Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

Tbh, Immortalism in theory may sound like a great idea, but in terms of implementation, every single strategy I've heard so far had significant drawbacks or unanswered dangers. Yes I know, this means I'm talking practicality. But allocating the resources to further one's quest for immortality, especially at the cost of others and the environment, seems a little... selfish. I don't want to die. But I may admit that it might be necessary. Don't want to end up like cancer, stubbornly refusing to die and destroying my surroundings and ultimately myself because of it.

edited 30th Jun '13 12:30:19 PM by Karasu91

Well yes. For corporal immortality we should optimally move beyond scarcity, invent FTL-travel and find good terraforming methods.

Not just that, but find a way to store our consciousness and memories beyond the storage capacity of a typical human brain, lest we wish to grow senile, insane, or have our memories and experiences overwritten - a different, but no less real kind of death. Not to mention the implications on time perception, halting evolution (an immortal human from the 21st century would eventually be a different species from an immortal from the, say 922nd), the issue of resources necessary to maintain the body for an indefinite amount of time, tuning immortality so that individual cells still die and we do not turn into grotesque, horrifying living tumours, escaping the odds, which will reach 100% if we live forever, of suffering an accident or event incapacitating us in a Fate Worse than Death / I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream scenario, surviving the heat death of the universe... And I'm just getting started. Have fun.

Permit me to disagree. Having one isn't always pleasant, but discussing it solemnly out loud will never not be funny. Especially when you haven't let it do anything yet.

Holy shit, that chapter.

I don't even want to imagine the shitstorm.

Wow I don't know what to say about this. Besides

I don't remember signing up for End of Evangelion...

Should we break out the lyrically dissonant music?

Speculating on some things Harry might try doing immediately: Despite what Harry said about not being able to use his time-turner, he can, and he knows he can. Either using the Quirrel method from earlier, or just asking Dumbledore/Minerva/whoever to unlock it. Frankly, I'm surprised he didn't have them unlock it earlier. Dumbledore can also use his time turner, and Harry knows others with time turners, too. Also, Harry's got the Weasley twins present to help with any planning needed. The fact that they've been sloppily obliviated may point to something going down.

The obvious thing to try is a "Tricked-Out-Time" Chrono Trigger-style resurrection. He just needs to be able to fool himself and his Patronus (Hermione could be there in the room but invisible with time-turned Dumbledore, to get her Patronus to lead him there and relay her scream-message). Then he needs a way to falsely trigger the "student-death" ward so that Dumbledore shows up to react as he did. Maybe the freeze-to-kill, then reheat-to-revive trick? Dumbledore may have a better idea of how to trigger it easily. And surely Dumbledore is wise enough to react the way he did even if he can tell it's a Hermione-doll that's "dead" before him, right?

We know that Dumbledore has failed to fool his instruments in the past, but we don't know what any of them have said, so there is no necessary inconsistency. I understand that it would defeat some of the dramatic effect to have such simple and obvious solutions work, but if Hermione really remains dead, the reasons must be consistent with Harry trying this kind of obvious method and failing. I mean, if this sort of thing really is impossible, what happens if Dumbledore just goes back an hour and swoops Hermione away? We know he should be physically able to do so, and Tricked-Out-Time is the most straightforward way to avoid paradox in this way.

-looking through the trope pages-

-notice the entry for Harsher in Hindsight-

...I'm not sure if I should cry or applaud EY for his foreshadowing abilities.

haha, only now it occured to me that Harry's short talk with Brienne in chapter 88 strongly resembles a talk with an ELIZA-like program.

I doubt it will be solved this easily. If EY took the time to wonder about what being The Resurrector means in terms of character motivation, it was not for Harry to embody this trope for six hours/two or three chapters. Harry will fail to find the solution in six hours. We might get some terrifying show of power, and a temporary solution à là Magic!Cryogenics. But no solution. Yet.

Now excuse me, while I'm drowning my grief in Harmony lemonfics.

...Lemonfics. °_°

It should be noted that Harry's attempts at resurrection will provide us with a great many chapters of character development, tasty angst and of course Dead Person Conversation, which is probably my favorite death-related trope.

Remind me please, were we told the fate of the Resurrection Stone yet? For all we know, it would behave differently in this setting.

It was mentioned by Dumbledore as one of the lost Hallows, when he (rather poorly) attempted to prove to Harry that there was an afterlife. In universe, jury's still out on whether or not it is genuine.

Well good job on not using spoiler tags everyone! I'd suggest a mod start a-thumpin' but there's like three or four pages to dredge through so fuck it at this point.

Now onto reaction

-coughs onto back of hand, clears throat-

That was awesome . I cried, I tilted my head, I re-read the entire section thrice over, I came to grips with it, I cried again, I shouted to the seven hells, I cried again.

I'm feeling a beautiful mix of despair, white hot hatred, mild bemusement and schadenfreude at these last few pages. Tam, might I suggest you start reading A Song Of Ice And Fire? I'm sure you'll love it

From a narrative standpoint this makes no sense. All the rules of pacing, story logic and narrative causality state that we must get one lighthearted arc between taboo trade-offs and this.

Which I'm guessing is why this happened here. Like a certain author Who-Shalt-Not-Be-Linked EY has decided that the audience is so genre savvy that pimp slapping them with reality was the only option. You thought whoever was after Hermonie was just going to lie low? That they'd just let it go? That they didn't already have sixteen backup plans in place in the event of their plot failing? If you think this has a happy ending you haven't been paying attention.

You know, that one night Quirrell tried to get Hermione to leave under her own power, if he'd brought Harry with him, he might have had a much easier time.

I don't know about that one. Hermonie picked up on the defense professors ulterior motives pretty quickly. Harry would've gotten the message as well.

So the probability of Harry!Hat-N-Cloak has shot up for me. Take a look at this again:

"HE IS COMING," said a huge hollow voice that cut through all conversation like a sword of ice. "THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY -"

compare to:

HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN. HE IS HERE. HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD.

Not very ambiguous right there. Well, okay, a bit ambiguous. If someone has the energy they could re-read 21 and look for foreshadowing. I think the who of this prophecy is very obvious. The next bits are a bit trickier. The stars bit could reference literal stars and literal tearing. I think it's meant to be connected however, to the world bit. Not the literal end of the world, mind you, but a re-write of reality. Perhaps Potter will succeed on his quest to make it to The Source and all that quasi-dimensional travel is what's causing him to pop out prophecies like zits.

Let's take a look at how this plan is either incredibly well/poorly crafted or requires foreknowledge. The plan requires a troll to be smuggled into hogwarts. Easy enough. Additionally it requires that the headmaster is away, that Hermonie is alone, that the brothers don't reveal a way to track someone down (who has the map right now, seriously?), that Harry's time turner is useless AND, and this is a big and, AND that it doesn't kill Harry.

Now while it's certainly possible that Quirrel was the mastermind he doesn't seem like the kind to leave all that to chance; no one would leave all that to chance. Therefore I'm changing my mind on my most-outlandish-theory theory to it being the muckings about of Future!Harry going back in time to do...something. I haven't figured that part out yet. My safe money is still on everyone's favorite defense professor somehow being the mastermind.

edited 1st Jul '13 10:37:08 AM by thatguythere47

I'm pretty sure Dumbledore has the map right now.

Anyway, I for one am not angry anymore. This was all abrupt and weird and missing a Really Dead Montage because Harry will bring Hermione back, and doing it the other way would be awkward in the end. So, yeah, as far as I'm concerned, she's just had her existence interrupted, not ended. I'll be missing her during the interval until Harry does the impossible again.

RAW RAW FIGHT THE POWER!

Future!Harry killed Hermione. Since in the Methodverse and in Canon, You Already Changed the Past, Future!Harry has to be Present!Harry's nemesis in order to get himself on the way to becoming powerful enough to rewrite reality. Additionally: Future!Harry is Mr. Hat-and-Cloak.

edited 1st Jul '13 11:41:53 AM by Karasu91

That's what I'm beginning to suspect. You can't have a rationalist story featuring time travel that doesn't abuse it. That's why we had to limit the time turner's powers so much after all.

Well, time travel is manifestly possible, and 'six hour limit' makes a lot less sense as a law of magic than either 'no time travel' or 'unlimited'. I wonder if that limitation of Time-Turners is a deliberate shackle, or something like a privilege boundary in Atlantis?

I'm backing Tam H 70 on this. Off-camera, non-POV death was entirely too fridge-like for a character who explicitly noticed and fought against such a thing happening to her. The treatment of her death upsets me far more than the actual death, and the death upset me.

Well, technically, she died on camera. She just took the fatal wounds off-camera.