Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

Have you read any other stories involving gluing solid-fuel rockets to broomsticks?

We've already had the part of the fic where it's pointed out that even people with the opportunities to do so don't optimise their power. Perhaps (unlikely) Flamel spends his centuries of life drinking tea and doing crosswords after having solved the greatest problem in magic, or perhaps he spends all of his research and training time on Charms and alchemy and can barely cast a Stunner, or perhaps he's an all-round powerful wizard who simply doesn't specialise in Battle Magic enough to make much of a difference in the war. Having reread the recent chapters that mention how he supposedly trained Dumbledore to fight Grindelwald, I now think it's likely that either he trained Dumbledore in magic in the sense of how to break the Dark Ritual fueled by the Holocaust, or that Flamel has technical ability but isn't actually a good fighter, like an elderly martial artist taken Up To Eleven.

edited 21st Mar '13 2:21:41 PM by LogicDragon

I'm pretty sure if I found the secret to everlasting health and wealth I'd use my eternity to master pac-man.

More likely he has a ton of raw magical power due to his age but doesn't direct it towards battle magic. Once you've secured immortality why risk it in combat?

edited 21st Mar '13 4:34:16 PM by thatguythere47

Assuming Eliezer doesn't want Flamel to be totally evil, there's probably some drawback to his lack of aging such that it might actually make sense not to share it with everyone. Again, I'm going to peg reduced stamina as a likely option.

Virtually all such drawbacks have the same problem - if that was the case, voldemort getting his hands on it would not be such a disaster. In canon, that is actually a possibility - the trap guarded by the laughable security could have had 2 layers - the mirror and the stone itself. That said, I suspect that the eternal youth part might simply not work on people who did not make their own stone. That would explain why Flamel published, but did not share directly.

The problem is that, while that would mitigate the stupidity of Dumbledore and the other Hogwarts employees who were guarding the stone, it would increase Voldemort's stupidity even more, and there aren't many things that can possibly increase the stupidity of Canonmort.

There's no reason that such a drawback would have to be immediate. In Voldemort's case, "the body comes back as good as new, but might be overly easy to exhaust in 200 years" would be practically no drawback at all.

the latest what if xkcd is on topic of retrieving the Voyager I probe. at first i was amused, then the excitement turned into a bit of disappointment due to the time required. still, it again made me wonder what would be possible with fusion of science and magic :D

in HPMOR the task would be somewhat easier - only destroying the horcrux would do (would nuke suffice? or some powerful magical device), and magic could be source of a huge speed-up. tweaked broomstick technology for the win.

that is, if you can't just accio the probe, or teleport yourself/something to it, as already proposed

A nuclear device probably wouldn't work to destroy a Horcrux, even if you somehow got it out to the Probe accurately and quickly and could trigger it from Earth. Even assuming the wards Quirrellmort presumably placed on the Probe itself wouldn't hold up to the blast (he has access to ancient magic, and remember "[the Hall of the Wizengamot] would pass unharmed, and perhaps unwarmed, through the heart of a nuclear explosion"), Hermione in canon Book 7 says that Horcruxes only count as destroyed if they are completely beyond magical repair, so the method of destruction has to be magical. It's unclear whether this property is a result of enchantments anybody with half a brain cell places on their Horcruxes or just a characteristic of Horcruxes.

Horcruxes are generally Charmed against Summoning.

If we're going to Abuse Apparition for Fun and Profit, I still want to know why you can't Tele-Frag people in battle.

edited 26th Apr '13 11:03:16 AM by LogicDragon

Im sticking with the theory that you can, but the standard apparition spell has safeguards against it because the designer was not a complete idiot, and if you are designing a spell specifically for killing people, there are ways to get that result that are much less harsh on the carpet. Like Avadra.

As a rule, when thinking of combat magics in the potter verse, the question to ask is "And in what way is this an improvement on the holy tactical trinity of Stupefy, Expelliarmus and Avadra Kedavra"? Because if it is not better than those, the reason noone does what you are proposing is pretty self-explanatory. And Tele-Frag would be greatly inferior to all three - Any battle fought to the death implies you are sticking up wards against apparition so people cannot just duck behind a wall and flee. And now your fancy custom spell does not work on the field of battle at all.

Apparition takes a second to take effect. Recall the fate of poor dobby who tried to Apparitate away mid-combat. Phoenix fire could probably make for useful teleportation during combat but if you've got a phoenix it would probably be more useful to use it's song as a mana boost and simply brute force your enemy into submission.

Progress report time. Relatively mixed - Eliezer had a relatively productive month of 6K words, but apparently next month is unlikely to be so good due to a math workshop. There are now 15,300 words in buffer, of which 8,800 belong to two apparently finished chapters which drat the cliffhanger, I want very badly! Aside from the slight possibility that Eliezer gets a week to work on Methods to cool off after his apparently more-than-three-week math session (hey SIAI, he totally deserves it), hopes for next month are not high.

edited 1st Apr '13 10:12:46 PM by Exetera

i wanted to find something in this ever growing thread, therefore i downloaded it whole, so that i could perform the search in a text editor. if anyone wants a copy as a back-up or for occasional search as well, i uploaded it to http://bitshare.com/?f=s7z6dc36

one long file, complete html content (could've stripped it of unimportant parts, but didn't bother), short info at its beginning, can be viewed in a browser (at least in my FF 20)

too bad the actual search can't be automated as easily as obtaining the data :)

see you tomorrow with another author update

I've already wrote a script for archiving and searching threads, though I haven't used it on this one.

Seeing as how no-one else has posted the link to the Author's Note yet, I think I had better.

http://hpmor.com/notes/progress-13-05-01/

"Not much HPMOR progress this month – as previously warned, the 3-week April math workshop at MIRI ate my existence. Lots of math progress there – more than I was expecting, a very pleasant surprise – and now I’ve got to write up my parts of it!"

Ah well...

He's reading Tales of MU, huh?

I haven't been following that in, what, five years? And it was already absurdly long back then. I can only imagine how long it would take to get through the whole thing now.

I remember reading this and wouldn't mind terribly continuing, but I have lost the point where I left it. I vaguely remember some kind of a situation with Harmoine deciding to become active on the whole women's equality front. Anyone with a better recollection of the work who could point out roughly what chapter I most likely was left on and if there has been enough progress since to warrant picking it up again?

Not holding my breath, but maybe somewhere in the vast Internet there exist a summary of chapters that could be used to quickly revitalize my memory?

It's always annoying to come back to something with extensive continuity after a good long break.

Sounds like you left off around chapter 70.

Thanks, seems about right.

There's a Richard Feynman night of sorts running on BBC 2 right now. First part is the dramatized documentary, "The Challenger", about what brought the eponymous Shuttle down, the second part is a profile on the man himself "The Fantastic Mr Feynman".

May be of some interest to some of those who read this fic and like it, I suppose.

New Progress Report.

So, hopefully a chapter this month, and if not, most likely in July.

Can I get somebody to take charge of YKKT Wing this, fleshing out the examples, and adding this trope for me? I'm sure I've seen many many more examples than this, but would just as soon crowdsource the task of remembering them.

The Resurrector

The Resurrector is driven by their mission to restore someone to life or undo their death. The beneficiary may be the One True Love, the Dead Little Sister, a daughter or son, or True Friend. They may have spent years, decades, or even longer trying to bring back that one person who's precious to them. Their methods may include Time Travel, Mad Science, or Forbidden Magic. The strength of their conviction may make them a [[Determinator]] or lead them to cross the Moral Event Horizon, especially if the author believes in Immortality Immorality.

This trope is not to be invoked lightly, when the resurrection is just one more subquest in a universe where Death Is Cheap - Star Trek III The Search For Spock wouldn't count, unless Kirk had been driven almost mad by Spock's death and was willing to do almost anything to bring him back.

Religion And Mythology:

• Orpheus (for Eurydice) makes this Older Than Feudalism.

Anime/Manga:

• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Akemi Homura (for Kaname Madoka)
• Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha: Precia Testarossa (for Alicia Testarossa)

Real Life:

• Saul Kent (for Dora Kent)

Also: The Elric brothers for Trisha Elric, in the backstory. Victor Fries (Mr. Freeze) for Nora.

I started one, I'm sure I've seen more examples, but I could only think of a few aside from the ones you already gave. If you remember more, feel free to add them.

Thank you, Desertopa!

New entries! Hurrah! Don't read my spoilers until you've read the entries!

Well, now we know why Eliezer brought that trope idea up... Anyhow. The most obvious immediate result of the entries is that Quirrell's got some 'splainin to do. He cut a massive swath of destruction through Hogwarts, for no reason that he should be able to adequately explain, then stopped cutting a massive swath of destruction through Hogwarts, again for no reason that he should be able to adequately explain. I can think of some potential BS reasons, but none that I can imagine convincing Dumbledore. And, a slightly delayed point of consideration: was this scene why Harry's father's rock was introduced? If so... mad props to Eliezer.

One last note: Harry's resolution at the end seems to be conspicuously missing a resolution to kill if necessary. I can't imagine that this would satisfy Quirrell.

Note after the last note: Harry is definitely shooting for Singularity now.

edited 29th Jun '13 6:09:25 PM by Exetera