Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

On Less Wrong, last chapter, yeah. It was one of the proposed options.

As to the really long one above, It sounds plausible, and partially fits with what is going on, but there are far too many ways in which it could go pear-shaped. It also lacks a certain elegance (though this may just be an emotional bias) which I've come to expect from HJPEV's plans. I think it may be on the right track though, and that whatever solves this is going to have to involve a large tradeoff/cost to Harry.

If the worst happens and Hermione is sentenced, can't Harry just call Fawkes, travel to the Dementor pit of Azkaban under the Cloak, then summon the True Patronus to destroy all of the Dementors? Fawkes wanted Harry to do that, so he'll be willing, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop him since Azkaban's wards permit Phoenix travel.

Come on people be creative! Harry has a time turner and that is just the sort of thing to conjure up a solution on the spot out of thin air. So far my favorite guess is that he will use the time turner to go back in time and fake evidence to counter cloak and hats fake evidence. After all if fake evidence got Hermoine into trouble it could get her out of trouble as well. Actually he could go back in time and fake evidence implicating a political enemy such as Lord Jugson and kill two birds with one stone

Also remember that any solution is going to include professor Quirrel, and its going to end up making Harry look good. After all Quirrel is working very hard for harry to achieve maximum political power.

pringlescan, to say "have Harry fake evidence", without saying what sort of evidence he can possibly fake (or how he'll manage to fake it, or how he'll manage to have it escape detection as fake), is about as "creative" a solution as saying "Have Harry come up with a solution".

In short it's not a solution at all. All your favourite suggestion says is "Have Harry use the Time Turner, I'm sure this can help somehow". You need raise your standards of what actually counts as a solution.

edited 23rd Mar '12 7:51:29 AM by ArisKatsaris

I didn't devise them to make the solution unworkable, they were possible explanations I came up with when I wondered why Dumbledore wouldn't have suggested it. It could be something else that's never even been mentioned, we don't know very much about how the Wizengamot works, but he does.

I thought of it the moment I started wondering what dirt Harry had on Lucius in the middle of the last chapter (I know, I don't have any record to prove this.) Catching people in the consequences of a lie is an obvious trick of political maneuvering; if I know someone has been lying, and am trying to gain advantage on them, that's one of the first things I'll think of. I didn't note it here or on Less Wrong because by the time I finished the chapter I had thought "well, if Dumbledore has been maneuvering against Lucius Malfoy for more than decade, and desperately needs to come up with leverage right now, I'd really expect him to have thought of this unless it wouldn't work for some reason." I can only guess what the reason might be, but I strongly suspect that either there's a ready-made reason for it not to work, or Eliezer didn't think of it and didn't intend the story to go that way and so he would have to create a post hoc reason for it not to work.

edited 23rd Mar '12 8:02:18 AM by Desertopa

to Aris Katsis - Thats because I said everything on the last page but I didn't want to repeat all of it since I assumed that even the laziest people had read at least the last 20 posts but apparently I was wrong Have harry go back in time after the trial, meet up with Quirrel who is probably in the same building and get him to false memory charm a witness saying for example, they saw Lord Jugson exiting the trophy room at midnight but they were too scared to say anything until now. Or have quirrel get ahold of either hermoines or draco's wand using the cloak of invisibility and use the prior incantum charm for evidence the wands hadn't been used to cast spells for the duel or the blood chilling charm. Or if they HAVE been use the confounding charm or something similar to fake it so they haven't.

There you go two different types of evidence he can fake up, along with the opportunity and means to do so.

edited 23rd Mar '12 8:15:27 AM by pringlescan

The intensity of the Speculah here really really makes me feel inadequate.

>they saw Lord Jugson exiting the trophy room at midnight but they were too scared to say anything until now.

How would Jugson have gotten to Hogwarts? How did he obliviate students without him being detected by the wards, even though he isn't a professor? Why would anyone in the Wizengamot believe such utter nonsense? And not to mention the practical difficulties of finding Quirrel, breaking him out, convincing him to cast such a charm, and doing all this undetected.

Am sorry, but you're not even bothering to think this through.

Wait. Knowing that there is a way to cheat the Veritaserum via false memory charms, is there a way to cheat the Priore Incantatem? I mean, besides using another wand? And, in that case, is there a way of testing whether the wizard or witch in question has used another wand?

Stop that.

edited 23rd Mar '12 9:08:53 AM by TheHandle

Wow, the theory Lorthos posted is amazing.

How come I never think of any of this stuff?

Because it's a massive dick move. And, more importantly, wouldn't Harry immediately lose Draco forever, if he did that to his dad?

We're in a Godzilla Threshold here, but that's a major inconvenience.

edited 23rd Mar '12 9:12:22 AM by TheHandle

Pringlescan, Harry can't access his time turner, which allows him to go back six hours, before 9 PM. Dumbledore said in the previous chapter that the trial would begin at noon tomorrow. Plus, Harry probably doesn't know where Quirrel is anyway, even if the readers have some idea, and Harry doesn't have a whole lot of leverage over Quirrel right now, plus it's hard to implicate anyone who can't circumvent the wards due to being a non-professor.

Possible other avenue for Harry. He knows that the wizarding trait appears to be the product of a single recessive gene. He performed the experiment with Draco, and Lucius probably obtained the details from Draco via veritaserum. Harry could threaten to reveal information which would be harmful to the pureblood agenda, and Lucius would most likely know what he was talking about. This might create leverage, although I wouldn't count on it being enough to counter Lucius's protectiveness of his son.

edited 23rd Mar '12 10:08:50 AM by Desertopa

">they saw Lord Jugson exiting the trophy room at midnight but they were too scared to say anything until now. How would Jugson have gotten to Hogwarts? How did he obliviate students without him being detected by the wards, even though he isn't a professor? Why would anyone in the Wizengamot believe such utter nonsense? And not to mention the practical difficulties of finding Quirrel, breaking him out, convincing him to cast such a charm, and doing all this undetected. Am sorry, but you're not even bothering to think this through."

Why I'm glad you asked! Being forced to come up with a work around for the wards lead me to think up of the one place in Hogwarts that WOULD bypass the wards, the chamber of secrets. Harry could have a student claim they saw someone 'voldemort, a person with their identity hidden, Lord Jugson, or someone in Death Eater attire' leaving the trophy room at the appropriate time. Lord voldemort or the person hidden in Death Eater attire would be easiest I would imagine. Then harry argues that they took the person to the chamber of secrets, did the spells in there, and then returned them.

Next, Harry simply has to be able to find out where quirrel is after the trial, and then go back in time with him then, abusing the snake in the pouch trick again. As for memory charming a student, Harry could even get someone to volunteer, then have quirrel obliviate that memory. as for undetected hello he has an invisibility cloak and Quirrel can disillusion himself. Quirrel would probably go along with it to preserve Harry's respect and to prove to Harry that Dumbledore is useless, and the only way to get results is to go outside the system. Please try to have some imagination next time, I'm sure harry would. You don't just go 'guess i can't possibly figure out a realistic way to prove Hermoine's innocence' and leave it at that after all.

As for "Pringlescan, Harry can't access his time turner, which allows him to go back six hours, before 9 PM. Dumbledore said in the previous chapter that the trial would begin at noon tomorrow. Plus, Harry probably doesn't know where Quirrel is anyway, even if the readers have some idea, and Harry doesn't have a whole lot of leverage over Quirrel right now, plus it's hard to implicate anyone who can't circumvent the wards due to being a non-professor."

Did you even spend a full minute by the clock thinking about it? Harry knows how to abuse his time turner either with quirrels help or if needed going to Dumbledore and doing it that way, the time turner being locked is a non-issue. Next Harry simply has to find Quirrel AFTER the trial and go back with him in the pouch as a snake again. And i mean harry could just ask dumbledore where quirrel is being held. Its probably in the same building. Next to bypass the wards Harry can claim either the person did it in the chamber of secrets or the person stunned them, took them out of the school wards, did the memory charms there, then returned them to the school. Plausible if the person is a school governor. However you do raise a good point in that Harry can threaten to reveal the secret of blood for political leverage I hadn't thought of that.

I'm still convinced going back in time after the trial with quirrel and faking up evidence is the best way for Harry to save Hermoine, and that it is the most plausible plan I have heard so far.

Also while I initially thought of Dumbledore doing the memory charms himself would be unthinkable, I now have a suspicion the 'taboo tradeoff' is dumbeldore deciding to fake evidence and violate his moral code to save hermoine.

Okay, Ive been refining the "Publish, let other people perish" gambit, which I really like because it forces the next moves of the wizengamot.

Harry knows - and can prove - that dementors are personifications of death, and can only be destroyed by people who belive that death itself can be defeated, for everyone. The only two people in the halls of the wizengamot capable of really beliving this are him and Hermonie. So he tells the entire wizengamot what dementors really are and then challenges them to let *Hermonie* prove her character by destroying the dementor. They should go for this, because the wizengamot belive dementors are indestructible, but if they dont go for it, he can just destroy the dementor himself to prove his theory. Once the dementor is destroyed, one way or another, everyone in the hall has no choice but to belive he is right about what they are. Which will wreck their ability to cast the regular expecto patronum, which leaves the wizengamot no choice other than to draft Potter and Hermonie into a campaign to wipe out the dementors before the truth reaches every auror on the planet and the dementors become utterly incontrollable. And as long as there are still dementors about, they cannot harm either one of them, lest they end up defenseless before them.

edited 23rd Mar '12 11:41:35 AM by Izeinsummer

If Harry asks Dumbledore where Quirrel is, Dumbledore probably won't tell him. Quirrel is being kept under custody and even with the invisibility cloak, Harry probably can't reach him undetected. Quirrel is probably not in the Wizengamot anyway, it's more likely that he's in some auror facility; he's under arrest, not trial, and this would be rather like keeping prisoners at the Supreme Court building when they're not on trial.

Stunning someone within the wards would almost certainly set off the wards just like memory charming them, again, unless done by a professor; Dumbledore did not say "unless it was done by a professor or a school governor," and that would be a foolish exception to build into the wards anyway because the responsibilities of a school governor do not entail working directly with students. This is the sort of thing that the wards are there in the first place to prevent. Jugson could dismiss the accusation of doing it in the Chamber of Secrets simply by not being a parselmouth; the whole reason the Chamber of Secrets is such a secret is that hardly anyone can get into it.

If Harry asks Dumbledore to take the lock off the time turner, Dumbledore will ask why, and if Harry explains that his plan is to free Quirrel and have him fabricate evidence, Dumbledore will almost certainly say no. The lock on his time turner has constrained him before, he can't just bypass it arbitrarily. If he can't get around the lock on his time turner, the earliest Harry can use the time turner to go back to is 3:00 PM, by which time the trial will already be over.

They probably won't go for this, because the Wizengamot is not in the habit of humoring the wild pronouncements of children. They probably wouldn't expect her to be able to do it, but it's more advantageous to them not to let people expect concessions like this from them at all.

They might even silence Harry if he insists on launching into an explanation of something irrelevant to the trial.

However, if he just destroys the dementor and then explains it to them, he'd probably have a captive audience.

I had forgotten about this before, but some people on Less Wrong have pointed out that Harry has demonstrated the ability before to threaten dementors into submission, which he might be able to bring into play here without actually summoning a patronus.

Simply destroying the dementor and telling the Wizengamot "You may be able to stop me from reaching Azkaban, but you can't prevent the dissemination of this spell, dementors are now obsolete," would have huge political fallout, but I'm starting to like the sheer elegant simplicity of it. Damn the torpedoes, try and sink Azkaban in one shot.

edited 23rd Mar '12 11:59:33 AM by Desertopa

You don't think Harry could get Dumbledore to undo the lock on the time turner when Hermoine's life is at stake? Also the Wizengamot is IN the ministry, which is the most likely place to stash Auror headquarters. Therefore Quirrel is probably within walking distance. And Quirrel isn't under arrest he is under interrogation the last time we saw him. "The interrogation room at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was usually lit by a small orange light, so that the Auror interrogating you would be leaning toward your uncomfortable metal chair with most of their face in shadow, preventing you from reading their expression, even as they read yours." ^^ Proof that Quirrel is IN the ministry and the difficulty of Harry finding out where quirrel is and how to get to him is trivial. I mean the kid cut a whole in six feet thick steel made a rocket broomstick and escaped from Azhkbahn so finding out where the Auror HQ is sneaking in with an invisibility cloak isn't exactly unimaginable.

Additionally even if he can't get Quirrel to do it, he could still just go back in time and convince Snape to do it, although it would take some convincing most likely.

Okay you got any other flaws in my plan or was that all you had?

edited 23rd Mar '12 12:16:50 PM by pringlescan

You don't keep dangerous suspects who're under interrogation somewhere where just anyone can walk in on them. Quirrel is almost certainly under guard, and Harry could be thwarted by a mere locked door (he can't cast Alohamora strongly enough to undo a lock meant to thwart an adult.)

I don't think Harry could get Dumbledore to undo the lock if Hermione's life is at stake if his solution is "Go back in time and try to frame someone."

Harry has said it before himself. If you tell a lie, the truth is forever after your enemy. By attempting to frame someone for a crime they had no involvement in, he's setting himself up against the very intertangledness of reality. What sort of evidence can you think of that Harry could fabricate in a few hours at most that the Wizengamot, already heavily biased against him, would not be able to dispense with it? If you've got Lord Jugson telling the Wizengamot "I was framed," vs. Hermione, with people saying on her behalf "she was framed," Lord Jugson wins. You'd need really, really compelling and comprehensive evidence to change this.

Read what I'm saying, it doesn't HAVE to be Lord Jugson, it just would be a coup for Harry if he could pull it off. Also you don't think Dark Harry could convince Dumbledore to let him go back in time to save Hermoine? Thats a bet I'm willing to take, considering Harry isn't going to be dumb enough to spell out how he is going to do it to a disapproving headmaster, he will just after the trial say 'it is essential that I travel back in time as soon as possible'

Then all he has to do is get Snape OR Quirrel OR Dumbledore OR the mystery party who false memory charmed Rita Skeeter to false memory charm a student into saying that they saw what looked like Lord Voldemort's shade leaving the trophy room at the appropriate time. Then Harry can argue that it was Voldemort's shade who did that, and broke Bellatrix out of prison. In this case the taboo tradeoff could also be blaming someone you know doesn't exist. IE Harry blames voldemort to save hermoine even though he knows voldemort isn't really alive and he is costing the nation by making them take unnecessary precautions.

Now while saying 'your plan is tough to implement and unlikely' is legitimate feedback pointing out areas for improvement, it doesn't rule out that Harry mother-f*cking-James Evan Verres Potter guided by authorial fiat isn't capable of doing it. Now if there's another plan with a better chance of working i'm all ears but so far the whole summon a patronus to attack the dementor proving how awesome you are isn't nearly as likely to work as taking the third hidden choice of faking evidence due to the part where everyone still thinks Hermoine is a murderer.

*cough* Room of Requirement *cough* CABINET *cough*

Also, someone else in Hogwarts has a Time Turner. Who knows this?

<blushes> okay okay two places in Hogwarts then. I guess I skipped it because it never specifically spelled out that it could be invisible to the wards of the castle but I guess it could very easily be plausibly keyed in on the same or higher level as the regular wards. edit: oh i didn't include it because Harry doesn't know about it right now.

edited 23rd Mar '12 1:09:13 PM by pringlescan

(Of course, there is a traditional solution when an innocent is about to be imprisoned for ten years.)

Kawarimi-no-jutsu? Someting like pulling a Bartemius Crouch but without letting her reach Azkaban first? Or maybe another breakout?

Anyway, I don't get the "a child's mind will be more scarred than that of an adult by a dementor". Your worst fears only grow worse with age, don't they? Surely, by that logic, children should be able to handle dementors much more easily than adults, and rebound more quickly from the exposure. Especially children with as little trauma in their past as Hermione. That, and aren't children supposed to have a much weaker sense of mortality than adults?

No need to blush, this is not an IQ test, nor is it a competition. We're doing speculah for the fun of it. Right?

edited 23rd Mar '12 1:12:30 PM by TheHandle

I guess casting the patronus is something that requires the ability to be happy, while resisting dementors and their effects is more about force of will and the power of your mind.

Also I actually do enjoy the naysaying because then it really motivates me to be more clever to prove them wrong.

edited 23rd Mar '12 1:14:19 PM by pringlescan

>>smart people being obsessed with being right at the expense of being sociable