Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

Well Rational!Zeus wouldn't have treated Hades so terribly, so no movie.

Wait, didn't harry's parents not have wands in canon? I guess that's less of a clue then "why the hell would you not have your wand on you at all times?!"

the really genre savvy move would've been to bring bellatrix and have her kill harry. But it seems he has...other plans in mind.

speaking of her, unless it's been edited, didn't the healer lady mention putting an unbreakable vow on bellatrix? Perhaps "You will follow harry potter's commands"?

I think I've said this before in this thread, but my interpretation of the whole scene with Voldemort killing Harry's parents was that he deliberately manipulated Lily so as to prevent her from placing magical protection on Harry the way she did in the original. I wouldn't expect HP Mo R Voldemort to overlook major feats of magic just because they involve something as unpalatable as love.

Eliezer actually made precisely that point in the Lord of the Rings omake: that even if evil might not comprehend the true reasons behind the choices of good, competent evil will darned well develop as accurate a predictive mental model of good as it can, and you can't assume that evil just won't anticipate good's actions because they're driven by a belief system alien to it.

I myself am leery as to the idea of Lily's blood protection holding as it does in canon at all; it shows up twice in canon, once for Lily on Harry and once for Harry on everyone else, though more weakly. But choosing to die for a loved one isn't the kind of thing you'd expect to be vanishingly rare, especially in wartime; if there was a general magical effect to such sacrifice you'd have expected it to show up at least once already. (I recall reading somewhere that some fanfic poo-pooed the idea in precisely those terms; was that this one? Can't quite remember.) (Also, there's the implication in canon that it's choosing to sacrifice your life against evil without resistance that invokes the protection, which...sends a bit of an odd moral message. But whatever.)

edited 15th Apr '12 4:19:40 PM by alethiophile

Can you imagine how weird it would be for Voldemort never to have run into it before otherwise though? True love would be as much a factor in any military effort as morale or logistics.

It might have been an attempt at some sort of moral message, but it might simply have come down to the fact that there are some matters of practicality even J. K. Rowling would have to concede.

It's how martyrdom works. A martyr's death is much more powerful if they die without violence on their part. But it's never really been the intention of martyrs to be imitated, and the Aesop one can take from their actions is that martyrdom is a chancy gamble, one where you don't live to influence or even see the outcome.

Standard Fanon explanation is that Lily as the "brightest Charms witch of her generation" was working on some kind of experimental charm that used her love as a reagent or something. It's never explained in canon, and that doesn't explain how Harry's works, but hey, canon also has Felix Felicis(Born Lucky in a bottle), which I think gives any rationalist a heart attack/orgasm instantly, so there is that.

edited 16th Apr '12 1:09:36 PM by Shinzen

The problem with Felix Felicis is that it tends to cause the user to grow overconfident. Then they die.

edited 16th Apr '12 1:12:31 PM by TheHandle

In canon, it's specifically stated that neither Lily nor James had their wands with them, and that wands are needed for Apparition, so they couldn't just Disapparate with Harry. However, in the fic, Lily tries to AK Voldemort, so she clearly has her wand. Why didn't Lily just Apparate away with Harry?

You'd expect "wizard panics and apparates away" to be a learned reflex by now... I mean, it's only at Hogwarts that that shit don't work. Or when you're in a premise with special wards.

The Malfoy Manor really looked decayed in Deathly Hallows. What happened?

Only when it wears off, nobody under its effects was ever harmed by anything in Canon. Hell, Harry subtly sets into motion the breakup of the girl he was falling for, entirely by accident.

Which begets the question why potion masters don't spend their entire lives under its effects. The luck should theoretically work ina positive feedback way to keep your supply going, since assuming it runs on browwing karma from the future, the second you stop using it the worst thing that could ever happen to you does, and the luck juice would try to stop that from happening and oh dear I've gone crosseyed.

edited 16th Apr '12 1:47:25 PM by Shinzen

I don't think it works retroactively or anything, it just helps you choose the best possible path among all those you can choose. Perhaps, like the comed-tea, it does have some spell that goes backwards in time to ensure that you feel the need to brew and or drink it right before you have a very lucky streak.

Or it could also be the AI that interprets spells to give wizards what they want.

Felix Felicis got discussed on the Less Wrong forums in this context. The recommendation was for anyone who knew about it to immediately read immediately learn as much about potions as possible, then brew some, take it and while under its effects conduct research into more effective luck potions. Repeat as necessary. To paraphrase from the poster there, "after the Luckularity, Harry should have ever-more-effective luck potions raining from the sky wherever he went; the book would end when he randomly threw a rock up in the air that happened to fall and kill Voldemort, just as the Pioneer probe fortuitously crashed into an asteroid at .01c."

That thing's existence is just one more bit of evidence for Rowling being suckish at consistent worldbuilding.

That's basically where I was going with that, positive feedback loop and all.

^^Otherwise known as the Morrowind hack. :-)

Actually, what happens if you take more than a teaspoonful of FF? My guess - you begin to believe you can do anything. For full narrative causality, it does do that, but at the cost of siphoning off the luck of other people.

I think this is exactly the attitude why some people would be put off from this fanfic.

Which attitude, pray? Exploiting loopholes?

Indeed. People are unhappy about this Harry being a Munchking and making everyone else look stupid.

far enough, she FF it is a major problem... unless you go with the possibility that you just can't create better potions with the FF u.u

Oh, that. Rowling is famous for hacked worldbuilding throughout the fanfiction world. On one hand, it makes her world hard to work with, but on the other hand there's lots of low-hanging fruit for writers to exploit, explore, and expand.

Indeed. The books have many great qualities, likeable characters, wonder, mystery, everything being new and sparkly. It's great escapism, and I loved 'em growing up and still do.

But the worldbuilding is like swiss cheese for how full of holes it is. It's not going to ruin a kid's enjoyment of the book, which is who they were written for, but an adult might be reading them and would go, "Hey, if wizards have invisibility cloaks and can apparate, why aren't more of them muggle bank robbers?" or "If the magic gene is dominant, how come squibs and muggles can have wizard kids? There shouldn't be any carriers." or "How come wizarding society is so stupid when it comes to muggles? How have they lived incognito in the modern-day world without figuring out how to use turnstiles or telephones?" or "Why does everyone use quills at Hogwarts when pens and pencils are so much better? Is it because the magic has somehow messed up a device as simple as a pen?"

Part of loving a work is being able to see its flaws and keep on loving it. I always saw Methods of Rationality as a work of love, fiddling around with all the kinks in the worldbuilding, rather than a fic that's just straight up bashing Harry Potter.

My Immortal...

In canon, there is an anti-disapparition jinx, which can be cast by a single individual, at least if they're on Dumbledore's level.

Also, in canon, we do see instances of apparition in combat, but the only people we see do this are Voldemort and possibly Dumbledore (I can't remember if he did it or not,) which suggests that while useful, it's difficult to do. Possibly when you're as tense and distracted as most people are when someone is actively trying to kill them, it becomes impossible to apparate effectively, like trying to drive a car while the person in the passenger seat is trying to murder you. Only the real dueling geniuses can pull it off.

edited 16th Apr '12 6:56:55 PM by Desertopa

and there is the stance in Deathly Hallows were Ron gets... I forget the term, but he is missinga piece of his arm, while they are less experienced than most Death Eaters and Aurors it isn't that hard to believe that the average wizard would have similar problems.

Felix Felicitas only affects your own actions. Nothing you can do is going to make Voyager suddenly crash. For that matter, there's likely an upperlimit to the effectiveness of luck potions, so you can't just create a singularity like that.

He got splinched. I suspect that's what would happen if an average wizard tried to apparate away in a panic. It's supposed to require deliberation, and it's dangerous enough that you need a license to do it.

I imagine that to actually use it in a combat situation requires your skills to be on an Excuse Me While I Multitask level.

edited 16th Apr '12 7:25:12 PM by Desertopa