Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

The "Harry's mom's love protected him" is canon. This is something verified by dumbledore as capable of happening.

However this version of Voldemort is not a moron, and the flashback shows something different happening. In it, When Lily asks to kill her instead, Voldemort accepts and tells her to put her wand down so he can kill her. Lily instead tries to kill him, thus invalidating the whole thing, unles I misinterpreted.

And I have no reason to believe there is no magical equivalent of plastic surgery. We've seen it with the teeth. It's never looked at as unusual.

As for Dumbledore knowing about Quidditch, that really doesn't matter. There are a myriad of ways he could've found out. He could've had the train bugged or listening personally. None of them matter, as the point of the scene is to give off the idea that Dumbledore knows everything.

Canon doesn't have to make sense. It's just what Rowling got published. The idea that a loving sacrifice can protect from the killing curse is inconsistent with a wizarding war where the Dark Lord zapped whole families repeatedly. This would have happend much sooner in the whole timeline. Was Lily the only one to love her child and to die protecting him?

Reading the author's other works, I doubt the power of love is what protected Harry in MOR, regardless of the details of the other events.

It also doesn't happen that much. There are wizards who are vain, ugly, and powerful. This is reason to believe that there is no magical equivalent of plastic surgery. Harry even comments on it in his first transmutation class.

Dumbledore is doing something. I don't know what, but he has a plan for the climax of the story which involves Harry having a large rock but not his pouch. I know or have a good guess as to what the kids are after. I know what the defense professor wants. I have rough ideas as to how they're going to try and get these things. I don't know what Dumbledore's plan is. If he does something impossible, there's a way he did it.

I've heard the claim from the author that the plot is a puzzle and there are enough clues to solve it in the first chapter. Someone did solve it by chapter 20. As a rule I won't accept anything as irrelevant without Yudkowsky saying so.

edited 16th May '11 9:16:41 PM by Oscredwin

Sex, Drugs, and Rationality

Wasn't 20 the Pioneer chapter? That can't be a coincidence.

I will keep my soul in a place out of sight, Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard.

Enough clues in the first chapter? Isn't that the one that involves interactions entirely between Harry and his aunt and uncle? I would like to see the logical train that gets the entire plot out of clues in that chapter.

I don't doubt that it's possible, knowing Yudkowsky, but... I would like to see it.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

Concept: Harry survived the killing curse because the utilitarian equality of the situation of Lily's choice balanced out.

Utilitarian Unbalanced Choice:

• Live and your child dies, or die and your child dies. 1 death or 2. Obviously the first is preferrable. This isn't really even a choice.

Utilitarian Balanced Choice:

• Live and your child dies, or die and your child lives. 1 death or 1. This is actually a choice, though a difficult one, and Lily obviously chose Harry's life to live.

Now, WHY did the choice become balanced? I don't know, probably has something to do with all the magic.

At first I didn't realize I needed all this stuff...

Currently rereading Shinji And Warhammer 40 K and realizing the very important lesson I learned from that fic:

Every character has the potential to be awesome.

edited 21st May '11 10:38:35 PM by EliezerYudkowsky

The best thing about 40k Shinji is that, despite being much more entertaining, he's still mentally disturbed. In this case, though, he's the right kind of crazy that Earth needs at the moment, rather than the realistic (and useless) kind of crazy he originally was.

They assed first. I am only retaliating in an ass way. -The Dead Man's Life

I didn't like Shinji 40k. I guess action super hero Rei was just too "awesome" for me.

But speaking of other fics, I recently read one of Rorschach's Blot's oneshots called "Better living through Chemistry", and I am amused by some of the thematic similarities to Methods. I particularly liked the way he weights the matchstick/needle before and after transfiguration, and how he deals with the stone's defenses.

And while on the subject of fics with thematic similarities, there is also "The Search for Supernatural Life". It points out ethical problems that are taken for granted in canon because a masquerade is just a standard and expected part of these kinds of fantasy stories.

Back to the fic itself, I noticed while reading chapter 46 that Professor Quirrell say "perhaps you will be told when you are older" instead of something like "I will tell you when you are older". This looks like one of his word games to me; he expects Dumbledore to be the one to tell Harry about horcruxes when he is older and has to face Voldemort.

Finally, I know the first chapter says you can give up by chapter 10, but I feel that in order to give Methods a really fair try you should read until at least chapter 20. For one thing, Quirrellmort is quite possibly the best character in the fic, and he doesn't do anything really interesting until his first class in chapter 16. For another, it is difficult to get a sense of just how amazing this fic is until you learn about what he did to the pioneer plaque, and that happens in chapter 20.

edited 22nd May '11 6:38:24 PM by jaimeastorga2000

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^ XD Yeah, 'cause losing even more time to a fanfic they aren't even sure they like yet is totally fair to a new reader. If you'll permit me a second to be incredibly smug and snobby, not everyone reads as fast as we do.

A True Lady's Quest - A Jojo is You!

^Same here. 'Ahh. Smug mode.'

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

That simply sounds like too powerful a plot device to include in any well balanced setting, especially one in which the main character is explicitly a munchkin.

...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

Yeah, Harry would almost certainly use it to make everyone immortal and bring everyone dead back to life and gain complete knowledge of everything and then the story would be over.

At first I didn't realize I needed all this stuff...

I am hypothesizing that it is the critical Mc Guffan. It's what Voldemort wanted, and it'll be how Harry takes over the world in a few months (of story time).

Harry might know how to brew it and forgot. That would be why the Rememberall went off.

Sex, Drugs, and Rationality

But why the fuck would Lily give one to Petunia for something so petty and trivial, when she could probably use much simpler magic for the same purpose?

At first I didn't realize I needed all this stuff...

One - Petunia had begged her sister for something like this. She had a horrible life ahead of her, with a guy who was going to name his son "Duddly Dursley".

Two - Magical breast enlargement and skin treatment doesn't seem to exist in HP. In MOR Harry is told that it can't be done with transfiguration and that Harry thinks, that makes sense otherwise I wouldn't see all these people being fat and having pimples. Just cause something seems like it should exist, doesn't mean that it actually does.

Sex, Drugs, and Rationality

Oscredwin, you are inventing an entire new hypothesis to explain something that doesn't exist. Skin treatment exists Fatness doesn't, but Lily was an expert potioneer. And besides; all that means is that JK didn't think through the implications on magic. Hardly the first time. The explanation your suggesting is MUCH more ridiculous than anything we've seen in canon.

The truly strange phenomenon I'm trying to explain is Harry Surviving the killing curse. In MOR is certainly isn't the power of love that protected him, what was it? Also why did a centaur (a likely prophet) tell Lily not to use magic to help her sister? And why was Harry chosen over Neville? I expect all three are connected.

I've heard Eliezer say that this is a puzzle that is solvable in the first chapter, which makes me think that this potion is more then just a one off plot device.

Sex, Drugs, and Rationality

Slightly off-topic but how accessible is Shinji 40 K for someone like myself whose entire experience of Evangelion comes from reading it's TV Tropes page a while back?

I read it after only watching the first few episodes of NGE and I understood it okay. I think the real issue is how familiar you are with WH40K.

edited 25th May '11 12:14:30 PM by Taelor

The Philosopher-King Paradox

I know precisely ONE thing about WH 40 K, and that is that WH 40 K is based on the principle of everthing in the universe trying to be as horrible as possible to everything else in the universe.

That and throwing in whatever might seem cool to the target audience, which is more relevant in this context.

I will keep my soul in a place out of sight, Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard.

You should be fine, but read a Ciaphas Cain story or two to be sure.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

I have a question about the Less Wrong blog, for anyone who can answer it.

...How do the forums work there, if they have regular forums? Are people allowed to ask regular philosophical questions, or would I have to phrase my pondering in the form of an essay?

They assed first. I am only retaliating in an ass way. -The Dead Man's Life

There's no forum per se. There's a discussion section, with the same blog format as the main site, that would probably be receptive to philosophical questions as long as they're reasonably well stated; a trivial karma requirement exists for adding top-level posts there, but it's low enough that you could almost certainly achieve it by introducing yourself first in the "Welcome to LW" thread.

Alternately, there are open threads that you could post in immediately.

I will keep my soul in a place out of sight, Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard.

I'll explain as well for the sake of redundancy.

There are no forums. There are blog posts with comments sections that are used for discussion. Blog posts can go into either the main section or the discussion section (the latter being more relaxed). The system is based on reddit code, including a karma mechanic. As for philosophical questions... it would help if you could tell us the kind of question you are thinking about. Alternatively, why don't you try lurking the discussion section for a few days (including the comments) to get a feel for the kind of discussion that goes there? If all else fails, you can always post your questions in the monthly open threads. Even if poorly received, you are unlikely to lose much karma that way.

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