Principia Discordia

OK, I'm going to assume everyone here is familiar with the Harry Potter series, yes?

So, I want you to imagine a series where, instead of our protagonist being bought up by mildly abusive and bullying foster parents, a young Harry Potter was raised by his maternal aunt and her husband, a professor of mathematics at Oxford University.  Instead of labouring under the various emotional instabilities gifted to him by his canon parents, he instead grows up with a keen awareness and love of science, the experimental method and rationality.  And then he's told there he is a wizard and magic exists...

The writer of this series is the multi-talented Eliezer Yudkowsky, most well known for his articles on the early Overcoming Bias blog and for his research into artificial intelligence and cognitive biases.  Somehow, he manages to change the Harry Potter series into something both hilarious and informative (all the science in the series is accurate), and changes the main character from the whimpering, maladjusted teenager he was in the canon into a Chaotic Neutral Magnificent Bastard, who wants to take over "optimize" the Universe.

Here are some samples of the writing, if you want a flavour of his style:

Quote"'Scuse me," Harry said, "but what is that stuff, exactly?"

"Comed-Tea," said the vendor. "If you drink it, something surprising is bound to happen which makes you spill it on yourself or someone else. But it's charmed to vanish just a few seconds later -" Indeed the stain on his beard was already disappearing.

"How droll," said Draco. "How very, very droll. Come, Mr. Bronze, let's go find another -"

"Hold on," Harry said.

"Oh come on! That's just, just juvenile!"

"No, I'm sorry Draco, I have to investigate this. What happens if I drink Comed-Tea while doing my best to keep the conversation completely serious?"

The vendor smiled and shrugged mysteriously. "Who knows? You suddenly see a friend walking by in a frog costume? Something humorous and unexpected will happen one way or another -"

"No. I'm sorry. I just don't believe it. That violates my much-abused suspension of disbelief on so many levels I don't even have the language to describe it. There is, there is just no way a bloody drink can manipulate reality to produce comedy setups, or I'm going to give up and retire to the Bahamas -"

Draco groaned. "Are we really going to do this?"

"You don't have to drink it but I have to investigate. Have to. How much?"

"Five Knuts the can," the vendor said.

"Five Knuts? You can sell reality-manipulating soft drinks for five Knuts the can?" Harry reached into his pouch, said "four Sickles, four Knuts", and slapped them down on the counter. "Two dozen cans please."

"I'll also take one," Draco sighed, and started to reach for his pockets.

Harry shook his head rapidly. "No, I've got this, doesn't count as a favor either, I want to see if it works for you too." He tossed a can to Draco and then started feeding his pouch, whose Widening Lip ate the cans accompanied by small burping noises, which wasn't exactly helping to restore Harry's faith that he would someday discover a reasonable explanation for all this.

Twenty-two burps later, Harry had the last purchased can in his hand. Draco was looking at him expectantly, and the two of them popped the top at the same time.

Harry rolled up his scarf to expose his mouth, and they tilted their heads back and drank the Comed-Tea. It somehow tasted bright green - extra-fizzy and limer than lime.

Nothing happened.

Harry looked at the vendor, who was watching them benevolently.

All right, if this guy just took advantage of a natural accident to sell me twenty-four cans of green soda pop, I'm going to applaud his creative entrepreneurial spirit and then kill him.

"It doesn't always happen immediately," the vendor said. "But it's guaranteed to happen once per can, or your money back."

Harry took another long drink.

Once again, nothing happened.

Maybe I should just chug the whole thing as fast as possible... and hope my stomach doesn't explode from all the carbon dioxide, or that I don't burp while drinking it...

No, he could afford to be a little patient. But honestly, Harry didn't see how this was going to work. You couldn't go up to someone and say "Now I'm going to surprise you" or "And now I'm going to tell you the punchline of the joke, and it'll be really funny." It ruined the shock value. In Harry's state of mental preparedness, Lucius Malfoy could have walked past in a ballerina outfit and it wouldn't have gotten him to do a proper spit-take. Just what sort of wacky shenanigan was the universe supposed to cough up now?

"Anyway, let's sit down," Harry said. He prepared to swig another drink and started toward the distant seating area, which put him at the right angle to glance back and see the portion of the vendor's newspaper stand that was devoted to a newspaper called The Quibbler, which was showing the following headline:

BOY-WHO-LIVED GETS
DRACO MALFOY PREGNANT

"Gah!" screamed Draco as bright green liquid sprayed all over him from Harry's direction. Draco turned toward Harry with fire in his eyes and grabbed his own can. "You son of a mudblood! Let's see how you like being spat upon!" Draco took a deliberate swig from the can just as his own eyes caught sight of the headline.

In sheer reflex action, Harry tried to block his face as the spray of liquid flew in his direction. Unfortunately he blocked using the hand containing the Comed-Tea, sending the rest of the green liquid to splash out over his shoulder.

Harry stared at the can in his hand even as he went on choking and spluttering and the green color started to vanish from Draco's robes.

Then he looked up and stared at the newspaper headline.

BOY-WHO-LIVED GETS
DRACO MALFOY PREGNANT

Harry's lips opened and said, "buh-bluh-buh-buh..."

Too many competing objections, that was the problem. Every time Harry tried to say "But we're only eleven!" the objection "But men can't get pregnant!" demanded first priority and was then run over by "But there's nothing between us, really!"

Then Harry looked down at the can in his hand again.

He was feeling a deep-seated desire to run away screaming at the top of his lungs until he finally dropped over from lack of oxygen, and the only thing stopping him was that he had once read that outright panic was the sign of a truly important scientific problem.

And my personal favourite:

QuoteAnd Professor McGonagall held out in one hand a necklace, a thin golden chain bearing in its center a silver circle, within which was the device of an hourglass. In her other hand was a folded pamphlet. "This is for you," she said.

Wow! He was going to get some sort of neat magical item as a quest reward! Apparently that business with refusing offers of monetary rewards until you got a magic item actually worked in real life, not just computer games.

Harry accepted his new necklace, smiling. "What is it?"

Professor McGonagall took a breath. "Mr. Potter, this is an item which is ordinarily lent only to children who have already shown themselves to be highly responsible, in order to help them with difficult class schedules." McGonagall hesitated, as though about to add something else. "I must emphasize, Mr. Potter, that this item's true nature is secret and that you must not tell any of the other students about it, or let them see you using it. If that's not acceptable to you, then you can give it back now."

"I can keep secrets," Harry said. "So what does it do?"

"So far as the other students are concerned, this is a Spimster wicket and it is used to treat a rare, non-contagious magical ailment called Spontaneous Duplication. You wear it under your clothes, and while you have no reason to show it to anyone, you also have no reason to treat it as an awful secret. Spimster wickets are not interesting. Do you understand, Mr. Potter?"

Harry nodded, his smile widening. He sensed the work of a competent Slytherin. "And what does it really do?"

"It's a Time-Turner. Each spin of the hourglass sends you one hour back in time. So if you use it to go back two hours every day, you should always be able to get to sleep at the same time."

Harry's suspension of disbelief blew completely out the window.

You're giving me a time machine to treat my sleep disorder.

You're giving me a TIME MACHINE to treat my SLEEP DISORDER.

YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.

"Ehehehehhheheh..." Harry's mouth said. He was now holding the necklace away from him as though it were a live bomb. Well, no, not as if it were a live bomb, that didn't begin to describe the severity of the situation. Harry held the necklace away from him as though it were a time machine.

Say, Professor McGonagall, did you know that time-reversed ordinary matter looks just like antimatter? Why yes it does! Did you know that one kilogram of antimatter encountering one kilogram of matter will annihilate in an explosion equivalent to 43 million tons of TNT? Do you realize that I myself weigh 41 kilograms and that the resulting blast would leave A GIANT SMOKING CRATER WHERE THERE USED TO BE SCOTLAND?

"Excuse me," Harry managed to say, "but this sounds really really really REALLY DANGEROUS!" Harry's voice didn't quite rise to a shriek, he couldn't possibly scream loud enough to do this situation justice so there was no point in trying.

Professor McGonagall looked upon him with tolerant affection. "I'm glad you're taking this seriously, Mr. Potter, but Time-Turners aren't that dangerous. We wouldn't give them to children if they were."

"Really," Harry said. "Ahahahaha. Of course you wouldn't give time machines to children if they were dangerous, what was I thinking? So just to be clear, sneezing on this device will not send me into the Middle Ages where I will run over Gutenberg with a horse cart and prevent the Enlightenment? Because, you know, I hate it when that happens to me."

McGonagall's lips were twitching in that way she had when she was trying not to smile. She offered Harry the pamphlet she was holding, but Harry was carefully holding out the necklace with both hands and staring at the hourglass to make sure it wasn't about to turn. "Don't worry," McGonagall said after a momentary pause, when it became clear that Harry wasn't going to move, "that can't possibly happen, Mr. Potter. The Time-Turner cannot be used to move more than six hours backward. It can't be used more than six times in any day."

"Oh, good, very good, that. And if someone bumps into me the Time-Turner will not break and will not trap the whole castle of Hogwarts in an endlessly repeating loop of Thursdays."

"Well, they can be fragile..." said McGonagall. "And I do think I've heard about strange things happening if they're broken. But nothing like that!"

"Perhaps," Harry said when he could speak again, "you ought to provide your time machines with some sort of protective shell, rather than leaving the glass exposed, so as to prevent that from happening."

McGonagall looked quite struck. "That's an excellent idea, Mr. Potter. I shall inform the Ministry of it."

That's it, it's official now, they've ratified it in Parliament, everyone in the wizarding world is completely stupid.

The whole series, so far as it has been written, can be read at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality

 :lulz: Reminds me of Shinji and Warhammer 40k (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3886999/1/Shinji_and_Warhammer40k).

 :lulz:

That's great!

Quote from: CAPTAIN SLACK on June 21, 2010, 02:12:23 PM
:lulz: Reminds me of Shinji and Warhammer 40k (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3886999/1/Shinji_and_Warhammer40k).

It may well have been inspired by it, since Elizier is very aware of TV Tropes, where that fic gets a lot of love.

This is AWESOME.

Quote from: CAPTAIN SLACK on June 21, 2010, 02:12:23 PM
:lulz: Reminds me of Shinji and Warhammer 40k (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3886999/1/Shinji_and_Warhammer40k).

My god. I just read the prologue, and it was AMAZING. Holy shit.

wow I really like where this is heading in! Yeah its definatly much more interesting when they have to go against their beliefs

Mwahahahahahah

:mittens: Awesome.

 :mittens:
This is fantastic.

I just finished reading whats up so far.  This is amazing.

Ah yes! I was planning to read that, thanks for reminding me :D

Fucking brilliant.

Yudkowsky also references several other series in the fic.  Some, like LOTR, are rather obvious.  However, you have to be looking very carefully for the David Xanatos shout-out, and have seen Death Note to know when it is being mentioned.

I just read the entire thing so far, and plan to keep reading more as it updates.

Damn, first fanfic I've read that's better than the book it's based off of.

Quote from: Sigmatic on June 27, 2010, 07:10:26 PM
I just read the entire thing so far, and plan to keep reading more as it updates.

Damn, first fanfic I've read that's better than the book it's based off of.

This.

The most recent chapter came out yesterday.

I wish all fanfiction was as good as this.

Thanks for finding this Cain. I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

QuoteAlissa Cornfoot's eyes were slightly glazed as she gazed upon the Potions Master giving her class a stern lecture, holding up a tiny bronze bean and saying something about screaming puddles of human flesh. Ever since the start of this year she'd been having trouble listening in Potions. She kept staring at their awful, mean, greasy professor and fantasizing about special detentions. There was probably something really wrong with her but she just couldn't seem to stop doing it -

"Ow!" Alissa said then.

Snape had just flicked the bronze bean unerringly at Alissa's forehead.

"Miss Cornfoot," said the Potions Master, his voice cutting, "this is a delicate potion and if you cannot pay attention you will hurt your classmates, not just yourself. See me after class."

The last four words didn't help her any, but she tried harder, and managed to get through the day without melting anyone.

After class, Alissa approached the desk. Part of her wanted to stand there meekly with her face abashed and her hands clasped penitently behind her back, just in case, but some quiet instinct told her this might be a bad idea. So instead she just stood there with her face neutral, in a posture that was very proper for a young lady, and said, "Professor?"

"Miss Cornfoot," Snape said without looking up from the sheets he was grading, "I do not return your affections, I begin to find your stares disturbing, and you will restrain your eyes henceforth. Is that quite clear?"

"Yes," said Alissa in a strangled squeak, and Snape dismissed her, and she fled the classroom with her cheeks flaming like molten lava.

:lulz:

:lol: What was with that, anyway?  Was that part of a side plot I'd forgotten about?

I think it had something to do with reviews of the previous chapter Snape featured heavily in, and Snape's general status among the fandom as a leather pant wearing god (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DracoInLeatherPants/Literature).

Hah.

I thought it might have been related to Harry's mention that Snape had been a bit different lately, but probably you're right.

Quote...the Transfiguration still wasn't happening.

Harry was breathing heavily, failed Transfiguration was almost as tiring as successful Transfiguration, but damned if he'd give up now.

All right, screw this nineteenth-century garbage.

Reality wasn't atoms, it wasn't a set of tiny billiard balls bopping around. That was just another lie. The notion of atoms as little dots was just another convenient hallucination that people clung to because they didn't want to confront the inhumanly alien shape of the underlying reality. No wonder, then, that his attempts to Transfigure based on that hadn't worked. If he wanted power, he had to abandon his humanity, and force his thoughts to conform to the true math of quantum mechanics.

There were no particles, there were just clouds of amplitude in a multiparticle configuration space and what his brain fondly imagined to be an eraser was nothing except a gigantic factor in a wavefunction that happened to factorize, it didn't have a separate existence any more than there was a particular solid factor of 3 hidden inside the number 6, if his wand was capable of altering factors in an approximately factorizable wavefunction then it should damn well be able to alter the slightly smaller factor that Harry's brain visualized as a patch of material on the eraser -

Goddamn this author is incredible. BIP disassembly.

Also, I thought I would mention that THIS story is badass.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4068153/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Wastelands_of_Time

What if Harry Potter was a time traveling magnificent bastard who has lived many lifetimes fighting and dying to Voldemort only to be sent back to a morning during his fifteenth summer every time to try to get things right?

It's one thing to have a hero be overpowered, but it's not overpowered when the big bad is even more powerful and wins every time. It reminds me of the scenes from the Wheel of Time where Rand is seeing through many possible lifetimes and how the Dark One says "I win again." at the end of every single one.

The world is Just Before The End and nearly Crackspace, and it's Groundhogs Day over and over and over again for Harry, except instead of reporting on the weather predictions of a rodent in a quaint pennsylvania town, Harry Potter is cheating goblins, killing horrors from the abyss, raiding 3000 year old libraries, fighting with gods, discovering lost cities (over and over), and breaking physics while at the same time wearing armani suits and getting both Fleur AND Tonks. It's overloaded with Crowning Moments of Awesome.

ETA: The epitome of Groundhog Peggy Sue (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GroundhogPeggySue).

I saw Yudowsky had favourited that particular story and was going to check it out, but on your recommendation I'm already up to chapter 2.

Fuck.  I really have to remember to check these out at home.

Quote from: Cain on July 05, 2010, 10:00:27 PM
I saw Yudowsky had favourited that particular story and was going to check it out, but on your recommendation I'm already up to chapter 2.

Yeah. The link to the Less Wrong 'Sequences', also on his page, is a goldmine that I have not yet exploited.

I have about half of the sequences saved to a word file, to make into a PDF.  It's already over 250 pages long.

So read to the end of the Wastelands of Time.  Well, the latest chapter, anyway.  Not bad, but felt a little rushed towards the end.  He can write insanity, I'll give him that.

Also, is it bad that I think Quirinius Quirrell is not only the most badass teacher ever, but a pretty good role model, the whole "having a genocidal wizard in the back of your head" thing aside?

That's the thing I'm not sure about. He's definitely possessed, but I don't think it's Voldemort who's taken up residence on the back of his head, based on the discussion around Harry learning to loose.

I'm not so sure.  Yudowsky explicitly said that Quirinius Quirrell placed a horcrux on the space probe they were talking about in one of the chapters, and well...that definitely suggests Voldemort, although not certainly, I will admit, since QQ is a Slytherin wannabe Dark Lord himself, by his own admission. 

Well, until Voldemort actually shows up, I'm not taking anything QQ says at face value.

It was too foreboding when he said "One higher than you" when asked what level a player he was.

Methods of Rationality was awesome, still waiting for updates.

The more I think about it, the more sure I am that QQ is Voldemort in this text as well.  I think his overriding fear is that Harry will become another Dark Lord and, because of his obvious intelligence and skill, present a formidable threat to Voldemort.  Therefore, in teaching him how to lose etc he is trying to stop him from becoming a Dark Lord while at the same time taking further stock of his potential opponent.  Remember what he said about submitting to someone's dominance in order to better control them and later take vengeance?  QQ is his superior, in academic and magical terms, but if he tried to treat Harry in the way Snape did, for example, he'd get nothing useful out of him and possibly push him further along the path to becoming a rival (well, a more dangerous rival anyway, given Teh Prophecy).

Definitely.  Although I'm still not sure if there's something that's different in this text from the original that's making QQ less pathetic.  I mean, he was really pathetic in Rowling's.

Well in this, QQ is a fully fledged Battle Mage with experience in martial arts, a keen mind and what seems to be an extraordinarily genre savvy villain sitting in his head.

In the book, as I recall, Rowling was writing for young children, and thus scary and competent were rarely allowed to meet, except in the special case of Snape who wasn't ever a villain anyway.

There's that too.  In this rewrite, almost everyone is scary competent.  Makes for a fun read.

Wastelands of Time was awesome. I love how the author doesn't reveal everything near the beginning, so as time goes on, more and more amazing shit starts happening. By the time the end of the Atlantis sequence is over, breaking and entering a millennia old roman library seems like a walk in the park. And lo, Potter, nearly a god, having destroyed Time and remade it in his image, stands on the bridge of a flying Atlantean battlecruiser with 8 wands floating around him saying "bring it" to a city sized demon, high above London.

Pretty good fucking set up for an epic battle.

Yudowsky favourited another fic which is quite similar to The Wastelands of Time, Backwards With Purpose.  Same basic premise of time travel, but going back further and only once.  Slowly but steadily going somewhere.

Also finally recognized where I knew Yudowsky's name and writing style from.  Turns out I've had a paper of his on my HD for the past three years, documenting cognitive biases and how they impact on the assessment of global risks.

Quote"Professor Quirrell, this is insanity," Draco said flatly. "This isn't Slytherin any more, it's just..." Draco was at a loss for words. He waved his hands helplessly. "You can't possibly do any real plots with all this stuff going on. Last battle, one of my soldiers faked his own suicide. We have Hufflepuffs trying to plot, and they think they can, but they can't. Things just happen at random now, it doesn't have anything to do with who's cleverest, or which army fights best, it's..." He couldn't even describe it.

"I agree with Mr. Malfoy," said Granger in the tones of someone who hadn't ever expected to hear herself saying those words. "Allowing traitors isn't working, Professor Quirrell."

Draco had tried forbidding anyone in his army to plot except him, and that had just driven the plots underground, no one wanted to be left out when the soldiers in other armies got to plot. After miserably losing their last battle, he'd finally given in and revoked his decree; but by then his soldiers had already started setting their own personal plans in motion, without any sort of central coordination.

After being told all the plans, or what his soldiers claimed were their plans, Draco had tried to sketch a plot to win the final battle. It had required considerably more than three different things to go right, and Draco had used Incendio on the paper and Everto to vanish the ashes, because if Father had seen it he would have been disowned.

Professor Quirrell's eyelids were half-closed, his chin resting on his hands as he leaned forward onto his desk. "And you, Mr. Potter?" said the Defense Professor. "Are you likewise in agreement?"

"All we'd need to do is shoot Franz Ferdinand and we could start World War One," said Harry. "It's gone to complete chaos. I'm all for it."

I laffed, hard.  This Harry Potter is so totally a Discordian.

Edit: I should really read the whole thing before quoting extracts, because this reminds me of something at my University:

QuoteProfessor Quirrell's eyes moved beneath their lids to regard Draco, and then Granger. "In truth, Mr. Malfoy, Miss Granger, I simply could not live with myself if I shut down the grand debacle before its climax. One of your soldiers has even become a quadruple agent."

"Quadruple?" said Granger. "But there's only three sides in the war!"

"Yes," said Professor Quirrell, "you'd think that, wouldn't you. I am not sure that there has ever in history been a quadruple agent, or any army with such a high fraction of real and pretended traitors. We are exploring new realms, Miss Granger, and we cannot turn back now."

This chapter was awesome.  :lulz: And there was a line reminiscent of imposition of order = escalation of disorder. One word difference, practically.

Our University games of Assassin generally dissolved into Thirty Xanatos Pileups like that.  They were good times.

This chapter totally made me want to start work on a throne. 

Quote from: Cain on July 25, 2010, 08:35:37 PM
Our University games of Assassin generally dissolved into Thirty Xanatos Pileups like that.  They were good times.

But this is the most amazing Thirty Xanatos Pileup I've ever seen.  :lulz:

I'm calling that blaise shoots himself for both chaos and dragon.  :lulz: :lulz:

WAIT, what if he killed himself for a different army than the three?  :aaa:

Almost plausible- where would the new army get enough points to contend for the lead?  I think Sunshine would win if that happened.

Quote from: Sigmatic on July 26, 2010, 07:31:30 PM
Almost plausible- where would the new army get enough points to contend for the lead?  I think Sunshine would win if that happened.

No, because since Blaise would be killing a traitor, himself, all three original armies would be tied for the win.

Which is why I'm going  :aaa:

Ahh-

Then, smart money says Dumbledore did it to avert the crisis he and McGonnagle were worried about.

Quote from: Sigmatic on July 26, 2010, 08:00:21 PM
Ahh-

Then, smart money says Dumbledore did it to avert the crisis he and McGonnagle were worried about.

I wasn't aware that Dumbledore controls Blaise. However, it's possible that he put the /thought/ into Blaise's head...

Which would mean that Dumbledore is the real Xanatos in this gambit.

Canon Dumbledore was a plotter in his own right, here I only expect that to be magnified to the Nth degree.

Also, that quote from the beginning of Chapter 32 is probably one of my favourite quotes ever.  It explains so much about human nature.

Quote from: Cain on July 26, 2010, 08:16:50 PM
Canon Dumbledore was a plotter in his own right, here I only expect that to be magnified to the Nth degree.

Also, that quote from the beginning of Chapter 32 is probably one of my favourite quotes ever.  It explains so much about human nature.

The Blues and Greens? Yeah. Tribalism is a primary social force in all of the Hominini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominini).

It's one of those passages that makes me sad and amused at the same time.  

Really though, I think I only fingered 'big D' because he foreshadowed some kind of meddling earlier on.

Quote from: Sigmatic on July 26, 2010, 08:26:51 PM
It's one of those passages that makes me sad and amused at the same time.  

Really though, I think I only fingered 'big D' because he foreshadowed some kind of meddling earlier on.

A reference. (http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/)

Woah.

/Keanu


It's been a while since I read a parable worth its salt.

OH I just found something with regards to Dumbledore's possible meddlings:

Quote"One of your soldiers has even become a quadruple agent."

"Quadruple?" said Granger. "But there's only three sides in the war!"

"Yes," said Professor Quirrell, "you'd think that, wouldn't you...

Quote from: Sigmatic on July 26, 2010, 08:55:11 PM
OH I just found something with regards to Dumbledore's possible meddlings:

Quote"One of your soldiers has even become a quadruple agent."

"Quadruple?" said Granger. "But there's only three sides in the war!"

"Yes," said Professor Quirrell, "you'd think that, wouldn't you...

8) I bet the author is gonna keep us hanging for several days just to build the tension.

He said he was going to post part two last night, the bastard.

Calling it now: Blaise shoots himself for Dumbledore's Army.

Yeah, I'm seconding that explanation.  It's subtle, but if you know how to look for it...  Also, I know Yudowsky is not hewing too close to the canon, but in the books he was one of Slughorn's Slytherins, which meant he was ambitious and cunning and not necessarily (just) a budding psychopath and thug.

Wouldn't that be the same as not doing anything?  Dumbledore has no points as is.

Or are all three at negative points?

If he did that, he'd just be taking one point from sunshine, putting them all at a tie.

At least, as I understand the rules.

Hot damn.  I turned on my Kindle's wireless, and it's incredibly easy to access this.

I'll be caught up with the story soon.

Yeah, with a tie, no-one gets Quirrel's special favour at the end of term, and it can, in theory, stop the competitive factionalization of Hogwarts, which was really a masterful stroke and one I should've seen earlier, but didn't.

Quote from: Sigmatic on July 27, 2010, 06:53:31 PM
If he did that, he'd just be taking one point from sunshine, putting them all at a tie.

At least, as I understand the rules.

That would be if he shot himself in sunshine's name, not Dumbledore's.

Duh?  Nothing ever said you could switch to non-existent armies anyway, so chances are that's what he'll do, is what I'm saying.

Quote from: Requia ☣ on July 27, 2010, 09:39:27 PM

Quote from: Sigmatic on July 27, 2010, 06:53:31 PM
If he did that, he'd just be taking one point from sunshine, putting them all at a tie.

At least, as I understand the rules.

That would be if he shot himself in sunshine's name, not Dumbledore's.

No, shooting himself in sunshine's name would be akin to doing nothing (an accidental self kill is meaningless), allowing sunshine to win, as would doing nothing. Shooting himself for either dragon or chaos would allow one of those to win (adding two points to the other army and subtracting 1 from sunshine). But shooting himself for a 4th army would take one point from sunshine (2 to the new army) leaving the score at 255:255:255:2. Which means no one would win. Or perhaps Quirrel would award favors to each of the three armies (less likely than the former).

I've thought about this for about 30 minutes overall, and it seems the most probable conclusion, given the priors (foreshadowing by quirrel, Dumbledore's comments, Blaise's indecision and comments).

I seriously can't wait.

didn't they say suicide was illegal or offered no points in this battle?

Quote from: Pope Lecherous on July 28, 2010, 06:20:58 AM
didn't they say suicide was illegal or offered no points in this battle?

if you kill yourself for your own army, yes.

If you kill yourself for some other army, no.

I actually want to see this game done with laser tag, somehow.

Rules confuse stuff.

lets see if i got this right:

shooting enemy = 2 points.
shouting out the name of another army: your points go to the called army.
so shooting anyone in the name of another army = 2 points for the called army.
shooting friendly = -1 point. This includes traitors, unless they call out another army before getting shot. *
so shooting friendly in the name of another army = 2 points for called army and -1 point for own army.
shooting friendly in the name of your own army would just be -1 right? And you count as a friendly, so a suicide would result in a draw.


* This opens the way for traitors to earn -1 for the army they are betraying twice, once for their kill and once for getting killed. Or am i missing something?
GAH! rules hard!  :asplode:

Quote from: Regret on July 29, 2010, 12:02:19 AM
Rules confuse stuff.

lets see if i got this right:

shooting enemy = 2 points.
shouting out the name of another army: your points go to the called army.
so shooting anyone in the name of another army = 2 points for the called army.
shooting friendly = -1 point. This includes traitors, unless they call out another army before getting shot. *
so shooting friendly in the name of another army = 2 points for called army and -1 point for own army.
shooting friendly in the name of your own army would just be -1 right? And you count as a friendly, so a suicide would result in a draw.


* This opens the way for traitors to earn -1 for the army they are betraying twice, once for their kill and once for getting killed. Or am i missing something?
GAH! rules hard!  :asplode:

Except suicides (for your own army) doesn't count as anything, only if you defect.

QuoteBut Professor Quirrell had gone on to announce that if you'd been originally assigned to Sunshine, nobody could shoot you in the name of Sunshine - or rather, they could, but then Sunshine lost a single Quirrell point, symbolized by a triple gong. That prevented you from shooting your own soldiers for points, and discouraged suiciding before the enemy got you, but you could still shoot spies if you had to.

Suicide = -1 point.

I can't find any other references to suicide. Can you quote your source or do you concede?

Well, I've just caught up.  Fuckballs, this thing is good.

Quote from: Regret on July 29, 2010, 08:52:08 AM

QuoteBut Professor Quirrell had gone on to announce that if you'd been originally assigned to Sunshine, nobody could shoot you in the name of Sunshine - or rather, they could, but then Sunshine lost a single Quirrell point, symbolized by a triple gong. That prevented you from shooting your own soldiers for points, and discouraged suiciding before the enemy got you, but you could still shoot spies if you had to.

Suicide = -1 point.

I can't find any other references to suicide. Can you quote your source or do you concede?

I concede, but still predict Blaise shooting himself for Dumbledore's Army.

Thinking in a purely pedestrian manner, couldn't he auction off his last shot?

Quote from: Doktor Alphapance on July 29, 2010, 04:38:20 PM
Thinking in a purely pedestrian manner, couldn't he auction off his last shot?

:lulz: How much time for that is there? There's less than a minute left in the battle.

That, and everyone else on the battlefield is asleep and can't respond.

Magic, perhaps?

question I was still planning on reading these, but checking the last couple of pages, I wonder if it's necessary to be familiar with the original HP novels?

cause I haven't read any of the books, just saw the first movie.

It can help, but the author himself hasn't read the entire series, so don't worry too much.  He actually addresses this, to a degree, in the notes for this chapter.

Sooooo.....not going to spoil for those who haven't read the chapter yet. But I was at least partially wrong. And it's a whole lot more crooked than I thought.

Speculation: Mr Hat and Cloak is not Snape, nor any other teacher at Hogwarts.  He may, however, be a former Death Eater who believes Quirrell presents a threat that only differs from Dumbledore in methods.  I thought Rookwood is possible, he worked for the Department of Mysteries, which sounds like it has quasi-intelligence duties, but he should be, according to the canon, in Azkaban.  Maybe Petter Pettigrew?  If he figured out that Quirrell is Voldemort then he has reason to hate both, and he was mentioned in the notes for this chapter...

Quote from: Cain on August 02, 2010, 04:35:45 PM
Speculation: Mr Hat and Cloak is not Snape, nor any other teacher at Hogwarts.  He may, however, be a former Death Eater who believes Quirrell presents a threat that only differs from Dumbledore in methods.  I thought Rookwood is possible, he worked for the Department of Mysteries, which sounds like it has quasi-intelligence duties, but he should be, according to the canon, in Azkaban.  Maybe Petter Pettigrew?  If he figured out that Quirrell is Voldemort then he has reason to hate both, and he was mentioned in the notes for this chapter...

I think hat and cloak is Quirrell.

A better guess than Pettigrew.  He does know about the Basilisk, and his skill at magic would seem to be exceptional, as the memory charm suggests.  But then again, I only really discounted Snape because he was too obvious, and that's using narrative-logic, which this story only loosely adheres to.  Well, that and I can see no obvious motive for Snape to increase suspicion between the two unless he already suspects Quirrell as being Voldemort, and wants rid of him ASAP, instead of at the end of the year.

Quote from: Cain on August 02, 2010, 04:56:17 PM
A better guess than Pettigrew.  He does know about the Basilisk, and his skill at magic would seem to be exceptional, as the memory charm suggests.  But then again, I only really discounted Snape because he was too obvious, and that's using narrative-logic, which this story only loosely adheres to.  Well, that and I can see no obvious motive for Snape to increase suspicion between the two unless he already suspects Quirrell as being Voldemort, and wants rid of him ASAP, instead of at the end of the year.

My thought is that Quirrell is pulling most of these strings to get the main players occupied in sidequests so he can set the stage for taking the prize.

There's also a thought (just by the way Quirrell acts) that Voldemort may be only partially controlling him and that Quirrell isn't fully aware, thus allowing Q/V to give both good and terrible advice to Harry. Or something. I'll admit I'm confused.

When does the troll get loose?

The troll was meant to get loose at Halloween, so I think we've missed that. 

The sidequests, I can see, but I still think V is in charge of Q.  Alot of his "advice" is dangerously double-edged, or advantageous for himself (ie convincing HP to not become a dark lord, since he then becomes a threat to Voldemort resurrecting his own plans).  It could also be that using Harry's inclination to chaos is part of his plan, causing enough confusion and disorder that it has the same effect as the various side-quests.

But, for some reason, both of those don't sound quite right.  So I'm not sure, all the hypothesis' I come up with aren't satisfactory in ther explanations.

There is a Twilight based spinoff by another writer for the Less Wrong Wiki

http://luminous.elcenia.com/

Havent read it yet.

I'm getting dizzy from all the traitorous subplots.

Quote from: Doktor Alphapance on August 02, 2010, 05:18:51 PM
I'm getting dizzy from all the traitorous subplots.

Yeah, it's pretty nuts. Is Less Wrong actually Yudowsky? Because, if it is, I can understand the craziness. Eliezer can handle all the different twisting threads.

Yes, it is actually him.

I actually thought Death Note was a little more complex, but only towards the middle and later parts, where multiple notes were in play and Light set his memory gambit in motion.

I think H&C is Dumbledore.

It makes sense to me because it's confusing, and that's what his plots are like.  Mostly a hunch.

Upon reflection, Quirrell's "Fascism is Good" speech seemed a bit too heavy-handed, especially since his back story of travelling in the Muggle world would indicate that he's familiar with the Italian Fascists and the Nazis.  Maybe it was clumsy writing, but it sounds like another ploy, to me.

It seemed that way to me, too.  It appears oddly un-clever of him, from what I've been used to so far.

Quote from: Doktor Alphapance on August 02, 2010, 06:46:48 PM
Upon reflection, Quirrell's "Fascism is Good" speech seemed a bit too heavy-handed, especially since his back story of travelling in the Muggle world would indicate that he's familiar with the Italian Fascists and the Nazis.  Maybe it was clumsy writing, but it sounds like another ploy, to me.

But he didn't actually say fascism was good, only an enlightened dictatorship of sorts.  And enlightened dictatorship was for a long time considered an enlightenment ideal.  Voltaire's protector and protege, for example, was Frederick the Great, absolute ruler of Prussia, and Voltaire himself was a monarchist.  Since this is meant to be a rationalist fanfic, perhaps he is playing with this notion or strand of thought in rationalist thinking, one which is often ignored.  It also sets up quite nicely Harry's deconstruction of the "we must unite!" trope often present in politics, by pointing out how such a united force will eventually become dangerous to ever larger units of people.

It was certainly a lot less subtle in the canon, what with mentions of "mudbloods" and wizard noble supremacy.  It was one step off the Death Eaters dressing in white robes and burning crosses.

Yeah, the canon was a lot more kiddish with it's rhetoric.  Rowling wouldn't deign to include a dialogue where frank and informed people break new ground in meaningful conversations.

I'm willing to admit the possibility that the whole Quirrel speech was just a foil to Harry's point about unity, adding to his thoughts about the imposition of order, et cetera.

I know for a fact that Yudowsky is aware of and perhaps even somewhat sympathetic to Discordianism (there are a few references peppered around the Sequences on Less Wrong), so its not entirely unlikely.

Well, it figures.  If the PD (book, not forum) had one good idea explicitly written in it, that was probably it.

Perhaps I've been reading too much of myself into Quirrell.  I want him to be the guy that says, "Chaos, fuck yeah!" 

Quote from: Doktor Alphapance on August 03, 2010, 02:14:32 PM
Perhaps I've been reading too much of myself into Quirrell.  I want him to be the guy that says, "Chaos, fuck yeah!" 

All the better to get Harry to do what he wants. He may be trying to be lovable (in a weird way), but he's also being manipulative at the same time. Besides, Voldemort is Lawful Evil, not Chaotic. Remember Quirrell's speech? It was pretty clearly revealed that Voldemort wants to rule Great Britain with a flaming fist. Getting Harry to unite people just makes them easier to crush in their unity.

I think it's also about one of the points Harry brings up, uniting people under a single leader means a single point of failure.  Think about what happened to the Death Eaters after Voldemort kicked the bucket (mostly), they fell to fighting among each other and thinking only of themselves.

If there's a prophecy that Voldemort and Harry will fight, then having Harry be a single point of failure for all of Britain is a good thing from the dark lord's perspective, if he wins he crushes most of the resistance he'd face.  There's only a small amount of additional risk, since he can't avoid a fight with Harry regardless.

Yeah, to use D&D terms, this is Lawful Evil versus Chaotic Neutral or Good, depending on your exact interpretation.

Harry is certainly a "chaos, fuck yeah!" kinda guy though, no doubts about it.

Quote from: Cain on August 04, 2010, 04:03:58 PM
Yeah, to use D&D terms, this is Lawful Evil versus Chaotic Neutral or Good, depending on your exact interpretation.

Harry is certainly a "chaos, fuck yeah!" kinda guy though, no doubts about it.

I'd say CN, given he wants to optimize reality for his own benefit and generally has been selfish about any altruism.

Quote from: Kai on August 05, 2010, 04:52:13 AM

Quote from: Cain on August 04, 2010, 04:03:58 PM
Yeah, to use D&D terms, this is Lawful Evil versus Chaotic Neutral or Good, depending on your exact interpretation.

Harry is certainly a "chaos, fuck yeah!" kinda guy though, no doubts about it.

I'd say CN, given he wants to optimize reality for his own benefit and generally has been selfish about any altruism.

i concur.  he hasn't really made moves against voldemort, he just doesnt want to end up like him.

also. WASTELANDS OF TIME. read that shit. the epilogue posted recently so you can read it start to finish.

Quote from: Kai on August 05, 2010, 04:52:13 AM

Quote from: Cain on August 04, 2010, 04:03:58 PM
Yeah, to use D&D terms, this is Lawful Evil versus Chaotic Neutral or Good, depending on your exact interpretation.

Harry is certainly a "chaos, fuck yeah!" kinda guy though, no doubts about it.

I'd say CN, given he wants to optimize reality for his own benefit and generally has been selfish about any altruism.

So would I, but there have been some genuine acts of altruism or anger on the behalf of others which suggest he is heading in the good direction, such as when he learnt about Azkaban.

I'm reading it.  It reads like Harry Potter, starring Spock, to me.  Fun stuff though.

Quote from: BabylonHoruv on August 06, 2010, 06:42:16 AM
I'm reading it.  It reads like Harry Potter, starring Spock, to me.  Fun stuff though.

Except Spock was highly irrational.

The more I read this the more I am struck by it's brilliance.  It is, for me, a part of my personal Discordian Canon.

I did find a logical fallacy however.  The theory of magical genetics that Harry and Draco work out doesn't work.  It explains muggleborns but it does not explain squibs.  If magic is a simple Mendelian recessive trait than any two wizards have to have a wizard child, they can't have a squib as a child.

Quote from: Kai on August 05, 2010, 04:52:13 AM

Quote from: Cain on August 04, 2010, 04:03:58 PM
Yeah, to use D&D terms, this is Lawful Evil versus Chaotic Neutral or Good, depending on your exact interpretation.

Harry is certainly a "chaos, fuck yeah!" kinda guy though, no doubts about it.

I'd say CN, given he wants to optimize reality for his own benefit and generally has been selfish about any altruism.

Maybe in some ways, but Eliezer has done a good job of portraying a character who has morals, idealism, guilt, and empathy who is also human enough to act like a little shit when it's appropriate.  I'd say despite his lapses in sentimentalism, he's overall a "good" character.  It's just that DnD alignments tend to be used with simple, 2D characters whose whole purpose is sweet loot.

Quote from: BabylonHoruv on August 07, 2010, 01:02:59 AM
I did find a logical fallacy however.  The theory of magical genetics that Harry and Draco work out doesn't work.  It explains muggleborns but it does not explain squibs.  If magic is a simple Mendelian recessive trait than any two wizards have to have a wizard child, they can't have a squib as a child.

think wizard; Ww or WW

squib ww

sence?

squibs are basically muggles in effect, with an awareness of magic.  may be attributed to other factors

It works.

Quote from: Pope Lecherous on August 07, 2010, 04:54:16 AM

Quote from: BabylonHoruv on August 07, 2010, 01:02:59 AM
I did find a logical fallacy however.  The theory of magical genetics that Harry and Draco work out doesn't work.  It explains muggleborns but it does not explain squibs.  If magic is a simple Mendelian recessive trait than any two wizards have to have a wizard child, they can't have a squib as a child.

think wizard; Ww or WW

squib ww

sence?

squibs are basically muggles in effect, with an awareness of magic.  may be attributed to other factors

That would make muggle borns impossible. 

Only if you assume no Muggles are also squibs.

As an alternative hypothesizes, squibs and Muggles may be genetically the same, squibs just get squib powers because they grew up exposed to magic.

There is also a chance Rowling didn't think much of it, and Yudkowsky's universe will have some changes due to his rule of taking the givens more seriously.

Quote from: Requia ☣ on August 07, 2010, 05:22:03 AM
Only if you assume no Muggles are also squibs.

As an alternative hypothesizes, squibs and Muggles may be genetically the same, squibs just get squib powers because they grew up exposed to magic.

no, it makes them impossible.  If the wizard gene is dominant anyone with it is a wizard.  If it is recessive then wizards cannot have squib children.  In the story it is recessive, Pope Lech was suggesting it was dominant.  Either one renders something impossible.  If wizarding is genetic it has to be more complex, it can't be simple Mendelian genetics.

Quote from: Sigmatic on August 07, 2010, 06:40:34 AM
There is also a chance Rowling didn't think much of it, and Yudkowsky's universe will have some changes due to his rule of taking the givens more seriously.

I doubt Rowling gave it much thought.  However the rules are a lot stricter in this take on the Rowling universe,  this error doesn't ruin the story for me, but I am surprised something so obvious got by the author.

The other possibility is that wizarding isn't genetic.  Magic has so far failed to follow any other sensible rules, so why this?

Quote from: Sigmatic on August 07, 2010, 03:41:18 PM
The other possibility is that wizarding isn't genetic.  Magic has so far failed to follow any other sensible rules, so why this?

Magic may not be tied directly to DNA in Rowlings universe, however it does have a MUCH higher incidence of appearance in children of witches and wizards than in children of muggles.  So wether or not it is genetic it is hereditary.

It could be genetic and rely on more than 2 bits, so, for instance, say it relies on 6 bits, if someone has 1 or 2 of those bits they have no magic, if they have 3,4,or 5 they have magic, if they have 6 they have no magic.  I don't know if real genes can work that way but it would allow for both muggle borns and squibs if it worked that way.

Also, finally noticing a bias I had, yet another option is that squibness is a recessive trait in wizards that occasionally comes out.  Perhaps a vestigial trait on its' way out, after a several wizard generations.

Quote from: Sigmatic on August 08, 2010, 06:49:01 AM
Also, finally noticing a bias I had, yet another option is that squibness is a recessive trait in wizards that occasionally comes out.  Perhaps a vestigial trait on its' way out, after a several wizard generations.

Yeah, that was what I was suggesting with the 6 of them means no magic.  Squibs seem to appear more often in pureblood families than otherwise, as far as I can tell.

Quote from: BabylonHoruv on August 08, 2010, 09:23:07 AM

Quote from: Sigmatic on August 08, 2010, 06:49:01 AM
Also, finally noticing a bias I had, yet another option is that squibness is a recessive trait in wizards that occasionally comes out.  Perhaps a vestigial trait on its' way out, after a several wizard generations.

Yeah, that was what I was suggesting with the 6 of them means no magic.  Squibs seem to appear more often in pureblood families than otherwise, as far as I can tell.

http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=29

About the crazy genetics of human eye color. it may be pertinent.

That's pretty cool! Explains why my hazel and blue eyed parents only produced one blue eyed child (the other one and I are hazel and green respectively).

Quote from: BabylonHoruv on August 07, 2010, 09:15:17 PM

Quote from: Sigmatic on August 07, 2010, 03:41:18 PM
The other possibility is that wizarding isn't genetic.  Magic has so far failed to follow any other sensible rules, so why this?

Magic may not be tied directly to DNA in Rowlings universe, however it does have a MUCH higher incidence of appearance in children of witches and wizards than in children of muggles.  So wether or not it is genetic it is hereditary.

It could be genetic and rely on more than 2 bits, so, for instance, say it relies on 6 bits, if someone has 1 or 2 of those bits they have no magic, if they have 3,4,or 5 they have magic, if they have 6 they have no magic.  I don't know if real genes can work that way but it would allow for both muggle borns and squibs if it worked that way.

It is. As I recall, she mentioned in an interview somewhere that the magical gene is dominant.

Then where do muggle borns come from?

Quote from: Requia ☣ on August 08, 2010, 09:48:41 PM
Then where do muggle borns come from?

In a different interview, she confirmed the fandom speculation that they're the descendants of squibs (a character who preceded Rita Skeeter as a foil for Hermione was a cousin of the Weasleys but technically speaking a muggleborn, since she's the child of Molly's squib brother who left for the muggle world). I'm guessing something in the environment maybe turns the gene(s) back on?

I think Rowling

a) sucks at genetics
b) made up most of the Harry Potter world as she went along, with little consideration for consistency or logic

Quote from: Cain on August 08, 2010, 10:19:03 PM
I think Rowling

a) sucks at genetics
b) made up most of the Harry Potter world as she went along, with little consideration for consistency or logic

Absolutely.  But the author of  this particular fanfic is trying to impose sense on it all.

Also, although Rowling paid very little attention to logic or science she did incorporate an awful lot of mythology, in fairly accurate ways.  Her world is fairly consistent, it's just not consistent with our world.

Quote from: Pope Lecherous on August 07, 2010, 04:54:16 AM

Quote from: BabylonHoruv on August 07, 2010, 01:02:59 AM
I did find a logical fallacy however.  The theory of magical genetics that Harry and Draco work out doesn't work.  It explains muggleborns but it does not explain squibs.  If magic is a simple Mendelian recessive trait than any two wizards have to have a wizard child, they can't have a squib as a child.

think wizard; Ww or WW

squib ww

sence?

squibs are basically muggles in effect, with an awareness of magic.  may be attributed to other factors

No.

Wizard: WW
Squib: Ww
Muggle: ww

A wizard must have two copies of the same gene. The effect must be that two squibs will produce 1/4 wizards. A squib is simply a name for a non-magical person who comes from two wizards. A muggle could technically be a squib and not know it, thus allowing people like Hermoine to be a witch (WW) yet have muggle (squib) parents (Ww).

You can make a Mendelian crossing diagram like so
              W              w
W        WW          Ww

w         wW           ww


This of course creates a problem, UNLESS you allow for mutation. Consider that the w is an inoperable allele. Therefore, in a wizard family where both parents have WW you could STILL get squibs, if there is a mutation at the W locus that causes it to be inoperable. This would have to be as a result of base pair changes during crossing over or meiosis. From what I gather, a squib is a rare event in families where both parents are wizards. How would it look if one parent was a complete muggle and the other a wizard?

           w              w
W     Ww         Ww

W    Ww         Ww

That would me that with a WWxWw cross, none of their children would be wizards (all squib) but one fourth of their childrens children would be wizards.



Unless I'm completely wrong and the wizard gene is recessive rather than dominant. In that case, it looks completely the same except the W allele inhibits the w allele. That almost makes more sense. Maybe some incomplete dominance going on too.

I think its incomplete dominance (for the purpose of the fanfic), which is why squibs can see all the magic stuff, but not actually use it the same way wizards do.

So with a WW (wizard) and Ww (squib) cross, half the kids would be wizards and half squibs.

Though, if we're going to try and poke at Harry's science, I'd point out that he might be wrong about it being genetic altogether.  IE, magical ability could be determined by environmental conditions.  Squibs could in turn have a dominant mutation that inhibits magical ability, which would provide the same number of wizard offspring from squib couples, as long as none of the squibs involved have a double dose of the dominant gene.  Easy to check too, just ask the paintings how many of the squib couples earlier mentioned had muggle children.

Quote from: Requia ☣ on August 11, 2010, 03:21:58 AM
I think its incomplete dominance (for the purpose of the fanfic), which is why squibs can see all the magic stuff, but not actually use it the same way wizards do.

So with a WW (wizard) and Ww (squib) cross, half the kids would be wizards and half squibs.

Though, if we're going to try and poke at Harry's science, I'd point out that he might be wrong about it being genetic altogether.  IE, magical ability could be determined by environmental conditions.  Squibs could in turn have a dominant mutation that inhibits magical ability, which would provide the same number of wizard offspring from squib couples, as long as none of the squibs involved have a double dose of the dominant gene.  Easy to check too, just ask the paintings how many of the squib couples earlier mentioned had muggle children.

There's no real way to tell a muggle from a squib. 

A squib can see a dementor, a muggle cannot.  Presumably squibs have other awareness of magic that muggles do not.

Quote from: Requia ☣ on August 11, 2010, 09:09:30 AM
A squib can see a dementor, a muggle cannot.  Presumably squibs have other awareness of magic that muggles do not.

heh, that would be a fun test.  I bet Draco would enjoy applying it to Hermione's parents.

Quote from: BabylonHoruv on August 11, 2010, 09:30:32 AM

Quote from: Requia ☣ on August 11, 2010, 09:09:30 AM
A squib can see a dementor, a muggle cannot.  Presumably squibs have other awareness of magic that muggles do not.

heh, that would be a fun test.  I bet Draco would enjoy applying it to Hermione's parents.

That would have a pretty clear conclusion too. Either they can see it, or not. If they can, it further supports the wizarding allele hypothesis. If not, it falsifies the hypothesis.

Quote from: Kai on August 11, 2010, 03:44:30 PM

Quote from: BabylonHoruv on August 11, 2010, 09:30:32 AM

Quote from: Requia ☣ on August 11, 2010, 09:09:30 AM
A squib can see a dementor, a muggle cannot.  Presumably squibs have other awareness of magic that muggles do not.

heh, that would be a fun test.  I bet Draco would enjoy applying it to Hermione's parents.

That would have a pretty clear conclusion too. Either they can see it, or not. If they can, it further supports the wizarding allele hypothesis. If not, it falsifies the hypothesis.

people need to get laid ITT  :lulz:

Quote from: Pope Lecherous on August 11, 2010, 11:03:00 PM

Quote from: Kai on August 11, 2010, 03:44:30 PM

Quote from: BabylonHoruv on August 11, 2010, 09:30:32 AM

Quote from: Requia ☣ on August 11, 2010, 09:09:30 AM
A squib can see a dementor, a muggle cannot.  Presumably squibs have other awareness of magic that muggles do not.

heh, that would be a fun test.  I bet Draco would enjoy applying it to Hermione's parents.

That would have a pretty clear conclusion too. Either they can see it, or not. If they can, it further supports the wizarding allele hypothesis. If not, it falsifies the hypothesis.

people need to get laid ITT  :lulz:

Excuse me, virgin. Girlfriend = pornstar. IOW, enjoy your sock.

Well, fair's fair.  This IS the nerdiest conversation I've taken part in for maybe years.

Quote from: Requia ☣ on August 11, 2010, 09:09:30 AM
A squib can see a dementor, a muggle cannot.  Presumably squibs have other awareness of magic that muggles do not.

Nope. Squibs and muggles both can feel a dementor, but can't see one.

5th book, Harry's trial, a squib testified that she could see the Dementor that accosted Harry and Dudley.

Quote from: Requia ☣ on August 13, 2010, 04:33:03 AM
5th book, Harry's trial, a squib testified that she could see the Dementor that accosted Harry and Dudley.

QuoteIncidentally, Arabella Figg never saw the Dementors that attacked Harry and Dudley, but she had enough magical knowledge to identify correctly the sensations they created in the alleyway.

http://www.jkrowling.com > Extra Stuff (the hairbrush) > Miscellaneous > Squibs

I'd just post a link ordinarily, but her site doesn't work like that.

Rowling needs to have a chat with the editors of the American versions then.

QuoteMrs. Figg at once, as though she had learned what
she was saying by heart, "when I heard a disturbance down the alley-
way between Magnolia Crescent and Wisteria Walk. On approaching
the mouth of the alleyway I saw dementors running —"
"Running?" said Madam Bones sharply. "Dementors don't run,

More importantly though:

Quote
Weasley. Incidentally, can Squibs see dementors?" he added, looking
left and right along the bench where he sat.
"Yes, we can!" said Mrs. Figg indignantly.

It's possible she was lying on one or both counts I suppose.

Figg was lying on both counts, yes.

Or JK Rowling lost track of the laws of her own universe.

I don't think so. Hence why Arabella said they run and Amelia Bones corrected her.

What I interpreted from that scene is that Figg had indeed lied about seeing the dementor. And there's also the fact that she was acting uncomfortable when asked by Fudge (?) whether squibs could really see dementors, but was on more stable ground when she said that she felt one there, too, and remembered " terrible things".

Quote from: Rumckle on August 13, 2010, 04:21:23 PM
Or JK Rowling lost track of the laws of her own universe.

Somewhere in the incredible success she found, she hired a "Potterologist" to keep things relatively in sync with one another.  I think it's easy to drift when writing seven books - I can barely remember if I've contradicted myself after a few pages.  Stephen King did the same with The Dark Tower series - Robin Firth I think her name was?

Rowling did seem to be making it up on the fly quite often though, in the earlier books at least.

Also, I know Terry Pratchett has a wordfile where he stores all the information he has on the various Discworld characters and books, which has since been published as a Guide to the Discworld and formed the basis of the L-Space Discworld Wiki.

I am finally devouring this and loving the crap out of it.  Great find, thanks for sharing.

I think Voldemort has possibly "repented."  By which I mean he no longer wants to be a Dark Lord*.  QQ's actions are confusing if you follow the assumptions of the novel, that he is in fact Voldemort and that he still aims to do the whole Dark Lord routine.  And confusion, as the author is fond of saying, means you believe something which is fiction.  The two key assumptions, to my mind, are those above.  Eliminating one of those assumptions makes his actions make sense, and since the author has already implied one of them is true (that QQ is Voldemort, in the chapter notes) then it would seem the other is the most likely correct one.

*By "Dark Lord", I mean the traditional Evil Overlord kind of Dark Lord.  Voldemort is still evil, still morally reprehensible in many ways, but he may be considering how to channel his lust for power in more useful and less dangerous (to him) ways - such as creating a single point of failure in the state of Magical Britain and Imperiusing the person in question to control it.  In short, he's being exactly what a Slytherin should be - cunning and ambitious, rather than a thug with a wand and sadistic tendencies.  And because he is focusing on these kind of goals, Harry is not a threat in the way he was for the Evil Overlord Voldemort of the books, prophecy nonwithstanding.

Pretty smart of him.

The author's notes were all taken down as I read through this, I believe, so I had no idea that QQ being Voldemort was any more heavily implied in those than in the text.  If that's the case, and we definitely see two sides of QQ in his waking and trance-like states, I'm not sure their goals are one in the same.  They're both individuals of power but QQ is controlled and disciplined while Voldemort is temperamental.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I wouldn't rule out the idea that Quirrell allowed/sought out/agreed to be the host for Voldemort's deceased form in hopes that he could control the Dark Lord in some way.  Maybe he wanted the power or maybe he wanted to act as a vessel to contain and reduce the threat using his own strong will instead of allowing Voldemort to enact a plan that will get him ressurected with more power quickly.
We might be seeing in Hat-and-Cloak a breaking down of QQ's control, where either Voldemort is now able to act directly through him or at least some of the professor's decisions are molded that way.

I actually think Hat and Cloak may be Snape.  Snape has more to fear from QQ than anyone else, if he does indeed suspect he is Voldemort (in the canon, he did not, although he did not trust QQ and thwarted at least one of his attempts to kill Harry).  By embroiling Voldemort and Dumbledore in a conflict, he may get Dumbledore to stop being Mr Crazy Plotting Guy and just kill the bastard, which he is very much capable of (recall, Dumbledore is currently in possession of the Elder Wand, making him virtually invincible in magical combat, and Snape is either aware of this, or smart enough to figure it out himself).

And then Harry Potter was a transhumanist.


Well, I mean it makes sense. Harry is Yudowski's Mary Sue in this story.

I wish I knew to what extent Yudowski is intentionally putting flaws in Harry's reasoning and to what extent he's just using flawed arguments.

Quote from: Requia ☣ on August 23, 2010, 02:38:54 AM
I wish I knew to what extent Yudowski is intentionally putting flaws in Harry's reasoning and to what extent he's just using flawed arguments.

Read the less wrong sequences.

He has pointed out in various chapter notes that Harry is only 11 years old, and has a vastly inflated opinion of himself, and that equally villainous characters will also give dangerously misleading or double-edged advice at times.

More thoughts on Hat and Cloak:  Could in fact be QQ...if we don't take him at his word.  For all we know, Harry was the target of HaC's disinformation, and he lied to Blase so, if his Obliviation on him was somehow undone (I'm not sure it can be, but it is theoretically possible, I assume) then people would assume it was not QQ in the first place, and the actual point of that whole charade was to plant seeds of doubt in Harry's mind about Dumbledore's methods and intentions.

The only problems with this are it seems far too stupid and crude for a plot by QQ, and it also didnt work on Harry anyway.

Quote from: Cain on August 23, 2010, 04:35:48 PM
He has pointed out in various chapter notes that Harry is only 11 years old, and has a vastly inflated opinion of himself, and that equally villainous characters will also give dangerously misleading or double-edged advice at times.

More thoughts on Hat and Cloak:  Could in fact be QQ...if we don't take him at his word.  For all we know, Harry was the target of HaC's disinformation, and he lied to Blase so, if his Obliviation on him was somehow undone (I'm not sure it can be, but it is theoretically possible, I assume) then people would assume it was not QQ in the first place, and the actual point of that whole charade was to plant seeds of doubt in Harry's mind about Dumbledore's methods and intentions.

The only problems with this are it seems far too stupid and crude for a plot by QQ, and it also didnt work on Harry anyway.

It can be and was a plot point in Goblet of Fire. Bertha Jorkins (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Bertha_Jorkins) was Oblivated to the fact that Barty Crouch Jr. wasn't in Azkaban and Voldemort broke the memory charm when he found her in Albania. Quirellmort certainly knows that.

Quote from: Cain on August 23, 2010, 04:35:48 PM
He has pointed out in various chapter notes that Harry is only 11 years old, and has a vastly inflated opinion of himself, and that equally villainous characters will also give dangerously misleading or double-edged advice at times.

Yes, I know, the frustrating part is not being sure which is which.  I kinda want to tear into him for a couple things Harry said to Dumbledore in the latest updates, but for all I know the author knows that those arguments were flawed.

Quote from: Hover Cat on August 23, 2010, 04:48:05 PM
It can be and was a plot point in Goblet of Fire. Bertha Jorkins (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Bertha_Jorkins) was Oblivated to the fact that Barty Crouch Jr. wasn't in Azkaban and Voldemort broke the memory charm when he found her in Albania. Quirellmort certainly knows that.

So it was.  It's been such a long time since I read the books....it seemed plausible that it could be broken, but I couldn't remember if it had been mentioned or not.  Thanks.

Quote from: Requia ☣ on August 23, 2010, 04:51:50 PM

Quote from: Cain on August 23, 2010, 04:35:48 PM
He has pointed out in various chapter notes that Harry is only 11 years old, and has a vastly inflated opinion of himself, and that equally villainous characters will also give dangerously misleading or double-edged advice at times.

Yes, I know, the frustrating part is not being sure which is which.  I kinda want to tear into him for a couple things Harry said to Dumbledore in the latest updates, but for all I know the author knows that those arguments were flawed.

Ah, OK.  Well I know Yudowsky personally bears something of a torch for extended life/immortality research, so he could be letting his own beliefs carry some of the argument here.

Still, the whole thing about either believing in immortality or immediate death is a bit of an absurdity.  It is possible to have slightly more nuanced beliefs without being logically inadequate.

Quote from: Sigmatic on August 23, 2010, 08:17:30 PM
Still, the whole thing about either believing in immortality or immediate death is a bit of an absurdity.  It is possible to have slightly more nuanced beliefs without being logically inadequate.

As Cain said, this is his soapbox.

Doesn't detract from the enjoyability, I hope.  If I was writing a hugely popular fanfic, I might do the same thing.

Quote from: Sigmatic on August 23, 2010, 08:34:38 PM
Doesn't detract from the enjoyability, I hope.  If I was writing a hugely popular fanfic, I might do the same thing.

Yeah, I really really don't want this to turn into an immortality propaganda piece. Not that immortality isn't interesting, rather that, in literature, it's already been done.

...To death?

His notes suggest he knows Harry is overstating his case:

QuoteIt's an interesting question as to whether Harry is behaving as a Flat Earth Atheist with respect to his skepticism about an afterlife. To be rational, you want to have the sort of mind that, if it finds itself in a world with no afterlife, doesn't believe in an afterlife, and if it finds itself in a world with an afterlife, does believe in an afterlife. J. K. Rowling clearly believed that the original Potterverse had an afterlife, and wrote it accordingly, so if you ended up there and you still didn't believe in an afterlife, one would think this was a bad sign for your rationality.

On the other hand, J. K. Rowling probably wrote the Potterverse using standard patterns she'd picked up about afterlife beliefs - what a LessWrong.com reader would call "cached thoughts". And of course these cached thoughts about 'what it means for there to be an afterlife' are all drawn from people in this universe claiming that this universe has an afterlife. Rowling is used to the idea that people who believe in an afterlife still cry at funerals, i.e., that people who profess to believe in an afterlife don't anticipate-as-if their dead friends just took a one-way trip to Australia. And Rowling didn't change that when she put her characters into a world with a Resurrection Stone. So instead of behaving like the people in Robert Sheckley's "Immortality Inc.", to whom immortality is simply a fact, the people in Rowling's Potterverse still cry at funerals, and make desperate sacrifices to protect the lives of their friends, and are devastated at their deaths; and Voldemort is still frantic for immortality at any cost, even the cost of fracturing his immortal soul so that it gets stuck in Limbo forever, which doesn't seem like a wisely calculated cost-benefit tradeoff.

But thankfully, despite her own belief that the Potterverse had an afterlife, Rowling nonetheless managed not to depict anything in her stories that would provide strong evidence of an afterlife - something you would only see in a world with an afterlife, that you wouldn't see in any other probable world. At least it looks that way as far as I can tell.

So people can doubt it without being stupid.

And that's all the story needs.

Quote from: Cain on August 26, 2010, 08:42:57 AM
His notes suggest he knows Harry is overstating his case:

QuoteIt's an interesting question as to whether Harry is behaving as a Flat Earth Atheist with respect to his skepticism about an afterlife. To be rational, you want to have the sort of mind that, if it finds itself in a world with no afterlife, doesn't believe in an afterlife, and if it finds itself in a world with an afterlife, does believe in an afterlife. J. K. Rowling clearly believed that the original Potterverse had an afterlife, and wrote it accordingly, so if you ended up there and you still didn't believe in an afterlife, one would think this was a bad sign for your rationality.

On the other hand, J. K. Rowling probably wrote the Potterverse using standard patterns she'd picked up about afterlife beliefs - what a LessWrong.com reader would call "cached thoughts". And of course these cached thoughts about 'what it means for there to be an afterlife' are all drawn from people in this universe claiming that this universe has an afterlife. Rowling is used to the idea that people who believe in an afterlife still cry at funerals, i.e., that people who profess to believe in an afterlife don't anticipate-as-if their dead friends just took a one-way trip to Australia. And Rowling didn't change that when she put her characters into a world with a Resurrection Stone. So instead of behaving like the people in Robert Sheckley's "Immortality Inc.", to whom immortality is simply a fact, the people in Rowling's Potterverse still cry at funerals, and make desperate sacrifices to protect the lives of their friends, and are devastated at their deaths; and Voldemort is still frantic for immortality at any cost, even the cost of fracturing his immortal soul so that it gets stuck in Limbo forever, which doesn't seem like a wisely calculated cost-benefit tradeoff.

But thankfully, despite her own belief that the Potterverse had an afterlife, Rowling nonetheless managed not to depict anything in her stories that would provide strong evidence of an afterlife - something you would only see in a world with an afterlife, that you wouldn't see in any other probable world. At least it looks that way as far as I can tell.

So people can doubt it without being stupid.

And that's all the story needs.

I think the "one way trip to Australia" metaphor is a good one for afterlives, and one that people that don't believe in them don't really get.  And that's without factoring in the possibility of different afterlives for different people.  If someone I loved took a one way trip to somewhere far away and I knew I would not see them again for another 50 years (giving myself a slightly generous lifespan here, but whatever)  I'd definitely cry about it.  I'd make personal sacrifices to keep from them being forced to make that trip. 

Voldemort's motivation doesn't really make sense with an assumed afterlife, but I think that mourning the dead does.  We aren't sad for them, we are sad for us.

Best segment from the two newest chapters (very minor spoiler)

QuoteIt was taking a bit of an effort for Daphne Greengrass to keep herself quiet, as Millicent Bulstrode retold the story in the Slytherin girls' common room (a cozy cool place in the dungeons running beneath the Hogwarts Lake, with fish swimming past every window, and couches you could lie down in if you wanted). Mostly because, in Daphne's opinion, it was a perfectly good story already without all of Millicent's improvements.

"And then what?" gasped Flora and Hestia Carrow.

"General Granger looked up at him," Millicent said dramatically, "and she said, 'Draco! You've got to let go of me! Don't worry about me, Draco, I promise I'll be all right! And what do you suppose Malfoy did then?"

"He said 'Never!'," shouted Charlotte Wiland, "and held on even tighter!"

All the listening girls except Pansy Parkinson nodded.

"Nope!" said Millicent. "He dropped her. And then he jumped up and shot General Potter. The end."

Wait.

Black and Pettigrew...?  Was that in the books? 

No.  Most certainly not.  The only canon gay character was, as I recall, Dumbledore.  Also I'm 99% sure Lupin is lying, though Hogwarts is a prestigious British boarding school and Yudowsky, as someone who has worked at Oxford University before, is undoubtedly aware of the Public Schoolboy stereotype.  Lupin is a werewolf, remember, and Pettigrew, Potter and Black all became illegal, unregistered AniMagus' just to accompany him and calm him down when he transformed.  That was the secret.  I'm thinking Lupin is thinking, if Harry wants to believe both were in a relationship together, then Pettigrew is dead and Black is incommunicado in prison, so why not let him believe it?

That makes sense.  I forgot to adjust my perception of Lupin for Yudkowsky's writing.

Or, perhaps Yudkowsky wants to emphasise his point about homosexuality being ok, I mean, it was mentioned 3 times in the last update.

Though, I do find it interesting that sometimes he portrays the magical community as being mostly an old feudal-like system, but on the topic of homosexuality it is more progressive than the muggle world.

I think that was perhaps a nod to the horde of slashfic writers in the Harry Potter fandom.  They are legion, as are stories of Draco and Harry succumbing to their Foe-Yay.

Unfortunately I am well aware of those stories.  :x

QuoteBut at least he'd learned an important fact today. The Comed-Tea was omnipotent. And that meant...

Harry blinked in surprise as his mind finally made the obvious connection.

...that meant that as soon as he learned a spell to temporarily alter his own sense of humor, he could make anything happen, by making it so that he would only find that one thing surprising enough to do a spit-take, and then drinking a can of Comed-Tea.

Well that was a short little journey to godhood. Even I expected this to take longer than my first day of school.

Augh I've been reading this for the last 5 hours

I had stuff I was supposed to do today

Bwa ha ha.

I have a headache now cause I read chapters 1 - 22 in one go

But the headache is worth it

QuoteHarry pushed himself up, making rather hard going of it. Using up your magic didn't exhaust your muscles, but dodging around trees certainly did.

He staggered over to the iridescent hemisphere that contained Draco Malfoy, who was holding his wand aloft to sustain the shield, and smiling coldly at Harry.

"All right," Harry said. "Does anyone know anything about General Malfoy's shield spell?"

It developed that Draco's shield was a version of the standard Protego which had several disadvantages, the most important of which was that the shield couldn't move with the caster.

The upside - or from Harry's perspective, downside - was that it was easier to learn, easier to cast, and much easier to sustain for long times.

They would need to hammer the shield with attack spells in order to bring it down.

And Draco could apparently exert some control over the angle of reflection at which the spells would bounce off.

The thought occurred to Harry that they could use Wingardium Leviosa to pile up heavy rocks on the shield until Draco couldn't sustain it against the pressure... but then the rocks might fall in afterward and hit Draco, and injuring the enemy general for real was not among today's goals.

"So," said Harry. "Are there such things as specialized shield-piercing spells?"

There were.

Harry asked if any of his soldiers knew them.

No one did.

Draco was smirking again, inside his shield.

Harry asked if there was any sort of attack spell that wouldn't bounce.

Lightning bolts, it seemed, were usually absorbed by shields instead of bouncing off them.

...No one knew how to cast any sort of lightning-related spell.

Draco sniggered.

Harry sighed.

He quite deliberately laid his wand on the ground.

And Harry announced, with some weariness in his voice, that he would just go ahead and take down the shield himself, using some method that would remain mysterious; and everyone else was to fire on Draco as soon as his shield went down.

The Chaos Legionnaires looked nervous.

Draco looked calm, which was to say, controlled.

A thin, folded blanket came out of Harry's pouch.

Harry sat down next to the shimmering shield, and pulled the blanket over his head so no one could see what he did - except Draco, of course.

From Harry's pouch came a car battery and a set of jumper cables.

...it wasn't like he'd been about to leave the Muggle world to start a new era of magical research, and not take along any way of generating electricity.

:fap:

Hasn't updated yet, but thought I should point out this interesting theory from TV Tropes

QuoteQuirrellmort shows a startling commitment to actually teaching (as opposed to the canon version who simply wanted the Stone so he could get back in the game). Though it would follow with the pattern of the book that this is just another Xanatos Gambit, there also seems to be a distinct possibility that he has given up on his ambitions, and has instead resigned himself to teaching his philosophy to the youth (especially Harry Potter, who he is overtly offering to help become the next Dark Lord). The upshot is that the motivation to make others think the same way you do is far more realistic than wanting to take over the world, and this fic is intent on adding as much realism as possible.

Quote from: Cain on June 21, 2010, 12:51:49 PM
OK, I'm going to assume everyone here is familiar with the Harry Potter series, yes?

So, I want you to imagine a series where, instead of our protagonist being bought up by mildly abusive and bullying foster parents, a young Harry Potter was raised by his maternal aunt and her husband, a professor of mathematics at Oxford University.  Instead of labouring under the various emotional instabilities gifted to him by his canon parents, he instead grows up with a keen awareness and love of science, the experimental method and rationality.  And then he's told there he is a wizard and magic exists...

The writer of this series is the multi-talented Eliezer Yudkowsky, most well known for his articles on the early Overcoming Bias blog and for his research into artificial intelligence and cognitive biases.  Somehow, he manages to change the Harry Potter series into something both hilarious and informative (all the science in the series is accurate), and changes the main character from the whimpering, maladjusted teenager he was in the canon into a Chaotic Neutral Magnificent Bastard, who wants to take over "optimize" the Universe.

Here are some samples of the writing, if you want a flavour of his style:

Quote"'Scuse me," Harry said, "but what is that stuff, exactly?"

"Comed-Tea," said the vendor. "If you drink it, something surprising is bound to happen which makes you spill it on yourself or someone else. But it's charmed to vanish just a few seconds later -" Indeed the stain on his beard was already disappearing.

"How droll," said Draco. "How very, very droll. Come, Mr. Bronze, let's go find another -"

"Hold on," Harry said.

"Oh come on! That's just, just juvenile!"

"No, I'm sorry Draco, I have to investigate this. What happens if I drink Comed-Tea while doing my best to keep the conversation completely serious?"

The vendor smiled and shrugged mysteriously. "Who knows? You suddenly see a friend walking by in a frog costume? Something humorous and unexpected will happen one way or another -"

"No. I'm sorry. I just don't believe it. That violates my much-abused suspension of disbelief on so many levels I don't even have the language to describe it. There is, there is just no way a bloody drink can manipulate reality to produce comedy setups, or I'm going to give up and retire to the Bahamas -"

Draco groaned. "Are we really going to do this?"

"You don't have to drink it but I have to investigate. Have to. How much?"

"Five Knuts the can," the vendor said.

"Five Knuts? You can sell reality-manipulating soft drinks for five Knuts the can?" Harry reached into his pouch, said "four Sickles, four Knuts", and slapped them down on the counter. "Two dozen cans please."

"I'll also take one," Draco sighed, and started to reach for his pockets.

Harry shook his head rapidly. "No, I've got this, doesn't count as a favor either, I want to see if it works for you too." He tossed a can to Draco and then started feeding his pouch, whose Widening Lip ate the cans accompanied by small burping noises, which wasn't exactly helping to restore Harry's faith that he would someday discover a reasonable explanation for all this.

Twenty-two burps later, Harry had the last purchased can in his hand. Draco was looking at him expectantly, and the two of them popped the top at the same time.

Harry rolled up his scarf to expose his mouth, and they tilted their heads back and drank the Comed-Tea. It somehow tasted bright green - extra-fizzy and limer than lime.

Nothing happened.

Harry looked at the vendor, who was watching them benevolently.

All right, if this guy just took advantage of a natural accident to sell me twenty-four cans of green soda pop, I'm going to applaud his creative entrepreneurial spirit and then kill him.

"It doesn't always happen immediately," the vendor said. "But it's guaranteed to happen once per can, or your money back."

Harry took another long drink.

Once again, nothing happened.

Maybe I should just chug the whole thing as fast as possible... and hope my stomach doesn't explode from all the carbon dioxide, or that I don't burp while drinking it...

No, he could afford to be a little patient. But honestly, Harry didn't see how this was going to work. You couldn't go up to someone and say "Now I'm going to surprise you" or "And now I'm going to tell you the punchline of the joke, and it'll be really funny." It ruined the shock value. In Harry's state of mental preparedness, Lucius Malfoy could have walked past in a ballerina outfit and it wouldn't have gotten him to do a proper spit-take. Just what sort of wacky shenanigan was the universe supposed to cough up now?

"Anyway, let's sit down," Harry said. He prepared to swig another drink and started toward the distant seating area, which put him at the right angle to glance back and see the portion of the vendor's newspaper stand that was devoted to a newspaper called The Quibbler, which was showing the following headline:

BOY-WHO-LIVED GETS
DRACO MALFOY PREGNANT

"Gah!" screamed Draco as bright green liquid sprayed all over him from Harry's direction. Draco turned toward Harry with fire in his eyes and grabbed his own can. "You son of a mudblood! Let's see how you like being spat upon!" Draco took a deliberate swig from the can just as his own eyes caught sight of the headline.

In sheer reflex action, Harry tried to block his face as the spray of liquid flew in his direction. Unfortunately he blocked using the hand containing the Comed-Tea, sending the rest of the green liquid to splash out over his shoulder.

Harry stared at the can in his hand even as he went on choking and spluttering and the green color started to vanish from Draco's robes.

Then he looked up and stared at the newspaper headline.

BOY-WHO-LIVED GETS
DRACO MALFOY PREGNANT

Harry's lips opened and said, "buh-bluh-buh-buh..."

Too many competing objections, that was the problem. Every time Harry tried to say "But we're only eleven!" the objection "But men can't get pregnant!" demanded first priority and was then run over by "But there's nothing between us, really!"

Then Harry looked down at the can in his hand again.

He was feeling a deep-seated desire to run away screaming at the top of his lungs until he finally dropped over from lack of oxygen, and the only thing stopping him was that he had once read that outright panic was the sign of a truly important scientific problem.

And my personal favourite:

QuoteAnd Professor McGonagall held out in one hand a necklace, a thin golden chain bearing in its center a silver circle, within which was the device of an hourglass. In her other hand was a folded pamphlet. "This is for you," she said.

Wow! He was going to get some sort of neat magical item as a quest reward! Apparently that business with refusing offers of monetary rewards until you got a magic item actually worked in real life, not just computer games.

Harry accepted his new necklace, smiling. "What is it?"

Professor McGonagall took a breath. "Mr. Potter, this is an item which is ordinarily lent only to children who have already shown themselves to be highly responsible, in order to help them with difficult class schedules." McGonagall hesitated, as though about to add something else. "I must emphasize, Mr. Potter, that this item's true nature is secret and that you must not tell any of the other students about it, or let them see you using it. If that's not acceptable to you, then you can give it back now."

"I can keep secrets," Harry said. "So what does it do?"

"So far as the other students are concerned, this is a Spimster wicket and it is used to treat a rare, non-contagious magical ailment called Spontaneous Duplication. You wear it under your clothes, and while you have no reason to show it to anyone, you also have no reason to treat it as an awful secret. Spimster wickets are not interesting. Do you understand, Mr. Potter?"

Harry nodded, his smile widening. He sensed the work of a competent Slytherin. "And what does it really do?"

"It's a Time-Turner. Each spin of the hourglass sends you one hour back in time. So if you use it to go back two hours every day, you should always be able to get to sleep at the same time."

Harry's suspension of disbelief blew completely out the window.

You're giving me a time machine to treat my sleep disorder.

You're giving me a TIME MACHINE to treat my SLEEP DISORDER.

YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.

"Ehehehehhheheh..." Harry's mouth said. He was now holding the necklace away from him as though it were a live bomb. Well, no, not as if it were a live bomb, that didn't begin to describe the severity of the situation. Harry held the necklace away from him as though it were a time machine.

Say, Professor McGonagall, did you know that time-reversed ordinary matter looks just like antimatter? Why yes it does! Did you know that one kilogram of antimatter encountering one kilogram of matter will annihilate in an explosion equivalent to 43 million tons of TNT? Do you realize that I myself weigh 41 kilograms and that the resulting blast would leave A GIANT SMOKING CRATER WHERE THERE USED TO BE SCOTLAND?

"Excuse me," Harry managed to say, "but this sounds really really really REALLY DANGEROUS!" Harry's voice didn't quite rise to a shriek, he couldn't possibly scream loud enough to do this situation justice so there was no point in trying.

Professor McGonagall looked upon him with tolerant affection. "I'm glad you're taking this seriously, Mr. Potter, but Time-Turners aren't that dangerous. We wouldn't give them to children if they were."

"Really," Harry said. "Ahahahaha. Of course you wouldn't give time machines to children if they were dangerous, what was I thinking? So just to be clear, sneezing on this device will not send me into the Middle Ages where I will run over Gutenberg with a horse cart and prevent the Enlightenment? Because, you know, I hate it when that happens to me."

McGonagall's lips were twitching in that way she had when she was trying not to smile. She offered Harry the pamphlet she was holding, but Harry was carefully holding out the necklace with both hands and staring at the hourglass to make sure it wasn't about to turn. "Don't worry," McGonagall said after a momentary pause, when it became clear that Harry wasn't going to move, "that can't possibly happen, Mr. Potter. The Time-Turner cannot be used to move more than six hours backward. It can't be used more than six times in any day."

"Oh, good, very good, that. And if someone bumps into me the Time-Turner will not break and will not trap the whole castle of Hogwarts in an endlessly repeating loop of Thursdays."

"Well, they can be fragile..." said McGonagall. "And I do think I've heard about strange things happening if they're broken. But nothing like that!"

"Perhaps," Harry said when he could speak again, "you ought to provide your time machines with some sort of protective shell, rather than leaving the glass exposed, so as to prevent that from happening."

McGonagall looked quite struck. "That's an excellent idea, Mr. Potter. I shall inform the Ministry of it."

That's it, it's official now, they've ratified it in Parliament, everyone in the wizarding world is completely stupid.

The whole series, so far as it has been written, can be read at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality

That was quite interesting. Hope to see some more.

From the last update, I think we know what Voldemort did with the rest of the horcruxes.  :lulz:

Also, holy shit awesome patronus. I did not see that one coming.

Nurse Enabler, the entire story so far (46 chapters) can be read at the provided link.  I suggest not reading it before you go to bed or have any pressing engagements, as it's both quite hilarious and very intellectually stimulating, as a story.

Kai, yeah, Voldemort is so dangerously genre savvy I'm having a hard time seeing how Harry is even capable of defeating him.  Which makes me wonder if he's even the Big Bad of the series at all.  Someone else pointed out while there have been many Draco and Snape redemption fics, there have been none who have tried to rehabilitate Voldemort, or at least suggest he has retired from his Dark Lord ambitions.  I'm still wondering about Mr Hat and Cloak, and wondering if everyone is being manipulated by him, for some unknown and sinister purpose.  It wouldn't take much to get the Lucius and Dumbledore factions fighting, with Voldemort attempting to take advantage of the chaos for his own purposes, and such a conflict could be a prelude to...er, something.

Yeah. I mean, it's possible Harry could find a way to get the horcruxes that are within his reaches (on earth), but how is he going to get to the edge of the solar system?

1. One is in an active volcano, encased in high melting point metal, and possibly in the mantle

2. One is buried in solid rock maybe a kilometer down in the crust.

3. One is in the Mariana trench, or another deep ocean trench.

4. One is buoyant and invisible in the stratosphere.

5. And one is careening out of the solar system.

That leaves out one more, assuming harry is right about the rest. He's the seventh, if Yudowsky is sticking with that part of the cannon.

I willing to bet that Harry's rock is one.

Also, it seems to me that another equally logical possibility of how Snape heard the prophecy (if it was Snape who told Voldemort, and didn't Pettigrew ask for Lily to be spared in the original?), is that he was there at the time with Minerva. Then again, seeing as though it seems every adult is trying a Xanos gambit, it probably isn't.

The Homo Sapiens patronus seemed like a no-brainer for me, but growing up my best friend was a super logical guy who always gleefully professed that his totem animal was a human.  :lol:

I'm no longer sure that there is a BBEG in this fic.  Voldemort seems mostly concerned with just making sure Harry becomes a bad person, and Harry seems mostly concerned with becoming god.  That's really all the danger the story needs.

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 06, 2010, 07:00:36 PM
The Homo Sapiens patronus seemed like a no-brainer for me, but growing up my best friend was a super logical guy who always gleefully professed that his totem animal was a human.  :lol:

I'm no longer sure that there is a BBEG in this fic.  Voldemort seems mostly concerned with just making sure Harry becomes a bad person, and Harry seems mostly concerned with becoming god.  That's really all the danger the story needs.

Maybe.


I'd like to draw attention to the rant currently in authors notes.

Quote from: YudowskiIf you'll excuse me, I'd like to go on a bit of a rant about some of the more idiot responses to Ch. 42, namely the ones who said "OMG this fic is now slash and I'm too good to read slash so I'm going to stop reading and let everyone know that!"

The obvious response to this would be to start inserting actual slash. But while I'd willingly take a pill that made me bisexual, this pill does not yet exist, so right now, writing actual slash would be about as much fun for me as a root canal.

So behold this rant, then:

I think of myself as someone who deliberately cuts against the grain of status and prestige. Which, of course, is something that everyone likes to think about themselves. But then again, my claim does have a certain credibility, because I had a reputation as a "real" writer before I started writing Harry Potter fanfiction, and I did that with malice aforethought to intentionally drop myself down multiple levels on the Geek Hierarchy. Snobbery offends me; I am offended by people who are prejudiced against beauty because of its form or its medium. I am offended by people who think "Calvin and Hobbes" can't be real art because it's a comic strip, and I can curse them with no darker fate than that they go look at some ugly, pointless, fake "modern art" that will impress their friends more. And I am equally offended by people who look down on fanfiction because it's fanfiction, who'd take something beautiful like "Always and Always" and turn up their noses at it. So I write Harry Potter fanfiction and be damned to them all. Someday, when I think I can get away with it, I will write deep intellectual self-insert pornography that is even better than MoR just so I can watch people's heads explode.

That, at any rate, was the damn-the-torpedoes, screw-the-critics, defiant iconoclastic spirit in which I decided to write this wacky little story just for fun, during my downtime from working on a nonfiction rationality book.

I should not have been surprised, but I was, to find my work being read by many people who took their Harry Potter fanfiction extremely seriously, and who were shocked at the way I was casually violating some of their most cherished artistic conventions.

And if I claimed that there was anything odd about taking Harry Potter fanfiction just as seriously as, say, 18th-century classical music, then I would of course be revealing myself as a great big snobby snob.

I came in thinking that I was making a great show of defiant iconoclastic spirit by writing Harry Potter fanfiction, and that means I wasn't nearly as iconoclastic as I thought. And for this I am heartily ashamed.

However.

If you think that everyone who writes Harry Potter fanfiction should take it as seriously as you take yours, and that it is sinful for anyone to enjoy it unless it's done exactly your way according to your favorite artistic conventions, then you are being a snob about Harry Potter fanfiction. I am just barely sensitive enough to the status conventions of the real world to notice that this is a tiny bit incongruous.

Don't get me wrong. You can write Harry Potter fanfiction. You can take it seriously. You can craft it with care. You can make it mature, emotional, and deep. You can have artistic conventions, and criticism of work that tries to obey those conventions and fails. And you can do all that with a straight face, because beauty knows no law but beauty.

What you cannot do with a straight face is be a great big snobby snob about Harry Potter fanfiction.

You cannot, for example, claim that your kind of Harry Potter fanfiction is real art, but that no Harry Potter fanfiction which involves slash can possibly be taken seriously.

Not unless you have stayed in your tiny little corner of the Internet for so long that you have totally lost perspective on what the rest of the world thinks about Harry Potter fanfiction in the first place.

Thank you.

:lulz:

That was magnificent.  Yudkowsky is my hero.  He makes rationality cool.

Wait, with the stone and Harry, that would make seven wouldn't it?

Also, this just struck me:

1. In the magma = fire

2. Buried deep in the crust = earth

3. At the bottom of an ocean trench = water

4. Floating invisible in the stratosphere = air

5. Drifting in space = void

The riddle?

Mind.

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 06, 2010, 10:29:00 PM
Mind.

Explain.

Just a hunch, but if Harry is the final horcrux, then it fits the pattern.

And yes, I'm basically just pattern matching here.  And at the same time, I'm doing the Dumbledore thing of expecting reality to match dramatic narrative cliches.  Two rational failures in one.

I still maintain that I have a hunch.

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 06, 2010, 10:43:35 PM
Just a hunch, but if Harry is the final horcrux, then it fits the pattern.

And yes, I'm basically just pattern matching here.  And at the same time, I'm doing the Dumbledore thing of expecting reality to match dramatic narrative cliches.  Two rational failures in one.

I still maintain that I have a hunch.

The other being the stone? Matter?

Harry being a Horocrux would explain his initial reaction to the Dementor.

Though, doesn't Voldemort need access to at least one of his horocruxes in order to come back from the dead properly in the books?  If that holds true Harry's ideas aren't terribly useful.

Edit: Apparently not.

I don't belive the rock is one of Voldemort's horcrux. Remember, the horcrux is a piece of Voldemort's soul, with awareness and intent to do evil.  Giving it to Harry would be exceptionally dangerous, he is already "susceptible" via his scar to possession and manipulation, and Dumbledore isn't that stupid.

It may be the Resurrection Stone, though.

Quote from: Cain on September 15, 2010, 03:29:59 PM
I don't belive the rock is one of Voldemort's horcrux. Remember, the horcrux is a piece of Voldemort's soul, with awareness and intent to do evil. 

That is a good point.

Quote from: Kai on September 06, 2010, 10:46:41 PM

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 06, 2010, 10:43:35 PM
Just a hunch, but if Harry is the final horcrux, then it fits the pattern.

And yes, I'm basically just pattern matching here.  And at the same time, I'm doing the Dumbledore thing of expecting reality to match dramatic narrative cliches.  Two rational failures in one.

I still maintain that I have a hunch.

The other being the stone? Matter?

That would complete the cliche...

I'm back to thinking Yudkowsky is going to actively avoid cliches.  And if (big if) the clue about Harry guessing the horcruxes is right, then Harry will probably scold Voldemort for being so obvious.

THIS SHIT IS FUCKING AWESOME.

Something just occurred to me.  What if, instead of guessing the locations of the horcruxes, Harry had simply given Voldemort better hiding places?

I thought the latter was what was actually happening.  That's why it's so hard for me to forsee how he can beat him, since without locating and destroying them all (including the one inside him), Voldemort will just keep cropping up, like a dangerously genre savvy bad penny.  Of doom.

One reviewer has also suggested that Harry, in keeping the Bayesian Conspiracy and it's findings secret, is violating one of the most basic key dictates of scientific advancement, and that the plot resolution will revolve around him realizing that.  Which is possible I guess, though Yudowsky isn't a vanilla rationalist and the reviewer in question may be assuming too much here (IIRC, in the sequences Yudowsky has claimed being a rationalist is more important than being a scientist, and has made some implicit criticisms of the standard scientific method).

I can't remember where he said it, but I vaguely recall-

Ah yes.

He has spoken of this before:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/p0/to_spread_science_keep_it_secret/

Since when is science *not* heavily guarded?  There's no way to get access to it beyond the high school level without shelling out tens of thousands of dollars.

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 19, 2010, 07:07:09 PM
I can't remember where he said it, but I vaguely recall-

Ah yes.

He has spoken of this before:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/p0/to_spread_science_keep_it_secret/

I really liked that essay when I first read it, if only because adding chanting and litanies to PhD initiation would be awesome.

Requiem, the point wasn't that scientific knowledge isn't hard to get, it's that the public thinks that it's freely available, and therefore unimportant. If you claim to have hidden knowledge that people must pay to get, it looks more valuable than if you seem to be freely giving it away.

Quote from: Requia ☣ on September 19, 2010, 07:56:12 PM
Since when is science *not* heavily guarded?  There's no way to get access to it beyond the high school level without shelling out tens of thousands of dollars.

There are public libraries, so the only barrier is one of effort.  People underestimate how big a barrier it is, thus the perception that science is not guarded.

Quote from: Kai on September 19, 2010, 08:29:26 PM

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 19, 2010, 07:07:09 PM
I can't remember where he said it, but I vaguely recall-

Ah yes.

He has spoken of this before:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/p0/to_spread_science_keep_it_secret/

I really liked that essay when I first read it, if only because adding chanting and litanies to PhD initiation would be awesome.

Requiem, the point wasn't that scientific knowledge isn't hard to get, it's that the public thinks that it's freely available, and therefore unimportant. If you claim to have hidden knowledge that people must pay to get, it looks more valuable than if you seem to be freely giving it away.

You have a very good point.  So really the goal should be to make people *think* that science is hard to get to.  There's no reason you can't make it actually easier to get to as well...

Quote from: Kai on September 19, 2010, 08:29:26 PM

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 19, 2010, 07:07:09 PM
I can't remember where he said it, but I vaguely recall-

Ah yes.

He has spoken of this before:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/p0/to_spread_science_keep_it_secret/

I really liked that essay when I first read it, if only because adding chanting and litanies to PhD initiation would be awesome.

Requiem, the point wasn't that scientific knowledge isn't hard to get, it's that the public thinks that it's freely available, and therefore unimportant. If you claim to have hidden knowledge that people must pay to get, it looks more valuable than if you seem to be freely giving it away.

Ironically, Adam Weisphaut said almost exactly the same thing to Zwack in one of his letters, except Weisphaut really truly believed in secret socieities devoted to Reason, as opposed to just making it look secret so people would get more interested.

If we dropped this informaiton off to Wiolwa's crew, we could have a conspiracy theory that Yudowsky is really an Illuminatus by the end of the week, and by the end of the month it'd be "common knowledge" in the conspiracy community that HP&MoR is Illuminati propaganda.

Also my graduation had Ominious Latin Chanting.  Translated it was a medieval drinking song, but it was nevertheless quite awesome.

Quote
If we dropped this informaiton off to Wiolwa's crew, we could have a conspiracy theory that Yudowsky is really an Illuminatus by the end of the week, and by the end of the month it'd be "common knowledge" in the conspiracy community that HP&MoR is Illuminati propaganda.

Is there any reason NOT to do this?

Absolutely none.  Given Yudowsky's....appreciation of chaos, and subtle references to Discordianism elsewhere, he might be quite tickled by such an event.

Would he take that as "fan art", I wonder?

Quote from: Cain on September 20, 2010, 07:34:51 AM

Quote from: Kai on September 19, 2010, 08:29:26 PM

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 19, 2010, 07:07:09 PM
I can't remember where he said it, but I vaguely recall-

Ah yes.

He has spoken of this before:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/p0/to_spread_science_keep_it_secret/

I really liked that essay when I first read it, if only because adding chanting and litanies to PhD initiation would be awesome.

Requiem, the point wasn't that scientific knowledge isn't hard to get, it's that the public thinks that it's freely available, and therefore unimportant. If you claim to have hidden knowledge that people must pay to get, it looks more valuable than if you seem to be freely giving it away.

Ironically, Adam Weisphaut said almost exactly the same thing to Zwack in one of his letters, except Weisphaut really truly believed in secret socieities devoted to Reason, as opposed to just making it look secret so people would get more interested.

If we dropped this informaiton off to Wiolwa's crew, we could have a conspiracy theory that Yudowsky is really an Illuminatus by the end of the week, and by the end of the month it'd be "common knowledge" in the conspiracy community that HP&MoR is Illuminati propaganda.

Also my graduation had Ominious Latin Chanting.  Translated it was a medieval drinking song, but it was nevertheless quite awesome.

He's not?  He certainly has enough little pinealist bits to make me assume he's got Discordian sympathies.

I'd be really happy if he posted another chapter soon.  All my other light reading has really boring, unintelligent protagonists.

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 20, 2010, 10:12:19 PM
I'd be really happy if he posted another chapter soon.  All my other light reading has really boring, unintelligent protagonists.

Have you read On the Origin of Species yet? That one has a kickass protagonist, really intelligent too.

I haven't, and I should.  I may even have a copy somewhere in my collection...

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 21, 2010, 01:03:43 AM
I haven't, and I should.  I may even have a copy somewhere in my collection...

http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F373&viewtype=text&pageseq=1

Sweet link, thanks! 

More inspiration to spring for an e-reader. 

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 21, 2010, 01:56:51 AM
Sweet link, thanks! 

More inspiration to spring for an e-reader. 

Most of the best books ever written are out of copyright, and can be easily obtained online for free and completely legal. Remember this. Internet Archive is your friend.

Quote from: Kai on September 21, 2010, 12:22:49 AM

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 20, 2010, 10:12:19 PM
I'd be really happy if he posted another chapter soon.  All my other light reading has really boring, unintelligent protagonists.

Have you read On the Origin of Species yet? That one has a kickass protagonist, really intelligent too.

Is that written as a narrative?  Not a complaint about it, just that a narrative, even with some really interesting philosophical or scientific questions in it, engages my brain in a very different way than an academic paper, which is what I had always assumed Origin to be.

Quote from: Xochipilli on September 21, 2010, 09:03:31 AM

Quote from: Kai on September 21, 2010, 12:22:49 AM

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 20, 2010, 10:12:19 PM
I'd be really happy if he posted another chapter soon.  All my other light reading has really boring, unintelligent protagonists.

Have you read On the Origin of Species yet? That one has a kickass protagonist, really intelligent too.

Is that written as a narrative?  Not a complaint about it, just that a narrative, even with some really interesting philosophical or scientific questions in it, engages my brain in a very different way than an academic paper, which is what I had always assumed Origin to be.

It's partially narrative and partially discussion of evidence. Scientists wrote differently in the 19th century, there was expectation of good writing because otherwise no one would read it. That being said, Voyage of the Beagle, and Darwin's Autobiography are more like narratives than On the Origin, On the Descent, and Expressions of the Emotions.

Those five books are the best that Darwin wrote. The rest of his works were more specialist, like the writing on atol formation, or worms, or carnivorous plants, or orchids, or barnacles.

How does the villain hold up to Darwin, or compare to Voldemort?  If he doesn't assassinate a journalist while going for a cup of coffee, I wont be happy.

Quote from: Cain on September 21, 2010, 12:37:35 PM
How does the villain hold up to Darwin, or compare to Voldemort?  If he doesn't assassinate a journalist while going for a cup of coffee, I wont be happy.

:lulz:

Darwin fanfiction... :lulz: :lulz:

A steampunk-esque fanfic with Darwin as the hero would be amazing.

Quote from: Cain on September 21, 2010, 01:00:52 PM
A steampunk-esque fanfic with Darwin as the hero would be amazing.

I somehow think someone might have already done this.

Quite probably.  If so, I hope it was the guy who wrote "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer".

http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2087198/EliezerYudkowsky and http://yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/ by the way.

Quote from: Cain on September 21, 2010, 01:00:52 PM
A steampunk-esque fanfic with Darwin as the hero would be amazing.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Comstock:_A_Story_of_22nd-Century_America)

Quote from: Remington on September 21, 2010, 09:47:22 PM

Quote from: Cain on September 21, 2010, 01:00:52 PM
A steampunk-esque fanfic with Darwin as the hero would be amazing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Comstock:_A_Story_of_22nd-Century_America

http://futurismic.com/2010/09/02/chuck-darwin-steampunk-terraformer-to-her-majesty-queen-victoria/

Incidentally, this story (http://lesswrong.com/lw/pn/zombies_the_movie/) is lulzworthy:

QuoteGENERAL FRED:  The reports are confirmed.  New York has been overrun... by zombies.

COLONEL TODD:  Again?  But we just had a zombie invasion 28 days ago!

GENERAL FRED:  These zombies... are different.  They're... philosophical zombies.

CAPTAIN MUDD:  Are they filled with rage, causing them to bite people?

COLONEL TODD:  Do they lose all capacity for reason?

GENERAL FRED:  No.  They behave... exactly like we do... except that they're not conscious.

(Silence grips the table.)

COLONEL TODD:  Dear God.

Quote(Cut to two POLICE OFFICERS, guarding a dirt road leading up to the imposing steel gate of a gigantic concrete complex.  On their uniforms, a badge reads "BRIDGING LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY".)

OFFICER 1:  You've got to watch out for those clever bastards.  They look like humans.  They can talk like humans.  They're identical to humans on the atomic level.  But they're not human.

OFFICER 2:  Scumbags.

The huge noise of a throbbing engine echoes over the hills.  Up rides the MAN on a white motorcycle.  The MAN is wearing black sunglasses and a black leather business suit with a black leather tie and silver metal boots.  His white beard flows in the wind.  He pulls to a halt in front of the gate.

The OFFICERS bustle up to the motorcycle.

OFFICER 1:  State your business here.

MAN:  Is this where you're keeping David Chalmers?

OFFICER 2:  What's it to you?  You a friend of his?

MAN:  Can't say I am.  But even zombies have rights.

OFFICER 1:  All right, buddy, let's see your qualia.

MAN:  I don't have any.

OFFICER 2 suddenly pulls a gun, keeping it trained on the MAN.  OFFICER 2:  Aha!  A zombie!

OFFICER 1:  No, zombies claim to have qualia.

OFFICER 2:  So he's an ordinary human?

OFFICER 1:  No, they also claim to have qualia.

The OFFICERS look at the MAN, who waits calmly.

OFFICER 2:  Um...

OFFICER 1:  Who are you?

MAN:  I'm Daniel Dennett, bitches.

Seemingly from nowhere, DENNETT pulls a sword and slices OFFICER 2's gun in half with a steely noise.  OFFICER 1 begins to reach for his own gun, but DENNETT is suddenly standing behind OFFICER 1 and chops with a fist, striking the junction of OFFICER 1's shoulder and neck.  OFFICER 1 drops to the ground.

OFFICER 2 steps back, horrified.

OFFICER 2:  That's not possible!  How'd you do that?

DENNETT:  I am one with my body.

DENNETT drops OFFICER 2 with another blow, and strides toward the gate.  He looks up at the imposing concrete complex, and grips his sword tighter.

DENNETT (quietly to himself):  There is a spoon.

FUCK YES HAHAHAA

That fills me with ridiculous joy

Also

QuoteSCIENTIST:  The zombie disease eliminates consciousness without changing the brain in any way.  We've been trying to understand how the disease is transmitted.  Our conclusion is that, since the disease attacks dual properties of ordinary matter, it must, itself, operate outside our universe.  We're dealing with an epiphenomenal virus.

GENERAL FRED:  Are you sure?

SCIENTIST:  As sure as we can be in the total absence of evidence.

Goddamnit Yudowsky, three fucking weeks.

These upcoming chapters better be amazing, or I will hunt down a motherfucker and teach him to see the truth in the world around him.  Whether he wants to or not.

I know.  He's been pretty consistent up until now.  Maybe he's doing a big push to finish his rationality book.

I know his place of work is looking to hire someone for a new position (because I saw it advertised on his blog) and thought that, along with the book, may be a reason for the delay.  And that, given the note on which the last chapter finished, it will probably be a pretty big and important subplot coming up, which will require a certain level of attention.

But seriously, I need my fix, and soon.  I can't impersonate Professor Quirrell in a class of 10 year olds for forever to make up for not having the next chapter.

Glad it's not just me.  I've started rereading old chapters to remind myself why I keep waiting.

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 25, 2010, 04:25:54 AM
I know.  He's been pretty consistent up until now.  Maybe he's doing a big push to finish his rationality book.

He caved into requests that he not publish until a story arc is finished, he's probably working on a long arc.

Oh well, I guess some people can't handle cliffhangers even for a week.  At least he hasn't lost interest.

Bwahaha!

Next chapter is up.  Unfortunately, Fanfiction.net is being buggy at my end and I'm finding I have to refresh everything several times to get any page to load.

SNAKES ARE SENTIENT?!?

Awesome chapter!  I was wondering if Harry was a parselmouth in this one.

QuoteI am amazed that not a single person got the hint in Ch. 45. Or at least, if anyone did, they didn't review it. I thought I was being pretty blatant that time, guess I was wrong. Say, you know what I envy J. K. Rowling? I envy that she has the sort of readers where if she writes the initials R.A.B., people will pour through all her previous books looking for a character with those initials and solve the hint. 'Cuz I have been diligently embedding hints all through MoR. I bet that if you were to reread MoR and copy everything that looks like a hint into a separate document, and then look through all of the hints at once, you would, like, notice some stuff. Just sayin'.

LOL

Guess what I did just last week?  8)

Quote from: Cain on September 25, 2010, 06:57:21 PM

QuoteI am amazed that not a single person got the hint in Ch. 45. Or at least, if anyone did, they didn't review it. I thought I was being pretty blatant that time, guess I was wrong. Say, you know what I envy J. K. Rowling? I envy that she has the sort of readers where if she writes the initials R.A.B., people will pour through all her previous books looking for a character with those initials and solve the hint. 'Cuz I have been diligently embedding hints all through MoR. I bet that if you were to reread MoR and copy everything that looks like a hint into a separate document, and then look through all of the hints at once, you would, like, notice some stuff. Just sayin'.

LOL

Guess what I did just last week?  8)

And what did you discover?

Nothing definite, I'm half certain I'm imposing my own thoughts on off the cuff comments and phrases.  I was sure Harry being a Parselmouth was foreshadowed earlier on somewhere though...to be honest, I'd need to check the textfile again.

Quote from: Cain on September 25, 2010, 07:25:17 PM
Nothing definite, I'm half certain I'm imposing my own thoughts on off the cuff comments and phrases.  I was sure Harry being a Parselmouth was foreshadowed earlier on somewhere though...to be honest, I'd need to check the textfile again.

It was foreshadowed at the very beginning of the first day at Hogwarts, when the snake from the Chamber of Secrets gave that message to Harry.

Oh, yes, so it was.  See, this is why I need to read it again.

Reading back, yes, the whole zombies sequence is lulzworthy. To think, there are actually people out there that believe it is possible to have beings that are on every level atomically identical to us, yet not conscious. Intuitively I know it is bullshit, but obviously there are some people that don't get it.  :lulz:

Inspired by that one, I called a friend of mine (who is not an intellectual) and explained Chalmers' hard problem to him.  Turns out he couldn't understand how anyone could make that mistake.  I even made sure to explain it as if I believed it, and he still saw the problem.

The best part of the whole thing was:

"Show us your qualia." "I don't have any." "Who are you?" "I'm Daniel Denett, bitches."

"There is a spoon."

:lulz:

That was genius. 

"There is a spoon" was a genius line.

The truly sad thing is I can really imagine Daniel Dennett crouched over with a bloodied katana in his hands, whispering it to himself.

Quote from: Cain on September 26, 2010, 12:22:31 AM
"There is a spoon" was a genius line.

The truly sad thing is I can really imagine Daniel Dennett crouched over with a bloodied katana in his hands, whispering it to himself.

It would be relatively simple for someone to write a short comics of the script as laid out, including that scene.

Anyone else read Yudkowsky's Three Worlds Collide?


I'm into it now, and...

Quote"There was a threshold crossed somewhere," said the Confessor, "without a single apocalypse to mark it.  Fewer wars.  Less starvation.  Better technology.  The economy kept growing.  People had more resource to spare for charity, and the altruists had fewer and fewer causes to choose from.  They came even to me, in my time, and rescued me.  Earth cleaned itself up, and whenever something threatened to go drastically wrong again, the whole attention of the planet turned in that direction and took care of it.  Humanity finally got its act together."

...



Sigh. 

I started it, but then remembered I had to actually finish off transferring his Sequences to my word file (nearly 900 pages now, on the final major sequence, but I still need to go through and add as many of the images as possible and a couple of the minor sequences I skipped before PDFing it) and actually read it, so I can start using Bayesian reasoning on the topic of IR and rule the world optimize the international system.

I read it, Sig. It was very Yudowsky.

Which ending do you prefer?

I honestly can't decide. 

Quote from: Sigmatic on September 29, 2010, 02:33:06 AM
Which ending do you prefer?

I honestly can't decide. 

Not the one where we blow up a planet because we don't like the idea of giving up most forms of pain.

Humans are irrational suckers, through and through.

Well-

I know, intellectually, that the "mutual assimilation" ending was the better outcome.  But I also have trouble accepting it for how alien it is.  The Lord Pilot is a very sympathetic character for me, and I can see myself doing as he did.  And it would please a certain destructive, primitive part of me to blow up a star.

But if I were in a position to decide without sentimentality, I'd choose the assimilation.  I'd have trouble deciding it for everyone, though.

The ethical problem for me is, what right do I have destroying the human conception of personhood, in favor of one I only understand slightly?

If I could, I would prefer to undergo the change myself, then decide whether to recommend it to others.  I would do so while best trying to anticipate that the new form would bias me just as much if not more toward it.

A new chapter is up.  Unfortunate Implications abound.  Plus, an interesting take on not caring what other people think.

Apparently he plans to update again this week.

I love how Ron has been completely thrown under the bus since day one. :lulz:

Actually compared to some fics, this isn't too bad (see the "Ron the Death-Eater" trope on TV Tropes for more on that).

Wow, okay.

The world of fanfics.  How curious.  :lol:

Fandom is crazy, yo.

Even other fandom members realize this, hence the creation of http://wiki.fandomwank.com/index.php/Main_Page

This is a treasure trove http://wiki.fandomwank.com/index.php/Harry_Potter_fandom

If you havent clicked that link yet, you're missing out of tons of crazy.

Also, Voldemort-Snake Rule 34 in the latest chapter!

I have a feeling we're coming close to the endgame of book one. And soon.

Calling it now: Voldemort fails because he attempts to use his cunning plot to not only fulfill the wishes of Hermione, Draco and Harry at once, but also to distract the rest of the school in order to seize the Philosopher's Stone, thus violating Lucius Malfoy's rule of clever plotting.

Edit: or it turns out that Mr Hat and Cloak or, less likely, Dumbledore is the Big Bad.  Why?  Read [ur=http://yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/the-sword-of-goodl]The Sword of Good[/url] for an explanation.  Harry hinted at the start that since the wizarding world was a de facto aristocracy run on quasi-racist nonsense, an optimized French Revolution may not be such a terrible idea.  Voldemort seems to care more about escaping Earth and immortal life than about Muggles per se (also see Harry's description to Draco of Malfoy's followers.  Voldemort was using their hatred of Muggles for his own gameplan, which I suspect will be rather different than that of the Canon Voldemort's).  Dumbledore is well intentioned on a personal level, but has his hands on many of the levers of power in the wizarding world, and apparently sits on his hands and does nothing most of the time, except get involved in pissing matches with Malfoy's faction.  He doesn't need to be Minister of Magic though, and apparently has no intention of being so, already having Hogwarts, a seat on the Wizengamot and being Chief Warlock as well.

And Hat and Cloak...well, they seem to know that Quirrel is definitely opposed to Dumbledore's faction, while having little but scorn for Lucius Malfoy as well.  But he wants Quirrel and Dumbledore fighting each other....why? 

Harry, when demented, suggested there was something that could be done, some clever plot, which could end up in having every faction kill each other.  Voldemort would be the most dangerous one, the hardest to kill, but virtually no-one trusts him, and therefore he would be the best trigger (presumably).  Voldemort's antipathy for Lucius and Dumbledore is being manipulated by someone else, someone whose identity we are not sure of.  They're moving the pieces into place, so that when they set the trigger, everyone dies.  The current Minister for Magic is a tool of Malfoy, he would likely fall quickly without his patronage.  A vacuum in power at the top of the wizarding world....

Maybe Voldemort is orchestrating this all.  He gets a body back using the Philosopher's Stone, leaves the unpossessed Quirrell out to dry and uses the chaos and disorder to implement the plan he suggested with the Mark of Light.

The problem with that is that it needs us to assume Voldemort is lying about his interest in escaping Earth, which I believe to be generally honest.  However someone else could also, plausibly use this scenario to rise to power.  The question is who?

How do we know that Voldemort is in fact hitching a ride on Quirrel, aside from that being how it happened in HPASS. It is possible that there is some other explanation for Quirrel's strangeness.

I didn't think Voldemort was hitching a ride on Quirrel, I thought he was completely impersonating him (poly-juice potion or something I guess). I wouldn't think that possessing Quirrel would allow Voldemort to transform into his animangus state (unless Quirrel also is a snake animangus, but that seems highly unlikely), perhaps I am wrong though.

Quote from: Rumckle on October 10, 2010, 01:55:55 AM
I didn't think Voldemort was hitching a ride on Quirrel, I thought he was completely impersonating him (poly-juice potion or something I guess). I wouldn't think that possessing Quirrel would allow Voldemort to transform into his animangus state (unless Quirrel also is a snake animangus, but that seems highly unlikely), perhaps I am wrong though.

Because it wouldn't make any sense for the drooling idiocy when not in control otherwise.

We know Quirrel is Voldemort because of Word of God (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WordOfGod).  Yudowsky has made it pretty clear in his chapter notes several times now, including the time he talked about the Pioneer plaque and how it was made into a Horcrux.

Also, did anyone look at the Less Wrong thread on Amanda Knox after reading the author's notes?  I'm pretty familiar with the case anyway, and had long believed the evidence did not add up against Knox or her boyfriend, so I'm glad to see others also see it that way, but I wondered if anyone else had any insights on the topic?

I'm not really familiar with the case, but from a brief look at the Wikipedia article I'm not sure where the case comes from.  They found a knife that had Knox's DNA, but it was a kitchen knife and Knox lived there, so finding her DNA isn't surprising.  Heck Neither is finding the victim's, people cut themselves cooking all the time, and it was apparently very trace DNA.

The only other thing they have on Knox and her boyfriend is the conflicted alibis, but human memory sucks badly, so that's not surprising.

Some of the rationale for the conviction is disturbing.  That they read violent comics and used drugs that aren't linked to violence is evidence? 

They also mention a bloody footprint in the conviction justification, but another part of the article says the footprints were not actually bloody, a fact concealed by the prosecution* but available before the conviction.  Though maybe I'm linking the two despite them not being related or the wiki is giving me bad info.

*Where the hell is a lynch mob when you need one?  This is not acceptable behavior.

Quote from: Cain on October 10, 2010, 02:28:18 PM
Also, did anyone look at the Less Wrong thread on Amanda Knox after reading the author's notes?  I'm pretty familiar with the case anyway, and had long believed the evidence did not add up against Knox or her boyfriend, so I'm glad to see others also see it that way, but I wondered if anyone else had any insights on the topic?

If you look at the evidence via bayesian reasoning, it doesn't add up to the conviction. So, no new insights.

At last, the Azkaban breakout I've been waiting for.

Note: Bellatrix, in canon, had one of the weapons capable of destroying Voldemort's horcruxs in her vault at Gingrotts, namely the Sword of Gryffindor.  However, it was only able to destroy them due to having being bathed in basilisk venom, which of course hasn't happened in MoR, as far as we know.

So Bellatrix is coming out for another reason.  If she's half the psycho she was in the canon, I can't see a calculating villain wanting to get her out for merely her expertise in fanaticism and torture.  It would be means to another end...perhaps getting the Dementors dismissed from guarding Azkaban, allowing them to be recruited by Voldemort?  But Voldemort hates and fears death more than anyone, and aside from having his soul split he has no real defences against a Dementor.  Maybe to help preciptate the fall of magical Britain's government, then?

None of those reasons seem entirely convincing though.

ALSO HI ELIZIER!

Edit: you know, I did wonder why we had 50 odd guests reading this page.  Damn, now I'll actually have to start thinking before I post in this thread.

He should register an account.

Quote from: Triple Zero on October 24, 2010, 12:02:52 AM
He should register an account.

This.

I'm not sure how he's reinterpreting Bella. What Quirrelmort says about her to Harry ought to be taken with a grain of salt, but this story's already reinterpreted pretty much everyone. For Harry not to back out when he sees Bella for the first time, she's got to have received quite the makeover.

I still want to know what he's got up his sleeve regarding Sirius.

I doubt the author will change Bellatrix in any severe way.  With Harry's powers of rationality and a little research on his part, he could determine that something is hugely wrong with this picture. 

But then Voldemort would know exposing Harry in any way to Bellatrix would ruin his cover.  And since we've already established this Voldemort is not a fool, and indeed Harry himself has doubts as to whether he could outwit him, it doesn't seem like the kind of move he would make.  Because then he would have to kill him, and as we've already established, Voldemort has had many chances to kill Harry that he has not yet taken (it could be, of course, he intends to keep him alive for long enough to enact a ritual like the one in the Goblet of Fire...but since Voldemort already has a body, one which was proven to not be involved in Deatheater activities, he may have decided possessing Quirrell is the best possible alternative, next to a brand new and normal looking body.  And even that could pose difficulties of background etc).

I initially wondered if Voldemort was going there in order to kill Bellatrix, for whatever reason, a break with the past, knowledge about the horcrux, something like that.  But that doesn't make sense either in canon (where she is a rather dim, but viciously loyal fanatic of the Dark Lord) or in MoR, where no-one has escaped from Azkaban before and nearly everyone believes Voldemort is dead anyway.

Of course, knowing Voldemort's motivation would help a lot.  But then, if we knew, I wouldn't have so much fun playing at figuring it out.

I'm really not sure what Harry's reaction will be. It's obvious he was thinking of Sirius rather than Bellatrix, so he may correct Quirrelmort at the beginning of the next chapter. On the other hand, he may keep it to himself and take it into his own hands to collect Sirius while at Azkaban.

Also, I just saw the authors notes for part 51, and what Cain said on the last page finally made sense.

:lulz: HI ELIEZER!

Chapter 52-54: the perfect crime gone bad. Well, it wouldn't fit the character of Harry for anything else to happen.

I only now noticed that he mentions this thread in the authors' notes.  That's pretty cool!

Quote from: Sigmatic on October 28, 2010, 05:18:02 AM
I only now noticed that he mentions this thread in the authors' notes.  That's pretty cool!

QuoteI would like to take this opportunity to hail Discordia, and say that yes, in fact, I would like it very much if you started convincing people that I was some sort of shadowy conspiratorial figure. Honestly I'm disappointed that this hasn't happened already.

hehehehe

We should get on with that, at some point.  Potentially useful starting places -

- Science/Rationality/Enlightenment/Illuminism = Elizier is an Illuminatus
- Science as secret, rituals = Elizier is an Illuminatus who wants to combine science with secret occult rituals!
- HP&MoR = Elizier is an Illuminatus who wants to combine science with secret occult rituals in order to become a God and is using contemporary pop culture figures as propaganda and to recruit for his cause!

And so on and so forth.

Add in some Transhumanistic xenophobia, and bobs yer uncle.  Where do we start?

A new, agonizingly short, chapter is up.

Yeah I was dismayed by its brevity as well, but he did say he might do a weds update right?  I'd almost prefer bi-weekly updates if I could get them.

Jesus christ, he made a boomstick.

Chainsaw hand would've been better  :argh!:

So it worked, they escaped. But for what? What is Quirrelmort planning? Is it truly the scenario that Dumbledore laid out, the one that came at the end of the fourth book?

I wonder if Harry telling Bella he was Voldemort is going to bite him on the ass some way down the line.  A lot of the school already thinks he's halfway towards being a Dark Wizard, Lucius Malfoy is afraid of him and he did figure out that Voldemort wasn't dead rather quickly... I mean, looking at it from that point of view, throw in Bella's testimony and even given her insanity you'd have to wonder if something seriously wrong was going on. 

Especially given how hard a time he'll have dragging the real Voldemort out into the light.  Even if he does manage to defeat him somehow, there likely won't be any evidence that it was legitimate.  There'll just be a dead professor and tons of red flags that all suggest that Harry is Voldemort.
 

Voldemort gets his body back, slits Quirrell's throat and put's the dagger in Harry's hands, metaphorically or otherwise?

Sounds possible.  A bit depressingly simple, for the actions undertaken so far, but that just means it is well within Lucius Malfoy's 'rule' of Xanatos Gambits.

Of course, we still have yet to find what Voldemort meant by this "Harry ruling Britain" business, especially since Voldemort is going to vanish at the end of the school year, and twelve year old boys are generally, though not always, barred from such offices.

Also, I don't think we've had anything from The Order of the Phoenix appear in the storyline, so far...aside from a couple of mentions of it's previous existence.  Apart from Harry being wangsty and letting Voldemort in his mind, oh, and the teacher who practices torture, I don't really remember much of that book.

But I'm sure something from it will pop up soon.  Books two, three and four have now all figured into the story somewhere.

Oh fuck.  OFUK.

I think I know where Voldemort slipped up, big time.  Anyone else remember that Harry read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?  And Voldemort wants Harry to rule Britain?  Well, very early on in the book, it mentions how Hitler's history teacher, a certain Dr Poetsch, who was a fanatical German nationalist and anti-Slavic racial theorist, was a huge influence on him.  Harry is bound to draw parallels between that.

Also, can someone with more knowledge of the canon than me check, is Grindlewald still alive, at this point in the series?  I have a suspicion...

Uh yeah.  He's in Azkaban.  Saw him in the latest movie.

Hmm.

I'm wondering, since Harry, Dumbledore, Draco and Voldemort have all had intelligence upgrades...why not Grindlewald?  I was also thinking "how would Dumbledore know about that dark magic ritual to bring Voldemort's body back", and then I remembered Grindlewald and Dumbledore used to be very close.  And then I remembered Grindlewald probably doesn't like Voldemort or Dumbledore much, and may be the identity of Mr Hat and Cloak.

THAT

Is an extremely cool idea.  Kudos on that, I never would have thought it.  

ETA:  If Grindelwald is Mr. H&C, then how did Dumbledore come across the elder wand?  Maybe H&C and Dumbledore are still good friends, despite appearances.

Didn't Dumbledore take the Elder Wand from him when he defeated him in 1945?  According to the Harry Potter Wiki, that was when it passed its mastery onto Dumbledore (and there is a story hidden in that as well - how did Dumbledore defeat Grindlewald?  The latter would have had to be without the wand for Dumbledore to win, which meant either Grindlewald was complicit in his own defeat or Dumbledore won through some clever trick)

Also according to the Wiki, he was in his own prison, Nurmengard, not Azkaban.  Which may make his escape more likely, since Gindlewald designed the prison himself.

From today's chapter, this made me LOL

Quote"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?" Her voice was nearly shrieking, now. "By his seventh year there won't be anything left of Hogwarts but a smoking hole in the ground!"

Albus leaned back in his great cushioned chair, and said, smiling, "Don't forget the Time-Turner."

She did scream then, but quietly.

Severus drawled, "Should I teach him to brew Polyjuice, Headmaster? I ask only for the sake of completeness, in case you are not satisfied with the magnitude of your pet disaster."

"Perhaps next year," said Albus. "My dearest friends, the question before us is whether Harry Potter has spirited Bellatrix Black out of Azkaban, which is more than youthful high spirits even by my tolerant standards."

Yeah, I thought the Weasley twins bit was a particularly good arson, murder, and jaywalking.

Or maybe not, given what they did to Rita Skeeter....how the hell did they manage that on 40 galleons?

I'm pretty sure it involved polyjuice, probably as Dumbledore. 

And then the phoenix changed hands.

Pretty sure it's just making a gesture at Dumbledore.  I doubt it will stick with Harry.

Besides, he'd spend too much time all blissed out anyway. :lol:

Damn, this is a good story.  That is all.

Yeah it is.  The latest story arc is a bit heavy for his usual writing, but very good.

rereading from start to finish.  i have noticed some changes, mostly continuity things.  to all, you may want to read again during this break of his

It's BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

 :fap:

So wait a second... He has this long speech to Hermione about how a small lie blossoms into the destruction of rationality and physical laws, and then decides to fake Voldemort's return and subsequent defeat?

Well, he did say he'd think first and decide later.  But yeah, that is somewhat poor form. 

Also,

:banana:  YAY IT'S BACK!

Remember though, Harry's faith/"trust"/fellowship with Quirrellmort is entirely destroyed at this point.  He has so many doubts and worries concerning Quirrellmort's actions anything he says to him cannot be taken at face value.

And there's always Refuge in Audacity.

Yeah.  You know it says something that, even though I know (strongly anticipate) that QQ is Voldemort, and I still think it's sad that Harry can't trust him anymore.  

Rational!QQ is scary charismatic.

He's one of the best villains I've ever read.

Also, you know who I think would have the perfect voice for the part of QQ?  David Warner, who voiced Irenicus in BGII.  I often read this story with that particular voice in mind. 

Oh hell yeah.  Also a great antagonist.

ETA: I think John Noble would be a good voice for this version of Dumbledore. 

Oh hell yes.

Also, this fic keeps inspiring me to write a revised Baldur's Gate style fanfic.  Irenicus and Sarevok were wicked smart (less said about Melissan the better...), but I cannot help but think they could be made even more clever.  And, I mean, despite the protagonist wandering around like an idiot in the game, they were raised in the fictional equivalent of the Great Library.  Right there you have the potential for some incredible plots.

Irenicus' smugness was played up a bit too much, IMO.  They could have added more to accentuate how "Just as planned" he can be.

Yeah, definitely.  Though I think the initial attack, which frees you, did catch him off guard (incidentally, there is a mod you can install where Chateau Irenicus is far more befitting an insanely powerful wizard who always plans ahead.  Fancy fighting roaming patrols of duregar and, among other things, a level 23 cleric and a fallen deva at level 8?  Oh yeah, those were fun times).

Also they could have played with his Dangerously Genre Savvy aspect a bit more, I think.  I mean, refusing to tell you what it was all about, even when he had you at his mercy, was a good one, but there was definitely more there which could have been worked with.

I dunno why, but I was kind of struck by this line:

Quote"Amateur foolisshnesss."

"Pardon?" hissed Harry.

"You ssee misstake, think of undoing, ssetting time back to sstart. Yet not even with hourglasss can time be undone. Musst move forward insstead."

This, I think, is one of the keys to surfing the waves of chaos.  You can't go back, you can't start from zero, or hit the reset button.  Adding another quarter in the next 15 seconds won't bring you back to the last save point.  Look ahead, look ahead.


Sure, it's trite, but I guess I was just in the right mood/context for it to jump out at me.

I've been arguing a point with similar logic to that for several years now: as to why our various foreign occupations are fucked, even with the introduction of Shiny New Humanitarian Counterinsurgency Practices.

The idea is seductive: if we do everything right now, it will undo the mistakes of the past.  Only, reality rarely works like that.  Life isn't designed like a computer game, there isn't always a way to achieve your objectives if your first few steps were wrong, choices made without understanding the consequences can seal off paths to victory for forever, and you wont even know this until well after the point of being able to make a decisive move is long gone. 

The only thing to do is plan everything from the very start of any given venture all the way to the end, with all the possible routes and diversions, no matter how unlikely, you can conjure up, and then choose the path most likely to bring you to the desired conclusion so every path brings you to the desired conclusion.  Or, work from the reality you already have to the most preferable of the still obtainable outcomes.

Good stuff.  A plan has to have certain assumptions about a situation.  When things change, check whether it'd be appropriate to make entirely new plans based on new situations.

I also see it as a way to warn against the Sunken Costs bias.  The belief that you can hit a reset button and go back and erase your mistakes is a very seductive one when you're up to your neck in shit, and may cause you to persist in your current course instead of cutting your losses once the inevitability of your desired outcome is apparent.

Yes.  Very yes.

I listened to a recorded lecture recently (few weeks ago) about the tragedy on Mt. Everest in 1996 as an aesop about the sunk cost effect.  I have a big sign that I leave by my door.  It says "IS IT TWO O'CLOCK YET?" in reference to the two o'clock turnaround rule Everest climbers (ideally) follow.

Hmm, I am not aware of this rule.

Also, been thinking about Quirrell's plan.  There seems to be a couple of problems with it.

Firstly, the Avada Kedava survival part.  Doesn't that just strike you as the perfect way to kill Harry off?  Fake!Voldemort kills Harry, Real!Voldemort kills the fake, and then goes on to implement the plan with him in Harry's place, becoming the ruler of magical Britain.

Secondly, isn't the best candidate for someone being the Dark Lord returned at the moment actually Harry?  Think about it.  He's a Parselmouth, most of the school think he's gone Dark, "Slytherin!  Only joking!" and he told Bellatrix he was Voldemort.  I can see Quirrell conspiring to somehow put Harry in a position where that is exactly what will occur to most spectators and then someone, whether an Auror, a patsy or Quirrell himself, then kills him.

Harry's also making a bad assumption, one that only the readers of the canon know: That Voldemort actually "returned" years ago, in QQ's body (although, with QQ in hospital without comment, Vold probably isn't physically manifested as he was in the book).


That is to say, Harry is taking as a given that Vold hasn't returned yet, even though he has.  Granted, from his stance it would be like proving a negative, but his Slytherin side might have to remind him to check all his fundamental points of knowledge.

He isn't physically manifested.  Elizier made a point of mentioning that Quirrell wasn't wearing a turban, when fanart of him wearing one was presented (it was also mentioned in the text, but possibly as a later edit).

I also think Harry is aware that there is something going on with Quirrell and it is Voldemort related (his refusal to touch him when he was knocked out, for example), but because he saw him as a kind of mentor he was trying to avoid thinking about it too much.  If his hypothesis is that everything is alright with Quirrell then he is avoiding the true weak points of his own argument by not even considering possible alternative theories for why Quirrell's presence may have that affect on him.

That's been bugging me.  Harry's genre savvy -- the entire story is genre savvy (hence the riff that Dumbledore lives in a Hero narrative), but when he encounters that feeling of dread and doom (that should, let's face it, come with it's own spooky incidental music) his only response is "Huh.  Weird."

But then, for all he knows it's some kind of magical ailment.  He has seen other kids ignore it (before class), and the normative influence (normality is largely learned by example) can be very influential.  He's not familiar with everything about magic, but he understands that when a wizard declines to explain something they probably have your best interest in mind. 

True.  But his very refusal to investigate it, when compared to, for example, his and Draco's experiments into magical power and blood purity (bringing Draco to the side of light aside) does seem rather telling.

Also, another thought:  Quirrell lets the plan go off without a hitch, and uses the threat of exposing Harry's involvement in the Azkaban breakout as blackmail,allowing him to rule magical Britain by proxy.  Rather shabby and lacking in ambition for a Dark Lord, but even Hitler was a pathetic snitch at one point in his career.

(http://i.imgur.com/WS5aw.jpg)

I think it would be cleverer of QQ to let Harry betray the truth to Bellatrix and get killed by her once he regains his body, and proves his identity to her.

That would maybe work, but it just isn't devious enough to be a likely outcome. 

I actually think the outcome isn't going to be as devious as most people suspect.  However, I do think the outcome will have to do with Voldemort somehow violating Malfoy's Rule of Clever Plots (relying on more than three things to go in your favour means your plan is doomed).  How that happens, of course, will likely be the unintended result of a Thirty Xanatos Pileup between the Order of the Phoenix, Harry, the Ministry and Malfoy and the former Death Eaters (Lucuis Malfoy in particular, IMO, has a lot to fear from Voldemort, as he is now powerful and has the Daily Prophet and Minister Fudge in his pocket.  Voldemort will upset that power structure and assert control over Malfoy, not a desirable outcome for a man who has lived the last decade being answerable to no-one).

I suspect something will come out of that arrangement which will mean Voldemort is in a position where he has no choice but to rely on a Cunning Plot.

And we should remember he still has to deliver on his Cunning Plot for Ravenclaw and Slytherin for the House Cup. 

We know he definitely doesn't expect to last to the end of year at Hogwarts, one way or another, which suggests, if he intends to keep that promise, he may quite easily end up violating the rule.

Maybe you're right.  The guidelines EY set out pretty much say that Harry wins by having ideas that make better sense, so it would probably be along those lines. 

Oh. Idea.  Both houses could win the cup if the school itself split up.  Uh oh.

Uh oh indeed.

Also, what is up with the story of how Harry got his scar?  Twice now we've had it suggested something is not right with that, but nothing has yet come of it.  Equally, nothing has yet come of Harry attempting to investigate the death of Narcissa Malfoy, allegedly at the hands of Dumbledore.

And those are only two of the hanging plot points I can think of off the top of my head.  I have a whole textfile of them somewhere...

Incidentally (read as: I couldn't find the thread where we were discussing it), Dad just got back to me re: The accuracy of the LessWrong Quantum sequence, and the Macroscopic Decoherence (Many Worlds) veiwpoint.

In short, the ideas are right, and explained well.  But as expected, he just can't get on board the Many Worlds train.  As he puts it, "He's 'right' about Many Worlds in that strictly speaking it's a logical solution of a problem built into quantum theory.  But I just don't believe it.  I'd rather live with a reality that exists in an infinite dimensional space (state vector in Hilbert space) than a reality that includes an uncountable infinity of parallel universes, none of which I will ever be able to get any information about."

So, there you have it.  Anyway, back to HP&MR.

We can use a quantum gun (http://www.higgo.com/quantum/qti.htm) to travel to alternate Universes.

Or an egg (http://www.incunabula.org/).

Quote from: Cain on January 10, 2011, 02:49:28 PM
We can use a quantum gun (http://www.higgo.com/quantum/qti.htm) to travel to alternate Universes.

YARGANARGANARG
 /
:crankey:

QuoteOr an egg (http://www.incunabula.org/).

ANARGANARGANARGANAG.
  /
:crankey:

Quote"Cedric Diggory!" said Hannah. "He's the Captain of our Quidditch Team, and general of an army, and he's taking all the electives and getting better grades than anyone, and I hear he learns dueling from professional tutors during the summers, and he once beat two seventh-year students, and even some teachers call him the Super Hufflepuff, and Professor Sprout says we should all emu, uh, emudate him or something like that, and -"

So there are three students with time-turners in Hogwarts, that we know of.

Quote from: Harry PotterThat's it, it's official now, they've ratified it in Parliament, everyone in the wizarding world is completely stupid.

Nice eye, I hadn't caught that.  Yeah, seems so.

Bump for new chapter.

It has been a long time, but at least the burning chicken incident is finally explained.

This chapter makes me want to compile a list of Chaos Legion-esque slogans.

Am I the only one who has grown disappointed that the story has become, well, more plot-driven?  I was drawn into this fanfic because of the skewering of HP magics, and the afformentioned "Methods of Rationality" in regards to problem solving.  I stuck around for the Battle School strategies, but now... it's all about heroism, and what makes a hero, and what makes an epic narrative.  And it kind of bores me.

I felt the same way, myself.  The later stuff isn't as charming.  The Stanford Prison Experiment chapters should have been a lot less overwrought, and it's brought down the tone.

This sequence hasn't done much for me either, but I don't mind the plot driven aspects of the story so much.  A lot of it does strike me as somewhat needless character development only loosely related to the plot, though.  I think a new sequence is coming up soonish, based on one of his notes, so maybe we will see a return to form then.

The last book was a huge disappointment.

New chapter up. Finally.

And I'd agree with Cain. The "hero" arc doesn't interest me all that much. I want to get back to SCIENCE! Maybe after the first year is over? I guess the showdown with Quirrelmort before the Mirror of Erised is coming pretty soon.

This particular chapter wasn't too bad, though that was mostly due to Draco stealing the limelight.  I mean, between

Quote"You want to know my plot?" said Draco. "Here's my plot. I'm not going to do anything and then the next time people think I'm plotting something, they won't be sure."

and

QuoteWhat are you really doing?

Draco stared at the parchment he'd unwrapped from the owl's leg. His hands trembled, as he held up the parchment to the light of his fireplace. Five words, carved in black ink, shouldn't have been scarier than death.

There wasn't very much time to think. Father knew exactly how long it took for a message to go from Malfoy Manor to Hogwarts and back again; he would know if Draco delayed to compose a careful lie.

But Draco still waited until his hand stopped trembling, before he wrote his reply, the only answer he'd thought of that Father might accept.

I am preparing for the next war.

he really stole the show.

But yeah, where the fuck has Quirrell been for the last six chapters?

I did not dislike this!  In fact, I rather enjoyed it.  I think he just needed a rest.  I'd kill to be able to write as volumetrically as him, nevermind as skillfully.

I think some of this latest set of chapters has had something to do with the New York Lesswrong group.

Going by this post anyway http://lesswrong.com/lw/5c0/epistle_to_the_new_york_less_wrongians/

QuoteAnd if anyone is making the group less Fun or scaring off new members, and yes this includes being a creep who offends potential heroine recruits, give them an instant ultimatum or just fire them on the spot

Sounds like IRL shit and someone getting a narrative-led beatdown for their actions.

Quote from: Chapter 74"There are hundreds of useful rituals which could be performed if men had so much sense; I could name twenty without stopping to draw breath. But in any case, Mr. Potter, the thing about such rituals - whether or not you choose to term them Dark - is that they are shaped to be magically efficacious, not to appear impressive when performed. I suppose there is a certain tendency for the more powerful rituals to require more dreadful sacrifices. Even so, the most terrible ritual known to me demands only a rope which has hanged a man and a sword which has slain a woman; and that for a ritual which promised to summon Death itself - though what is truly meant by that I do not know and do not care to discover, since it was also said that the counterspell to dismiss Death had been lost. The most dread chant I have encountered does not sound even a hundredth as fearsome as the chant you composed for Miss Davis. Those among the bullies who had a passing familiarity with Dark rituals - and I am certain that there were some - must have been terrified beyond the capacity of words to describe. If there existed a true ritual which appeared that impressive, Mr. Potter, it would melt the Earth."

"Um," said Harry.

Professor Quirrell's lips twisted further. "Ah, but the truly amusing thing was this. You see, Mr. Potter, the chant of every ritual names that which is to be sacrificed, and that which is to be gained. The chant which you gave to Miss Davis spoke, first, of a darkness beyond darkness, buried beneath the flow of time, whose voice echoes in the emptiness, which knows the gate, and is the gate. And the second thing spoken of, Mr. Potter, was the manifestation of your own presence. And always, in each element of the ritual, first is named that which is sacrificed, and then is said the use commanded of it."

"I... see," said Harry, as he trod through the halls of Hogwarts after Professor Quirrell, following him toward the Defense Professor's office. "So my chant, the way I wrote it, implies that the Outer God, Yog-Sothoth -"

"Was permanently sacrificed to empower a ritual which but briefly manifested your presence," said Professor Quirrell. "I suppose we will discover tomorrow whether anyone took that seriously, when we read the newspapers and see whether all the magical nations of the world are banding together in a desperate effort to seal off your incursion into our reality."

:lulz: :lulz: :lulz: :lulz: :lulz: :lulz: :lulz:

That was pretty good.

And look, another appearance by Mr Hat-and-Cloak!  And Snape is not in a very good position right now, oh no...

Shit, I should pick this up again. I got burned out a while back and don't even remember where I left off.

Just wanted to mention a huge THANKS to you guys for mentioning this story.  I just read the whole thing and I find it incredible and hilarious!

But, Hat and Cloak, a glowy woman in a dress?  The hell?

It seems "Mr Hat and Cloak" takes on whatever form will most help convince the person they are talking to.

For Blaise Zabini, who desperately wants to prove himself a conspirator equal to Harry and Draco, it takes the form of a shadowy conspirator.  For Hermione, who wants to be a heroine, it takes the form of a kindly spirit/ghost/thing.

This ability to change form kind of sounds like Nymphadora Tonks.

My son is THOROUGHLY hooked on this fanfic series.  He thanked me, again, the other day for turning him onto this.  So, thank YOU, Cain.

I just wanted to mention that the Wastelands/Heartlands of Time series continues to be excellent.

Quote from: Cainad on September 13, 2011, 10:22:43 PM
Shit, I should pick this up again. I got burned out a while back and don't even remember where I left off.

I just caught up, and I'm glad Elizer stopped trying to quell LessWrong infighting through fanfic analogies.  I feel like the story's back on track now.

He's set up an interesting dilemma -- Harry is incredibly concerned about his responsibility of people around him getting hurt, but he's also determined to fight the big fight, regardless of the consequences.  Dumbledor's tribute to the fallen puts the dilemma in a clear light.

I'm so SO happy about the newest three or so chapters.  I love the summoning scene.  :lulz:

Hey, since this is also our de facto thread for discussing Less Wrong topics also...

Remember when Yudowsky brought up the Amanda Knox discussion on LW?  Can anyone remember if anyone mentioned on there about Knox's attempts to implicate Patrick Lumumba in the murder?  I wasn't even aware of this, until I saw some references of it today, and was wondering if it came up in the discussion (I know it was a large one, and I didn't read all of it). 

Damn, I haven't read any of the LW forums in a long time.  I need to do some catching up there, as well.

There's been a few good things, but it is mostly meetups and rationality quotes at the moment.

I might attend the London meetups, if I can get them to sync with my weekends off.

Reviving this thread for new chapter: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/78/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality

Was that a side effect of Hermione's brainwashing? Or was that Mr Hat and Cloak's intention from the beginning, and if so, what is he trying to accomplish (to force Lucius to do something stupid? (Draco was his one weak point, after all))? And where is Draco, anyway?

Are those the "plot bunnies" the author was complaining about?


EDIT after chapter 79:
That was quite an eventful chapter. Close parens on Santa Claus, and Lily's Potions textbook, possibly even James' rock.
Also, Mr Hat and Cloak's identity has been narrowed down, because he could cast Obliviation without triggering any alarms.

This amused:

QuoteThe Defense Professor was sitting calmly with his hands still folded in his lap. "If you consult Headmaster Dumbledore," said the Defense Professor, "you will find that he is well aware of this matter, and that I agreed to teach his Defense class on the explicit condition that no inquiry be made into my -"

In a lightning motion, the interrogator whipped out his wand and spat "Polyfluis Reverso!" at the same time that the Defense Professor sneezed, which somehow caused the mirror-silvered ray to disrupt in a shower of white sparks.

"Pardon me," the Defense Professor said politely.

The smile that the Auror gave had absolutely no mirth in it. "So where's the real Quirinus Quirrell, eh? Under an Imperius in the bottom of a trunk somewhere, while you take a hair now and then for your illegal Polyjuice?"

"You are making highly questionable assumptions," the Defense Professor said with an edged voice. "What makes you think I did not steal his body outright using incredibly Dark magic?"

This was followed by a certain pause.

"I suggest," the Auror said, "that you take this seriously, Mr. Whoever-You-Are."

"I'm sorry," said the Defense Professor, leaning back in his chair, "but I see little reason to humble myself on this particular occasion. What are you going to do, kill me?"

"I don't appreciate your humor," the Auror said softly.

QuotePortkey visas for Transylvania, the Forbidden Empire, the City of Endless Night... my my, Texas."
The man looked up from the portfolio, eyes narrowed. "What were you doing there, Mr. Quirrell?"

:lol:

It's odd that Voldemort didn't thoroughly erase Quirrel's past. Although he did remember to remove Albania from the list of countries he visited.

Anyone still reading?  Good but short chapter posted today, one expected tomorrow.  Ideas on the last few chapters? Dont want to give spoilers just yet.

It's clearly in Quirrell's interest to undermine Harry's faith in the practices of Magical Britain, and thus make them his enemy.  But that doesn't necessarily make Quirrell the person responsible.

I have not read the most recent chapter, though.

WHY DO MY KINDLES HAVE TO KEEP DYING ON ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So frustrating reading this on my computer.

holy hot genitalia in purgatory, how did i not see this previously?

this is freakin awesome

Quote from: Cain on April 04, 2012, 10:02:13 AM
It's clearly in Quirrell's interest to undermine Harry's faith in the practices of Magical Britain, and thus make them his enemy.  But that doesn't necessarily make Quirrell the person responsible.

I have not read the most recent chapter, though.

The ending of Chapter 82 confuses me. Which of course should be something I hone in on; the Sequences are clear in that confusion is a sign of map not corresponding to territory. I don't understand this utlitarian mental combat between costs and Harry's mention of his mother's emotional involvement inspiring her decision in the same episode. They seem to be contrasting world views. This could be why Harry himself is confused at the end of the chapter.

It reminds me of one of machiavelli's points, that you can't both be a good leader and a good person.
Similarily, it seems that you can't both be a good person and a good utilitarian ethicist.
I think this mostly says something about (my) morals, i.e. that they have a (seemingly) irrational basis.
I can't really wrap my head around it but there's something there.

New chapter from  Less Wrong,

Title: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Category: Harry Potter


Character(s): Harry P. & Hermione G.


Chapter 84 Title: Taboo Tradeoffs, Aftermath 2
Words: 11,619
Genre(s): Drama/Humor
Rating: Rated: T
Summary: Petunia married a professor, and Harry grew up reading science and
science fiction. Then came the Hogwarts letter... Ch. 84, "Taboo Tradeoffs,
Aftermath 2".  Hermione wakes in a sad new world.  Next update Tuesday Apr 17,
7PM Pacific Time.

URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/84/

for those who have not signed up for email alerts

Quote from: :regret: on April 09, 2012, 11:34:49 PM
It reminds me of one of machiavelli's points, that you can't both be a good leader and a good person.
Similarily, it seems that you can't both be a good person and a good utilitarian ethicist.
I think this mostly says something about (my) morals, i.e. that they have a (seemingly) irrational basis.
I can't really wrap my head around it but there's something there.

Those first two statements don't make any sense to me. What do you mean by good?

Also, utilitarian ethics are ultimately flawed because they are so mechanical. Might as well be robots.

ETA: I'd argue that human morals tend to be irrational, because (in large part) they don't need to be rational. Ultimately they stem from the necessity of /getting along with each other/ in a social species which relies on conspecific interactions for day to day survival. Natural selection has finely honed so many unconscious behaviors that we get along quite well, considering. Likewise, it is the fact that so many of these behaviors are unconsciously fine tuned that stepping in with reason can actual screw things up. The important thing about ethics is knowing when to reason things out, and knowing when to see these unconscious behaviors are most useful and shove the rational mind /out of the way/.

Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on April 11, 2012, 07:56:39 PM

Quote from: :regret: on April 09, 2012, 11:34:49 PM
It reminds me of one of machiavelli's points, that you can't both be a good leader and a good person.
Similarily, it seems that you can't both be a good person and a good utilitarian ethicist.
I think this mostly says something about (my) morals, i.e. that they have a (seemingly) irrational basis.
I can't really wrap my head around it but there's something there.

Those first two statements don't make any sense to me. What do you mean by good?

Also, utilitarian ethics are ultimately flawed because they are so mechanical. Might as well be robots.

This latest chapter seems to indicate Dumbledore has been pondering those statements/questions by Regret extensively.  As far as the definition of 'good' goes there probably can not be an objective definition, however in this example it would be Dumbledore's personal idea of what he thinks society would regard as 'good.'  How many licks... right.

As far as utilitarian ethics go I do see them as flawed but i don't see them as mechanical exactly.  In Dumbledore's application of the system to a wartime environment/scenario it seems a process largely based on balancing a scale of sorts where each action can likely be intuitively understood as more good or more evil, yet in the context of the grand scheme or 'greater good' the inherent good or evil quality/value of each action becomes harder to quantify when weighed against a combination of other deeds and the sum of these again weighed against the 'nobility' of the desired goal.

I realize i used a scale in this example and that is a mechanical object, but the careful balancing element seems more like an organic(?) process, especially considering the use heavily subjective terms and the user of the system's personal ideas of these terms, and their perception of others' ideas etc.

Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on April 11, 2012, 07:56:39 PM

ETA: I'd argue that human morals tend to be irrational, because (in large part) they don't need to be rational. Ultimately they stem from the necessity of /getting along with each other/ in a social species which relies on conspecific interactions for day to day survival. Natural selection has finely honed so many unconscious behaviors that we get along quite well, considering. Likewise, it is the fact that so many of these behaviors are unconsciously fine tuned that stepping in with reason can actual screw things up. The important thing about ethics is knowing when to reason things out, and knowing when to see these unconscious behaviors are most useful and shove the rational mind /out of the way/.

I agree completely.  I think for the sake of this fanfiction Harry understands the cognitive science behind the behavior you mentioned which lubricates/facilitates co-existence among human animals, yet as we have transcended the common animal in many ways some of these subconscious behaviors he may see as relics no longer necessary to our survival as a species, but now as a hindrance to our development and advancement as a people.  That's just my idea about how mor!harry might regard the issue given the things his character says regarding his 'Patronus 2.0' and subjects connected.

So, who does Madam Bones believe Quirrell is?

My initial thought was it might have been Sirius Black (has to be a Most Ancient and Noble House, after all), but that doesn't fit, as it was established in the HPMOR canon that everyone thought Sirius guilty, not a hero.  I also considered his brother, Regulus, who turned traitor and died while fighting Voldemort, but the dates don't fit, either.  It seems to be someone who went to Hogwarts at the same time as Tom Riddle.

The Harry Potter Wiki is almost useless in this regard, and of course, the Noble Houses are at least in part an Elizier invention, so trying to figure out even which house we suspect he is from is not east.

What we do know is that the Noble Houses are: Greengrass, Malfoy, Longbottom (?), Potter, Black (?).  That's three, possibly four other old, mostly "pure-blood" and politically influential families, that need to be accounted for, as Bones said there was 7 - 8, if Quirrell's identity is included.  I cannot go back and search through the series right now, as my time is limited, but I'm willing to bet if we went through the whole series, we'd find seven or eight families named as being Noble Houses.  Yudowsky's put too much thought into this for something like that to be merely an off-the-cuff statement.

Quirrell's comments to Hermione are also interesting, for those of you who have read Elizier's shorter fiction.  In particular, a certain fantasy story about his concerning a Dark Lord who needs to be vanquished.... all I'm saying is that Quirrell was probably not being entirely untruthful when talking to her.

Mr Hat and Cloak remains the most likely suspect for the Memory Charm/Duel gambit, given his proven previous skill at these, but the identity of Mr Hat and Cloak remains a mystery.  There is one canon character who is known to be exceedingly good with memory charms, who has not yet made an appearance, though.  A certain Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.... Just a suggestion, though, since we still need to account for how Hat and Cloak knew to pick those two students to have a duel to cause a political crisis, that it would set Lord Lucuis "I would burn all of magical Britain down for my son" Malfoy and Harry "I cannot stand down from threats on my friends" Potter against each other. 

It might be an idea to establish who Potter told his conversation with Lucius Malfoy to, and work up a list of potential suspects back from that.

Of course, there is always the possibility that Hat and Cloak is Quirrell, which cannot be discounted.  He has an apparent skill for fake identities, after all.  Or someone else we know under another name, too.

Also Chaos Legion anti-conformity training sounds like something we should incorporate into our daily lives.

Quote from: Cain on April 12, 2012, 01:02:25 PM
So, who does Madam Bones believe Quirrell is?

While reading the reviews for the chapter i came upon a very plausible theory, but i'm reluctant to post it here because it really seems that damn possible.  I'm not 100% certain of course, but it almost seems like a spoiler, it's that good.

Quote from: Blackfoot on April 11, 2012, 11:55:31 PM

Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on April 11, 2012, 07:56:39 PM

Quote from: :regret: on April 09, 2012, 11:34:49 PM
It reminds me of one of machiavelli's points, that you can't both be a good leader and a good person.
Similarily, it seems that you can't both be a good person and a good utilitarian ethicist.
I think this mostly says something about (my) morals, i.e. that they have a (seemingly) irrational basis.
I can't really wrap my head around it but there's something there.

Those first two statements don't make any sense to me. What do you mean by good?

Also, utilitarian ethics are ultimately flawed because they are so mechanical. Might as well be robots.

This latest chapter seems to indicate Dumbledore has been pondering those statements/questions by Regret extensively.  As far as the definition of 'good' goes there probably can not be an objective definition, however in this example it would be Dumbledore's personal idea of what he thinks society would regard as 'good.'  How many licks... right.

As far as utilitarian ethics go I do see them as flawed but i don't see them as mechanical exactly.  In Dumbledore's application of the system to a wartime environment/scenario it seems a process largely based on balancing a scale of sorts where each action can likely be intuitively understood as more good or more evil, yet in the context of the grand scheme or 'greater good' the inherent good or evil quality/value of each action becomes harder to quantify when weighed against a combination of other deeds and the sum of these again weighed against the 'nobility' of the desired goal.

I realize i used a scale in this example and that is a mechanical object, but the careful balancing element seems more like an organic(?) process, especially considering the use heavily subjective terms and the user of the system's personal ideas of these terms, and their perception of others' ideas etc.

Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on April 11, 2012, 07:56:39 PM

ETA: I'd argue that human morals tend to be irrational, because (in large part) they don't need to be rational. Ultimately they stem from the necessity of /getting along with each other/ in a social species which relies on conspecific interactions for day to day survival. Natural selection has finely honed so many unconscious behaviors that we get along quite well, considering. Likewise, it is the fact that so many of these behaviors are unconsciously fine tuned that stepping in with reason can actual screw things up. The important thing about ethics is knowing when to reason things out, and knowing when to see these unconscious behaviors are most useful and shove the rational mind /out of the way/.

I agree completely.  I think for the sake of this fanfiction Harry understands the cognitive science behind the behavior you mentioned which lubricates/facilitates co-existence among human animals, yet as we have transcended the common animal in many ways some of these subconscious behaviors he may see as relics no longer necessary to our survival as a species, but now as a hindrance to our development and advancement as a people.  That's just my idea about how mor!harry might regard the issue given the things his character says regarding his 'Patronus 2.0' and subjects connected.

It also has to be considered that, as many writers, Yudowsky is using this story as an Aesopian foil for his own beliefs about how humans ought to behave (e.g. see his science fiction on the Less Wrong site). And not necessarily with any single character as Author Avatar either.

Quote from: Cain on April 12, 2012, 01:02:25 PM
So, who does Madam Bones believe Quirrell is?

My initial thought was it might have been Sirius Black (has to be a Most Ancient and Noble House, after all), but that doesn't fit, as it was established in the HPMOR canon that everyone thought Sirius guilty, not a hero.  I also considered his brother, Regulus, who turned traitor and died while fighting Voldemort, but the dates don't fit, either.  It seems to be someone who went to Hogwarts at the same time as Tom Riddle.

The Harry Potter Wiki is almost useless in this regard, and of course, the Noble Houses are at least in part an Elizier invention, so trying to figure out even which house we suspect he is from is not east.

What we do know is that the Noble Houses are: Greengrass, Malfoy, Longbottom (?), Potter, Black (?).  That's three, possibly four other old, mostly "pure-blood" and politically influential families, that need to be accounted for, as Bones said there was 7 - 8, if Quirrell's identity is included.  I cannot go back and search through the series right now, as my time is limited, but I'm willing to bet if we went through the whole series, we'd find seven or eight families named as being Noble Houses.  Yudowsky's put too much thought into this for something like that to be merely an off-the-cuff statement.

Quirrell's comments to Hermione are also interesting, for those of you who have read Elizier's shorter fiction.  In particular, a certain fantasy story about his concerning a Dark Lord who needs to be vanquished.... all I'm saying is that Quirrell was probably not being entirely untruthful when talking to her.

Mr Hat and Cloak remains the most likely suspect for the Memory Charm/Duel gambit, given his proven previous skill at these, but the identity of Mr Hat and Cloak remains a mystery.  There is one canon character who is known to be exceedingly good with memory charms, who has not yet made an appearance, though.  A certain Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.... Just a suggestion, though, since we still need to account for how Hat and Cloak knew to pick those two students to have a duel to cause a political crisis, that it would set Lord Lucuis "I would burn all of magical Britain down for my son" Malfoy and Harry "I cannot stand down from threats on my friends" Potter against each other. 

It might be an idea to establish who Potter told his conversation with Lucius Malfoy to, and work up a list of potential suspects back from that.

Of course, there is always the possibility that Hat and Cloak is Quirrell, which cannot be discounted.  He has an apparent skill for fake identities, after all.  Or someone else we know under another name, too.

Knowing that Yudowsky has read and continues to read other Harry Potter fanfic, it's likely that he is using a similar scheme. Longbottom and Potter are usually two of the lesser noble houses, the status of these determined by how "pure" the bloodline is.

While Harry may have lost all the money in his vault, I went back to an earlier chapter, and it was never made clear that all the bounties on Voldemort were collected and put in the Potter vault.  That's a big maybe, but there is potential there for Harry to not have lost access to cash entirely.

I assume if that was followed up on, though, the process of getting the bounties would not be as easy as just going "I'm Harry Potter and I'm here to collect my money".  Of course.  Because the entire Wizarding World is insane.

Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on April 11, 2012, 07:56:39 PM

Quote from: :regret: on April 09, 2012, 11:34:49 PM
It reminds me of one of machiavelli's points, that you can't both be a good leader and a good person.
Similarily, it seems that you can't both be a good person and a good utilitarian ethicist.
I think this mostly says something about (my) morals, i.e. that they have a (seemingly) irrational basis.
I can't really wrap my head around it but there's something there.

Those first two statements don't make any sense to me. What do you mean by good?

Not sure if i remember correctly:
Machiavelli said in The Prince that is is better to completely eradicate a village and replace the populace by you own people than it is to conquer it and keep the original population alive. This was mainly because the tension and rebellions caused by keeping the original populace alive caused more deaths in the long term and more importantly they would be the deaths of your own people.
I think we can all agree that a good person wouldn't commit genocide, but a good leader would.
I think there are more examples, but it has been a while since i read any Machiavelli.

Quote from: :regret: on April 15, 2012, 07:08:15 PM

Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on April 11, 2012, 07:56:39 PM

Quote from: :regret: on April 09, 2012, 11:34:49 PM
It reminds me of one of machiavelli's points, that you can't both be a good leader and a good person.
Similarily, it seems that you can't both be a good person and a good utilitarian ethicist.
I think this mostly says something about (my) morals, i.e. that they have a (seemingly) irrational basis.
I can't really wrap my head around it but there's something there.

Those first two statements don't make any sense to me. What do you mean by good?

Not sure if i remember correctly:
Machiavelli said in The Prince that is is better to completely eradicate a village and replace the populace by you own people than it is to conquer it and keep the original population alive. This was mainly because the tension and rebellions caused by keeping the original populace alive caused more deaths in the long term and more importantly they would be the deaths of your own people.
I think we can all agree that a good person wouldn't commit genocide, but a good leader would.
I think there are more examples, but it has been a while since i read any Machiavelli.

I disagree. A good leader would charm the hell out of the population so that they would later wonder how it was that they had ever lived without him.

Might not work.  Historically, it could, but nationalism in particular makes that difficult in the modern world.  Then again, Regret doesn't exactly quote Machiavelli accurately, either (he actually says, a republic, which is brought under the rule of a prince and deprived of its liberties, must either have the Prince reside there or be destroyed).

There could be other methods, but it'd take a long time to describe them, and this isn't Harry Potter and the Methods By Which A Prince May Come to Good Fortune or Ruin Depending on Stratagem and Fortuna.

Anyway, upon re-reading it a couple of times, Harry's main objection at the end of Chapter 82 seems to be that acting as a bean-counting utilitarian in the long run seems a way to put strategy over morality, which rather defeats the point if you're fighting someone because of their wicked and evil nature.  Yes, one will have to undertake methods they disagree with, sometimes sacrifice friends and family for the greater good, but expecting people to act that way in the long run is wrong.  And his mother stands out in stark contrast to this advice, because she did not assess her options cooly, and decide to sacrifice herself because it would work to a strategic advantage, she did it because she loved Harry and would rather go down fighting than let a monster like Voldemort take him.

(Assuming the series of events that have been sold to Harry are true.  We've had hints they are not, after all).

I think Harry is thinking himself around to the point that if you assess everything as a utilitarian, eventually you're sacrificing really existing good things/people/situations for an abstract "higher good" which may not exist - especially because, if you're acting as a utilitarian in a war, you could end up doing some especially nasty and wicked things in order to win.  Harry wouldn't sacrifice his friends, nor would he kill an innocent to make a point, as Dumbledore seemingly did (though again, I have my doubts that went down as presented). 

At least, that's what I took away from it, though I may be confusing Harry's stance with my own, given I've done a lot of reading on utilitarian philosophy, and in particular how it could inform the ethics of conflict (badly, was my conclusion).  A particular essay I wrote on those topics is still used to teach students how to approach that module of philosophy, so it must be pretty decent, but it was written 8 years ago, and I've not continued my studies into utilitarianism since then, so I may not be remembering well, or have missed some large philosophical breakthrough in ethics.

Also this:

QuoteThey both laughed, then Harry turned serious again. "The Sorting Hat did seem to think I was going to end up as a Dark Lord unless I went to Hufflepuff," Harry said. "But I don't want to be one."

"Mr. Potter..." said Professor Quirrell. "Don't take this the wrong way. I promise you will not be graded on the answer. I only want to know your own, honest reply. Why not?"

Harry had that helpless feeling again. Thou shalt not become a Dark Lord was such an obvious theorem in his moral system that it was hard to describe the actual proof steps. "Um, people would get hurt?"

"Surely you've wanted to hurt people," said Professor Quirrell. "You wanted to hurt those bullies today. Being a Dark Lord means that people you want to hurt get hurt."

Harry floundered for words and then decided to simply go with the obvious. "First of all, just because I want to hurt someone doesn't mean it's right -"

"What makes something right, if not your wanting it?"

"Ah," Harry said, "preference utilitarianism."

"Pardon me?" said Professor Quirrell.

"It's the ethical theory that the good is what satisfies the preferences of the most people -"

"No," Professor Quirrell said. His fingers rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I don't think that's quite what I was trying to say. Mr. Potter, in the end people all do what they want to do. Sometimes people give names like 'right' to things they want to do, but how could we possibly act on anything but our own desires?"

"Well, obviously," Harry said. "I couldn't act on moral considerations if they lacked the power to move me. But that doesn't mean my wanting to hurt those Slytherins has the power to move me more than moral considerations!"

Also, interestingly, this (emphasis mine)

QuoteProfessor Quirrell gave a mirthless laugh. "Perhaps the Headmaster thought the rivalry was good for his pet hero and wished to see it continue. For the greater good, you understand. Or perhaps he was simply mad. You see, Mr. Potter, everyone knows that Dumbledore's madness is a mask, that he is sane pretending to be insane. They pride themselves on that clever insight, and knowing the secret explanation, they stop looking. It does not occur to them that it is also possible to have a mask behind the mask, to be insane pretending to be sane pretending to be insane. And I am afraid, Mr. Potter, that I have urgent business elsewhere, and must depart; but I should strongly advise you not to take your cues from Albus Dumbledore when fighting a war. Until later, Mr. Potter."

Yes, it does seem that utilitarianism fails for the very reason it is supposed to be superior: It misses our cherished trees for the forest. Yes, a mother dying to save her child, in the sense of an evolutionary stable strategy where mothers who's children die can have more children, is illogical. But she wouldn't be human if she didn't.

What is that phrase? "If it makes you laugh, it's true; if it makes you cry, it's real." Human ethics are tied to emotional attachments. Attempting to remove one from the other, well, the person might as well be an alien.

Also digging through earlier chapters, it turns out Harry has a hundred galleons buried in his backyard.  Not that 100 galleons is a huge amount, but it's certainly better than nothing, should he need to buy, say, huge quantities of sodium at some point.  And cannot Transfigure it.

I have a theory of who Bones thinks Quirrell is...but I'm not sure if it fits.

My thinking is that she thinks he is Tom Riddle...but Tom Riddle is not known as Voldemort, except possibly by members of the Order of the Phoenix.  Riddle is, after all, the last scion of a Most Ancient and Noble House, whose members were killed by Voldemort - he is the last surviving member of the Gaunt house, descended directly from Salazar Slytherin.  Voldemort killed his own relatives, "satisfying his own parental issues to his satisfaction" as Quirrell put it.

The problem with this is obvious, that it's not certain that only the Order of the Phoenix knows Voldemort's true identity.  The other problem is Yudowsky did describe Voldemort has having the look he had in the movies - pale, snake-like, red eyes.  It's not clear how he could manage to continue on as Tom Riddle unless that appearance was a disguise of some sort.

OR

(note: this is getting into highly speculative territory)

We have some entirely wrong assumptions about the relationship between Tom Riddle, Quirrell and Voldemort.

What do we know, absolutely and for sure?  That Quirrell is Voldemort.  We have Word of God on that, unless Yudowsky is lying, which doesn't seem like the kind of thing he would do.

But do we know who Voldemort is?  Or Tom Riddle?  Do we know for sure that Tom Riddle was Voldemort, that Riddlemort was killed assaulting Godric's Hollow?

Consider the inconsistencies in how Voldemort is reputed to have acted, and how Quirrell acts.  Voldemort was a terrorist, and a particularly sadistic and chaotic one at that.  Dumbledore contrasted him entirely with Grindlewald, who thought he doing the right thing, who wanted to be a hero, who was, in his own eyes, "serving the Greater Good".  How can Voldemort be seen as anything except a brutal killer, based on what we know?  It doesn't seem he can.  His tactics and his overall strategy put him far beyond any point where he could seriously consider himself heroic, especially with the kind of intelligence Quirrell displays.

So there are two options.  Most fans have gone for the obvious option - the link between Quirrell and Harry means that the former is somehow able to call upon the latter's latent intelligence.  But that's far too obvious, and boring.

Here's the other one: Tom Riddle was never Voldemort.  He was the man behind Voldemort.  Voldemort, whoever he really was, was a patsy, a front man.  Just as Bellatrix was a tool of the Dark Lord's will, the Dark Lord was a tool of Tom Riddle/Quirrell's will.  The plan was similar to Quirrell's plan now - use Voldemort as the threat, leverage his position among the Noble Houses, control the Wizengamot, use the Mark of Light to rule Britain as a dictator.  Why it failed is unclear, but somehow, Voldemort's death prevented the plan from going forward.  Now he's using the threat of a resurgent Voldemort to keep the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters at each others throats, while he manouvers Harry into the position to be the Minister for Magic and implement the Mark of Light - with Quirrell as the man behind the throne.

Problems with this theory:

- assumes the Light Mark plan was Quirrell's real aim.  This not readily apparent.
- does not explain the resonance Harry has with Quirrell.
- does not explain how Tom Riddle died, or came to possess Quirrell.
- does not explain Harry's Mysterious Dark Side

I may have Quirrell's new or indeed original plan as wrong.  Riddle may not be possessing his body, it may be his own, altered, aging processes slowed.  It might be that the one people thought was Voldemort was Tom Riddle, and someone else, the real Voldemort, was the one behind this fake Voldemort, meaning whoever is possessing Quirrell is Voldemort, but not Tom Riddle.  However, the idea that people are making some very questionable assumptions about the identities behind these three names is, I find, a strangely compelling one.

Chapter 86 is finally up.

I have not yet read it.

Quote from: Cain on December 18, 2012, 05:07:52 PM
Chapter 86 is finally up.

I have not yet read it.

Be sure to re-read 85, as it has been rewritten.

Yes.  85 is now more powerful.

half way through 86, and it's back to the good old days.  high form.

I've suspected that the Defense Professor is exactly who that head Auror woman thought he was since that interview... who we now know the name of.  I suspect that Voldemort was the evil persona he took on to play the Tyrant, while Monroe played the Hero.  I think the idea was for the people to follow him either as the Hero or the Tyrant.  As for what went wrong and his plans for Harry, I have some suspicions as well.

I wondered something very similar, Trix.

Though this was before we knew of Monroe, so I had suspected that it had been Tom Riddle who had played his role.  The aim being a Monroe ruling Britain through the Mark of Light, as mentioned in the plot.

Also, the terrorist Voldemort seems too stupid for Quirrell.  He used force and brutality which made people fear him, but not the hallmark cunning or skill that Quirrell is noted for.

The new information about the Dark Mark is very interesting, also.

I am so way behind on this series. Good lord. Need to catch up.

Quote from: Cain on December 21, 2012, 06:10:55 PM
I wondered something very similar, Trix.

Though this was before we knew of Monroe, so I had suspected that it had been Tom Riddle who had played his role.  The aim being a Monroe ruling Britain through the Mark of Light, as mentioned in the plot.

Also, the terrorist Voldemort seems too stupid for Quirrell.  He used force and brutality which made people fear him, but not the hallmark cunning or skill that Quirrell is noted for.

The new information about the Dark Mark is very interesting, also.

I think, that the obvious fact that the general description of Voldemort as a lot less intelligent than Quirrell is the part we are supposed to catch, means that the author wants us to realize that Voldy was just a role being played.  Which could imply something less obvious going on.  But if my suspicions are correct, I'd further guess that Quirrell is setting up Harry as the new People's Hero (Monroe mk 2), with the intent of body-snatching him whenever he can figure out how to use Magic on him.

But I put a very low level of confidence on that last part, it's an all out guess and doesn't feel quite right.

I don't know if anyone else has been keeping up with this, but sweet merciful fuck, shit just got real.

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 02, 2013, 02:25:11 PM
I don't know if anyone else has been keeping up with this, but sweet merciful fuck, shit just got real.

Understament. Will say more when I'm sure I'm not spoiling anything for anyone, but yeah. Good twist.

Apparently, one more chapter by the end of the week, and then another long hiatus.

Even though you have to wait months for an update, I like how he's posting an entire arc all at once.


And this one has a LOT of stuff to chew on. Like the fault analysis.

Another chapter. Wow.

Is anyone reading this, or has Hirly taken over LC?

Havent read yet, am going to try and catch up tonight.

Enjoy. I think.

Oh my god.

Oh. My. God.

OH. MY. GOD.

Zombie Quirrell eats chicken legs.  This changes everything.

 :lol:

So, I suppose the most fruitful area of speculation would be the apparent change in attitude by Quirrell between the end of Time Pressure and the start of Roles.  The writing doesn't make it entirely clear if the recall of the Prophecy at the end of Time Pressure is being done by Quirrell, and that is what stops his train of thought.  That would be my primary assumption, but did anyone else come to that conclusion/or other conclusions.

Quote from: Cain on July 12, 2013, 08:13:37 PM
So, I suppose the most fruitful area of speculation would be the apparent change in attitude by Quirrell between the end of Time Pressure and the start of Roles.  The writing doesn't make it entirely clear if the recall of the Prophecy at the end of Time Pressure is being done by Quirrell, and that is what stops his train of thought.  That would be my primary assumption, but did anyone else come to that conclusion/or other conclusions.

It wasn't a recall. Harry made a choice, or some kind of resolution, that changed Fate, and the Divinations teacher was with Quirrell at that time, bacause McGonnagal is an idiot.

The Divinations teacher then made a new prophecy right there and then, and Quirrel understandably freaked out.

Ok, that makes more sense. This sort of reaches back to the Patronus episode, and the elimination of death. What happened to ---- would certainly send him down that road.

This is great:

Quote"There is no war here," said a soft voice emanating from within the emptiness. "No conflict and battle, no politics and betrayal, no death and no life. That is all for the folly of men. The stars are above such foolishness, untouched by it. Here there is peace, and silence eternal. So I once thought."

Harry turned to look at where the voice originated, and saw only stars.

"So you once thought?" Harry said, when no other words seemed to be forthcoming.

"There is nothing above the folly of men," whispered the voice from the emptiness. "There is nothing beyond the destructive powers of sufficiently intelligent idiocy, not even the stars themselves. I went to a great deal of trouble to make a certain golden plaque last forever. I would not like to see it destroyed by human folly."

Quote from: a prophecy
born to those who have thrice defied him...

Quote from: old prophecy
Three shall be Peverell's sons and three their devices by which Death shall be defeated.

The Peverell brothers defied Death three times (they made three Hallows), and Harry was "born from" them (he is a descendant).
Could be a total pattern matching error, of course.

Chapter 99-101 are up.

Chapter 99 is a corker.  So much so, I'm going to repost the whole thing.  Is your body ready?  Brace yourself...

QuoteTen days later, the first dead unicorn was found in the Forbidden Forest.

99's good but the reveals (if that's the best term) in 100-101 were excellent. I hope they give him a few more weeks next year to finish it off.

Two new chapters up.

Killer line (spoiler alert):

QuoteThe silence stretched.

Slowly, Harry turned around.

Professor Quirrell was standing upright and smiling.

In the Defense Professor's hand was a shape of black metal pointed at Harry's wand arm, held with the sure grip of someone who knew exactly how to use a semiautomatic handgun.

Harry's mouth was dry, even his lips were trembling with adrenaline, but he managed to speak. "Hello, Lord Voldemort."

Professor Quirrell inclined his head in acknowledgement, and said, "Hello, Tom Riddle."

Shit just got real:

QuoteThis is your final exam.

You have 60 hours.

Your solution must at least allow Harry to evade immediate death,
despite being naked, holding only his wand, facing 36 Death Eaters
plus the fully resurrected Lord Voldemort.

If a viable solution is posted before
*12:01AM Pacific Time* (8:01AM UTC) on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015,
the story will continue to Ch. 121.

Otherwise you will get a shorter and sadder ending.

Keep in mind the following:

1. Harry must succeed via his own efforts. The cavalry is not coming.
Everyone who might want to help Harry thinks he is at a Quidditch game.

2. Harry may only use capabilities the story has already shown him to have;
he cannot develop wordless wandless Legilimency in the next 60 seconds.

3. Voldemort is evil and cannot be persuaded to be good;
the Dark Lord's utility function cannot be changed by talking to him.

4. If Harry raises his wand or speaks in anything except Parseltongue,
the Death Eaters will fire on him immediately.

5. If the simplest timeline is otherwise one where Harry dies -
if Harry cannot reach his Time-Turner without Time-Turned help -
then the Time-Turner will not come into play.

6. It is impossible to tell lies in Parseltongue.

Within these constraints,
Harry is allowed to attain his full potential as a rationalist,
now in this moment or never,
regardless of his previous flaws.

Of course 'the rational solution',
if you are using the word 'rational' correctly,
is just a needlessly fancy way of saying 'the best solution'
or 'the solution I like' or 'the solution I think we should use',
and you should usually say one of the latter instead.
(We only need the word 'rational' to talk about ways of thinking,
considered apart from any particular solutions.)

And by Vinge's Principle,
if you know exactly what a smart mind would do,
you must be at least that smart yourself.
Asking someone "What would an optimal player think is the best move?"
should produce answers no better than "What do you think is best?"

So what I mean in practice,
when I say Harry is allowed to attain his full potential as a rationalist,
is that Harry is allowed to solve this problem
the way YOU would solve it.
If you can tell me exactly how to do something,
Harry is allowed to think of it.

But it does not serve as a solution to say, for example,
"Harry should persuade Voldemort to let him out of the box"
if you can't yourself figure out how.

The rules on Fanfiction dot Net allow at most one review per chapter.
Please submit *ONLY ONE* review of Ch. 113,
to submit one suggested solution.

For the best experience, if you have not already been following
Internet conversations about recent chapters, I suggest not doing so,
trying to complete this exam on your own,
not looking at other reviews,
and waiting for Ch. 114 to see how you did.

I wish you all the best of luck, or rather the best of skill.

Ch. 114 will post at 10AM Pacific (6PM UTC) on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015.

Just the premise stated in the OP sounds amazing.  Have not even bitten into it yet, but have the link from the OP bookmarked. Got a friend or two that might filp for this. Thanks for posting and bumping!

I was NOT expecting that. Shit. I'm not sure I'm smart enough for this.

Well, you've still got what, two days?

I'm unfortunately working night shift, which turns brains to mush, otherwise I'd throw some ideas around.

The above question is simple. If Harry wishes to survive he must join the Deatheaters. His pointless death will do no good and all other options in the scenario result in fast, messy death at best. He can be treacherous right?

If you can't beat 'em join 'em. Then beat 'em with their own bar stool later.

Interesting option, but he must speak truth. Parsletongue would not let him deceive, even in absence of information.

I'm thinking that it comes down to his two largest discoveries: partial transfiguration and patronus 2.0.

If you've read the sequences, there are two major things Elizer believes: Muliple Universe Theory, and Timeless Physics.

He's also shown Harry to be able to affect reality if he's holding his wand, even if it's not pointed at anything -- because everything is reality.

So, my guess at this point is that Harry will focus his magic to the very limits of existence, and change the very fabric of the universe. I'm not sure if this violates his vow, but if he changes the universe, that changes everything inside it, including the vow.

Technically, it shouldn't because it would allow for another Universe to exist alongside the former one. 

Not read the other things at all yet, just happened to read the above conundrum when I realized it wasn't going to be a spoiler.

The idea of parseltongue is symbolic and plays to how I see such a solution as I presented working out. Got to get ready for work but will write and post a bit more detail BEFORE I dig into the fan fiction. Also note that I haven't read the whole series either, but am very familiar as my brother is a fanatic and due to mild dyslexia got the unabridged audio books. I got a lot of little pieces from that.

Um,  I don't want to get in the way of your fun, but to propose a solution without even knowing the backstory is a guarantee you're gonna miss.  This Potter Universe is waaaaay not canon.  I strongly suggest you read the whole thing first.

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on March 02, 2015, 03:09:23 PM
Um,  I don't want to get in the way of your fun, but to propose a solution without even knowing the backstory is a guarantee you're gonna miss.  This Potter Universe is waaaaay not canon.  I strongly suggest you read the whole thing first.

Fair enough. The essence of what I was getting at above was that lies per se and treachery are not quite the same. But I will read first and see if the rest of my thought can hold water.

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on March 02, 2015, 08:38:15 PM

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on March 02, 2015, 03:09:23 PM
Um,  I don't want to get in the way of your fun, but to propose a solution without even knowing the backstory is a guarantee you're gonna miss.  This Potter Universe is waaaaay not canon.  I strongly suggest you read the whole thing first.

Fair enough. The essence of what I was getting at above was that lies per se and treachery are not quite the same. But I will read first and see if the rest of my thought can hold water.

You are going to have so much fun!

I've been poking through the comments section, and most people seem to have forgotten rule 3:

Quote3. Voldemort is evil and cannot be persuaded to be good;
the Dark Lord's utility function cannot be changed by talking to him.

I still got nothing.  Guess we'll find out at 6PM GMT.

Huh. Solution was far more mundane. Wasn't sure you could do that with that spell, though.

And his method of disposing of V was very clever, indeed.

I've ta I en my first bite of the fruit and will most likely be occupied with this most excellent and well written fiction.

Harry rubbed his forehead, grimacing. Don't believe everything you think, one of his books had said.

I'll let you know when I'm done binging!  :)

This is wrapping up mighty tidily.  Not that parts don't resonate, but I caught as light whiff of deus ex machina in Draco's conclusion.

Took a break for a bit to digest. Then just finished ch7. The one where Harry and Draco have a nice little sociopathic jousting match and become 'friends'. I have not read the books and sense many subtle in-references that I have no context for, but I very much like this. Whenever, if ever, I commit to reading the original works through it's all going to be colored by this..marvelous thing.

I'm not even sure where to begin trying to relate what this is doing to my mind. Perhaps best I just get it all read first.

Comed-Tea given to someone who is neurologically unfazable would be instructive. Assuming that it cannot fail to work then the effect required to dribble it would tell me if the intent is surprise, impossible in the subject, or the dribbling or spittake it's self.

It worries me that a probability manipulation device of such magnitude is in the hands of this little power stacking munchkin version of Harry!

The consequences are all on the vendor really.  8)

So, this finished.

Somewhat ambivalent about the end. Probably due to the "more in a year" bullshit.