Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 6

And Mad Eye is Bruce Schneier.

Man, this just makes the fanfic-as-idealized-autobiography bells go off in my head even more.

(Also, I totally sympathize on the most-upvoted sadness.)

I've been getting this impression, too; there have been several occasions where Quirrell has advocated something very close to Hanson's signaling theory of human behavior.

Nonsense! Quirrell isn't a whiny self-absorbed dork always happy to spout rash idiocy purely for the thrill of gathering contrarian cred and to signal that he is not one of those stupid superficial sheep who only care about signaling.

(The above is at least partly unfair and I'll take the thoroughly deserved karma hit - it felt good to throw out that little piece of bile.)

Those would all be excellent ideas if Lesath was a perfect Occulemens. As it is, as far as Harry knows Snape may very well be mind-reading as a matter of routine. He's probably get away with claiming to be playing along for the sake of manipulating Lesath, but given the circumstances cannot be blamed for playing it safe.

"Acquire friends. Acquire power. Acquire happiness. Try to publicly join a faction, if any will have you, so that you aren't a loner associated with the one Death Eater that even other Death Eaters repudiate, but are instead associated with respectable Slytherins. If Slytherins won't have you because you're worthless as an ally, try moving to Hufflepuff. Note that Neville was willing to defend you from bullies; make him and others like him like you. Publicly repudiate your mother if plausible."

I like this idea, except I'd leave out the last bit if it were me. You've already left yourself some wiggle room with the "if plausible," so you probably wouldn't get Lesath into much trouble that way, but given what we've seen of him fanatic & public loyalty seems to be a big part of his nature. It's probably the only reason he's in Slytherin (loyalty to the idea of Slytherin, I mean--I bet he had to beg the Sorting Hat, as otherwise he seems completely unsuited to the House). It looks like he's formed his identity around that loyalty, and it might do a number on his head if he had to suddenly act in an inconsistent manner.

That capacity for loyalty would make him a great minion though. Harry already caught himself wishing for a Bella of his own, and now! Here's her son, pledging his life...

Harry missed an opportunity to do good with Lesath.

Agreed. I think if Harry had had proper prep time (which he would have if he hadn't assumed it was a different L.L.) he would most likely have done this. Unless Hermione has succeeded in shaming him into stopping.

As it is, my story-pattern-matching is yelling that Harry is going to be exposed by Lesath trying to help him.

There is a strong similarity to a certain storyline in Death Note, isn't there? But unlike Mikami, Lesath doesn't have the power to expose Harry other than by coincidence, because Harry hasn't trusted him with any information.

There's certainly a danger of Lesath ridding him of a meddlesome priest, or jumping in front of an Avada Kedavra.

I like this analogy.

Dumbledore's cost per plot is also very low: he has a large supply of minions whose time would otherwise be wasted playing Unicorn Attack, and he has no credibility to lose when his plots fail.

He also tries to force his rivals to be play the same way, since they don't have his advantages. If Voldemort is scheming to get at the Philosopher's Stone by year's end, he has to simultaneously target the third-floor corridor, Harry's father's rock, the Hogwarts vault at Gringotts, and who knows what other decoy locations. Similarly, Dumbledore engineered a three-way tie in Battle Magic to try to force Quirrell to pursue three different plots (Quirrell being a rival for the students' hearts and minds).

On a slightly more serious note....

Flitwick: "Yes, Harry, what is the matter?"

Harry: "I have been instructed to deliver a message to you, Professor. "Silver on the tree"."

Flitwick: "I... see. May I ask who sends this message, Harry?

Harry: *pause*

Flitwick:"...the Headmaster? Prof. McGonagall? Prof. Snape?"

Harry's inner Hufflepuff: Next time maybe let's not be so lazy with doing a few extra Caesar shifts, eh?

(To avoid spoilers, please give your answer in rot13.)

Har har.

I went through the trouble of finding a tool to brute force the Caesar cipher before I realized that of course it would be in rot13. I feel silly now.

Write these letters exactly as I say them: S-Y, space, F-V-Y-I-R-E-B-A-G-U-R-G-E-R-R

Has anybody unscrambled Harry's secret message?

(To avoid spoilers, please give your answer in rot13.)

I can't tell if you're being clever here or are just suffering from compartmentalization.

I've been on the opposite end of this-- someone believed, for complicated reasons, that I was an angel or living saint-- and I can confirm that it's really weird and that it caused me to avoid interacting with the person in question for a long time.

It took you long enough, but you are still to be congratulated on having realized it before most.

Unfortunetly, like the rest, you're still stuck thinking it was a mere distraction. Ask yourself, what happened as a result? Who's plan benefited from it? Was it foreseeable?

Harry is still too young, his magic is still weak. He will need some more time before he can be the Hero and Leader Dumbledore and Quirrell wants him to become.

Suppose the rescue plan goes flawlessly. No one would be the wiser, until the time some Bellatrix-sightings or something similar casts doubt on her death. Once her cell is investigated (if enough of her clothes remained to cover her after ten years, the vial would last long enough too), the same thing would have happened, Dumbledore soundig the alarms, and people turning to Harry Potter to save them.

That was the plan, anyways. It succeeded the moment the vial was placed in the cell, so long as they got out without being identified. And it's only a minor inconvenience that it had to happen early.

It's difficult to see only if you think Quirrell lied about wanting Harry as a leader.

I wonder what's the Death Eaters' opinion of phoenixes. If they agree that they're a force for good, seeing one of them in Dumbledore's retinue should make them ask themselves a few questions (a generic problem whenever you put a public, physical moral compass in any world, really - it becomes much harder for the villains to delude themselves into thinking they're heroes). Perhaps they think they're just creepy, winged endorphine peddlers.

Phoenixes encourage you to go out, and throw yourself full-strength against a problem, regardless of whether you can solve the problem, regardless of your chance of death.

To a slytherin, this is simply irrational. Gryffindor is brave, AKA foolhardy. Slytherin is devious AKA rational. The gryffindor method is the phoenix method: ignore the dangers that stand in the way of your goal.

Verdandi, or rather Verðandi, is one of the Norns, a sort of Norse version of the Greek Moirae and Roman Parcae. I don't believe that's the right reference, though?

"Verdandi" is Belldandy.

And "Bahl's Stupefaction" is the Idiot Ball.

Amelia didn't wonder how a ten-years-in-Azkaban Bellatrix could have not just killed, but obliterated the same man who had just defeated Bahry? Not that there aren't answers (say, a Geas-type spell, with a lethal payload to be triggered by Bellatrix).

An "Avada Kedavra" to the back from point-blank range probably would have worked well enough. A blade would have worked too, I suspect.

Say more?

Can I ask for clarification as to WHY a Harry/Quirrel alliance is a bad thing?

Please don't say "because he's Voldemort". It seems possible that MOR!He-Who-Sall-Not-Be-Named wasn't pure evil, and it's been hinted that even good people like Dumbledor used some decidedly evil tactics. Furthermore, it is strongly suggested that Quirrel/Voldemort have learned quite a bit from the first attempt at world-optimization and are taking corrective action.

Is it because this path leads to taking over the world? This seems a strange objection if we consider that one of the purposes of at least a portion of the HPMoR readers is to create a minor god. World-optimization is an explicit goal.

Is it because if a Harry/Quirrel alliance takes over they won't implement at CEV? Is that necessarily a bad thing if we consider that a CEV may well result in Azkaban staying open?

I love the battle of wits between the two, especially because it seems a large part of it isn't just "using" the other person, it is attempting to convert the other person to one's own view. And I think I particularly love this battle because I myself am often caught between cynicism and idealism, and I find myself rooting for BOTH of them at the same time. As a result, I kinda hope they both win together. Maybe end up using each other for balance, each one preventing the other from swinging too far to one extreme (or at least from taking extreme action). Everyone needs a check, and only Harry is powerful enough to be Quirrel's, and only Quirrel is powerful enough to be Harry's.

I thought the way chapter dealt with Hagrid was very appropriate. The fact is Hagrid wouldn't have much to add to the story and Harry wouldn't be able to interact with him well, but that fact IS a little sad.

Eh. It and the Ron thing make the elitism increasingly distasteful. I mean, what does it say when the Malfoys care more for the underclass than you do?

But the fact is there's only so far I can go along with this before the reader-character disconnect becomes too great.

Honestly, I think it's passed that point for me. This was the Harry who told Minerva about the enchantment on the Sorting Hat; for him to make the choices he's made means he's in full Dark Lord mode. Harry's lost, and it's a question of whether or not he'll be redeemed, not whether or not he'll resist.

It also doesn't help that his morality is bland and broken; if he were rejecting interacting with Hagrid because he's an Objectivist, I'd be more interested; instead, he's just made the calculation that Hagrid is worthless to him but is deluding himself into believing he actually has compassion for all other people.

I was left with the same impression about the clock.

Is [Dumbledore] insane?

Ch. 61: "And there is no one else in the world who would accidentally overestimate my wit, and leave me a message I cannot understand at all."

Why/did he kill Narcissa?

Ch. 62: "The Death Eaters learned, toward the end of the war, not to attack the Order's families."

Dumbledore plays a deep game. He's not "the Dumbledore we know and love" in many, many ways, and perhaps that big change is the largest cause of the issues.

I would say that while there are hypotheses with such low priors as to make it irrational to expend the effort to check them (and Harry would probably have assigned such a low probability to the existence of HP-style magic, and magical Britain, before he got the letter), one of these hypotheses being promoted specifically to your attention in the manner of the letter probably raises the prior to the point where it's worth testing, at least.

I no longer remember what I thought when I first read Chapter 1, but now I don't think that Harry should need this cognitive distortion (which I agree is there) in order to make the effort to test. He would propose (and then make) the test anyway, to try to settle the dispute between his parents.

There's a potion too, right? (Whatever's in the cauldron before Wormtail's hand is added, although that might have only been in the movie.) If that has to be made before the grave is robbed and goes bad after a few hours, then you have a time limit.

The obvious test I noticed they failed to perform involves Dumbledore asking Harry to summon his patronus.

To these three, the animagus potion is such a blatant Voldemort calling-card that it screens off Harry's involvement. Not only that, they simply haven't thought of the idea that Voldemort and Harry are working together, so to them Voldemort's involvement exonerates Harry.

Voldemort's potion was just that good of a trick. The only people it could fail to work on were people who were plotting at too low a level, and they were fooled by the time-turner test.

In general, this is explained when bringing up Occlumency in the first place. If he was good enough, he could readily agree to dropping his shields, then just keep them up. How would they tell? Again, this is assuming that he's good enough, but it does mean that they could never be certain. If they were motivated enough, they could Imperios to make sure he actually did it, but it is an Unforgivable...

1) I agree w/ JoshuaZ, Dumbledore might not want to further antagonize Harry w/o quite possibly gaining anything from it. It might be worth the risk, though.

2) That is quite possible, but I think that Snape's biggest hurdle in this is that he is still seriously underestimating Harry. Though the fact that Quirrell had to deduce that the girl had a Time Turner, and not just know, means that he possibly wouldn't know that there's a Slytherin w/ a Time Turner, or even necessarily that there are any issued at the moment. He could, through checking his student's schedules, but he might not know offhand.

3) I really wouldn't say an order of magnitude smarter than Dumbledore, he's just tuned his mind to that kind of thinking through decades of experience. Again, I agree w/ JoshuaZ in that Moody wouldn't be thinking of him as an option. He honestly might not even know the information that would be required for him to make that deduction, like Harry's predilection for Muggle artifacts.

edit: I forgot to say, I did not think of the animagus potion as evidence of Harry's innocence, but rather of Voldemort's guilt. Rather than making Harry less likely, it merely makes Voldemort more likely.

Even if they don't suspect Harry, they should still have searched his memories in order to figure out what event might have triggered the time-paradox. That really ought to trump any concerns about Harry's mental privacy, and besides, they should expect Harry to go along with it.

I think that the story leaves a lot of uncertainty in its depictions of other characters' disposition towards Harry and each other. We still don't know what level Dumbledore's playing on. Did he notice Harry in the prison cell (he could, since he might have mastered the deadly hallows)? Did he connect the hole in the wall or transfigured rocket fuel with Harry's magic style? Could he stop rocket-powered broomstick in time? Is he Santa Claus? Did he mislead McGonagall to try the flawed test? Did he prompt Snape to confront Quirrell at Mary's Place? What does he know and suspect about Quirrell?

McGonagall seems to be irrationally optimistic about everything and hopeful about Harry. Snape underestimates Harry, or at least doesn' t interfere with him all that much. Mad-Eye doesn't know Harry personally, or else he would probably instantly unravel all of his plots and half of Quirrell's and Dumbledore's for good measure.

1 is a good point, but Dumbledore doesn't know how good Harry's barriers are and may not want to further antagonize Harry. 2 is certainly an issue and it could easily occur to Snape. 3 isn't that much of a big deal since it isn't at all clear that Moody is thinking about Harry as an option at all.

How would they know if his occlumency barriers were down? It is pretty clearly established that if you are sufficiently skilled, you can make a Legilimens who tries to read your mind see whatever you want them to. So if harry said he let his occlumency barriers down and he was telling the truth, they would see his barriers down and see whatever he remembered seeing. But if he was not telling the truth it would still look like his barriers were down and they were seeing his memories. Harry is already good enough that he does not think veritaserum would be able to have any effect on him, so it seems unlikely that anyone could have been sure if he was telling the truth even if they saw in his memories that he was innocent.

Edit: looks like someone already said this

Telling Harry to drop his Occlumency is no good if he also knows Obfuscomency (from Always and Always).

I don't quite have time now to go back to Eliezer's text to check, and I never read the original Harry Potter, but based on my memory of how occlumency is explained, I don't think it's that simple. I thought occlumency was something like the ability to present a totally convincing false image to a legilimens. It sounded like the legilimency analogue to being a truly excellent liar - no one can ever completely trust anything you say, even if you promise real hard that you're telling them the truth, or are threatened with horrible things.

I was not under the impression that you could tell whether someone had dropped their occlumency barrier, and therefore becoming a skilled occlumens renders them forever opaque.

Why didn't anyone ask Harry to drop his occlumency shields and check his memories? There are three people who can propose it:

Because once you're sufficiently skilled at Occlumency, nobody can tell if you have shields up or not.

Well, he didn't free the prisoners of Azkaban, so how can he still own the Bird of Good? Clearly there's room for some disagreement between Dumbledore and the Bird without breaking up their relationship.

"Not giving into blackmail" sounds like letting Aberforth (etc?) be killed by the Deatheaters rather than giving into demands, but I dunno if it was implied that Narcissa was direct revenge for that, or if that was a separate incident.

"Bird of Good", that's great. I can't help but think that whenever I read about Fawkes, now.

Sorry, where's this?

And where did the Portkey lead to before Quirrell tapped it with his wand?

I was more interested in Quirrell's statement about the note. Have we seen evidence before that the lawyer/genie style of not-technically-lying is particularly relevant in the magical world? Veritaserum, perhaps?

Yes. It's a question that could be verified by a third party without too much difficulty, and I think Quirrell would strongly disprefer to be caught lying. Making Harry mistrust the note-sender may be to his advantage, but I don't think it's enough to outweigh the downside.

Quirrel has been reluctant to outright lie so far...

Reminds me of this article. Now, Hemmens is being a little polemical there and I'm not sure the morality of the books is well-developed enough to support his reading, but there's some interesting convergence anyway.

My take on it is that our judgments of people are ultimately about predicting how well their future behavior will align with our (moral and/or personal) interests. This is determined by their core motivations and assumptions, but our access to that deep structure is often patchy and speculative; if we don't have a reliable enough read on it, about all we can do is fall back on nearest-neighbor matching against their past actions. It's not a binary actions-or-motivations dichotomy, in other words: the more confident about someone's motivations we are, the higher we weight those motivations relative to their actual deeds.

Harry's just found out two important things about Quirrell: that his deep structure isn't as accessible as he thought it was, and that he's willing to use death spells in questionable circumstances. That might not be enough to completely destroy his confidence in Quirrell (and indeed I think Harry's overreacting a bit given the evidence), but it's definitely enough reason to take a step back and reevaluate.

That seems to suggest that Harry has entirely given up on the idea of judging people by what they do... at least, when it comes to Quirrell.

Quirrel is a schemer and what he does or rather wants you to think he does is not what he really did. Let's take the dementor for an example. What Quirrel did was bring a powerful creature within reach of Harry with the effect of almost killing him. But also with the effect of teaching Harry the true Patronus. How would you judge Quirrel according to this deed? With a more straight forward character you could assume he really wanted to teach the children to defend themselves which probably is good. And Harry realized that this straight forward reasoning doesn't apply to Quirrel.

I am, of course, curious to see what the implications are of Harry's formally declaring opposition to Death.

Meh. He declares war on Azkaban, not on Death. I suppose it could be read (very) broadly to mean he declares war on severe torture.

If only he'd shut up and calculate, he'd realize that to prevent the largest amount of suffering he should dedicate his life to researching magical means of granting immortality to everyone, like the Philosopher's Stone.

Including Dumbledore and Snape and McGonnagal! Who really should know better. They speculate that Harry was forced to use his Time-Turner for the Dark Lord, but they don't even think to check up on all the other children who have one? For shame.

I think the missing insight was that there were students who would be willing to convey messages back in time with no explanation and keep their mouths shut.

After reading that Bones and Dumbledore had timeturners, and remembering that if the ministry hands them out to schoolchildren, I thought probably any ministry official rating an iPhone, Blackberry, or Franklin Planner would have one as well. So, certainly the Dark Lord should/could/would have recognized their utility and gathered a few for his side.

...Which is weird, because unless they want to prohibit students from taking certain pairs of electives, no two classes should take place simultaneously for any given house and year.

Oddly enough, salvation here might come from Draco, with his arguments that influence/manipulation/persuasion is, far from being evil, actually a good thing and you can't have healthy relationships without it.

My take on this is that it's just an illustration that wizards really don't understand science, and they'll be unsuccessful at implementing their anti-physics charm.

Isn't the normal force dependent on/related to this? My mental image is of people falling through the floor because the normal force doesn't automatically balance their weight.

XKCD forum discussion http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=62115

Threads 1, 3, and 5 have been updated with a link here.

Done already.

It's like Harry is Harry Potter instead of Eliezer or something!

He also has trouble not throwing his life away to destroy some dementors for no lasting gain at all.

Harry is just deeply irrational about these things.

Well, he specifies "on fanfic.net". This isn't a definitive answer, but it's a start: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090122202501AA0vhnZ

Harry doesn't actually suspect McGonagall, but wishes to seem as though he does. As it's a goal that's a degree removed, he probably didn't think it through a thoroughly as he could have. Especially with the stress of other issues weighing on his mind.

Whether anyone will pick up on that depends on their faith in Harry's abilities. In general, I don't think they're so convinced that he's supersmart, and capable of maintaining composure in situations where he's under significant threat, that they'll find it unusual. Hence, his actual goal (convincing them that he needs convincing) is achieved.

So, considering those two factors, I wouldn't really consider it an idiot ball. Just Harry being human, rather than a hyperintelligent FAI.

Or if you want to do it in a way that isn't unethical, you can play Illuminati or Diplomacy or The "A Game of Thrones" Boardgame.

just try juggling two or three concurrent girlfriends or boyfriends.

I'm actually rather curious as to what that would be like, specifically how difficult it would be to keep the intrigue from exploding. I'm actually thinking that these days Facebook would be most irritating hurdle.

just try juggling two or three concurrent girlfriends or boyfriends

...who don't know about one another.

It's monstrous, yes, but does anyone here honestly have a better solution, if you accept the premise that Dementors are indestructible?

Were I involved in the decision-making, and assuming the Dementors are not just indestructible but also unimprisonable, unteleportable-to-the-surface-of-Jupiter, and so forth, I'd like to think I would present the following argument: "Right now, we can't defeat the Dementors, so we do best to negotiate some kind of agreement with them. We ought to continue researching a way to defeat them, and implement it when we find one. If we negotiate an agreement that we find convenient or easy to ignore, our odds of doing those things decrease, so Azkaban is a bad solution. I propose instead that we institute a lottery and feed the selected people to the volcano god -- um, I mean, the Dementors. I further propose that we do so publicly, and that the only exception we allow is for people who are actively and effectively working on solving the Dementor problem."

But I would expect to be voted down.

At which point I would be briefly tempted to "walk away from Omelas," but wouldn't follow through on it.

Probably his chats with Fawkes. The phoenix song seems to convey more than just words.

At some point he must admit that, of course. But given how messed up and untrustworthy the administration of Magical Britain is, he ought to err on the side of destroying Dementors until he's able to get better information.

I believe we should turn this over to RoosterTeeth.

"Fawkes, does caw mean yes?"

Caw!

"Holy shit! He just said caw means yes. I speak phoenix!"

"Yeah, unless caw means no. In which case, he just said no, caw does not mean yes."

"What, no way. Hey Fawkes, am I right?"

Caw!

"Hah, see?"

I think the first is what is intended. Fawkes is leaving temporarily to make a point.

It must be the first because there seems to be no reason for Eliezer to have induced this particular bit of ambiguity in this particular place deliberately, and there is no way he could possibly have missed that cutting off a sentence and then uttering a sentence that starts with a repetition of the cut off sentence might be interpreted as completing the cut off sentence. On the other hand it's perfectly plausible that he might have overlooked the other possible reading.

Same here. I also almost hugged my kitten to death.

And we must remember that Eliezer's CEV depends on the supposition that there is no absolute morality, no basis for calling Dumbledore morally superior to Voldemort, or Gandalf morally superior to Sauron.

Do you expect that Eliezer would agree with what you just wrote? I personally would bet at 99:1 odds that he would disagree strongly with the second half (as the other commenters have pointed out).

If you think that he would disagree strongly, have you considered that it's more likely you've misinterpreted his position (apparently Eliezer admits that the metaethics sequence isn't his best-written material) than that he's misinterpreted himself?

Um... I wouldn't say CEV is based on a rejection of the idea of an objective moral standard, since Eliezer himself doesn't exactly reject that:

Yes, I really truly do believe that humanity is better than the Pebblesorters! I am not being sarcastic, I really do believe that. I am not playing games by redefining "good" or "arbitrary", I think I mean the same thing by those terms as everyone else. When you understand that I am genuinely sincere about that, you will understand my metaethics. I really don't consider myself a moral relativist - not even in the slightest!

From The Bedrock of Morality: Arbitrary?.

And we must remember that Eliezer's CEV depends on the supposition that there is no absolute morality, no basis for calling Dumbledore morally superior to Voldemort, or Gandalf morally superior to Sauron.

Going from "there is no absolute morality" to "there is no basis for calling agent A morally superior to agent B" is a much broader jump than you make it seem here. The first part I agree with; the second part is much less clear to me.

If by "basis" you mean "absolute basis," well, OK, but so what?

Will MoR lead to a vindication of Voldemort?

I expect the story will make explicit what's been hinted at so far: that Voldemort is the product of Dementation, and is brain damaged. This would, by Eliezer's lights, place him in a different moral frame of reference to normal, neurologically intact humanity. Voldemort's not mistaken about how he should be using his talents. He's now an inhuman mind pursuing inhuman ends.

What's the policy/netiquette on fanfiction based on HPMoR?

APPROVED

From here:

All fanfiction involves borrowing the original author's characters, situations, and world. It is ridiculous to turn around and complain if your own ideas get borrowed in turn. Anyone is welcome to steal any ideas from any fanfiction I write.

Eliezer also has a section specifically devoted to HPMoR fanfics in that page, though at present it only contains Once Upon a Tower. It seems pretty lonely in there, all by itself... why don't you write your story and give it some company?

I asked him once, here. He reacted favorably. (for the curious, work in progress).

The one time I saw the question come up Eliezer was OK with it and even reacted possibly.

Eliezer has said he's okay with derivative works, and I really want to see it.

I think I can go ahead and say, now that Ch. 63 is up, that there are exactly two characters in this fic who will reliably think of that sort of thing, and they are Professor Quirrell and Mad-Eye Moody.

It's only the Idiot Ball if it has been previously established that the character is too intelligent to make a mistake. Not all characters in this fic are supposed to be that intelligent!

This is actually pretty brilliant.

Also, why isn't Hogwarts warded somehow against Portkeys?

When Snape and McGonnagal travel to Mary's, they have to take the Floo to Gringotts first, and remark that this is the fastest way out of Hogwarts. Presumably a Portkey would be faster (since it could take them directly where they wished), so either Dumbledore doesn't have Portkeys prepped for major locations like Diagon Alley (which would be stupid), or MoR!Hogwarts is warded against leaving by portkey.

Shouldn't this effect happen in MoR as well?

During the Christmas break, Quirrellmort was able to get as far as the Verres-Evans garden, so if the protection is in place it extends at most to the physical walls of the house, which isn't much - first, because Harry isn't likely to stay secluded (and even if he swears to do so, his parents won't, and while outside of Dumbledore's authority he is susceptible to blackmail), and second, because there are probably sufficiently creative solutions to that little snafu (hijack and crash an airplane on the house? I doubt the Power of Love super-enchantment turned the building into an adamantium-darksteel nuclear bunker).

It's possible that Hogwarts is protected against portkeys in, but not portkeys out. We saw that sort of 1-way wards was possible in Azkaban, and it might be smart to leave a method of getting out that could be used to evacuate somebody/everybody on short notice.

Not clear if we still have the love-magic in the MOR-verse, given that Lilly's death went down a little differently (she tried to fight back).

Inspired by the omake:

A fragment from a lost folio of Hamlet.

P(Ranma)=1/2.

Concur that that is the most amazing crossover I have ever imagined.

I'd really like to write a Buffy fic called "Once More, With Thinking" and have it focus on cooperative rationality, but I lack the skillset and have no idea how to plot it.

Allow the worst prisoners to choose between Askaban, taking an unbreakable vow not to escape the normal prison and execution.

What's the purpose of imprisonment in the first place?

1. To guard the society from criminals.
2. To punish the criminals (revenge on the behalf of the relatives/victims).
3. To redeem the criminals (so that they don't commit another crime).

The way Harry's been acting, seems like he'd strongly prioritize #3 over the other two. And considering that he didn't hold too much of a grudge against Draco for gom jabar'ing him, and believed that Bellatrix can be turned back into an okay human being, it seems like he would want to devise some sort of a method to redeem criminals.

And thanks, TobyBartels, for noticing my circular vocabulary issue.

I should think that wandless magic, while possible, is at least far less powerful than wanded; presumably with that advantage, as well as anti-Disapparition jinxes, and perhaps other pre-cast defensive spells, a competent Auror should be able to hold and defeat any wizard. It might well be possible, for instance, to have an ongoing magic-triggered overpowered Somnium enchantment cast on the prison, that ignores the wands of specifically keyed-in wizards. Or something.

I don't see putting the wizards to sleep for the duration of their sentence as at all inhumane, just very ineffective punishment.

It shouldn't be necessary to suppress magical ability beyond taking away prisoners wands as long as there are magical defenses in place that are beyond their ability to break.

I don't think transfiguring prisoners into muggles is possible. You might be able to transfigure them into animals (using non-free transfiguration; canon suggests this is possible although in MoR it might not be) and put them in containers that would be beyond the extent of wandless magic to escape from, but that would also be rather inhumane, and probably unnecessary.

He completely ignored a lot of information because he was still processing a lot of old information, was trying to maintain a false personality in front of an incredibly intimidating wizard, and was exhausted to boot.

Yes, it's used frequently for comic effect (e.g. Arthur Weasley's enthusiasm and lack of clue concerning Muggle artifacts).

As david implies, basically all wizards are pretty ignorant of muggles. Draco was surprised to learn that muggles had been to the moon.

If so, wouldn't he be less worried about doing things the LotR way? After all, if he's fictional, the author will most likely make it work out regardless. Not that the whole concept really makes much sense - a fictional character can only "realize" precisely what the author wants them to, anyway.

I had vaguely formed the hypothesis that Harry has read only things that appeared before 1991, so that anything after that is fair game for shout-outs

Yes, I had the same rough hypothesis and it seems correct when amended with "Except when something else is funnier or more awesome"

It's not clear. But I would guess that all works of speculative fiction that existed prior to 1991 exist identically in MoR, and some of them are based on actual events.

Ch. 61:

"Mr. Potter is an Occlumens? You gave him an invisibility cloak and he is immune to Veritaserum and he is friends with the Weasley twins? Albus, do you have any idea what you have unleashed upon this school?"

I can't believe we all glazed over this one. I only know because a TVTroper noticed in the thread. And Eliezer posted in that thread shortly thereafter and made no comment on it.

Yes, it's possible that McGonagall is just assuming, or that Dumbledore lied to her. But still.

An undiscussed alternative, of course, is dhveery. He probably was able to pick up the Cloak, and has a strong incentive to port Harry someplace special if Harry cracks.

My personal guess is Lupin, though. I think the Black/Pettigrew story is wrapped up in MoR with one of them dead and the other in Azkaban, but Lupin has the connections and freedom and desire.

It makes the most sense to me too, but it certainly doesn't have to be true.

How about Gilderoy Lockhart or Horace Slughorn, cynically trying to curry favor with the Boy-Who-Lived? Maybe he sends presents (through a corrupt House Elf?) to all the promising students in Hogwarts.

discussed here (tvtropes)

"What's been going on?" she said. "There's all sorts of rumors. There were people saying you'd run off to fight Bellatrix Black, there were people saying you'd run off to join Bellatrix Black -" and those rumors had said that Hermione had just made up the thing about the phoenix, and she'd yelled that the whole Ravenclaw common room had seen it, so then the next rumor had claimed she'd made up that part too, which was stupidity of such an inconceivable level that it left her completely flabbergasted.

"I can't talk about it," Harry said in a bare whisper. "Can't talk about a lot of it. I wish I could tell you everything," his voice wavered, "but I can't... I guess, if it helps or anything, I'm not going to lunch with Professor Quirrell any more..."

Yes, he is. A promise to lie can be broken or kept with equal loss of honor.

Nothing about the break-in. He can talk about other matters, presumably including Quirrel's answer to his "Why am I not like other children", which did make him trust Quirrel less and is a plausible topic of conversation either way.

FFN does this routinely but infrequently. As soon as you see a popup appearing, hit "back" in your browser, then "forward," and you'll get the fic.

Has Harry ever been offered any useful threat assessment on Voldemort by anyone but Quirrell? Depending on the requirements of the spell, Quirrell could easily have a sample of Harry's blood from their Saturday lunches. (Disillusioned confederate or magic item, magical anasthesia, healing, even transfusion, ...) If magical stasis and templated copying is possible, he can have any needed amount whenever needed. If the Philosopher's Stone remains in play, why rush if healing Bella improves that choice?

I don't think the name's significant- it's taken from canon, and the Eye of Vance is a shoutout to Jack Vance's The Eyes of the Overworld.

Question answered by Chapter 63. If Eliezer can work a connection between the Eye of Vance and Emmeline Vance (that's more interesting than 'old ancestor made it'), it would be awesome.

I thought it was a reference to the D&D Eye of Vecna, especially after the left leg of Vance was mentioned (Vecna is a powerful D&D villain who left behind an eye and a hand, and if - as expected - somebody tries to get both and succeeds, something bad happens, although I don't remember what exactly).

The Eye of Vance! (not serious)

Thanks! Fixed. Although I've linked to the tag rather than the article so that it'll stay up-to-date as we add more threads.

Done. Thread 7 is now the place for further discussion.

Anyone can make a new thread - lack of knowhow might prevent you but there's no such thing as lack of authorization.

I kinda hope we're done with them. They were ok at first but now they seem to detract from the actual storyline, and there's not much more charecter-building you can do with them.

Maybe I missed it, but I thought the battles were done with the award ceremony and the associated wishes.

I know that some fans of this story have never read the original series, so on the assumption that you are not kidding, that's a reference to the fourth Harry Potter book. Bahl's Stupefaction was a reference to the Idiot Ball trope.

Note that the wand was under the tombstone to the right of his father's grave, not under his father's grave itself. Unless they had reason to think he had hidden something in the graveyard, it's not obvious they would have looked there.

Actually, this is evidence against Moody's theory that the graveyard was moved, since there has to be a tombstone to the right of the grave. Moody could still be correct, however, if Voldemort already recovered the wand earlier, and moved the graveyard after doing so.

I'm hoping Eliezer will show us some reason why Dumbledore and company repose so much trust in Quirrell; otherwise, he's the most obvious agent-of-Voldemort suspect behind the time paradox. (To say nothing of the selection effects on DADA professors caused by the curse.)

Mutual obsession is a solid foundation for future bliss.

Really? There is a scientific question here: Are some people more likely to balk in the Milgram experiment than others? I don't know how one would test this; you can't just repeat the experiment on the same subjects, because their behavior would be affected by the memory of the previous trials.

But it is a valid question. How much of that 7.5% is due to individual variance of behavior, and how much is due to variance over the population?

And as soon as they burst into the Slytherin common room, Tracey Davis took a deep breath and shouted, "Everyone! Harry Potter couldn't cast the Patronus Charm and the Dementor almost ate him and Professor Quirrell saved him but then Potter was all evil until Granger brought him back with a kiss! It's true love for sure!"

It was ordered storytelling of a sort, Daphne supposed.

The news failed to produce the expected reaction. Most of the girls glanced over and then stayed in their couches, or the boys simply kept reading in their chairs.

"Yes," said Pansy sourly, from where she was sitting with Gregory's feet in her lap, leaning back and reading what seemed to be a coloring book, "Millicent already told us."

How -

it was mentioned once that Margaret passed on the gossip about harry/hermione's kiss impossibly fast.

Ugh, really?

I thought it's obvious it was told to Dumbledore. I also thought it obvious it implies that it was Dumbledore who suggested the new rule. If people can't see that, I shouldn't be surprised most can't see the full extent of Dumbledore's plot.

Had the battle lasted longer, had one army pulled ahead in points, the other two would have switched to point-diminishing. The natural attractor for the situation was a three-way tie. All because whoever made such rule predicted Harry Potter would find the way to exploit it. Zabini's job was fine-tuning. And once the explosive situation was taken care of, Hermione's wish (suggested by Dumbledore) helped reinforce the officially accepted group dynamics. That Draco did something similar with his wish just goes to remind us that some people do benefit from maintaining the status quo.

It's a great deal of fun, but it was written by an Awesomeness Maximiser (or at least an initiate of the Awesome Conspiracy), not a rationalist. What the fic shares with MoR is not a lack of the Idiot Ball, but a sense of... embiggening, as if walls around the canon were suddenly removed. I don't know how better to put it.

Actually, a good comparison of 40K!Shinji and MoR!Harry would be illuminating, but I'd have to reread it before trying. There are parallels, although the former's mental uberness is more along Paul Atreides lines - the details aren't quite there.

I imagine it also depends on how much you know/like the two settings, because that conjunction magnifies the effect (for me at least). 40K is a setting composed entirely of insane heroism in the face of death. NGE is a setting where the whole world desperately yearns for awesome, but the flawed hero's inability to deliver awesome brings everything crashing down. To some extent, every NGE fanfic is a Fix Fic, because the canon just hurts so much.

Using 40K as the patch happens to work really, really well. Canon!Shinji would be incapable of casting the True Patronus. 40K!Shinji pretty much IS one.

Presumably Harry or Quirrell has already figured out that Harry will be expected to do this (in fact, this may be why Quirrell told Harry to leave one time-turn in reserve). Here's one plan they could have come up with:

Quirrell removes himself from the action by pretending to be more tired than he is. Harry uses his time-turner to go back to eight o'clock, signal Quirrell, and tell him the password. Quirrell comes into Hogwarts, uses Imperius or Confundus or some kind of false memory charm on Flitwick to make him say he heard the password at three o'clock. Just after nine, Harry and Flitwick come into McGonagall's office, Flitwick says he heard the password at three, and Harry is off the hook.

For a particularly evil flourish, Harry could have polyjuiced into Quirrell and Quirrell into Harry before returning to Mary's Place, and Quirrell can just Confundus Flitwick himself without worrying about sending any signals, while Harry rests at St. Mungo's.

Are you talking about the "I'm an impudent youngster and I should get off its lawn." comment? Because that's something Harry!Sorting Hat told Harry to tell McGonagall after Harry told Harry!Sorting Hat that McGonagall had threatened the Hat.

As Vaniver said, the hat was not recalling something it had said to McGonagall in the past, it called her an "impudent youngster" right then and there and asked Harry to transfer the message. (Calling a 70-year old woman "youngster" is after-all funnier than calling a 11-year old girl such)