer, but ask yourself - is it really that you overvalue losses from gambling? If I were offering to put $2,000 up against your $100, would you still refuse because of the exact same chance you'd lose that exact same $100? (I raised the odds to reflect p≥0.99 for pedanterrific because he implied that I was being a sucker for offering 1-for-20 odds.)

6loserthree13y

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that unless I am willing to tie significant amounts of money up for the sake of winning tiny amounts of money, I lack the confidence I claim. It that didn't have the sound, the feel of a scam with it's a-sure-thing-isn't vibe it'd be a passable bullying tactic for the mathematically adept sort with something to prove. I've pushed people around for a living, so I like to think can appreciate a good push. Or maybe that scamishness is part of the push? The mark thinks himself a rational fellow, so he's unlikely to bolt. Bringing money into it makes the mark nervous. The mark mistakes his nervousness about money for doubt about his claim. You capitalize when the mark starts backing down, and claim some petty victory. Seems like an awful lot of work for a small show, but thanks for the trick. Maybe I'll make something of it.

2see13y

No, not at all. Not being willing to tie up the money is a perfectly sensible reason to refuse the bet. Opportunity cost isn't remotely connected to confidence levels; that I quite confidently expect a Treasury bond to pay me the promised interest doesn't mean I'd rather spend the money on something else that I value more. And you certainly don't owe me an explanation of any kind as to why you refuse a bet. You merely owe yourself a good one instead of a bad one. Then it would seem improbable that I'm putting the work in for the small show you identified, no? Not impossible, of course, but maybe you need a better theory of what I was trying to do.

1pedanterrific13y

I'm not saying it can't be used as a status attack the way you're suggesting, but this is a thing people do here. Something about calibrating confidence levels.

2loserthree13y

Huh. Doesn't actually look like fun. Good for them, though. I'll stick to poker and "status attacks," thanks. Is there much here on status attacks?

5ArisKatsaris13y

When I accepted the bet by ITakeBets, it didn't feel like a status attack -- just that he/she was honestly evaluating the likelihood of the event differently than I was, and so we both had a positive-return expectation given our different models. And I had the odds enough tilted enough away from my confidence levels, so that it worth the bother of betting. I'd most likely not have accepted a bet from someone that offered it in the way that "see" did though. And I'd not feel the need to offer any excuse other than "No, I don't feel like making a bet with you". If anyone makes you feel like you're obliged to bet money, just refuse to bet -- you don't have to offer any excuses.

2loserthree13y

Thanks. Your reassurance isn't unappreciated. When the Pedant One used the term 'status attack' instead of push or bully or buffalo, I thought maybe that indicated there were resources on the topic. I love the feeling when I find there is a developed system and language for describing and expanding on something I thought I was familiar with. It's almost always a game-changer.

0pedanterrific13y

This is a good resource. Actual 'attacks' are a little too Dark Arts-y to get much discussion on LessWrong, though.

0loserthree13y

Thanks. It's a nice list. No DADA, eh? Is rationality and a desire for self-improvement supposed to provide defense against Dark Arts as a side effect?

0pedanterrific13y

Here's something, but it would be good if there were more discussion of the topic, yeah.

0David_Gerard13y

It's better than that - the classic con is to make the mark feel like he's putting one over on you.

2loserthree13y

That is what I meant when I mentioned that a sure thing isn't.

1thomblake13y

Even Urban Dictionary is no help with this one. What?

2loserthree13y

It was totally non sequitur. Also very old. Maybe obscure. http://www.bash.org/?10739 I think it's still in the top 200 quotes on the site.

[-]pedanterrific13y30

it was a "What Is Music?" weird noise festival

[-]loserthree13y30

Thanks for the mention. It's nice to hear that my contributions have been noted.

Just an FYI, I said almost the same thing in my very first post, "Mr. Hat-and-Cloak, who we are to understand is most certainly Quirrell" The difference is that you know a spoiler about the one, and don't know a spoiler about the other. In both cases there are sufficient in-text cues for me to speak as confidently as I do.

[-]loup-vaillant13y30

Although it raises the question of what they would have done if the battle had not turned out that way, since Hermione probably would not have challenged Draco.

Possibly nothing, if Quirrell is to blame. That would sound just like him:

"Usse ssensse, boy! Ssupposse I am evil. To end usse of you here iss obvioussly not what I planned. Misssion iss target of opportunity, invented after ssaw your guardian Charm, whole affair meant to be unnoticed, hid when left eating-place. Obvioussly you will ssee persson pretending to be healer on arrival! Go back

... (read more)

[-]pedanterrific13y110

Obvioussly you will ssee persson pretending to be healer on arrival!

Is... is it not possible to lie in Parseltongue? I mean, we have

"I am not regisstered," hissed the snake. The dark pits of its eyes stared at Harry. "Animaguss musst be regisstered. Penalty is two yearss imprissonment. Will you keep my ssecret, boy?"

"Yess," hissed Harry. "Would never break promisse."

The snake seemed to hold still, as though in shock, and then began to sway again.

and

You ssay nothing, to no one. Give no ssign of expectancy, none. Undersstand?"

Harry nodded.

"Ansswer in sspeech."

"Yess."

"Will do as I ssaid?"

"Yess.

1loup-vaillant13y

I didn't think of that. Sounds worth considering. But it doesn't change the fact that pretending to be a healer doesn't prevent being a healer. Quirrell knows that Harry knows it, so to me, "pretending to be healer" doesn't provide meaningful evidence in any direction. Plus, Quirrell is exploring a hypothetical, here. And the healer could be genuine, and somehow tricked, seduced, or bribed. Now that I think of it, this is even more probable than the false healer hypothesis: a real healer genuinely convinced of doing good is probably both easier to find and more reliable than an actual minion.

6pedanterrific13y

I guess for me the thing that tips the scales between 'real healer' and 'minion pretending to be a healer' is that I don't think it's actually in Quirrell's interests to deprogram Bellatrix of her loyalty to Voldemort. Though presumably she is at least competent in regular healing, of the sort needed to get Bella back in fighting trim.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y30

This is not a point for using it for something that the majority of people posting in the thread already know.

If spreading spoilers hurts then its hurt is not limited to vulnerable people posting in the thread, but encompasses all vulnerable people reading the thread.

I doubt you have evidence that the majority of people posting in the thread are aware of the spoiler. I am certain you have only weak reasons to believe you know about all the people reading the thread. I lurked here for over a year.

1Random83213y

Do the numerous positive-scored posts on this thread mentioning the spoiler (due to the sporadic enforcement of the rule) count as such evidence? If not, why not?

[-]buybuydandavis13y30

I think he's just describing what happens when you tell people Dementor's are Death. He considered that a tactic in the WIzengamut to prevent them from being able to cast a patronus, and gives no thought to the possibility that knowing that would enable them to cast the True Patronus.

5MarkusRamikin13y

Yeah, makes sense. There goes that theory of mine... (Hm. This "changing your mind" business is strangely unpleasant.)

1loup-vaillant13y

I wouldn't be surprised if changing one's mind requires the same kind of mental effort required to change habits. Spending willpower is not very pleasant.

2oliverbeatson13y

I thought that was odd: that they would actually have to understand, and not just be told that Dementors are death. Like in the same way that under-confidence in your ability to perform a physical action actually undermines your ability to do it, which should be relatable if you've ever tried to back-flip on a trampoline or forced yourself to perform an action in spite of an anticipation of pain or great displeasure -- but so long as you expect being able to do it, you can still do it. But if someone just said 'Dementors are death', you'd cast your animal patronus just fine so long as you didn't grok it. Which made me suspicious of Harry's possible tactic in the Wizengamot.

1buybuydandavis13y

I think the problem is the lack of a Happy Thought to confront Death. Harry has one - his absolute rejection of Death as the natural order, and his belief that we shall overcome some day. As long as you still believe that death is inevitable, that everyone will die - there is nothing happy about that to comfort you. I believe that Harry internally discusses this point.

1loup-vaillant13y

1oliverbeatson13y

True, especially on the last point. It still feels like there's a large philosophical knowledge-set to convey before their Patronus fails reliably for the right reason. I see what you mean though. Maybe the habit (mental) necessarily built into the Patronus charm would be harder to override more than temporarily due to the strength in habit, or at least without genuinely shifting how that person conceptualises all the relevant stuff.

[-]buybuydandavis13y30

How do we know that Godric could do it? I recall Harry musing on Godric and Rowena knowing that Dementors were Death (pg 742, pdf) - but would that automatically imply that they could also cast the True Patronus?

Harry can because he rejects Death as part of the natural order. Is there any evidence that they did? I don't remember any evidence that anyone but Harry has ever done it.

[-]orthonormal13y30

Quirrellmort's history (or, at least, his history as believed by Bones) reminds me a bit of Count Fenring from Dune, somehow.

1Vaniver13y

Interesting; I'm curious what parallels you see.

6orthonormal13y

Both were groomed to be Messiahs but failed, for one reason or another (though being groomed through eugenics is rather different than being groomed through circumstance); both carry a sardonic and world-weary detachment through much of the plot, broken by a few dramatic moments (Fenring's refusal to kill Paul, Quirrellbody's dramatic appearances and disappearances). That, and Fenring's secret humming language (obviously with a different purpose, but still).

[-]pedanterrific13y30

Wasn't that the Ravenclaw door asking a riddle? And anyway it says "Vanished objects", it would be a weird non-answer to say "they die".

1gwern13y

So who knows what to make of the answer. tl;dr: rumors that Rowling is a psychotic who wrote a Hogwarts in which students sadistically murder hundreds of kittens a year may be exaggerated.

5drethelin13y

considering the glass harry makes vanish in the zoo, maybe the kittens just reappear again a little while later.

1Velorien13y

Except accidental magic use in the Potterverse ignores all known rules of magic. It has young children manage things that aren't possible without extensive study and a wand. But even ignoring this, the facts that accidental magic stops when a child starts learning spellcasting, even in circumstances where it would save their life, and that children stop being able to perform wandless magic without super-advanced training, suggest it's not properly integrated into the rest of the setting.

[-]Velorien13y30

Actually, he also tests a toenail-growing curse on either Crabbe or Goyle, and at least one other on a different Slytherin.

3thomblake13y

It was on Crabbe, and I believe the only other experiment was Harry accidentally casting Levicorpus on Ron in the bedroom.

1kilobug13y

He did cast curses on other Slytherin during various fights, but I don't think any of those was a test.

[-]Velorien13y100

Harry had already attempted a few of the Prince's self-invented spells. There had been a hex that caused toenails to grow alarmingly fast (he had tried this on Crabbe in the corridor, with very entertaining results); a jinx that glued the tongue to the roof of the mouth (which he had twice used, to general applause, on an unsuspecting Argus Filch); and, perhaps most useful of all, Muffliato, a spell that filled the ears of anyone nearby with an unidentifiable buzzing, so that lengthy conversations could be held in class with out being overheard.

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky13y110

And people go around complaining about HJPEV being a bastard.

1Eugine_Nier13y

The difference being that in cannon Harry acts and thinks his age and thus acts immature. In MoR Harry mostly thinks like an adult except he still acts immature.

0Percent_Carbon13y

Why do people use this? Also, why Harry Potter James Evans Veras?

7pedanterrific13y

Wait. Wait just one minute. Can Eliezer edit his posts without leaving an asterisk?

2Percent_Carbon13y

Yes. Yes he can. Must be an administrator thing. I expect he could edit mine, too, if he wanted.

1wedrifid13y

Do you mean he both can and has done so at least once in the past? That is in poor taste if he has. (And I think I recall the comment in question having the wrong name order the first time I read it.) Note to self (and others): Assume all Eliezer comments have an asterisk. (If it is the case that Eliezer can't leave an asterisk even if he chooses to then the fault is of course not his and it should be filed as a bug and change request.)

2Percent_Carbon13y

Yes. I am positive that I pasted that line and did not rearrange it. Either he or someone he strongly influences has administrator access to the site and can change any comment at any time. You either have to trust him or assume that all comments have an asterisk. Is there supposed to be something especially secure about this place?

2wedrifid13y

No, I don't - there is no such dichotomy. I really could (and do) expect Eliezer to not edit other people's comments without it being apparent to anyone but at the same time to edit his own comments without leaving an asterisk - because he just did. So instead of taking a small amount of information from the convenience of an asterisk on a given comment I take zero information. No. If I really (really) wanted to I could hack it myself I expect. I already live in Melbourne (where the Trike developers who work on lesswrong reside). Even discounting my actual computer security knowledge all I'd need is a gun and a ninja outfit. But the expected cost/expected benefit ratio suggests I'm not likely to do that. I similarly don't expect Eliezer to go around editing other people's comments behind our backs. Not because he couldn't if he really wanted to - just because it doesn't seem likely that he'd bother. (He has done so at least once - changed a post title while he was promoting it. He did it without thinking and with good intentions but realized later that it was a total brain fart. A lapse into naivety, not a corruption of power.)

0Percent_Carbon13y

Right, sorry. You either have to trust him to some degree or assume that any content may be compromised. I don't understand all the interest in this. Is there a section of the site where unedited comments carry special weight?

0wedrifid13y

I saw your comment in the recent comments page and thought the technical question was mildly curious. It's more fun than arguing with people who spam "You're a cult, I'm right!" or "Science doesn't make any sense unless I say it does!" which were the only other things that were going on at the time.

2loserthree13y

I started using it because I believed the protagonist is not just an alternate Harry Potter but a truly different person. (I don't believe that quite as strongly, anymore.)

1pedanterrific13y

It's shorter than "MoR!Harry".

3Random83213y

But harder to spell. HPJEV.

1pedanterrific13y

Yes, and it's Verres, not Veras. What's your point? I noticed that, I was just answering a different question.

1Random83213y

Well, if I were comparing it to spelling out the whole name, you'd be right. But I was comparing it to "MoR!Harry". EDIT: Which makes my response relevant to yours.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y30

You've been told the spoiler policy. You've been asked to obey it. Expect to be downvoted if you don't obey the rules of the thread. Capital letters and multiple exclamation marks aren't an argument.

I don't like people who deliberately join a forum whose rules they don't have any willingness to follow, no matter how "unfair" they seem to them.

[-]wirov13y30

There was a bookcase containing random books rescued from a bargain bin, and a full shelf of ancient magazines, including one from 1883.

Funny. 1883 seems to be the year Grindelwald was born. (Although that's not sure – it even says “c. 1882” in the main article.)

I can't see how this might be related to the rest of the story, and most probably this is just a way of telling us “Yes, these magazines are ancient.“ On the other hand, this 1926/1927 thing made me somewhat more susceptible to possibly meaningful dates …

8Eugine_Nier13y

When it really should have caused you to update in the other direction.

9Random83213y

Not so. That he changed it implies that he will make an effort to avoid possibly meaningful dates unless they really are meaningful. Therefore if we see any possibly meaningful dates in the future it is more likely that they are meaningful, than if he had left a non-meaningful possibly-meaningful date in this chapter.

3Alsadius13y

Only if we jump on it as hard as we'd jumped on the hero-Riddle theory.

[-]pedanterrific13y30

The only canon Noble and Most Ancient House is Black, though.

[-]Joshua Hobbes13y20

Despite the many good reasons to believe Quirrell is H&C, My Red Herring Alarm (©) wouldn't stop going off while Harry was going over the list of suspects. My gut is usually fairly good at seeing plot-twists coming, and it's very certain there's someone Harry is forgetting about. Anyone else getting a similiar vibe?

3Jonathan_Elmer13y

I think H&C is Snape. I am really confused about what was going on with H&C1 and Quirrell but everything since then is consistent with Snape plotting against Harry.

1Normal_Anomaly13y

What do you think is his motive? (Full disclosure: I'm >80% confident it was Quirrell.)

1Jonathan_Elmer13y

Full disclosure for me as well, I want H&C to be Snape so there may be confirmation bias at work on my part. I think that the rage inducing revelation that Snape had in chapter 22 caused Snape to abandon his canon role has Harry's protector and went back to the obvious role for him: fighting for the dark lord whom he used to serve and will soon be returning. Which means fighting against Harry. For what its worth Harry also thinks something significant happened in that interaction: *Just before Harry left the workroom, with his hand on the doorhandle, the boy turned back and said, "As long as we're here, have either of you noticed anything different about Professor Snape?" "Different?" said the Headmaster. Minerva didn't let her wry smile show on her face. Of course the boy was apprehensive about the 'evil Potions Master', since he had no way of knowing why Severus was to be trusted. It would have been odd to say the least, explaining to Harry that Severus was still in love with his mother. "I mean, has his behavior changed recently in any way?" said Harry. "Not that I have seen..." the Headmaster said slowly. "Why do you ask?" Harry shook his head. "I don't want to prejudice your own observations by saying. Just keep an eye out, maybe?" That sent a quiver of unease through Minerva in a way that no outright accusation of Severus could have.*

1anotherblackhat13y

The evidence against QQ is pretty strong; * H&C cast a memory charm on Hermione without triggering the wards. Only a Hogwarts professor, Dumbledore, and maybe Lupin could do that. * H&C either wanted Hermione to be blamed for attempted murder, or wanted her to succeed. That rules out everyone is isn't willing to kill innocent children to advance their plots. Realistically, only QQ fits. Whether Harry has enough information to figure it out is a different question.

1wedrifid13y

What is special about Lupin that he could pull it off? The professors would probably have security clearance. Dumbledore has security clearance and is incidentally freaking Dumbledore but Lupin is just some wizard. He's fairly competent but not so much as, say, Mad-Eye. I suppose he has better than average Hogwarts-security knowledge due to his misspent youth...

7anotherblackhat13y

Lupin was brought in as a special instructor for the Patronus charm, thus might possibly have professor status.

0JoshuaZ13y

Snape falls into the first category. That said, I agree that Quirrell is almost certainly the actual culprit.

[-]75th13y20

(This isn't a prediction, exactly. Or if it is, it's extremely speculative and with a fairly low weight of confidence.)

The end of an arc will be posted here in a little while. The last couple of arc-concluding chapters have been from points of view we don't normally get. The end of TSPE was with Trelawney, and before the switch, Self-Actualization ended with Snape. Both were rather portentous moments: Trelawney had a vision of something horrible coming, and Snape made a decision that might ally him permanently with the Dark side.

For obvious reasons, we've ... (read more)

1Joshua Hobbes13y

Nice catch. I'm now wondering exactly how the prophecy system works. Did Harry's resolution alter time and directly cause these seers to see what they saw?

[-]LKtheGreat13y20

Just noticed this lovely little tidbit at the very end of Chapter 84:

"[Hermione] thought she heard, as she was within the doorway, a distant cawing cry. But it wasn't meant for her, she knew[.]"

What on Earth is that supposed to mean? Who or what is cawing in Hogwarts or on the grounds, and how does she know something about it that we don't? Or am I missing some terribly obvious connection here?

2Eliezer Yudkowsky13y

I'm very sorry about this. It referred to a part of Ch. 85 that I simply couldn't work out in time for the posting deadline. I've removed the corresponding lead-in from Ch. 84. If I get Ch. 85 to work as originally planned, I may put it back in later.

6loserthree13y

It's so totally Snape.

2pedanterrific13y

Fawkes.

175th13y

Yes. And it absolutely was meant for her.

0aladner13y

I'm pretty sure it was meant for Dumbledore. If it was meant for Hermione it could have just fire-ported to her.

1chaosmosis13y

It's done similar things before. It called her to the bullies (probably) without her seeing it.

3Vladimir_Nesov13y

It's plausible that that was actually Fancr, vavgvngvat uvf pbasyvpg rfpnyngvba cybg.

1loserthree13y

Snape may have used the sound of a phoenix call to guide Hermione in the past.

0linkhyrule513y

I thought it was the phoenix, myself.

0ArisKatsaris13y

There's still an aftermath chapter left I think - it may be we'll see first hand what Fawkes was cawing for.

[-]RobertLumley13y20

Automatically, the mask of the innocent Harry said exactly what it would have said: "Are my parents in danger? Do they need to be moved here?"

"No," said the old wizard's voice. "I do not think so. The Death Eaters learned, toward the end of the war, not to attack the Order's families. And if Voldemort is now acting without his former companions, he still knows that it is I who make the decisions for now, and he knows that I would give him nothing for any threat to your family. I have taught him that I do not give in to blackmail, and so he will not try."

This quote from Chapter 62 seems quite prudent to consider in hindsight.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y20

Dumbledore tried to push Hermione away from heroism specifically to push her towards it. Maybe Quirrell thinks the same tool work work on her. He doesn't even have to know that Dumbledore thought that would work or used that tool on Hermione. He could just observe in her the same vulnerability to that method.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y110

Okay, can someone answer in what way it would look different if Quirrel did try to get Hermione away and just honestly failed? As opposed to this supposedly not-real attempt?

Because I think too many people in this thread suffer from thinking that Quirrel is literally infallible in regards to anything he tries.

5Percent_Carbon13y

I have thought the same in conversations about other puzzles for that character, so I should heartily agree. The evidence shows no reason for him to want her to stay. I update to believing that Quirrell tried and failed to drive Hermione away p>0.6. His groundhog day attack equipped him to expertly apply pressure to her but she still persevered, even barely, because she is heroic. (He was using reverse psychology to drive her toward Harry p0.25.) Thank you for the reality check.

[-]qjmw13y20

A good bit off topic but replying here anyway. If humanity was not special enough to set the Interdict of Merlin on absolutely everybody it could really turn against them when the aliens arrive.

[-]Vaniver13y20

There's a difference between dynasties and titles. Houses are dynasties- lots and lots of people were Habsburgs, even though only one person held a title at any particular time. For example, Philip I was, in 1505, King of Castile, Duke of Burgundy, Duke of Brabant, Duke of Limburg, Duke of Lothier, Duke of Luxemburg, Margrave of Namur, Count Palatine of Burgundy, Count of Artois, Count of Charolais, Count of Flanders, Count of Hainault, Count of Holland, and Count of Zeeland, but only a member of one House- the Habsburgs.

Also, take a look at cadet branche... (read more)

1pedanterrific13y

In MoR, Malfoy is a Noble and Most Ancient House, which presumably comes with a title. In canon, Lucius is neither a Lord, nor on the Wizengamot. Also, in MoR we have

0Vaniver13y

My presumption is that title comes from being on the Wizengamot, not that he's on the Wizengamot because he has a title. That's mostly because I don't quite see what they would use the titles for, except as a medieval version of "Senator."

1pedanterrific13y

Except we have an example in MoR of a prominent member of the Wizengamot not having a title, and one- Lord Greengrass- of someone having a title without being on the Wizengamot.

1Vaniver13y

Chapter 78 suggests that Lady Greengrass has a vote on the Wizengamot, and referring to consorts as Lord or Lady is standard. Not referring to Mrs. Longbottom as Lady seems odd, but I don't know how significant it is. (If EY has done extensive worldbuilding about the politics and courtesies of Wizarding Britain, it is opaque and appears to be a significant departure from canon.)

2pedanterrific13y

Yes, since he married a Lady of a Noble House it would make sense for him to become a Lord. It doesn't make sense for him to become a Senator because he married a Senator, though. It seems to me that the face value of is that the titles come from the family. Edit: Not to mention Amelia Bones is on the Wizengamot, and she's not Lady Bones. Yes. We know this to be the case because people are being addressed by "Lord" and "Lady", which no one ever was in canon. (Except Voldemort.)

0Vaniver13y

Mr. Greengrass wasn't born to a House- and even if he were married to her matrilineally, I believe he'd remain houseless (under European rules). My guess is that the system is not internally consistent, or at least not internally consistent enough to use formal logic instead of fuzzy logic. Bones is the head of a department of the Ministry, and may have been seated with Fudge and Umbridge instead of with the voting members.

0pedanterrific13y

So, wait, is this the case or is it true that "referring to consorts as Lord or Lady is standard."? Or both, somehow? I'm confused. I looked back through, and it seems you're right that her location wasn't mentioned. I guess the fact that she was on the Wizengamot in canon isn't much evidence in this case.

0Vaniver13y

Again, titles and dynasties (houses) are different things. If the appellation accompanies the dynasty, then I'm pretty sure Lady Greengrass's husband would neither use her name or have a Lord title. For example, Prince Philip is a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, not the House of Windsor, the house of his wife, Queen Elizabeth. A patrilineal marriage is one in which the children are of the husband's house, and a matrilineal marriage is one in which the children are of the wife's house. (The practice of forming a new line with each new pairing, like with 'Potter-Evans-Verres', is incredibly short-sighted and is very uncommon. I know of no society where that was the norm for an extended period of time.) If appellations follow the title, like in the UK, you get things like John Morrison, lowborn but raised to the peerage. His appellation is now Lord because of the barony he holds, and his wife's appellation is now Lady because her husband holds a barony. Similarly, Lady Greengrass would be married to Lord Greengrass under this system. (The Morrison dynasty would be everyone who can trace their lineage back to him and has the surname of Morrison- which comes with no legal benefits.) This is modern UK politics, so I'm not clear on it, but I think ministers get votes in parliament? But that adds another wrinkle- I guess it would be a temporary vote, where Malfoy may have a life vote, and so he gets a title and she doesn't. Edit again: I should mention that kinship, and the etiquette surrounding it, can get really thorny. So far I've been assuming patrilineal dynasties, which fits with canon Harry Potter and most of European history, but might not fit with MoR (as Greengrass and her husband are clearly a matrilineal couple). Sophia Dorothea was born into the House of Welf but became a member of the House of Hanover after marrying George I. So if both patrilineal and matrilineal marriage are common, then it could be that the Lord and Lady

2pedanterrific13y

It's worth noting for the patrilineal / matrilineal thing that MoR!Wizarding Britain claims to have gender equality for quite a while (in matters other than heroism). And the Wizengamot vastly predates the Ministry; it may be the case in canon, but I would be very surprised if the WizengaMoR gave department heads a voice in the body. Unless they had the right lineage, anyway.

[-]pedanterrific13y20

Would you change your mind if I dug up links to the two times in the last two weeks that someone on the LW discussion page asked why everyone was so certain that Q=V, clearly displaying that they didn't know the spoiler?

And just to reiterate, since pleeppleep is determinedly ignoring this fact despite being repeatedly made aware of it, the spoiler isn't "X" but "Eliezer said X".

2Random83213y

Out of interest, and as an experimental test of the point I made earlier, what sort of responses did those comments receive?

2pedanterrific13y

Here's one.

2Random83213y

My theory was correct: the policy did not prevent that user from being told the spoiler. You may say this is because it was violated, as of course it was, but what was the correct response? "We can't tell you due to the spoiler policy"? "Ryvrmre fnvq fb va na rneyvre nhgube'f abgr gung jnf ergenpgrq"? Would either of those, or indeed any response, have resulted in that user not finding out about it? If someone says something similar in the next thread, what would you have me do?

0pedanterrific13y

The same thing I did then: inform them that it is a spoiler, and give them the option to find out.

[-]pleeppleep13y20

The people who frequent this site are expected to read a sequence of posts explaining quantum physics, but a dual "like" system is too complicated?

[-]Random83213y20

The rule is that it's only spoilage if you say both things in cleartext in the same post. Yes, I agree, it's a stupid rule, but it is the rule, and I was angry because that argument was used specifically against my claim that it's inconsistently enforced.

"edit the tone to something you wouldn't have to apologize for." I could only do so honestly if this did not make me angry. EDIT - done. I'm still a bit angry about it though...

4thomblake13y

I wouldn't normally see that as worse than doing something while apologizing for it. This isn't Brockian Ultra Cricket.

[-]loserthree13y20

Anything that isn't fun and isn't good doesn't even enter most people's minds, because there's no reason to do it.

Unless you have a really broad definition of 'fun' you're quire wrong here. Sometime people will experiment. Sometimes people will do what they're told not to as a gesture of defiance. Sometimes people will do things that are very harmful to themselves because it is the only way they can strike against forces they are otherwise powerless to resist, like an abusive partner or guardian. Sometimes people mistakenly think they don't have any... (read more)

0Alsadius13y

Okay, I was oversimplifying - there's "necessary"(which is a pretty broad category, even in the first world), there's experiment, and there's a dozen others. But my point was "there's things good people would do, and then there's things that they won't but bad people will. The latter category is likely to be all the fun-but-naughty stuff", and I think that's still basically true.

0thomblake13y

I still think that's wrong. Most people don't operate in fun-seeking mode, most of the time. Good people will not beat you to death for a loaf of bread. Evil people might. Maybe you're just using an overly-broad definition of "fun". An evil person might (reluctantly) murder you for a huge wad of cash, which might be used for all sorts of non-fun things like paying the mortgage, buying a safe SUV for the family, paying off the mob boss, or securing a place of power for safety.

[-]loserthree13y20

The author has suggested we pay attention to the Conservation of Detail. With that in mind, the involvement of Albania is enough for almost certainty.

2see13y

The detail is already conserved by its known use to try to make the reader suspect Bones is going to discover Quirrell is Riddle/Voldemort. Now the question left is whether Albania is a Chekhov's Boomerang, or whether theories based on it are an example of Epileptic Trees. I know I'm not "almost certain" either way.

[-]Viliam_Bur13y20

At this point I've gotten most of my karma back, and a lot of people have gained karma, so I'd say karma is up overall.

With regards to karma, most of the comments on LW have positive karma, very few have negative. So by mere participation in a long discussion people gain karma, unless they do something very wrong and refuse to give up.

This does not directly contradict what you said. Most of discussions are added value on LW. I just suspect that the karma does not reflect utility precisely; positive votes are given more cheaply than negative votes. (An e... (read more)

[-]thomblake13y20

World War II had a different story in Harry Potter, and it's a bit clearer in MoR. It was sparked by Grindlewald's desire to have dominion over the muggles - the muggle war was just a reflection of the wizarding war going on at the same time. Grindlewald was the real power in Germany, and Hitler just a pawn. The reason Dumbledore couldn't take down Grindlewald until the war was over, was that Hitler was fueling Grindlewald's power using dark rituals involving the blood sacrifice of millions of muggles.

0Percent_Carbon13y

Yeah, that is one of the holes in this thing. Riddle probably got his idea to exchange heroism for power from somewhere else.

[-][anonymous]13y20

It seems like an important feature of a security system would be to detect outsiders as well as students.

[-]pedanterrific13y20

...I don't think it does. I think what we're supposed to take from those passages, plus every other time Harry has made a promise, is that he doesn't make promises with the intent to break them.

2Alsadius13y

The latter, yes. The former, no. I think he's basically honest, and as such the statement made in Parselmouth is not a lie, but he's not going to feel himself bound by that promise in extremis.

4pedanterrific13y

(Unless Parseltongue is magically binding.) But yeah, of course I agree that Harry doesn't consider keeping his word to be the be-all end-all. For instance, in the course of TSPE there were several times that Harry considered breaking that specific promise and confessing all, and I don't think the fact that he promised not to was ever even brought up in his internal narration- the decisive factor was always the consequences to Quirrell if he did. But I still disagree quite strongly with

[-]Alsadius13y20

Though of course, Potter and Voldemort exist in the same world for 17 years without breaching physical law in canon, so perhaps it's not entirely literal.

[-]pedanterrific13y20

The spoiler is "Eliezer said X", not "X". This has been mentioned, repeatedly, by other users in this thread.

[-]gjm13y20

I'm not sure that the word "creation" is quite right (except in so far as for some musically-minded people it may bring to mind the other words "representation of chaos") but yes, I'm afraid it is.

[-]wedrifid13y20

OH, COME ON! What'd I say HERE that earned a downvote?

This.

More fun with pictures!

[-]chaosmosis13y20

Could anyone try to summarize some of the main theories that have been in previous discussion threads?

This is way too overwhelming for a newcomer.

9FAWS13y

* Quirrel is pretty much universally agreed to be Voldemort, likely with the 5 places Harry names in chapter 46 as his Horcrux hiding places, among them the Pioneer plate, and probably Harry himself as in canon. * Surius Black is generally agreed not to ever have been taken to Azkaban, most likely by somehow making Peter Pettigrew take his place. * Lucius is agreed to think that Harry is Voldemort (and be right with respect to Harry's dark side). There were a bunch of theories regarding the identities of Hat and Cloak and Santa Claus and the details of the prank on Rita Skeeter, but those were mostly settled in recent chapters.

3chaosmosis13y

I can haz evidences, plz? But thanks for even just the claims.

8loserthree13y

Quirrell makes 'riddle' puns and told the story of his mother's crime as an offhand remark. The rest is all under Conservation of Detail, which the author suggested we pay attention to. That is, there is only room for one, true antagonist, everyone else is just an obstacle. Voldemort, more than anyone else (except maybe Dumbledore if you follow that fascinating fringe theory), is set up to be the antagonist. Behind all the things that Quirrell does for HJPEV or anyone else, he is evil. He really is. Donc, he's almost certainly Voldemort. I think it is also fairly accepted that Dumbledore helped Lily Potter pretty-up her sister through the potion textbook he gave to HJPEV with the "terrible secret." I think that's winning out over the "Dumbledore used Lily to break Snape" theory that I was favoring a while back. We think Lucius thinks HJPEV is Vodlemort because it makes a lot more sense out of what Lucius says to HJPEV in chapter 38. And later chapters, too. That's a "It just fits together" answer that I'm sure some don't like. But there it is. I don't know of good proof for Harry's status. I thought it was disputed. There's the whole 'dark side' thing, but then he kind of has a lot of sides. I could get quote for all of these later, like Monday or maybe sooner. But not right now. Maybe someone else will in the meantime, maybe not.

1chaosmosis13y

On Riddle Puns: Malfoy's "instant" of surprise doesn't make sense unless it's in response to what Potter said. Malfoy wouldn't have been surprised for only an instant by anything else that Harry said, because he had already seen Harry spook the dementor. This supports the theory that Malfoy thinks Harry is Voldemort, to the extent that the Quirrell = Voldemort theory is true. It also supports the Quirrel = Voldemort theory to the extent that the Malfoy thinks Harry is Voldemort theory is true. It ties those theories together, a little bit. The weakness of this argument is that it requires a previously unmentioned detail, that Malfoy knows Voldemort uses riddle puns. But that's a small weakness and the argument still seems more true than false.

2ArisKatsaris13y

It only requires that Malfoy knows Voldemort to be Tom Riddle -- which in canon he did.

0chaosmosis13y

I don't know why you think I didn't know this. But there is a difference between knowing Tom Riddle is Voldemort and knowing that Voldemort's secret identities often use Riddle puns. This difference is poignantly illustrated by the fact that HPMOR Harry knows Tom Riddle is Voldemort but never catches on to the Riddle puns. If you're going to correct me, please make sure that I'm actually wrong in the first place. Additionally, I explicitly said that this objection was only weak and that the theory was still fairly strong. I don't know why you would make this comment unless you're fishing for karma or you love to argue about trivial and stupid things.

5ArisKatsaris13y

Harry in HPMoR hasn't been told Voldemort was once named Tom Riddle. I've just made sure, by searching for all occurrences of the word "riddle" in the Methods of Rationality PDF -- and seeing that Dumbledore never once mentions the name Tom Riddle in front of Harry. Is this enough "making sure"? Your imprecisions lead to flawed conclusions. I've only been making corrections when the mistakes significantly affect such conclusions.

3drnickbone13y

This is a good catch by the way, and itself another oddity. Canon Dumbledore told Harry a lot about Voldemort's background (including the Riddle years and his theories about the horcruxes) - HPMOR Dumbledore has done none of this. And yet he expects Harry to fight him, and Harry already knows about the prophecy. Another issue is that I'm recently doubting whether Quirrell/Voldemort is actually Tom Riddle in the HPMOR universe. It is clearly implied that Quirrell = Voldemort, but then suddenly in chapters 84 and 85 we get this Quirrell = Hero identification (from a Noble and Ancient House, no less). Further, Eliezer has made it clear that Hero is not Tom Riddle (by adjusting the birth year). So what are the possibilities? It seems that either Tom Riddle killed the original Hero character, and then impersonated him in the fight against his alter ego Voldemort. Or, even more intriguingly, the Hero character fought and defeated Tom Riddle much earlier on, then set up the Voldemort character to be the awful Dark Lord with a "secret" identity of Tom Riddle, while himself being the "secret within a secret" identity, and the heroic adversary. This is a plot worthy of a truly evil Sith Lord such as Emperor Palpatine. Presumably the Death Eaters as well as Dumbledore and aurors are all deceived, and this is the real reason why booby-trapping the grave of Tom Riddle's father (after TSPE) is going to be of no use. Quirrelmort has no need to hide the father's grave, because it's totally irrelevant.

0pedanterrific13y

What makes you think this? (He doesn't.)

1chaosmosis13y

Dumbledore talks about Tom = Voldemort all the time in front of him... I think. But it doesn't impact my point either way. But I understand why pointing out the error still makes sense despite the previous sentence. And now I've wasted an hour arguing on the internet which is one of the most useless things that I know of and which is what I was trying to avoid in the first place hangs head in shame.

6pedanterrific13y

Not even once, in fact.

7FAWS13y

In addition to what the others have said there are numerous other passages and oddities that hint at Quirrel = Voldemort = Harry's dark side. Harry and Quirrel describing a Horcrux between them when they talk about the Pioneer plate. Quirrel saying he "resolved his parental issues to his satisfaction" long ago, just after saying being grateful for his parents could never have occured to him. Quirrel having a much better model of Harry than of Draco or Hermione, particularly when Harry's dark side is involved. Harry's dark side and Quirrel both being extremely vulnerable to Dementors. Harry's dark side and Quirrel both being very good at pretending to be other people. Quirrel's extremely odd reaction when Harry talks about having a mysterious dark side and his going along with the convenient conclusion that it's just another part of Harry. Dumbledore and Snape recognizing Voldemort's hand in Quirrels actions. Harry's dark side hating Dumbledore. And so on. The strongest piece of evidence for Lucius believing Harry to be Voldemort is his "I know it was you" message after breaking out Bellatrix.

5Benquo13y

And of course, from Chapter 34:

4pedanterrific13y

Evidence for the second one (Sirius Black).

2chaosmosis13y

The guy who caught that second quote is completely amazing.

2pedanterrific13y

Why thank you.

1[anonymous]13y

Wait, when did we learn anything about the Rita Skeeter prank?

9FAWS13y

Harry concluded that it must have been a false memory charm. That was one of the more popular theories before, and Harry agreeing is probably as much confirmation as we are going to get in-story.

[-]Velorien13y20

We don't have canon examples of a lot of things.

But we have an explicit canon statement by a recognised authority in the spell school in question. That should trump guesses based on inferred similarities between different instances of different spells.

Which is more likely, that the Vanished animals follow the trends already observed for all the related magics, or that Rowling makes an exception for the animals and Hogwarts is a charnelhouse?

Given that

1) the trends you cite are only there if we assume that every instance of something disappearing use... (read more)

[-]kilobug13y20

In my understanding of fun theory, you have worthy adversaries, but low consequences in case of failure. Like a video game, where if you lose, you lose a few hours of gaming at worse. Not that if you lose, you end up in Azkaban feeding the Dementors.

At least for myself, I like hard games, not easy ones, but I like it when defeat isn't too severe; I do sometimes play games in "iron will" mode (no saving, if you lose, restart all from the beginning), but not often, it's really the upper limit to what I accept when losing.

[-]loserthree13y20

You meant this one, right?

[-]ArisKatsaris13y20

I don't think the rule right now prevents any spoilage.

Unless you argue that it actually causes spoilage (which is implausible), it's highly implausible that it's effect is exactly zero.

Such guidelines as you suggest are perhaps nice to be followed voluntarily, but obliging people to follow them would impose an additional cost and burden -- when it seems that atleast two people in this thread have a problem with the rule being as much of a burden on them as it currently is.

3loserthree13y

I'll argue that it causes spoilage. Create a new account. On the day after a chapter goes up, post a complaint about someone saying that Dhveeryy vf Ibyqrzbeg and ask how anyone knows. Even if all the replies to you are ciphered, you will still know that people know. And if you were not already-in-the-know, you would be spoiled. And any non-posting lurker who has already seen this happen a half donzen times but was not in the know and did not decipher anything also has been spoiled. The cipher rule makes people comfortable talking about spoilers, so they do talk about spoilers. But the rule doesn't prevent the spoilage that occurs because of the talk about spoilers, just what occurs because of the spoilers themselves. Sensitization is complicated. That's one reason censorship is so popular.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y20

It's not treating it a fact that's frowned upon, same way that it's not frowned upon to treat Hat&Cloak as Quirrel, or Dumbledore as Santa Claus - we don't ask that people treat their conclusions as if they're spoilers.

What's against the rules is to reveal the specific announcements that have been "unrevealed".

Is this too fine a distinction for you to understand? Here's a clue, none of those nine comments say anything about what Eliezer has or hasn't revealed in retracted Authorial Notes.

So give it a rest already.

[-]Desrtopa13y20

I would do other things for fun than risk losing.

[-]GeorgieChaos13y20

No. Madam Bones said that the man she suspects Quirrell of being just disappeared (and, indeed, was the last of his family before he did so). Granted we don't know where most of Wibble went, but 1) he had a family, and they were peeled as well, and 2) I don't think having your skin found flapping loose in your office counts as a mysterious disappearance.

[-]pedanterrific13y20

Whoops, you're right, actually- but it seems to be standard procedure, it's not like he had to fight to have it done.

Now, according to the Ministry of Magic, I'm supposed to teach you countercurses and leave it at that. I'm not supposed to show you what illegal Dark curses look like until you're in the sixth year. You're not supposed to be old enough to deal with it till then. But Professor Dumbledore's got a higher opinion of your nerves, he reckons you can cope, and I say, the sooner you know what you're up against, the better.

[-]pedanterrific13y20

A bit improbable? Another difference would be that Wibble was killed, rather than disappeared.

[-]Incorrect13y20

Maybe it's a joke. EY could mean that her response to it is the same as our response to the simile: confusion.

[-]NancyLebovitz13y20

While it does keep completely accurate time overall

Pratchett quote a few posts upstream.

[-]Username13y20

The trouble was that you attributed the information to Eliezer, and said that it had been made explicitly clear. Commonly held speculation is one thing, insider information from the author is quite another.

If your comment was (non-rot13'd):

V jbhyq arire unir thrffrq gung Dhveeryy jnf fhpu n sna bs Ngynf Fuehttrq. Nyfb, V'z fyvtugyl pbashfrq ng ubj ur'f orvat cbegenlrq va guvf puncgre. Dhveeryy vf boivbhfyl Ibyqrzbeg, naq V pna'g vzntvar jul snyfr pyhrf jbhyq or tvira gb qvfgenpg sebz n gjvfg gung rirelbar fubhyq frr pbzvat.

then it could have been read as your own speculation, and that would have been absolutely fine.

[-]thomblake13y20

Seriously. If this was another forum, you'd have been outright banned by now for failing to follow the stated policy, even after repeated warnings. Please go elsewhere or follow the rules.

7Percent_Carbon13y

Please be aware that not everyone wants you to leave. Whether you conform on not, I hope you stay. This is fantastic and I look forward to more of the same. EDIT: downvote me back if it helps. I doubt the regulars will defend this post with their upvotes. FURTHER EDIT: okay, apparently I was wrong. After a reasonable dip, the comment is headed back up, despite my "No, no. Keep fighting." encouragement.

1pedanterrific13y

Curious: what are you referring to by this?

1Percent_Carbon13y

The bickering. You, specifically, do it so much. Surely you do it because you enjoy it?

2pedanterrific13y

(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Not so much.

2Percent_Carbon13y

Aw. That's like learning that the reason Mulder and Scully have such great chemistry is that David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson can't stand each other.

0[anonymous]13y

That... that isn't true, is it?

[-]thomblake13y20

Why is the text of that section unchanged when he decided not to reveal it after all - are people who can figure it out (as he assumed everyone would when he wrote it) not entitled to as good a story as people who can't?

Figuring it out != getting it spoiled.

I was confident of that fact well before that section of the story. I would expect anyone with knowledge of canon to suspect a connection between the two characters.

But if you didn't get it spoiled, you get to test your hypothesis against every new piece of evidence, and it's a much more entertainin... (read more)

2Random83213y

Is it a norm on Less Wrong that there is not a "grace period" to make an edit within a few seconds after posting and before anyone has replied, to make minor corrections or to add something that the user forgot to say and just realized after submitting the comment? (Also, did I really deserve -8 karma for my opinions on this issue, or is it just a matter of -2 not seeming so bad when you do it four times?)

4thomblake13y

4ArisKatsaris13y

I haven't downvoted any of your posts, but it need not be just your opinions -- it may very well be the way you express them, either in terms of expressed hostility, or in terms of confusion/lack of clarity. e.g. you've still not explained the meaning of the 'should' in "He made his decision - so he should live with it." . But frankly, I'd wager it's just the constant aura of hostility you seem to exude towards the rest of us.

[-]gwern13y20

On the Stone's mention: http://lesswrong.com/lw/bfo/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/6ahg

7thescoundrel13y

In a rather large "Oh Duh" moment: if Harry knew about the stone, he would insist it be used on everyone. Barring some unforeseen mechanism that prevents its mass use, he would view Dumbledore as Evil for knowing how to keep everyone alive, and not acting on it.

1HonoreDB13y

See also this exchange on the tvtropes forum, where EY clarifies at least one of his reasons for removing the Griphook line.

[-]ChrisHallquist13y10

Ack. I can't believe it took me this long, but I think Quirrellmort's plan has finally fallen into place for me. Quirrellmort's primary goals are:

(1) Attain immortality. (2) Enjoy it.

But he believes a necessary means to those ends is:

(3) Kill Harry Potter.

When Quirrellmort first said that when he made his Evil Overlord list, he realized following it all the time would defeat the purpose of being a Dark Lord. I wondered if he was telling the truth about that. HPMOR is all about playing with things that don't make sense in traditional stories, and the fact t... (read more)

6alex_zag_al13y

Seems Quirrell has a good motive for conquest that you didn't mention, or at least a motive for attempting the unification of wizards, whether under his leadership or not. And remember his magical fascism speech, where he said to imagine an outside enemy attacking the divided armies? It could be that Quirrell wanted a believable fake secret motive for his interest in Harry, and all of the above was so that Harry wouldn't question this: Or, his desire to unite wizards against the muggle threat could be sincere. EDIT: A proposal of this theory by 75th, and a little bit of discussion, here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ams/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/60di

4FAWS13y

It's definitely not just that, otherwise he'd have tossed Harry a knut port key into an active volcano or the like. His plan seems to involve Harry's "dark side" taking permanent control (like he expected to be the case before he was surpised by the news that there was a separate dark side in the first place rather than just Harry sometimes pretending to be non-dark).

3Jonathan_Elmer13y

They prophecy does not say that "either he or Harry must die" it says that one will "destroy all but a remnant of the other." One way for that to be true is that Volde dies but is still exists as a spirit due to his horcrux. However even if that is the obvious answer it would be wise for him to try to determine non-obvious ways the prophecy might be fulfilled. Preferably one where he could win. For example, inserting his personality into Harry's mind so that his personality changes Harry's such that it is only a remnant of its previous form. Prophecies are a done deal, what is said will come to pass. Considering that the obvious answer is that Harry kills Volde it might be a good idea to make sure that happens when Harry is still a baby and cannot finish him off. With the personality insert as a backup plan for fulfilling the prophecy without completely losing.

275th13y

Keep in mind that in canon, "either" in the prophecy was used in its lesser-known (but legitimate) definition of "both". "Either must die by the hand of the other", but what really happened was that BOTH died by the hand of the other. So if that persists in MoR, we should expect both Harry and Voldemort to somehow destroy all but a remnant of the other.

0Jonathan_Elmer13y

Good point.

0Normal_Anomaly13y

If I recall correctly, there are unfulfilled prophecies in canon.

2SkyDK13y

Seems an awful lot of work to go through rather than just siccing an expert killer on the baby. No, I find it highly unlikely that killing Harry is the main goal. On the other hand Dumbledore's version of good seems to be very incompatible with Harry's...

0Shmi13y

You might also interpret this sentence in a mathematical sense, the two of them being identical, so the survival of either one is good enough for either of them. Thus V. tries to ensure that HP (presumably) has the best possible chance of survival in the harsh realities of Magical Britain :)

[-]LauralH13y10

Well, Quirrell thinks that the Dementor at Hogwarts tells him that he'll hunt him down....

8pedanterrific13y

When you think about it, it makes sense that Horcruxing yourself would piss off Deathmentors something fierce.

[-]Alsadius13y10

You're assuming that a culture as ossified as modern wizarding society has lots of people striving to create new spells en masse, and that it's sufficiently easy to do so that they'd be getting created if the people were trying and "slots" were available. That's absurd. Also, you seem to have no understanding whatsoever of the Interdict of Merlin - it says that spells above a certain power level can only be passed between intelligent minds, with no intermediaries(like books) allowed. The best I can assume is that you're engaged in circular reasoning, with the lack of new spells proving the slot theory proving your weird interpretation of the Interdict proving the lack of new spells.

[-]TheOtherDave13y10

Hm.
I'm not quite sure in what sense a choice of language is objective but a choice of religion is subjective. They both strike me as aspects of a culture... though it is admittedly easier to raise a child without a religion at all than to raise one without a language.
Then again, I'm content to say that human parenting pretty-much-universally involves indoctrination. As does education, for that matter, although not all indoctrination is educational and not all education is indoctrination.

0Alsadius13y

But you're not teaching the kid to believe in English, just how to speak it. Saying to your kid "This is what Christians believe" would be education, saying "This is what we believe" is indoctrination. It's the difference between creating knowledge and creating belief(as fuzzy as that line can be sometimes).

1TheOtherDave13y

(nods) Similarly, you aren't saying "this is what English-speakers speak," you are saying "this is what we speak." I'm not suggesting that indoctrinating someone in a language is the same thing as indoctrinating them in a religion, or that it's morally equivalent, or that they are equally useful, or anything of the sort. But they are both indoctrination (as well as both being education).

[-]Alsadius13y10

What was idiotic about the way Harry was protected? They were betrayed to a superior force by someone highly placed, and there's no good defense against that. And Voldemort was knowingly superior to every possible defender, so why would he worry about it?

And re prior probabilities, it's obviously dependant on the issue in question. On something where MoR is silent, canon carries a lot of weight. On something where MoR spends time adjusting expectations, canon carries very little weight. So it's quite likely that Aberforth loved goats(though even more like... (read more)

3Percent_Carbon13y

Did you miss the part about a single point of failure? Fate of the whole fucking world and the critical security decisions and on site protective services are trusted to a crew of twenty somethings who were really close in school. Idiots. The only reason to work alone is if working with others means watching your back more. We have no evidence that Vodlemort executed his other raids singlehandely, so we should believe that he did it the smart way with backup. So why the sudden switch from terrorist to cheap slasher monster? MoR is not silent on the question of sacrifice, it is covered under the primary themes of the story. Throwing your life away futilely not smart and should not be rewarded in a story with rationalist aspirations. There's no exposition on the subject of mother's love sacrifice charms, so if this is what happened it will be unforeshadowed. EY has said that is a bad thing to do so we should guess that he probably doesn't intend to do that.

2Alsadius13y

Find me a protection scheme that applies to the situation at hand with a second point of failure, and I'll accept your criticism of the plan they had. Highly-placed traitors are really, really hard to defend against. Similarly, find me an example of Voldemort having backup on any of his attacks, and I'll believe that him lacking it here is relevant. Rationality is about winning. Lily Potter won that night, as much as she believably could have. I'd say she did okay by "throwing her life away".

2pedanterrific13y

Have Dumbledore be the Secret-Keeper. The Ministry raid at the end of OotP.

0Alsadius13y

So you want to replace a single point of failure for defending a baby with a single point of failure for the entire Order? Remember what happens when the Secret-Keeper dies, after all. And there's a bit of a difference between hitting a single-family house and a large battle.

3pedanterrific13y

How would Dumbledore be any easier to kill as a Secret-Keeper than otherwise? Wait, before that, how would Dumbledore's death be any more crippling to the Order if he was a Secret-Keeper than otherwise? He dies, they've pretty much lost the war, baby Harry Potter or no baby Harry Potter. I am. Are you? (Dumbledore's death resulted in everyone read into the Secret of 12 Grimmauld Place becoming Secret-Keepers themselves; the Fidelius was still in place.) Edit: The wiki claims- unfortunately without attribution- that Dumbledore offered to be the Potters' Keeper, and was turned down. Edit2: Emphasis mine.

0jaimeastorga200013y

I definitely remember this from the third book. The adults are talking about the Potters' deaths in the Three Broomsticks Inn and someone mentions that Dumbledore himself offered to become the secret keeper, but was turned down with insistences that Sirius Black would never betray them. EDIT: Found it.

[-]Percent_Carbon13y10

Well, you get to pick your race and your class (middle)

Pfft

I'd stick with the Human race. I don't like the lack of supplemental material for the others. They're really under developed.

I have serious doubts that class in the sense you use it in could possibly be elective. The spread just doesn't match any decision making process I'd want to relate to.

[-]TimS13y10

I think she intended it to be plausible. Weren't we just discussing what a terrible worldbuilder Rowling is?

0Alsadius13y

It's an entirely plausible legal process...for a shitty country stuck in the Middle Ages. If she's so much as watched an episode of Matlock, she'd be aware of how far outside the realm of modern legal procedure it is.

[-]Random83213y10

I was under the impression this was a community rule. People were certainly talking as if they believed in the logical basis for having the policy in order to prevent people from getting spoiled, rather than just doing what he says.

3pedanterrific13y

If Eliezer unretracted the Author's Note I highly doubt anyone would argue to keep the policy.

[-]pedanterrific13y10

Oh god, bad fanfiction flashbacks...

3thomblake13y

I wasn't sure whether it was relevant to include a note about those there. If only Harry realized earlier that he was a descendant of all four Hogwarts founders, Merlin, Amaterasu, and Voltron.

3Eliezer Yudkowsky13y

Don't forget Naruto!

3pedanterrific13y

Or better yet, do forget Naruto.

0[anonymous]13y

Not to mention the Sage of the Six Paths! Not to mention...

[-]thomblake13y10

How does that make sense?

The idea is mainly to keep new users from wrecking the site by downvoting everything. Since things tend to get upvoted over time, everyone who participates (and doesn't seriously piss off the community) tends to get a slow trickle of karma even if they don't post anything astounding.

It was a quick-fix sort of solution. The initial limit was equal to your karma, but I already had used more than 4x that many downvotes, so it was quickly changed to a limit of 4x your karma, since the intention was not to limit the downvoting powe... (read more)

0pleeppleep13y

Why limit the downvoting ability of people who have already proven unlikely to abuse that power? Why not just limit downvoted until you reach a certain point, like the twenty karma rule for adding main posts?

0thomblake13y

As compared to that, the current system trades "Established users might get limited in downvoting ability at very large numbers" for "Someone might get the requisite 20 karma and then pillage the site". It's a pretty good tradeoff, but I still think I like your system better.

[-]Velorien13y10

Its purpose might simply have been to slow down the rate of high-level spell development and use. We know that the greatest body of magical lore would have been lost with Atlantis (going with the theory that the Atlanteans created the Source of Magic) and that magical research appears to largely be the province of individuals. The Interdict of Merlin would be like going to medieval Europe and saying "OK, you can carry on developing science/natural philosophy/etc., but you can't read any classical works, and if you want the latest research, you've got ... (read more)

[-]Xachariah13y120

It appears to me that the original purpose of the Interdict was as a form of DRM for strong spells. If you want to disseminate a spell, you can't just take a book, magically duplicate the book, and pass it out to all your friends. Learning a powerful spell thus required a willing trainer to teach you the spell, and you couldn't duplicate the knowledge contained in your mind until you knew the spell well enough to teach it yourself (and teaching something is harder than just being able to use it).

If you take this as a starting point, it's just basic classism at play motivating Merlin. All the wrong sorts were getting literacy and learning spells from books, taking away from the right sorts, who had learned from tutors, exclusive clubs, and networking with other powerful wizards. And it probably worked exceedingly well for several hundred years until those damn four decided to start up a school and accept everyone to be taught.

9Alsadius13y

I'd think of it as being more like "don't spread nuclear design secrets" than DRM, given the nature of powerful wizardry.

7Velorien13y

Feature rather than bug, I think. They don't call them "Every Flavour Beans" for nothing.

0[anonymous]13y

Is it actually that bad? I haven't read it in English yet, but if the translation is at least semi-decent, then I can start recommending it to friends.

2Velorien13y

I will admit to having read reviews rather than the actual thing (having read the original in Russian). However, the reviews are pretty damning in terms of translation quaity. To give one example, the translator apparently didn't twig that, in the Cyrillic alphabet, "X" is pronounced "KH" rather than "ECKS". As a result, every single name containing an "h" sound (of which there are many, including major characters) has had it swapped for an "x" sound. This is a level of incompetence that I wouldn't believe if I hadn't read the reviews first-hand.

0[anonymous]13y

...Huh. By itself, that doesn't seem that bad: it's not as though the exact pronunciation matters to someone who hasn't read the original. But it is a pretty frightening warning sign.

0Velorien13y

It's pretty bad in that it forces you to pronounce lots of awkward "x"s in names that were meant to be euphonic. But yes, the main issue is that a translator making such an epic mistake can't be trusted to maintain accuracy or faithfulness elsewhere. Also, a separate review criticism is that the translation fails miserably to capture the cheerful, whimsical style of the original narration, instead giving it a completely different and much less gripping narrative voice that ends up clashing with the content of the story.

[-]Random83213y10

It was explained that the [well, a] main purpose of downvoting is to cause "bad" comments to be hidden from view, rather than to punish the writer. When I asked in another thread for an explanation of downvoting to very low scores under this model, it was explained that this is done to offset the risk of people voting up the posts after the downvoters are no longer paying attention to the thread.

One way to change the system that might mitigate these factors would be to allow for "soft" downvotes that don't subtract from the karma of the... (read more)

2pleeppleep13y

If the only function is to silence the writer, than the system doesn't make that much sense at all. Beyond the twenty points needed to prove trustworthy, karma only serves as emotional satisfaction. This is clearly intended as incentive be mindful of what you post. There would be no reason for people to accumulate thousands of points. Maybe there could be a system of likes and dislikes, as well as a system of up or downvotes. Up and down are only to be used in regard to rationality, and they'll be limited. These votes would be on display to show whether or not a person should be trusted. There should probably be limits on how much of these a person can have. The likes and dislikes should be used when someone says something either clever or amusing, or something like my comment which people might consider unhelpful, but does not reflect on my rationality. This would be displayed above the comments, but the total amount of likes a commenter has stored up will be private. This way the emotional element will still be present, but will not interfere with a person's ability to add to our understanding of rationality.

2Random83213y

Downvotes you can make are limited to some multiple of your karma.

[-]pleeppleep13y10

fairness means only following the rule that reactions should be proportionate to the initial action. I thought you guys were being silly by insisting that I had spoiled something everyone already knew. I thought you were all too quick to judge, and I felt that you became biased against my comments, even ones unrelated to the spoiler. I was not aware that I had broken any rules until I had nothing left to lose. An accused person has the right to know why they are being accused and to defend themselves before receiving a penalty. If this were not the case then the accusing party would wield far too much power to be trustworthy. I think I have made it very clear why I thought this was unfair.

6thomblake13y

Irrelevant. Damage was done, and downvotes were used to route around the damage. Try not to take it personally.

1pleeppleep13y

i don't take it personally. He questioned my understanding of fairness. I answered him. I wasn't complaining, because I have not really been harmed. And downvotes did not solve the problem, as the "damage" remains. Do try to follow the conversation.

5Random83213y

Of course - each person's reaction was to downvote your post once (ignoring for the moment the issue I've mentioned elsewhere of additional penalties for defending yourself - it's not really relevant in this case since that's theoretically a second 'initial action'). So, what you really mean is the collective response should be proportionate to the initial action. The way the voting system works creates a strange set of incentives - downvoting a post that already has a low score - or a person who already has low karma - does not cost any more (in terms of the cost to the downvote cap) than downvoting a post which is just on the visibility threshold. Yet it's hard to see how this could be otherwise, particularly if both the downvote cap and karma scores need to be statically calculated.

2Percent_Carbon13y

Sorry, but this doesn't appear to be the case. If you do not possess the means to defend a right, you don't actually have it. In this case, no authority greater than your own had declared this right, and you have no expectation for any power to intercede on your behalf. It's like Nerf Mob Justice in here.

[-]Alsadius13y10

Long-form noble titles are used very rarely, because they're so unwieldy, and we've only seen a couple of folks who would be in a position to have multiple titles at all in the sort of detail where the long form would be used. Dumbledore is the only example I know of where they actually used anything longer than a few words. You're right that we might have seen one, but Rowling would likely have found it a bit too complex, and they're not so common that the lack is significant.

0pedanterrific13y

Rowling wouldn't have done it because the only nobility in canon Harry Potter is the Black family.

0ArisKatsaris13y

I thought this contradicted at least some of what JKR said about the later (post-Hogwarts) reformation of the wizarding world accomplished by Hermione Granger, but it seems JKR just mentioned laws favoring pure-bloods, not laws favoring an aristocracy/nobility. The relevant passage is this:

0Desrtopa13y

I'm pretty sure that Lucius Malfoy was Lord Malfoy in canon. The canon Potterverse showed no signs of being semi-feudal though. I imagine that he was a lord in much the same way that present day Lords of the Commonwealth are, ie. upper class but without meaningful rights over the rest of the population. Edit: a google search for Lord Malfoy doesn't appear to bring up any text results from canon, but the potter wiki describes him as "aristocratic".

0pedanterrific13y

You would be wrong. Edit in response to your edit: He is "aristocratic". He's rich, he lives in a manor, he carries a cane, and he's a pureblood. He's just not a lord, or any other sort of noble.

0Alsadius13y

Really? That doesn't seem right.

1pedanterrific13y

You're right, actually, it isn't. The Black family is just called "the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black", it doesn't actually have any members with any sort of title. So there isn't any nobility. Sources: NaMAH search, nobility in Harry Potter

[-][anonymous]13y10

Well yes but there is quite a big difference between having moral standards and actually living up to them enough to think of oneself as "good". At least in my brain truly "good" people are very rare.

[-]thescoundrel13y10

75%

Seems very clear at this point that Q. cannot predict Harry's actions, and that he was responsible for Hermione's framing. Truth is entangled, Harry is very clever, especially when not under a time crunch- this seems very likely to me.

1Alsadius13y

I think the probability might be that high given narrative requirements(i.e., Harry will near-certainly figure it out, Potter books usually end at the end of school years and it's April, and we know that the series is in the homestretch), but I'd put an in-universe probability without reference to that data a vastly lower chance.

[-]Alsadius13y10

Create enough tension and it'll spring loose somewhere, and I doubt Quirrel much cared where. There's no way that those two(Hermione in particular, given the lack of political training) have enough self-control to hate each other, think that they're scheming at each other, and then do absolutely nothing about it for an extended period.

[-]Alsadius13y10

I cannot parse that.

[-]pedanterrific13y10

That's something I hadn't thought of before. When I first heard the prophecy I immediately assumed it just meant Harry didn't need to come up with a way to deal with the Pioneer, and I didn't reevaluate upon Harry's reconciliation with his dark side.

Also, I've been wondering what that means in reverse- what's stopping Voldemort from destroying all of Harry, what would his remnant be? Interesting thought- maybe Harry's dark side counts as a remnant of Harry, too.

[-]Velorien13y10

Is it? I can't remember. The only Santa Claus reference that springs to mind is the signature on the notes in MoR.

[-]Velorien13y10

Goes into non-being = ceases to exist = dies if previously alive. Possibly worse than that, since in canon the dead do not disappear but go on to an afterlife.

If I said to you "Bob has gone into non-being", is there even a slight chance that you would interpret this as "Bob has been temporarily teleported to another dimension" rather than a fancy way of saying "Bob has ceased to exist"?

1gwern13y

I dunno. When you told me that a pane of glass went into non-being and it came back a little while later, and this sort of thing happens with all the other examples, what should I think?

3Velorien13y

We have no canon examples of a person using a Vanishing Charm to make something disappear and come back later. We have accidental magic (which does not appear to follow normal magic rules, as I note elsewhere), we have objects being Vanished and never seen again (including all the entries in the Wiki), and we have Vanishing Cabinets, which we have no reason to believe are the same thing as Vanishing Charms. To assume that "a thing disappears by magic" = "use of Vanishing Charm" is as spurious as to assume "a thing gets killed by magic" = "use of Avada Kedavra".

[-]faul_sname13y10

Things with negative karma get downvoted even more. You hadn't noticed?

Edit: perhaps not. It actually took longer to go from -2 to -3 than 0 to -2. I think we need more data points.

[-]FAWS13y10

I don't have any saved copy, but clear memory of the bolded part not being there. I think the wording is otherwise identical.

[-]pedanterrific13y10

Word of God.

[-]ArisKatsaris13y10

Some of the resistance to rot13 may be the complexity of using it: it requires multiple steps and an external program.

If you have Firefox, install the LeetKey addon.

[-]Paulovsk13y10

And it is likely that he likes her, just as in canon.

[-]Velorien13y140

Canon!Ron had a lot of time and personal interaction in which to grow to like Hermione. MoR!Ron is in a different house, and much of his interaction with her is informed by her close friendship with Harry, whom he considers Evil. And according to Ron, being friends with Evil is extremely damning in and of itself.

2Vaniver13y

Also, Canon!Ron and Canon!Harry both thought Hermione was a twat until the troll incident.

[-]thomblake13y00

You seem to have taken the wrong emphasis from my words. The grandparent was arguing that the things that good people won't do but bad people will, are all fun-but-naughty stuff. My point was that there are lots of things that 'bad' people might do, that are not fun.

The idea that someone would kill someone else for a pair of shoes has gotten so ubiquitous that it's become a cliche!

This supports my point, unless you think that people are stealing shoes because shoes are fun.

1Sheaman377313y

I do, actually. I think I see the disconnect here. If I'm correct, then you believe that I was referring to people who kill someone for shoes because they have none, which falls under the above situation of desperation. In fact, that was not what I was referring to. In certain sub-cultures, shoes are status symbols. The "killing someone for their shoes" cliche that I was referring to is about killing someone so that you can remove their status as above you, appropriate their status as your own, or in response to their damaging of your own status (in which case they likely wouldn't keep the shoes). So killing over shoes is killing to maintain or improve your status, which is fun in the same way that getting a new car is to those who are obsessed with them; it may not be the classical definition of fun, but it certainly seems appropriate in this situation.

[-]Sheaman377313y00

If it's not already in other fanfics by now, it will be soon.

[-][anonymous]13y00

When was the Naruto parody added to the omake chapter?

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply

0[anonymous]13y

Several months ago, I'm pretty sure.

[-][anonymous]13y00

Well as I've said somewhere in this tree, I don't like the "evil" label, so I'll stick to "bad". But I do think that the baby-eaters were bad, regardless of what they were evolved to do. There are a whole bunch of things that humans are evolved to do that I also think are morally wrong - I think that humans who do those things are bad. If we didn't have a drive to do bad things, no one would ever do them and morality would be pointless. The baby-eaters perhaps shouldn't be hated too much for being bad (in the story they weren't as i... (read more)

1chaosmosis13y

Sure thing, that all means that you don't support (pure) naturalism, which is okay with me even if I like naturalism.

1[anonymous]13y

I agree. What a pleasant conversation. This is why I love Less Wrong.

[-]drethelin13y00

Wild guessing:

There's a lot of things said about Voldemort that don't really make sense. How did get killed by a child? Quirrel himself makes fun of the Dark Mark, and why would someone who wants to be an effective leader torture his own servants for fun? He destroys the martial arts school without learning anything. I'm starting to think that Voldemort makes far more sense as a propagandized creation of Dumbledore's side than as a real entity. It's pretty obvious that the known story of what happened at Godric's Hollow isn't what REALLY happened. Dumble... (read more)

[-]Jonathan_Elmer13y100

Tom Riddle needed a Voldemort for his plot so he became Voldemort for a time. Just as he needed a Quirrel and a Mister Jaffe.

6pedanterrific13y

Ah... no? Actually, the opposite of that.

4drethelin13y

Shit, you're right. Who was it that made fun of the concept of having a sign that could easily reveal you to your enemies if they just asked you to roll up your sleeve?

8Jonathan_Elmer13y

Harry in chapter 21.

0GeeJo13y

On the other hand, it surely wouldn't be beyond the Dark Lord to come up with a system that accomplished all that without leaving such an obvious identifier on his minions.

[-]Random83213y00

Are we certain that the amount of time that each rotation takes you actually is an equinoctal hour, or a constant? If broomsticks can use Aristotlean physics, maybe Time Turners can be limited to six solar hours.

[-]raptortech9713y00

Do not have the audience be part of the group being tested. Pull in confederates off the street, and tell them about the test. Do not allow subjects to see each other's testing. Let's say now that the current subject is Alex. Alex prefers vanilla ice cream to chocolate ice cream. Now go through the anti-conformity training.

After the training, hold a break (still with just Alex and the confederates). Offer ice cream in chocolate, vanilla, and, say, mango. Have most (maybe about 80%) of the confederates go for the chocolate, 10% for the vanilla, and 10% for ... (read more)

[-][anonymous]13y00

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[-][anonymous]13y00

Pottermore is out of beta.

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[-][anonymous]13y00

If you go as far as to outright patronize people for not understanding something then it is just too late to pretend it is a secret.

See, I could've sworn I said

And just to reiterate, since pleeppleep is determinedly ignoring this fact despite being repeatedly made aware of it, the spoiler isn't "X" but "Eliezer said X".

Should I change that "pleeppleep" to "wedrifid"?

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