Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 20, chapter 90

Why the magical dualism? Since the magic ability has been confirmed genetic and not external in the earlier testing with Draco, a "repaired" wizard will remain a wizard.

According to Quirrel (this might not actually be accurate) troll regeneration works by constantly transmuting itself into its own body. I wonder if that can be applied to a human...

... It strikes me that Harry's wand could not be affected by a normal reparo, up until someone threw the Elder Wand itself at it...

Ideas about what Hermione without magic would do? Presumably some sort of research with occasional overwhelming research-based action, but science? magic? some combination?

... This is perfect.

Both of those cases depended on a crucial insight rather than knowledge (Dementors represent death rather than fear, the boundaries of objects are arbitrary) I'm not sure if knowledge of physicalism is analogous.

So much win.

I think Harry phrased it poorly, and if he meant it, he was absolutely wrong.

Allocating blame on yourself is a category error. We morally judge to separate the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the chaff - in short, to sort into piles of approach and avoid. You're stuck with you - where ever you go, there you are - so the point of the categorical judgment is simply inapplicable.

The sensible and very valuable part of what he is saying is to look to what you can do, and don't seek to console yourself with "that was his responsibility". Such interpersonal judgments are all about roles

because you're the only one whose actions you can change by putting blame there.

But you can change your actions more directly and more effectively by changing them. Putting blame on yourself is one of the better paths to depression, which is not an effective state. Blame others where appropriate and useful, but don't blame yourself, only search for actions to improve the situation, and choose them. You blame others because their actions are not yours to choose. Don't blame yourself, choose better.

My issue is that I don't have a good procedure in place for constructive blame: by default, when I blame myself for something mostly what happens is that I rehearse to myself what a terrible person I am without trying to figure out what I could do differently in the future (and then actually making sure that that happens).

Does it feel wrong to anyone else that he's basically complaining to a woman old enough to be his grandmother about how immature she is? This despite the fact that she's proven herself repeatedly to be willing to listen to good advice, and has pulled his bacon out of the fire by quick-witted crisis management at least once?

I think this is related to Harry's problem, highlighted in the three armies arc, with considering other people as potential sources of ideas.

I think it's helps to remove blame and responsbility from the equation when you try to get people to do fault analysis.

When trying someone to lead through a learning experience it's good to produce an enviroment where the person doesn't feel judged.

I don't want to get them to self-flagellate, but to look for what leverage they have and not worry as much about what it totally outside of their control.

Someone please tell Shinji Ikari about this radical notion.

BTW, the psychological technique you seem to be referring to from Stoicism is usually called the "dichotomy of control." And yes, it appears to be quite Googleable.

I think somewhere on LW there's a rationality quote to this effect, possibly by Geoff Anders. But I can't find it at the moment.

Yes, and it's part of a pattern of behavior. HJPEV consistently finds (seeks out?) uncharitable explanations for other peoples' behavior, especially when he's under stress. It's probably the most 11-year-old-like thing about him.

I think this is actually Harry's fault: He should've requested his time turner be unlocked as soon as he could plausibly argue that REALLY IMPORTANT things were happening around and to him. When Mcgonnigall first locked it, he was doing more harm than good with it.

It depends on what other corrective options she had. She might, for example, have password-protected it as a form of probation, and told him the password. She could then check every couple of weeks/months to make sure he hadn't used it, while still leaving him the option in case of emergency. Of course, she probably wouldn't have believed him able to not give in to the temptation, and it's hard to say whether she would have been right at that exact moment in time.

I still don't believe it's been explained why Harry didn't transmutate a one-crystal wide ring through the lock into paper. Is that part of what he blames himself for not thinking of?

For that matter, I wonder if the sky illusion on the Great Hall ceiling counts? It reflects real weather.

Considering McGonagall's first impulse was sending them back to their dormitories, I believe they just didn't think it through.

This assumes that the troll is the only threat. That's not a safe assumption to make.

That solution has the disadvantage of requiring the students to move through the halls, which is extremely hazardous. The Great Hall has its own risks, but the seventh year armies should be sufficient to secure it.

Somewhat-credible conjecture: It is not possible for one Time-Turner to transport another through time. So when conductor Harry, carrying his trunk supposedly full of passenger Harries (Harrys?), flips his Time-Turner ... something bad happens. Maybe the others get left behind somehow, or the Time-Turner just doesn't work, or the universe ends, or something. Consequence: at least in any consistent branch of the universe, Harry fails to get his army of copies.

Whether this method works or not is up to the GM; the as-stated rule is that "information cannot go back more than six hours in time, using any combination of Time-Turners", which would allow this, but it's possible that anything which results in someone having more than 30 hours to a day is also bad. Granted, the hypothesis that 6 hours is the universe simulator's buffer size would suggest that this works.

It's a bit scary that if this scheme fails, there's no clean way for it to fail. In the very simplest case -- you go back in time 6 hours and then try to go back in time 1 more hour -- presumably the Time-Turner just doesn't work and nothing happens. Here, that outcome is not self-consistent: there's only one spin of the Time-Turner, and if it fails then there are no multiple Harry Potters so there is no reason for it to fail.

So if this scheme goes against the Time-Turner constraints, the only consistent outcome is that something unspecified happens to one of the first 6 Harry Potters to prevent them from getting back into the trunk. And summoning unspecified obstacles by the power of Time-Turner consistency seems like a really bad idea.

To fix this, we could have each Harry Potter toss a 100-sided die and leave the loop on a 1 being rolled; then run this algorithm several times. It's likely that spontaneous catastrophic failure has a probability much less than 1%, so the most likely consistent loop assuming this scheme doesn't work is one in which Harry rolls a 1 early on, which is very unlikely to happen assuming this scheme does work. So if several trials of this algorithm consistently keep ending after 1-6 repetitions, then it's almost certain that the universe doesn't like it.

Well, he can get as much time as he wants in 40 minute intervals with no breaks in between. Smelly Harry must have been awake at least 1 hour per mark on his arm, unless he has at some point mastered Polyphasic sleep (which is completely contrary to his aberrant sleep cycles as mentioned previously) he is going to be significantly diminished in terms of mental acuity after a mere 24 or so cycles. He would need to spend a few cycles eating. After subjective days without sleep he should be moving into hallucination territory, barring some kind of magical aid. His "useful time" is only between 5:10-5:50 on each cycle, at other times he will be boarding or leaving the express.

It's a moderately good hack, but it isn't of infinite versatility, barring the addition of a bit more cheating to get around the sleep/food problems.

The method above might not work if we maintain a fixed past.

You see it can be compared to another similar situation.

Harry an hour (6 to 5 pm) in past and finds 4 time tuners with 4, 3, 2, 1 hours left.

Now harry has used all the five time tuners (but not all of their remaining hours) , done his work in the past and the time move to 5 again. here harry will have to leave 4 time tuners for another future harry to pick up. If we are preserving the past then the four time tuners should have the time left that the original time tuners had i.e.. 4, 3, 2, 1.

So you see even when harry uses these 4 extra time tuner he still will be unable to use it them to get back more than 6 hours in past.

Now this can be scaled to 1000 time tuners or 1000 harries with time tuners it would make no difference in the amount of time that can be transversed in past by using time tuner.

Summary :- Even if you find "n" more time turners once you go in the past, you would not be able to use them to go more then 6 hours in past because to preserve past you will have to leave "n" time tuners (after their use), thus have to leave as much time in them as you potentially gained earlier.

Sorry for grammar, spelling mistake, complicated language etc. I am bad at languages.

The method above might not work if we maintain a fixed past.

You see it can be compared to another similar situation.

Harry an hour (6 to 5 pm) in past and finds there 4 time tuners with 4, 3, 2, 1 hours left.

Now harry has used all the five time tuners (but not all of their remaining hours) , done his work in the past and the time move to 5 again. here harry will have to leave 4 time tuners for another future harry to pick up. If we are preserving the past then the four time tuners should have the time left that the original time tuners had i.e.. 4, 3, 2, 1.

So you see even when harry uses these 4 extra time tuner he still will be unable to use it them to get back more than 6 hours in past.

Now this can be scaled to 1000 time tuners or 1000 harries with time tuners it would make no difference in the amount of time that can be transversed in past by using time tuner.

Summary :- Even if you find "n" more time turners once you go in the past, you would not be able to use them to go more then 6 hours in past because to preserve past you will have to leave "n" time tuners (after their use), thus have to leave as much time in them as you potentially gained earlier.

Sorry for grammar, spelling mistake, complicated language etc. I am bad at languages.

If it's plausible for him to be burnt by a rebounding killing curse, then the evidence for a faked death is weak. If it's implausible, he'd have found a better method to fake his death.

Why would he fake his own death, though? He was winning.

This point is repeated in subsequent chapters - e.g. "burnt to a crisp", which given its inconsistency with Avada Kedavra's established effects, really makes it sound like foreshadowing. I do agree that we don't have strong evidence for a motive, though.

Also, limiting Harry's access to knowledge (warning off the other profs, warding the books, etc) makes Quirrell the sole conduit for advanced knowledge for Harry. (Or at least limits the competition). And Quirrell implied to Harry that he was at his nearly-unrestricted service. That gives Quirrell more access to Harry's thought processes (by the questions he asks) and more capacity to steer his choices.

As to what he's steering them toward, he pushed Harry off of new spells, which makes me wonder if he has an old one in mind. There was talk about rituals of sacrifice here (the blood-to-fire) and generally recently (Tracy Davis's invocation). It's possible that there's some ritual that Quirrell would like Harry to perform, not for what it manifests, but for the changes it makes to the caster.

I think it's more likely that Quirrell is being sincere, and that he is trying to avert the prophecy that he heard at the end of Ch 89. As evidence, I submit:

"You don't like science," Harry said slowly. "Why not?"
"Those fool Muggles will kill us all someday!" Professor Quirrell's voice had grown louder. "They will end it! End all of it!"

• Chapter 20

"HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN. HE IS HERE. HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD."

• Chapter 89

"... If I have to brute-force the problem by acquiring enough power and knowledge to just make it happen, I will."
Another pause.
"And to go about that," the man in the corner said, "you will use your favorite tool, science."
"Of course."
The Defense Professor exhaled, almost like a sigh. "I suppose that makes sense of it."

• Chapter 90

I'm actually impressed with Quirrell's control, here. We can judge how great his fear of death is from his response to Dementor exposure, and here we have a prophecy which (to him, at least) is signalling the end of the entire universe. He's spent decades desperately trying to find a way to avoid death, and now he thinks he's looking it straight in the face. And nobody in the story has even noticed that he's concerned, although I'm pretty sure he was showing his fear a little at the end of 90 there. He must be gibbering on the inside, and holding it together out of sheer determination.

Of that much I'm fairly confident. This next bit is speculation on my part. I'm not going to give a percentage, it's just a hunch, but it is my pet hunch which I've had for a long time.

Quirrell has it all wrong. HPMORverse is actually a simulation being run at some higher level of reality, and Harry is going to figure this out and either rewrite the universe to his will, or airlift everybody in the world the hell out of there by their bootstraps, thereby mass-producing immortality. Merlin was the last wizard to know that the universe was a sim and he patched it to stop people breaking it. Unfortunately this resulted in the loss of a whole lot of useful stuff which may very well have been grandfathered in.

The trick to the second one is that McGonagall's way of cheering Harry up is actually going to be quite predictable: she and Dumbledore are likely going to try bringing Harry's parents to Hogwarts.

Really? That doesn't sound like something I'd expect Dumbledore to do. It sounds transparently tactically dangerous given that someone close to Harry has already just died at Hogwarts, and his parents have no idea how to relate to what he's going through now anyway.

Like I said in another post, I suspect Quirrel simply wants Dumbledore and Minerva to get in Harry's way in order to get him to distrust them. Or perhaps I should say, to maintain the distrust that currently exists. Asking them to cheer Harry up will only have them keep treating Harry's feelings as a problem to be solved, like what he yelled at Fawkes for, and Quirrel knows this.

He's cut him off from Draco, Hermione, and now he's working on Minerva.

I suspect Quirrell's closing statements to McGonagall at the end of this chapter are not quite what they seem. I'm thinking of two in particular: the first, that he wants Harry kept away from the Restricted Section, and the second,

He set up a situation where Harry wants in the restricted section but McGonagall is trying to stop Harry. The result will be that Harry will get annoyed at McGonagall and Dumbledore for forbidden him access to the restricted section.

that he wants McGonagall and Dumbledore to try to restore Harry's mood by any means necessary.

Harry asked Quirrell to tell McGonagall that he shouldn't be disturbt. From Quirrell's perspective McGonagall is likely to do something that annoys Harry when she tries to restore his mood.

The trick to the second one is that McGonagall's way of cheering Harry up is actually going to be quite predictable: she and Dumbledore are likely going to try bringing Harry's parents to Hogwarts.

Huh. I assumed that Quirrell was trying to manipulate someone from the Order into to obliviating Harry to further alienate Harry from Dumbledore's side. Harry hasn't detected himself being obliviated yet, and that needs to happen in the next few chapters. But memory charming Harry to happiness a high entropy guess so I don't have much confidence in it.

One thing I am reading out of this is that Quirrell is (understandably) genuinely worried about what Harry might do, after the Prophecy.

Part of this is making him dependent on Quirrell for information, obviously, but part of this also seems to be a genuine desire to keep certain knowledge out of his hands - I'm 90% sure that the stock answer Vector and Flitwick will tell Harry about spell creation is the same one that Quirrell just gave, for example.

Why does he think of beefing up the restricted section's security only after his conversation with Harry? What did he learn?

I also don't see bringing Harry's parents to Hogwarts as being terribly predictable.

I read QuirrellMort as being honestly horrified by Harry's conclusions from Hermione's death. My take is that Quirrell engineered the troll to kill Hermione in order to get Harry to become an agent of death, not of life. He thinks Harry could possibly find a way to achieve his goals and wants to prevent both Harry from getting Hermione back and from inventing "universal healthcare". There is also the side benefit of driving a wedge between Harry and Albus / Minerva.

I'd be pretty shocked if we don't see a heroic Minerva, given how she reacted to Harry's rant and the fact that this incident provided the name for the chapter.

It's never too late for character growth. Let's just hope she doesn't do something stupid... I mean stupider than usual.

Keep in mind that while on the one hand, memory charms are a crazy broken superweapon for anyone with a bit of unrestrained creativity, they also seem to be a standard response for ordinary wizards on the spot dealing with muggles who've caught a slip in the Statute of Secrecy (for instance, a rampaging dragon.)

... But second, what the heck are Memory Charms doing outside the--

Right. Hogwarts. Crazies. Nevermind.

Or Quirrell, who has declared his intention to visit the restricted section, is planning to plant the book for Harry's 'benefit.'

the standard introductory text

NOT "how to cast a Memory Charm", NOT "the spells you are looking for", but rather, 'the information readily available to students'.

i.e. unceremoniously killed offscreen

nitpick: Hermionie wasn't just killed onscreen, she was front and center.

Imagine a cryonics enthusiast writing about a cryonics enthusiast making the explanation of his move a pun on a trope name ;-)

Does this describe an event that has already happened?

It's been debated constantly since the start because it's highlighted as important. The best guess was that it might have been when Voldemort attacked the Potters, but there's obvious problems with that (what's the silver? and as far as we know, no blood was shed by Voldemort since he favored AKs). Given that ch90 brings up blood as a powerful sacrificial element, it's looking more like it's about a future event and maybe a ritual by Harry - pursuant to bringing back Hermione being the obvious goal.

Note that of the italicized parts that appear at the start sporadically throughout the first ~20 chapters, this is now the only one that has not yet appeared later in the story (I went through and checked).

If a drop of blood is all that's required to summon fire that can burn through the walls of hogwarts, then what can liters of blood do?

The first 20 chapters mostly have similar italicized bits at the top. Many have come to pass, but Ch. 1, the most mysterious of the lot, I do not believe has.

One of the only things I can recall being referred to as a line, is the Line of Merlin Unbroken - the short rod Dumbledore has when presiding over the Wizengamot. Of course, that's not silver...

EDIT: Just expanding; the Line seems to both refer to the physical object Dumbledore holds, but also the succession of people, going back to Merlin - making Dumbledore literally a fraction of a line.

There is another ritual we know of which could be described by the above:

Even so, the most terrible ritual known to me demands only a rope which has hanged a man and a sword which has slain a >woman; and that for a ritual which promised to summon Death itself

Of course there are obvious problems with the exact wording; and it is probable that this ritual just summons a dementor.

a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line

A silver cord is commonly said to connect the spirit to the body during astral projection.

Considering that the closest we've seen to astral projection is Hoarcruxes, and they'd be pretty useless if they were that obvious, this doesn't seem like a likely explanation, but I still feel like throwing it out there.

you're uh, assigning just a tad too much power to the average biochemist.

The biggest problem I see with this is that in the past, Harry felt his father did not take him seriously. However, he now has power his father knows not, and he has resolved to do anything to bring her back - he could credibly threaten his father's career, for example.

If his father does not take him seriously, then credible threats are both difficult and costly (because once you have made the threat and they dismiss you, then you need to follow through).

Harry is also bad at threatening, and so I would not recommend it to him even if it were optimal for one with more skill.

Not only do I use that, it means that your comment renders as:

Hermione's body should now be at almost exactly five degrees Celsius [≈ recommended for keeping food cool] [≈ recommended for keeping food cool].

to me.

You don't want the meat to spoil, after all.

I'm switching from Firefox to Chrome, just so I can use this extension.

The word "very" in this sense means "literal". The prophecy is talking about actual stars.

Interesting idea. Unlikely though. PredictionBook link.

There is an error in your analysis. There is no reason to start 6 hours ago, since the alternative is being able to go back 6 hours in the future. Either way, he has the same amount of time. If he finds out he needs to do something in the past, then he could go back. The only difference between researching first and going back first, is that if he researches first, he keeps the option of using the time turner to do something else. (e.g. Use 6 versions of him to do something in parallel at the same time).

When choosing between closing doors available to him and researching, the rationalist researches first.

This list has been compiled on reddit some time ago. It goes up to chapter 85. Some things have been resolved since then.

I find it incredible that Quirrel would ever show his true emotional state on his face, unless he wanted to. Especially given this chapter's title.

McGonagall's lips twitch when she's stifling a smile (this is stated several times in the text). Perhaps the same is true of Quirrell? In the second case, canon!Quirrell is responsible for both trolls that occur in the first book and at least according to Harry Potter Wikia is supposed to have a talent for using trolls. In the first case... I think what happened when Voldemort killed Harry's parents involved a sacrificial ritual (Lily sacrificing her life for Harry), so Quirrell might have found that particular idea ironic. Or maybe he's just amused by the idea of Harry using sacrificial rituals because of previous events.

What he means is that he wishes that books on memory charms fit that description - but in fact they're not guarded at all or even in the restricted section of the library.

Interesting idea. However, given that Roger Bacon's diary is of interest as a scientific rather than wizardly historical artefact, and wizards wouldn't know an item of scientific value if it electrocuted them...

I don't think anybody gets as excited by a Prequels reference as they do by an Ender's Game or Naruto reference.

Okay, I did chuckle.

This is clearly a coincidence. The idea that Eliezer Yudkowsky approves of the SW prequels is unseemly, indeed blasphemous. I mean... it can't be true, can it?!

On a slightly (but not much) more serious note: there needs to be a reference to Darth Traya somewhere.

No, the abruptly-ended and grammatically-incorrect sentence preceding this passage indicates actual discontinuity:

"Dumbledore wasn't being very cooperative, and in any case this was several minutes after the critical location within Time"

Notice the lack of punctuation. The end of this sentence has been lopped off, and deliberately. Eliezer Yudkowsky does not make careless punctuation errors.

Yeah, it sounded like a first person perspective of Harry-in-shock to me.

Prediction: Harry will attempt to learn Obliviation, use his Time-Turner to go back to before, and attempt to mess with his own head to save Hermione while preserving his own experience of events.

This is more likely to not work than work.

Relating to the foreshadowing part,

Harry nodded, his eyes very wide. Then, after a second, "What do I get if I can make it happen on the last day of the school year?"

Brute force method:

1. Precommit to create a paradox if whatever arranges time in consistent loops doesn't give you what you want.
2. If you don't get what you want, receive a red or green slip of paper from your future self. Use time turner, hand to your past self whatever color of paper you didn't get. If you find that the paper has "Do not mess with time" on it, for the slip you hand to your past self, instead write "Fuck you, time."

3. Discover secrets of Atlantis, hack time travel, etc.

   The problem with this is that time can adjust to avoid the paradox at any point in the timeline, which means that if you are a person who would try to exploit this, the sperm that would have created you was outraced by another one. So perhaps existing depends on not using this. (Parfit's Hitchhiker)

The second bit does not accurately distinguish between a frys-njner ragvgl naq n aba-frys-njner ragvgl gung whfg vf "cebtenzzrq" jvgu gur erfcbafr bs "lrf" gb "ner lbh frys njner?". Hayrff lbh ner vzcylvat gung fbzrubj nfxvat gur dhrfgvba jvyy znxr gur cnvagvat orpbzr frys-njner fbzrubj?

That method would resurrect something but not the real Hermione.

That doesn't

Uryc Ibyqrzbeg trg erfheerpgrq, fb Dhveery jvyy fgrre Uneel gb qvssrerag zrgubqf (sbe rknzcyr, ol gryyvat gur abezny crbcyr gung Uneel fubhyq or qvffhnqrq sebz svthevat bhg ubj gb erfheerpg crbcyr ol 'gur abezny zrnaf')

Unless it does...

Draco and Lucius, Snape, Bellatrix, Amelia Bones. Maybe the Weasley parents or Nicholas Flamel. I haven't given up on Minerva. Grindelwald is still alive and undemented.

Snape, potentially.

To me it seemed obvious that Quirrel was just taking the opportunity to isolate Harry from Dumbledore-and-co. He's always tried to make Harry distrust Dumbledore. Now Harry will find them even more obstructionist to his goals, so he will only have Quirrel to go to with his ideas and plans.

I wouldn't be surprised if the next thing we see is Quirrel supplying Restricted books to Harry.

Given the chapter title, the first thought that leapt into my mind is "he's being exactly what Harry wants/expects to see, then being exactly what Minerva wants/expects to see, leaving no-one including us aware of what he actually wants or is actually going to do". Malus points to Minerva for the fact that he told her straight out what he was doing to Harry, but it didn't occur to her whether he might be doing the same to her.

What's wrong with assuming that Quirrell wants to keep the universe intact? Quote:

I have no great fondness for the universe, but I do live there.

Harry's lecture to Macgonnagle on identity-based strategy actually made me realize something about myself I feel is worth analysis... somewhere. I may or may not get back on that if I figure out if it's worth publishing.

I get the impression that this is a known part of the LW-sphere, but since no articles immediately come to mind that suggests there's space for one. I recommend committing to write something, and then deciding whether to put it into main or discussion based on how good you think it is at some specified point in the future.

I thought it might have been that he doesn't want Harry to destroy himself doing something stupid before he could take over the universe.

It seemed to me that Quirrel just wants to prevent Harry from bringing Hermione back so she doesn't affect his judgements (positively, but negatively for Quirrel).

In light of all the talk about heroic responsibility, my first thought was that if he really, really wanted Harry kept away from those books, he'd steal them or something. (This specific method isn't a very good one because it would raise suspicion, but there has to be a better way to keep them from Harry than going through Macgonnagle.) And maybe he was hoping that Harry would notice the increased wards and try to go there because of it, but that seems like he might be assuming too much.

This has got me quite convinced that Fred and Fred is going to happen. They are probably connected magically, rather than acoustically, so they might be able to communicate across time. This setup might create the time beacon Harry was wanting.

Or, maybe their connection does not link through time. Send a pair of Weasleys back in time. You now have 4 Weasleys. Wait not-quite-an-hour, and then send 4 Weasleys back in time… 4 Weasleys is twice the number of Weasleys. Are N Weasleys N/2 times as smart as 2 Weasleys? No. It is much more interesting if it is the connections that matter. HE is the Weasley hivemind.

They gave a respectful nod because they are smartasses.

Neville is neither dead, nor in immediate danger. In light of what happened to Hermione, in particular how all their precautions were bypassed, they will want to up Neville's security level, and I think it likely that this will come up before the arc is over, but I would not say that it has immediate level urgency.

Also, note that chapters 88 and 89 are titled "Time pressure", and the exact date and time is specified repeatedly throughout the text. In addition, there’s something funny in chapter 90: Right before Harry has the hypothermia idea, there's a discontinuity:

[The Headmaster] had vanished from where he was standing over the Weasley twins and come into existence beside Harry; George Weasley had discontinously teleported from where he was sitting to be kneeling next to his brother's side, and Fred was now lying straight with his eyes open and wincing as he breathed.

Right after Harry explains the Frigideiro, there’s this:

Fred and George started sobbing.

Which suggests a time loss (likely someone messing with Harry’s memory, the discontinuity sounds a bit like what Mr. Hat did). The sobbs might be because the twins knew what happened during that time, and realized that too long passed for the spell to do anything.

Harry also looks at the Time Turner when he gets it unlocked, and seems to notice or confirm something.

There’s a lot going on here we’re not told.

I didn't notice it either. But Eliezer posted this comment on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/1hh5ph/ch90_salvaging_gender_bias_in_hpmor/cauafkt He may've felt the need to bring it to wider attention.

Eliezer added it in response to reader speculations.

So we know, for egotistical example, that he did not add "Dumbledore had looked down over the side of the terrace and made a gesture before returning" in response to my post that included risking transfiguration sickness on the list of things for which Harry could get in trouble.

Or, at least, we know that is what the author wishes us to believe. dun dun daaaaaaaah

Back in the story's early days I predicted that prime factoring wouldn't work, because then the story wouldn't be about rationality any more... it would be about time travel. If my theory and your theory are syncretized then "the force" here is simply "Eliezer's plot generation efforts which will output a story consistent with his broader authorial intent".

In this model, the way the characters might be able to choice-fully manipulate "the force that chooses time loops" to give them what they want is by being genre savvy enough to have their planning process be the one that functions as a positive example of science informed x-rationality leading to good outcomes, and the stable time loops that come into existence won't be super dramatic, but they will helpfully nudge them closer to x-rationality-demonstrating victories. Harry's unlocked time turner (as of Chapter 90) becomes more interesting in this light.

However, it seems like there's an element of irony in this framing, because there is almost no scientific evidence that I'm aware of in the heuristics and biases literature (nor inspirational essays in Eliezer's sequences) that the skill of genre-savvy-ness is useful in real life. On the downside I've heard that keeping a diary may have a causal role in depression. On the upside I've also heard that reading more novels than normal tends to give people better "other human modeling" skills that can translate into higher salaries. But neither of these sorts of prosaic angles seem central to LW culture?

I thought it was more that we are just following the story in one of the very lucky universes that has no paradoxes.

Say there are LOTS (not infinite, but unimaginably large number) of universes. One for every configuration, every difference, every spontaneously created particle.

If a paradox is created, the universe ends. (or never was; depending on how you think about it).

We are following a story in one of the universes that did not end due to paradox.

In another one of these universes, harry continued with his experiment. This universe was never meant to be, and in fact it never was. Nobody was around in this universe to write a story about it.

In another one of these universes a toaster materialized out of nowhere next to harry. It stopped his time-travel experiment, and also confused him for the rest of his life. This story was confusing.

In another one of these universes our solar system was never formed. This story was dull.

In one of these universes something clicked in Harrys mind and made him impulsively send back a note saying "DON'T MESS WITH TIME TRAVEL" . This deterred further advances down this road, triggered a desire to send the note back and averted a paradox. This universe continued existing, and made for a good story.

Professor Quirrell spoke with eyes half-lidded, looking out like through slits. "More than the question of whom the prophecy spoke - who was meant to hear it? It is said that fates are spoken to those with the power to cause them or avert them.

http://hpmor.com/chapter/86

Quirrell is of the view that prophecies are sometimes of things that can be prevented.

But a prophecy can't be prevented from coming true. Otherwise it would just be a prediction.

The workaround used on Draco could credibly be the work of a hogwarts student. That was needed because it was intended to be blamed on Hermione. The hit on Hermione did not have that constraint -it is blatantly, obviously, undeniably, the work of a master wizard. The fact that the wards were fucked with is just one stone in the pile of evidence that this was not the work of a fellow student with a grudge, but the work of someone like Bellatrix, Lucius,Voldemort, or a highly competent wand-for-hire.

Sure, imagine that whoever killed Draco just did it by cutting off his legs. He would die, Dumbledore would arrive, and catch him. No way to avoid it - Dumbledore can use the time-turner to watch the murder.

The point of evading the wards isn't to ensure the success of the hit, it's to make sure that nobody hears about the death until the six-hour limit hides the murder.

Both Hermione's death and the complex setup used to kill Draco are consistent with wards that respond only to death.

The impression I got from canon is that it works exactly as HJPEV believes even in the Rowlingverse; there is some evidence against this (the resurrected marauders insisting that death doesn't hurt, LIMBO! Dumbledore's information might not be things Harry could have figured out on his own), but as I recall, one of the resurrected ones said "We're part of you, after all", and Dumbledore's "Well of course it's in your head! But why should that make it any less real?" Even if there is an afterlife in the Rowlingverse, it seems like she really did not intend for there to be any method of communicating with it.

Of course, HJPEV does not have access to a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so you're right that he's privileging his hypothesis, and should at least do the obvious test--come up with information that Hermione would know that Harry couldn't figure out on his own, use the stone and ask the Hermione that appears about it.

Phoenix

The method of resurrection should be 'no resurrection' or I'll have to stop recommending HPMOR.

I think that large rocks transfigured into something small are in general useful, and Dumbledore knew this.

Maybe it really was his father's rock.

Maybe James Potter carried around that specific huge rock, transfigured into something portable, for all the right reasons.

Maybe James even told Dumbledore that if anything every happened to him, Dumbledore should give Harry his cloak, his snitch, and his rock. Dumbles knows that Harry hates Quiddich and the Snitch most of all, so he's holding that one back until he thinks he can present it without it being rejected. The cloak was easy. And he's managed to make Harry carry the rock, so that's got to me making Dead James happy.

I'd suggest that Potters have carried that rock for generations -- for all the right reasons of course -- except that Dumbledore wouldn't ignore heritage like that. He'd call it The Potter Rock or something.

No. The twins know how to keep a secret, even from themselves. Perhaps too well from themselves.

Presumably not, modulo memory charms.