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Stupidity I would get, let alone well-reasoned disagreement. But bad faith confuses me. However selfish, don't these people want to live too? I really don't understand, Professor Quirrel.
The "they are playing a game" thing - some examples, please?
Was cold war NATO willing to retaliate "in full force" against an attack on a non-member?
If Russia uses tactical nuclear weapons in a limited theater, It seems to me that, given the West's reticence, it may seem reasonable to expect from it a similarly limited, local retaliation.
Even if it's not a certainty, Putin may be weighing such risks against the risk of what will happen to him if he is ousted from power (this idea speaks to me because it's simple, mundane fear, it does not require Putin being about to keel over and looking for a dramatic end). Die the death of a deposed tsar = die in nuclear war, you're dead either way. Maybe the latter is even better, as it'll be more impersonal. As long as you're selfish and amoral (which Putin obviously is), the fact that this is "bad for Russia" (let alone the world) won't stop him.
Kamil Kazani proposed that Putin may be planning to use nukes as a face-saving gesture (in the eyes of Russian public opinion, not yours, you don't matter to him no matter how absurd you think he's being), since it's not humiliating to lose to a retaliatory strike from powerful America, but losing to "inferior" Ukraine certainly is.
Thoughts on this?
What if there was an asteroid rushing toward Earth, and box A contained an asteroid deflector that worked 10% of the time, and box B might contain an asteroid deflector that worked 100% of the time?
I'd change that to 95%, because if B contains a 100% deflector, A adds nothing and there's no dilemma.
Finally got around to it, and it's great. The ending was exactly what it should be.
Is this against spaced repetition as such, or against flash cards?
For me the value of Anki (or my own custom program that I wrote a while back) is as a review-scheduler, not as a quizzer.
Yep, me too.
I guess that when I thought "religion", I thought "system of worship", not "system of belief". To me the a religion would be "true" if it accurately responded to a demand for worship or obedience or such. If the creators of the Universe have no preferences over our actions, then at most you could have a, well, description of them, but not much of a religion thus defined. Discovering such beings would not make me a religious person.
Of course now that I thought of it explicitely, I realize this is a rather narrow definition.
Wait, why? If God existed, I'd expect the true religion to be among actually existing ones.
Pretty sure you're getting downvoted for some combination of the following: unclear, incoherent, unspecific, and impolite. Compared to your growing wordcount in this conversation so far, you have shown little evidence of having something to say.
For reasons, I suggest that Bayesian Judo doesn't make EY look good to people who aren't already cheering for his team, and maybe it wasn't wise to include it.
More generally, the book feels a bit... neutered. Things like, for example, changing "if you go ahead and mess around with Wulky's teenage daughter" to "if you go ahead and insult Wulky". The first is concrete, evocative, and therefore strong, while the latter is fuzzy and weak. Though my impression may be skewed just because I remember the original examples so well.
stop watching TV
One of my past life decisions I consistently feel very happy about.
I'm guessing something vaguely along the lines of the "do not mess with time" warning. Except I can't imagine it specifically, how that might possibly go in the case of someone who's doing what Minerva says not to do.
If Quirrel killed Hermione to "improve [Harry's] position relative to Lucius", what was the point of trying to persuade her to leave Britain for France, in chapter 84?
To be sure: Fiendfyre, the black-red phoenix, and the "spell of cursed fire I shall not name" are all the same thing? I don't see Quirrel sacrificing a drop of blood in chapter 107...
Probably nothing
So what do you think McGonagall meant by disconcerting?
"Although wizards are advised to avoid being seen by their past selves. If you're attending two classes at the same time and you need to cross paths with yourself, for example, the first version of you should step aside and close his eyes at a known time - you have a watch already, good - so that the future you can pass. It's all there in the pamphlet."
"Ahahahaa. And what happens when someone ignores that advice?"
Professor McGonagall pursed her lips. "I understand that it can be quite disconcerting."
So what does happen when someone ignores that advice, on the assumption that history with time-travel is self-consistent in the way EY describes?
Does this count?
(cough, don't answer that, cough)
Interestingly, this is kinda one of the reasons this Voldemort impresses me. EY writes that "more than your own life has to be at stake", but Voldemort was sane enough that caring about his own life was enough to get him thinking and to get him moving.
So much so, he ended up genuinely working to save the world, and indeed ended up doing so, or at least significantly helping (Harry's Vow). Sociopath or not, the fact that normal people aren't sufficiently motivated by risk to their own lives is not a strength.
Also, Riddle's care about his own life didn't look like a mere animal flinch away from death; he seemed to find meaning in his works towards that goal:
He paused in his Potions work and turned to face Harry fully; there was a look of exultation in the man's eyes that Harry had never seen there before. "In all the Darkest Arts I could find, in all the interdicted secrets to which Slytherin's Monster gave me keys, in all the lore remembered among wizardkind, I found only hints and smatterings of what I needed. So I rewove it and remade it, and devised a new ritual based on new principles. I kept that ritual burning in my mind for years, perfecting it in imagination, pondering its meaning and making fine adjustments, waiting for the intention to stabilise. At last I dared to invoke my ritual, an invented sacrificial ritual, based on a principle untested by all known magic. And I lived, and yet live." The Defense Professor spoke with quiet triumph, as though the act itself was so great that no words could ever do it justice.
Agreed, I didn't buy it either. Felt a bit like a forced end-of-episode moral in a kid's show.
I see the point of the Something to Protect article as being about growing past your current conception of how you should think and act. That you need something more important to you than whatever is anchoring you to your current rules of thought, in order to do that.
Say, when Harry realized he could have used Lesath to save Hermione from the troll, instead of thinking that would have been "sort of Dark-lordish", that seemed like an example to me.
Or when Quirrel accepted Harry's lesson about strategies involving kindness, and decided to train himself in those "until my mind goes there easily". Because it was more important to him to achieve his goals than to indulge in his distaste for everything that reminded him of Christmas.
But in chapter 114 I don't see anything holding Harry back that he needs to see past. The nanotubes solution was a purely technical thing that Harry would either think of or not, and we've known since chapter 16 that Harry can think of creative ways to kill his enemies. It's as if a known chess master made a really good chess move - it may be technically impressive, but in some sense it's nothing new. If some kind of something-to-protect-like growth happened to make that possible, it's not obvious. If Voldemort woudn't have been able to think of it in Harry's shoes and with Harry's knowledge of science and partial Transfiguration, it's not obvious either.
I'm not sure why having won one kind of lottery is more admirable than another. (Getting a good brain from genes vs inheriting useful brain patterns from Tom Riddle).
Haven't read it, putting it on my list now.
Upon some reflection, the reason I liked Luminosity less on second reading seems to be at least partly that the protagonist started as a relative underdog (sympathetic) and ended up as dominant authority, one effective in their dominance to an oppressive degree, enforcing her ideas on everything and everyone. This moved me out of "yay, rationalist fiction, let's get into it from the pov of the protagonist" into a third person view... from which I started noticing how freakin' obnoxious rationalist!Bella is. Poor Edward.
Hermione says that she has an answer to Quirrel's question: if he was horrible for walking away from his fight, are the people who never even lift a finger still worse. That got my interest, because I think that's a good question.
But insofar as I can understand, her answer is not on topic. What she says may be a useful thought in its own right, but not an answer to Quirrel's question. Or am I missing something? Does she have a worthwhile point that I am failing to see, and what is it?
Please subscribe to the notification email list at hpmor dot com, if you want to see the separate epilogue when it appears (not for months, at least)
Separate epilogue? Does EY mean the "shorter, sadder ending"? or an expansion of the one we got?
why, Professor Quirrell, why, the thought still stabbing sickness at Harry's heart
Minor point, but wouldn't it be better with "stabbed" rather than "stabbing"? It's a sentence fragment, and lacks a verb. Compare:
why, Professor Quirrell, why, something inside him asked for the hundedth time, the thought still stabbing sickness at Harry's heart
"Have you gone through puberty since we last spoke?"
Or either of them speaking to Hermione's parents.
I also wonder if Lesath was allowed to remember his involvement in V-day.
"I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
Except for that leaving and changing identity thing. That might get in the way.
It was disguised. And Harry he admits in chapter 120 only figuring it out after the fact.
And less secure.
Harry may be shown as flawed in this chapter, but choosing to keep extremely important secrets secure is not one of the reasons.
Thanks, good points.
But it doesn't explain how Harry would know.
Could you elaborate on the evidence pointing to White that you see? In what way is it more in line with canon?
Or is she. She doesn't seem to have found her Muggle existence very meaningful. Now that she's presumably going back to the real "first world", her rightful place, to reunite with what's left of her family, I see it as at the very least a possibility that she'll look back at it with contempt, and resentment for whoever removed her from her real life.
Of course that's just speculation, depending on what kind of a person she is - I imagine diferent people in her position would have wildly different reactions to something like this.
I hoped for Draco saying "I need more time. Lock me up somewhere safe if you have to, but I need time to process this."
So Mr. White was the one who was Lucius? Not Mr. Counsel, the one Voldemort chided for not conquering the country in his name and limiting himself to the Wizengamot?
What made Harry certain of that?
Dumbledore knew about Quirrelmort
Ugh, I hope not. The closer a story gets to "actually, everyone knew everything all the time, it was all just acting all along and the audience was being lied to and otherwise misled constantly" the more pointless such a story becomes in retrospect. The tricks and maneuvers that impressed you at the time, the emotional reactions that used to engage you (like Dumbledore's surprise at seeing Quirrel before the Mirror) all turn out meaningless.
(Can you tell I didn't like Ender's Shadow all that much?)
I remember I enjoyed reading Luminosity/Radiance a lot less on second reading, once I knew how it ended. The same thing was true for Friendship is Optimal.
I am starting to wonder if the same thing will happen with HPMoR, once I read the last chapters. It's like there's something about story endings written by transhumanists....
Not sure how this version's supposed to be safer to keep.
One bit that feels unsatisfying is the complete underreaction to Harry's "oh btw Voldemort's alive, here, I brought him with me."
So instead I Obliviated most of his memories, then Transfigured him into this." Harry raised his hand, and silently pointed to the emerald on his ring.
Splat. Boing. Splat. Splat.
"Huh," Moody said, leaning back in his chair. "Minerva and I will be putting some alarms and enchantments on that ring of yours, son, if you don't mind.
I immediately thought of a scene in the Eye of the World:
It was his sword she touched, not him, her hand closing around the hilt at the very top. Her fingers tightened and her eyes opened wide with surprise. “A shepherd from the Two Rivers,” she said softly, a whisper meant to be heard by all, “with a heron-mark sword.”
Those last few words acted on the chamber as if she had announced the Dark One. Leather and metal creaked behind Rand, boots scuffling on the marble tiles. From the corner of his eye he could see Tallanvor and another of the guardsmen backing away from him to gain room, hands on their swords, prepared to draw and, from their faces, prepared to die. In two quick strides Gareth Bryne was at the front of the dais, between Rand and the Queen. Even Gawyn put himself in front of Elayne, a worried look on his face and a hand on his dagger. Elayne herself looked at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. Morgase did not change expression, but her hands tightened on the gilded arms of her throne.
While that would be an over-reaction in the HPMoR scene, at least there should be, well, some reaction to discovering that Harry is wearing the biggest threat of their time on his finger.
But they'd also not take him for granted the way they had Munroe and Dumbledore, accepting their heroism like princes, with a sneer for the lateness of the payment. *blinks innocently*
More seriously: I only meant the closed circle he's talking to: Moody, Bones, McGonagall, and he still wouldn't have to admit to killing anyone, just let Bones know that Quirrel wasn't a good guy and Harry deserves the credit for the Light winning. We can still have Voldemort supposedly killing everyone else.
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.
Sorry if I was unclear, I meant it turns out they weren't fooled and I'm glad of that.
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?
I gotta say, I've been wanting to know what intelligent people like Moody and Amelia made of Harry's derp story, and hoping 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!
I had assumed Harry was being sarcastic in chapter 6:
Nah, in chapter 33 we have Harry irrationally worried that Hermione is dying rather than just Somnium-ed:
Could've been her last breath escaping.
Oh be quiet. Why are you being so paranoid-protective, anyway?
Er, first real friend we've ever had in our whole life? Hey, remember what happened to our pet rock?
Would you SHUT UP about that worthless lump of rubble, it wasn't even alive let alone sentient, that is like the most pathetic childhood trauma ever -
(Which had me in stitches.)
So Dumbledore killed Harry's pet rock. Best twist ever.
This might be a dumb question, but is the specific lesson of the Something To Protect article reflected in these last chapters? If so, in what way?
It's close to the same thing, yes.
(Unless we count the horcrux backups, but since Harry doesn't mean for them to come into play, they don't count in this moral calculus.)
I am okay with that.
Agreed. Especially if we judge the story by usual storytelling standards. Though that's harder to do after HPMoR itself has been teaching us the difference between story-logic and what is realistically probable, and mocking stories in general and the original Harry Potter in particular at every turn for that stuff.
I don't think that hole was even necessary. Voldemort did need to let Harry keep his wand for the Unbreakable Vow. and could have intended to have someone disarm him afterwards. So just have Harry prepare the antimatter bomb while Voldemort is dictacting the Vow, and announce it before he could be disarmed. What do you think?
(Sure, that would probably mean no "final exam" for the readers. Now I hated the idea of holding the story hostage, and refused to even "try to try" for that reason, so that doesn't bother me. I suspect I'm in the minority about that, though.)