Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 104

Ironic that The Watson actually got the right answer...

Somehow I can't see Sprout having Hat-and-Cloak's eloquence, and I doubt you can Imperius someone to be significantly more eloquent than their usual self.

That, and title of this chapter is The Truth, Pt 1, Riddles and Answers. As in two Tom Riddles.

It's odd, because Quirrell went so far out of his way to appear to be dying. He set himself up to be caught drinking unicorn's blood. So it's very strange for him to give that away.

Magic is, in the end, zero-sum.

Doesn't Harry spend at least the first half of the story being variously shocked and outraged at how magic does not abide by the laws of thermodynamics? See Aguamenti producing water out of nothing.

Even the laws governing potions aren't really a case of equivalent exchange: the heat of the Ashwinder eggs disperses into the surrounding environment and is bestowed upon any potion made using them.

Harry and Quirrell are partial backups of Voldemort

I can see how Harry is a partial backup, as he doesn't have all the memories of Voldemort.

But why consider Quirrell a partial backup? I always thought of him as the fully transferred Voldemort, with Voldemort going through time from one host to the next.

This could just be a developmental thing

There have been lots of instances of comparisons between the lives of Q and Harry along the lines of "how would Q's life been different if Q had been in Harry's position."

That would fit with EY's general ideology of all human lives having value.

A bunch of unspecified Muggle items he got the Weasleys to obtain for him.

You're missing sextillions of resources, although only a few hundred billion are in this galaxy and only one is near enough to use immediately without FTL.

The stunning aspect of "the secret to creating new potions" isn't just that you can expend energy accumulated in some magical ingredient, it's that sunlight counts as magical energy. Yottawatts of power plus the ability to transmute elements might be useful...

The Killing Curse 2.0. Harry is never going to hate someone enough to want them dead,

ಠ_ಠ Why are you taking Harry's far mode pronouncements as binding on his near mode actions? Not only is that dubious for humans in general, we know Harry has a mysterious dark side that can take control and does want people dead if they're annoying.

I could imagine him being sufficiently angry with Quirrel to consciously put him outside of his monkeysphere

I don't see how that's different from "hating" Quirrel; if you Other someone by being angry at them, you don't stop being angry at them once they're Othered.

he can send information back another six as long as he figures out the plan now.

How? Remember the bits about being careful to not leak info to allow people to go back in time? (Though 'info' clearly is defined as being 'plot-relevant info' rather than 'physics-relevant info,' so that independent time travel is possible at all.)

Am I missing any resources?

Some others, off the top of my head.

• Harry knows enough mind-magic to make a person forget every life memory involving the color blue, or their left arm (or cough their animagus form cough)

• The imprisoned Beatrix had as much magic as a first year student, and it was considered conceivable that she could complete an animagus transformation. Harry's animagus form, like his Patronus form, would be a person.

• Harry has mental ability to become whoever he believes he is.

• Cedric Diggory and the Weasley twins have enough magic to cast the spell of cursed fire, which can destroy powerful magical devices (such as Horcruxes and the Deathly Hallows).

• Cedric has a time-turner

• Weasleys are the heirs of Gryffindor.

Partial Transfiguration

Also the controlled transformation Harry learned about in Chapter 104.

The Killing Curse 2.0. Harry is never going to hate someone enough to want them dead, but I could imagine him being sufficiently angry with Quirrell to consciously put him outside of his monkeysphere - aka, not care/be indifferent to his death.

Harry won't have enough magic to cast the killing curse for a few years. The character of Lesath Lestrange only exists to give Harry a minion who can cast the killing curse.

I take the current fight against genre-awareness as some indication that we should not expect Harry to solve death. I more expect he'll end up in a long-term fight against it, with something like magical cryonics (transfiguration or the like) as the best short-term response to actual death.

but in all seriousness: I expect Harry to solve Death before the end of the fic - it's too central to both Harry's current motive and thus the current plot arc, and Eliezer's motives in writing this fic, to avoid, even putting aside the conspicuous Peverell prophecy.

EY also likes to point out the virtues of hard work. It might seem... too easy, too trivial for an 11 year old to solve death in less than a year.

Cedric isn't a professor, so him using the Memory Charm on a student would trigger the wards.

Which I suppose would also work as a last resort way of calling for backup.

If Harry had time to duplicate the Cloak of Invisibility (bearing in mind Lesath is already wearing it), couldn't he wear a copy himself?

furthermore Memory Charmed Harry to forget him so that no one could read Harry's mind and figure out that backup plan.

That does seem a prudent precaution in a world of mind readers.

I also suspect that the next chapter will contain a long discussion between Harry and Quirrel before any serious action

Bayes points for me! But I suppose that one was pretty easy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYyUUrga7kU
Do not question super thinking powers.

Though to be fair, the HPMoR chapter was waay better about it. EDIT: I liked it more on second reading, and even more on third. This isn't just about "same time", it's also things like "look at all the security your note from the future instructed you to discard".

There were many interlocking pieces of evidence already pointing to the truth of Q == V (I think readers were actually chastising Harry for not figuring it out earlier at some point); the perfect timing of this particular incident was simply the part that happened to break Harry's voluntary suspension of disbelief enough for him to actually start trying to piece it all together.

Not exactly. A lot of it was trying to figure out just what set of people had their presence unexplained. If some of them had perfectly understandable reasons for being there right then without intervention, then his new explanation would not need to cover them.

It turned out that everyone (perhaps except Snape) needed explanation, including himself, so it kind of looked like he ended up where he started, though he was on much firmer footing afterwards.

Ha, but it does start with a conviction that intelligent design is involved. I think that makes it better and not worse.

Yeah, this part of the chapter seems heavy with Rand-like author tract. The fake note analysis made up for it, though.

Legilimensed? I thought Sprout was Imperiused?

I think that's more likely Quirrell actively casting that causes the anxiety.

I agree that legilimensed Sprout's magic is activating the sense of doom. But the troll was not legilimensed, so there's no reason for the sense of doom to activate.

I may be wrong, but intuitively it seems that when Voldemort causes Sprout to cast a spell, that spell counts as originating from Voldemort, not Sprout -- and that is what makes it activate the sense of doom. Whereas the troll was acting on its own accord, and so didn't activate the sense of doom.

Also, Harry shot Sprout and didn't trigger doom. Either it's just sloppy writing on Eliezer's part, or Sprout wasn't mind-controlled after all, or Quirrell dispelled his magic when Sprout fell.

Who says he need Harry to get the Stone? For all we know, he wants Harry to look into the Mirror of Desire in the hope that this will explain what the %&* Harry wants.

I'm still really curious how the Deathly Hallows are going to tie into this.

Okay. Hm. I think maybe you can't transfigure Hermione into Hermione if you don't have a true image of what Hermione was like. But if you had the Resurrection Stone, maybe you could use it to create a true image to work from?

No idea about the wand/cloak.

Also, where the hell is Cedric Diggory?

Maybe under Harry's other invisibility cloak. He has two -- a time-turned one and a non-time-turned on.

Isn't the whole shtick with the Mirror that it will only give the stone to someone who doesn't want to use it?

Doesn't Harry want to defeat Death more than anyone? And is likely hauling around a transfigured Hermione to do just that?

Is Harry just the backup ritual in case they can't find the Stone?

Or, is it all just a Harry and Hermione plot to get the Stone to mass produce immortality for all?

He went with Lesath, not Cedric.

where the hell is Cedric Diggory?

Under Harry's other Invisibility Cloak. He has a time-turned one and a non-time-turned one.

It tried to point to all the horcruxes in Hogwarts at once, and crashed because of an unchecked stack overflow.

If there's a disturbance which Dumbledore suspects is a distraction, why did he send only Snape, rather than several aurors/coming himself?

Hypothesis: the situation is a trap for Voldemort. The corridor itself is blatantly a trap - it's easy to enter, but we know from Fred and George that it's full of invisible wards. Voldemort wouldn't risk confronting Dumbledore, and an unguarded corridor would be too suspicious, but Snape is just right in terms of difficulty level (and also has the option of going "my lord, you have returned!", surviving an encounter which would be fatal for anyone else, and possibly sneaking off to call Dumbledore).

The flaw with this is that the trap is really obvious, and Voldemort's intelligence is known to be very high, so it's implausible that he would enter the corridor at all unless he was absolutely certain of being able to steal the Stone despite the wards, and before Dumbledore could return.

If there's a disturbance which Dumbledore suspects is a distraction, why did he send only Snape, rather than several aurors/coming himself?

In canon, Dumbledore is called away for some business (Supreme Mugwump duties?), and I presume the same happens here. Now, why Dumbledore didn't time-turner to both be at that business and here is harder to say--unless Quirrel explicitly used the time-turner prevention on going back more than X hours to send a message to Dumbledore preventing him from using his time-turner? I didn't look closely enough at those rules to figure out whether or not it would be likely to work (and don't have the time to pull out the relevant bits of HPMOR).

Quirrell's internal monologue makes that unlikely.

Doubtful. Canon states that Riddle felt affection for Hogwarts, and this is implied to be the spell of cursed fire that permanently costs you a drop of blood to cast.

I suspect he's not the sort of fellow who plays for only one objective at a time.

The outcome of the comedy of errors that we witnessed, was that Harry realised that Quirrell was Voldemort. If this was Quirrell's explicit intention, then that's strange because there are much more efficient ways for him to do this

Maybe the point is for Harry to not go that extra step, and realize that Q wanted him to know at that point?

Though I think the simpler explanation is just that Q's plan failed, and now he is resorting to his backup plan. That Q is always N+1 to Harry's N strikes me as a false portrayal of human reasoning and knowledge.

Don't forget that Quirrell can sense Harry's emotions (cf. coming to a resolution, and the prophecy). Under the circumstances, he doesn't need mind-reading to realise that Harry's figured him out.

Good point. As skeptical_lurker said:

The mirror shows what you want, so the idea is a "good" person like canon Harry would see themselves finding the stone (which allows them to actually find the stone), whereas a "bad" person would see themselves drinking elixir of youth or making gold. Harry would presumable see himself providing everyone with elixir of youth, which means that he would not see himself finding the stone, which means he could not find the stone.

In that case, we would assume that Bellatrix would see herself presenting the stone to Voldemort and pleasing him, which would allow her to find it. In fact, that's a reasonably satisfying answer to why he wanted her out of Azkaban. So why does he even need Harry?

I understood it to be implied that the message was actually set in advance to mislead Harry into believing time travel was involved.

Or that Harry then forges Quirrel forging his signature.

I thought it was more of a hint as to how he's going to bring Hermione back. Seems to me like surgery gets a lot easier when you can just partially un-transfigure the injured part and fix it, while leaving all the vitals transfigured into something unchanging, like a rock.

I'm too obsessed with antimatter

Prediction:

Harry gets the Snitch eliminated from Quidditch. Not just in Hogwarts, but in the big leagues as well - they don't want a Germany vs. Austria on their hands.

All of the celebrity Quidditch players of the world - Victor Krum, Ludo Bagman, Finbar Quigley - are distraught by these sudden and drastic changes to a traditional game they've loved for many years. At the ceremony marking the changes, some of them tear up.

The Daily Prophet headline is "BOY WHO LIVED TEARS UP THE STARS"

Eliezer gives all of us a long lecture about how the prior for somebody making celebrities cry is so much higher than the prior for someone literally ripping the Sun apart that the latter hypothesis should never even have entered our consideration, regardless of how much more natural an interpretation of the prophecy it is.

I would have thought the obvious answer is to stop adding match points onto house points and instead simply give a fixed number of house points to the winner.

I'll just note that the presence of the Snitch in Quidditch has historically survived a match that took 3 months because nobody could catch the damned thing.

I'm pro-Snitch.

Harry's gripe about the snitch, which is that it trivializes the rest of the game, isn't the problem on display here.

The issue currently afflicting the user experience is that the House Cup doesn't just rely on Quidditch Win/Loss, but also on the magnitude of the win/loss. Therefore, two teams can collaborate to play a game of such magnitude that it obliterates all other considerations.

A clock wouldn't actually solve this, (they could just agree to exchange points for the first X minutes, then play for real for an abbreviated endgame when time pressure became acute).

A solution to the problem must prevent Quidditch collusion from making one of the last two teams to play Quidditch automatically win the House Cup, but simultaneously maintain the primacy of Quidditch in determining the House Cup (because otherwise students won't care about the House Cup).

A simple solution seems to be that rather than adding the points of both winners and losers to their Houses respective scores the winner is awarded a static (high) number of points.

Whenever a snitch is caught, it is marked as a score and released. A team's final score is the product of their snitch-catches with their quaffle-goals.

The game ends when a team's score reaches or exceeds 100.

Suppose there is a clock that determines the end of the game. Then Quidditch becomes similar to football (of the non-American variety) or basketball, with a slightly more hostile field. But it loses some drama from the Seeker no longer having a role.

I do think that multiple snitches is a good way to go, but video games provide the right role for them: power-ups. Then there's lots of room to get creative. Suppose there are, say, three snitches active at any time, in order to get their effect they have to be held (but they also attract the attention of the Bludgers, which has lots of potential for manipulation), and they all have a maximum duration of, say, two minutes, at which point the Snitch is depleted and is replaced by another one from the supply (and it reenters the supply to be available when the next one is depleted). Probably the seeker gets a faint glow of whatever color Snitch they're holding, both to make it more obvious to spectators and to make it easier for the other team to try to interrupt the Seeker's boosting of their team.

1. Raw points: a golden Snitch is worth 20 points if you manage to hold onto it the whole period.
2. Amplifying team members: a blue snitch increases the points scored through the Quaffle by your team, and a red snitch makes everyone on your team fly a bit faster. A green snitch makes the opposing side's goal hoops a bit larger, and an orange snitch makes your hoops smaller.
3. Replacing team members: a white snitch causes the Bludgers to avoid members of your team (both making Beaters unnecessary and less likely to help, since the Bludgers would avoid getting hit). A black snitch halves or eliminates points scored by the other team (giving your Keeper a break).
4. Meta: the team composition seems unforgiving to increasing or decreasing the number of players, but it might be reasonable to have one that lets you field an extra player or knock out one of their players (likely chosen by the opposing team captain), but here there are significant frictional costs for moving players on or off the team that might not be appropriate for something that only lasts two minutes.

I think just having the snitch be worth zero or a very nominal amount of points works fine. This makes the core of the game the regular point scoring and play, and makes the snitch-hunting important but more about biding your time and trying to pounce on the snitch when your team gets ahead.

Make it worth 20-30 points and keep it as the game-ender. It's only going to make a difference if the game is close, so the Quaffle remains relevant.

Eliminating the snitch won't even solve the problem entirely. Sure, if there's an hour time limit, the game won't take forever, but they could still rack up points by alternately letting each other score 30 points. Come to think of it, why didn't they? They could have way more points by now.

Make the game end when the clock runs over, or when the snitch is caught, whichever is sooner. And make the snitch worth ~half the typical point spread of a match.

Make it worth fewer points, make the game not end when the snitch is caught (it's re-released and can be chased and caught again, so it's just another way of scoring points)...

Not necessarily. Dumbledore implies that Lily used a potion, and potions may not need the Philosopher's Stone for their effects to be permanent. (Harry thinks it's the Thestral blood, and guesses that Thestral blood is also responsible for the permanency of his Cloak's magic.)

Petunia was made pretty by a potion that made her ill for an extended period, which doesn't sound like the Philosopher's Stone. Interesting theory, but I lean towards it being false.

How about putting the prediction on predictionbook and linking them?

The mirror shows what you want, so the idea is a "good" person like canon Harry would see themselves finding the stone (which allows them to actually find the stone), whereas a "bad" person would see themselves drinking elixir of youth or making gold. Harry would presumable see himself providing everyone with elixir of youth, which means that he would not see himself finding the stone, which means he could not find the stone.

I still consider it unlikely that Voldemort is keeping Harry alive just to get the Stone.

I thought the canon was that the mirror would only give the stone to someone who didn't want to use it. Doesn't Harry want to use it more and more often than anyone else?

I would imagine a wide range of intrinsic altruistic natures allow one to get it out of the mirror when your true motivation is to bring back your dead friend.

We've gotten much less senses of doom with this encounter with Quirrell than any in the past as far as I can tell. Only Sprout's magic caused apprehension, Q not at all.

Was Quirrell in control of the sense of doom all along? Has something changed?

What on earth makes you think that a gun is more deadly than Avada Kedavra in Voldemort's hands?

Explain?

I think it's more likely that Quirrell has the Resurrection Stone. When Harry shows him the Deathly Hallows symbol, he cuts their meeting short and hurries off somewhere. In canon, the stone was set into the Gaunt family ring, which Quirrell would have seen and would know the location of (it is implied that HPMOR follows the canon relationship between Tom Riddle and his family: "I have long since resolved my parental issues to my own satisfaction", "my family are long since dead at the Dark Lord's hand", Snape and Moody meeting at Tom Riddle Senior's grave).

Perhaps, especially since I assumed the Philosopher's Stone was under the lampshade in Dumbledore's office.

Like was their a particular message that this sort of reasoning is (particularly) poor?

I think this was yet another hint that obgu bs gurz ner Gbz Evqqyr. I think that the "world is mad" reasoning is one that Eliezer endorses in some sense--that is, there is a special kinship between the Only Sane People, but that kinship should not override other strategic and moral concerns.

This simply cant be the first time some house has exploited the rules to steal the cup. Its a patently obvious strategy...

There's what, 16 chapters left? Still plenty of chaos left to ensue.

On the other hand, I didn't see it at all, so it takes all sorts, I guess.