Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 119

Man, that's beautiful. What does Bellatrix Black want most, that Harry can offer?

She wants Tom Riddle to love her.

My bet is that the last bit will be polyamory in the epilogue.

Note that using the stone for human transfigureation, he can perform sex changes.

Boy-who-lived gets Draco Malfoy pregnant?

I did find that reference quite amusing. I had assumed Harry was being sarcastic in chapter 6:

Professor McGonagall pointed toward a shop that looked as if it had been made from flesh instead of bricks and covered in fur instead of paint. "Small pets are permitted at Hogwarts - you could get an owl to send letters, for example -"

"Can I pay a Knut or something and rent an owl when I need to send mail?"

"Yes," said Professor McGonagall.

"Then I think emphatically no."

Professor McGonagall nodded, as though ticking off a point. "Might I ask why not?"

"I had a pet rock once. It died."

I think there is evidence that "magic" has natural language processing and is capable of taking context and intent into account. I don't know that Harry wouldn't be unable to interpret distorting the world as killing everyone. Particularly dice the person he gave the vow to was particularly concerned about and motivated by the death of people (or at least of one specific person).

In the text, they made it clear that the vow was based on the meaning of the words and not the words itself. V said that it was important that everyone understood the meaning.

Harry would not consider star lifting or terraforming or the creation of a virtual world at the expense of the actual one to be 'destroying the world'. He would considering 'destroying the world' to mean 'the ending of all life' or somesuch.

So you mean that Voldie screwed it up AGAIN when he tried to mess with a prophecy? Man, some people are simply not meant to hear prophecies.

On the other hand, the Vow did not change Harry's terminal goals. While he may not work to undermine the Vow itself, it is possible that before coming to the horrible realization that he has to protect the world above its people, he lets enough slip to other so that they may find a way to remove the Vow (or put him back in a box). Also, the Vow has some loopholes:

That I shall not... by any act of mine... destroy the world... I shall take no chances... in not destroying the world... if my >hand is forced... I may take the course... of lesser destruction over greater destruction... unless it seems to me that this >Vow itself... leads to the world's end... and the friend... in whom I have confided honestly... agrees that this is so. By my >own free will... If a good agent ever learns the full text of the Vow, they can use the loophole to make a dead man's switch and destroy the world if a significant fraction of its people are gone. Also "it seems that this Vow itself leads to the world's end" would probably be true if Harry ends up killing everyone to save "the world". More specifically, when making the Vow, Harry was probably picturing the people in it rather than the physical planet. Because Atlanteans did not speak English, it seems reasonable to assume that the intended meaning of the speaker, rather than the actual words he used, is binding. He may yet get out of this one.

I think you are right. I hadn't considered that, and I don't think Harry has either, but while Harry was thinking that "destroying the world" meant killing all the dudes, the Death Eaters were thinking of the ground blowing up, and there were two of them, so their interpretation probably prevails.

+1, yeah, great chapter. As Harry says, sometimes "that explains it" doesn't fully cover it.

I liked this chapter a lot too, though I liked 108, 111, and 115 a similar amount.

What is a wibbler by the way? I google it and all I get doesn't make sense.

Wizards seem to be overly skeptical of the information that they get from their magical detection spells, an analogue to what some muggle scientists call algorithm aversion. (As evidenced by the current confusion about Hermione's nature, and the lack of response when the wards previously identified The Defense Professor as her killer.)

When a magical detection spell says that a human is really a unicorn, is it likelier that the spell is accurate or that whatever Dark ritual fueled Hermione's resurrection has residual effects that interfere with the usual function of said detection spell?

Wizards seem to be overly skeptical of the information that they get from their magical detection spells, an analogue to what some muggle scientists call algorithm aversion.

It's not clear for the wizards what it's supposed to mean that Hermoine is a unicorn.

But then, Dumbledore seemed to think, after listening to all the prophecies, that the end of the world was inevitable, and that the optimal goal was not about preventing it.

Recent chapters make me wonder what "and his time" really means, as well as "the world and its magic."

I can understand destroying the world, but how can the Interdict make the loss of the world's magic less likely? Actually, are "magic" and "the world's magic" likely to refer to the same thing? Is the source of magic a physically embodied thing, and if so is it on Earth?

There's a limit on a person going back, but I don't know about things. So maybe a bunch of people with time-turners could hand off the stone.

I don't know how often Eliezer reads either these threads, or the ones on r/HPMOR. If he reads them often enough, hopefully he'll take great considerations like this one, and create a bonus or omake chapter in which Harry thinks all the best suggestions through. It would be of great service to us fans.

But didn't he note in the confrontation in the Defense Against the Dark Arts class that Harry had chosen Quirrell as his Wise Old Wizard?

"“Harry… you must realize that if you choose this man as your teacher and your friend, your first mentor, then one way or another you will lose him, and the manner in which you lose him may or may not allow you to ever get him back.”"

Dumbledore's comment in his note just don't seem congruent with this comment earlier on, and it's this comment and not the note which seems congruent with reality.

I noticed that too--I'm not sure what it is with Moody, but in an earlier revision of Chapter 97 he'd ended the chapter by saying "what the crap--" (it's now been changed to "WHAT -"). It's unclear if EY edited the earlier chapter because it wasn't very British or because it seemed out-of-place, but for whatever reason, he's saying it again now.

Harry's sleep cycle has been adjusted to a 30-hour day in Chapter 65, in the same way that Dumbledore had previously adjusted it to a 26-hour day.

That is a very interesting suggestion. What probability do you assign to it?

Why is Harry special? His sleep cycle? Anybody can use a time turner.

There is no way Emma Watson can get behind a story that angered feminists so much.

Eliezer finds her more intimidating /hypothesis

Hm, any particular reason, if Harry is already discussing other vulnerable info like having a transfigured Voldemort, he won't fess up to the part where Quirrel was Voldemort and that he won single-handedly?

Harry's upper hand relies on the idea that Dumbledore knew exactly what he was doing, and them that Dumbledore hired Voldemort to teach children for a year would undermine that.

Incidentally, my P(Dumbledore knew about Quirrelmort) just went way up this chapter.

My feeling is Harry doesn't want everyone knowing that he, 11-year-old warrior of light, killed 36 death eaters. People would always be wondering if you were evil after that.

I gotta say, I've been wanting to know what intelligent people like Moody and Amelia made of Harry's derp story, and that it wouldn't turn out that "Eliezer wants us to believe that everyone in Magical Britain really is that stupid" - and I got precisely what I wished for. Great!

Maybe they are on to him, but they see little reason to let him know that until they have better evidence?

The more I come back to this story, the more I like him, and I had felt he was well written to begin with. There are moments I find not just believable but moving, like after Harry rejects his phoenix:

I truly do not know if it was the right thing, or the wrong thing. If I knew, Harry, I would have spoken. But I -" Dumbledore's voice broke, then. "I am nothing but a foolish young boy who has become a foolish old man, and I have no wisdom."

It always stops me when I get to that part.

And there were ones that were moving in a not-sad way, like his talking about all the Tolkien copies he's received and how he treasures them. I remember that bringing a real smile to my face.

Not in the least. As the endgame plays out, I'm more certain than ever I'll win my bet against it winning a Hugo for Best Novel.

To have a chance of winning, MoR needed two things:

1. an ending that blew peoples' minds and moved the work as a whole from pretty good to extraordinary
2. to gain a SF professional following

The ending is pretty good but not fantastic, and one of the few professionals openly praising it, David Brin, has cooled a bit on it (in part because he's a lazy reader and in favor of his own much more stupid ending, true, but cooled nonetheless), so it has been doing neither and, as it uses up chapter after chapter, sealing its fate. Should've taken my offer to sell the bet at a discount.

Context?

Are you interested in making more bets of this type?

Hopefully the apparent time limit on the Philosopher's Stone isn't going to get worse over time.

Good point. A time limit of 3:54 does seem too arbitrary to be hard-coded.

Harry also hasn't considered that it may only be good for some finite number of permanent transfigurations. He's going to try to use it many more times than it probably has been used in a very long time.

At least he only intends to use the Stone as a stop-gap measure for fighting death until he is able to properly end the world.

[edited]

Huh? Harry thought it was McGonagall. What in this chapter changes that?

I'd been wondering that forever.

His explanation on Reddit is that his style is too distinctive to go undetected.

For one, it would mean he could never talk about his work "as himself", e.g. on Facebook or Reddit, unless he wanted to set up and constantly use dummy accounts, which is both time-consuming and sometimes in violation of site T&Cs.

There seem to be much more changes, even that is probably the most important one.

Time Turners don't work the same (in canon, there is no hard limit on 6 hours, it just becomes exponentially dangerous if you try that), the Sirius Black/Pettigrew thing doesn't turn out the same at all, the Free Transfiguration stuff doesn't seem to work the same, ...

And as others mentioned, Voldemort is much more competent.

So, this is the single change that makes this story an AU?

I was thinking along those lines as well, but at that point in time Voldemort was already significantly different from canon.

As a point of interest, wasn't it Merlin's original intent that, at minimum, everyone mentioned in a prophecy should have access to it? It was only centuries later that the Unspeakables sealed the prophecy records away, so why does the Line of Merlin Unbroken have a function for bypassing that seal, how does anyone know this, and why is using it forbidden?

Right at the front of the whole fic he says this isn't SPoD.

So, this is the single change that makes this story an AU?

From chapter 1:

This is not a strict single-point-of-departure fic - There exists a primary point of departure, at some point in the past, but also other alterations. The best term I've heard for this fic is "parallel universe."

Well, that and the differences in the setting/magic (there's no Free Transfiguration in canon, for instance, and the Mirror is different - there are less Mysterious Ancient Artefacts generally - and Horcruxes run on different mechanics ... stuff like that.)

And Voldemort is just inherently smarter than everyone else, too, for no in-story reason I can discern; he just is, it's part of the conceit. (Although maybe that was Albus' fault too, somehow?)

Narcissa

"Phoenix's Price is the password that opens the stairwell to the room with broken wands, pictures and Pensieve vials. Phoenix's Fate is the password that opens the final door into that room. Both times Dumbledore takes Harry to the room, he speaks the first password, then the second.

Phoenix's Price room held broken wands and other miscellaneous items reminding him of each of the friends he's lost in his battles.

... You know, if I had had to predict which character would end up as a magical girl, Voldemort would've been at the bottom of my list...

What's the something? He seems to have successfully caused Harry to defeat Voldemort

Splat. Boing. Splat. Splat.

Saying nothing is a reaction. We're talking about poeple who knows how to keep their reactions shut down and seems to have secret agenda to hide from each other. They underreact also about Harry's being Tom Riddle Jr.

By that point, the story will have propagated far enough that people probably won't believe her even if she denies it, and it'll just make her look crazy.

Plus trying to reveal that Harry was lying will damage his reputation and sabotage his efforts to cure death etc. just as they're gearing up.

That would be CelestAI, and that would be a colossal screwup.

The thing, if no wizards are dying any more, how do you get those Unbreakable Vows in any ethical way?

Honestly I think you just have to throw up your hands at the Unbreakable Vow. Nothing about Wizarding society makes the slightest bit of sense once you realize that they have the Unbreakable Vow. It wouldn't look like it does.

I like "The Girl Who Lived Again".

How about "Unicorn Troll Jesus"?

I would have preferred Girl-Who-Returned.

How about “Girl-Whose-Name-Contains-Too-Many-Hyphens”?

"Girl who came back".

Better than "Undead" X-)

In Chapter 46, he gives her a sealed note containing the explanation.

But if you ever need to fight Dementors, the secret is written here, cryptically, so that if someone doesn’t know it’s about Dementors and the Patronus Charm, they won’t know what it means...

Eliezer is planning an epilogue that takes place during the protagonists' 7th year at Hogwarts. It seems fairly safe to infer that by the end of chapter 122 Harry will not yet have torn the stars apart and gained root access to the Source of Magic.

[EDITED to add: On the other hand, there's a reasonable chance that we get to see Hermione taking out a lot of Dementors. That might be a bit awesome.]

I read Harry's suggestion not to investigate, and her responding smirk, as indicating that's it's already tacitly understood that the good guys actually killed the death eaters somehow. This room seems likely to be pretty ok with that, maybe except McGonagall.

Even she is aware that when a powerful wizard tells you to do something as part of keeping a dark magic ritual secret, you do what you are told.

I would expect her to first ask the ghost before mentioning its existence to Harry.

If only his teacher hadn't been Lord Frickin' Voldemort.

Well, you might want to figure out whether the fanfic would bootstrap itself and airgap the computer you write it on. I'm sure that will work to contain it....

For that matter, "mention" is misspelled as "mentio" in the A/N.