Reviews FanFic / Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

This isn't really valid criticism. In all honesty, HPMOR isn't really a For Want of a Nail fic. There are many points of divergences and many of the characters are significantly different from what they are in canon. Harry, Hermione, Dumbledore, Snape, and Quirrel, in particular, are all more intelligent than in canon so that Harry's intelligence isn't a gamebreaker and doesn't make him the only smart character.

I agree that Bellatrix' behavior is ridiculous in this story,

Phoenix back up your statement and tell us what is wrong about the chromosomal theory for magic? Stating something and not backing it up is naive.

To NG 14916: The story was in the rec section for For Want Of A Nail Fics, which is part of the reason that I chose to read it in the first place. To find that it made so many more changes, many of which didn't make sense, was a letdown.

To qtjinla15: It's partially a matter of statistics. The wizarding population is small enough that, with the number of marriages with muggles, there would be only squibs left after a while, with only the occasional Wizard. It also means that there wouldn't be squibs or near-squibs born from pureblood families, which have been mentioned before in canon. Any marriage between a pureblood and a non-'squib' muggle would result in another squib. While the chromosomal theory that Harry outlines in the early chapters fits in with the in-story statistics, it does not match up to canon evidence.

I do agree it's a downhill ride, but mostly because the farther it goes, the more it diverges from the Harry Potter-verse into a rather strange and far-fetched story that seems to exist just to make outside references. Don't get me wrong, I love the Ender's Game nods, but it no longer feels like an HP fanfiction, just a rambling unrelated story that has the same characters (and character names, in some cases) as HP. The magic part has become almost completely incidental, and what made it interesting to me at the start was Harry's methodical deconstruction of the 'verse.

That's not to say I don't like it, though. It's kept my attention, but not for the reasons that hooked me at the very beginning.

It's still on going. I like it.

1) Harry had anger problems in Canon. It is not that far-fetched that it was because of the horcrux as much as the child abuse. 2) the Pioneer Plaque makes sense of a part of the original story that never fit. 3) Fair point. I don't mind the justification, but I like OC Lesath, too. 4) Rowling said it was genetic. You didn't understand genetics when you were eleven, so it doesn't matter if you felt you could pick it apart then. Also, Harry has little information to go on, but he sees evidence for it being inherited so thinking it's genes makes perfect sense.

Regarding your issues...

1) First, anger problems don't necessarily have anything to do with how you were raised. There are certainly genetic and biological factors. Further, he actually is shown to have a frustrating home life — one doesn't have to be abused to have anger issues due to upbringing.

That's a bit irrelevant though. The anger Harry has is all but stated to have something to do with the Horcrux in his head.

2) I don't think one should think of the story as a "For Want of A Nail" but even so, the changes to canon are aid to happen well before you might think — at least that's what I remember the author saying. That said, best to think of it as an AU.

3) I rather like this take on Bellatrix. And just because she's broken and needs psychiatric help doesn't mean she isn't also dangerously psychotic. We have only seen her in a spot that highlights her most sympathetic elements.

4) Regarding the Mendelian inheritance of magic, it is quite possible to maintain a population with a very rare genetic profile. We see it all over the place today even in advanced societies. Whether it is red hair, genetic disorders, or other traits, there are groups that are far, far more likely to have them than others. This obviously includes recessive traits (like blue eyes). The only disappear if there's no selection for them, but groups with insular mating patterns DO select for them. The fact that blood purity is such a big deal and that they add outside members who have the right genetics is certainly enough to sustain a population.

Remember, if we consider m to be the recessive trait for magic, and M to be the dominant trait for non-magic, then the vast, vast majority of the Wizarding world are mm. People that are Mm are squibs and are ostracised within the magical community. That means they are less likely to marry and more likely to try to make it out in the muggle world. The selection system for school would seem to guarantee that M Ms would definitely never attend Hogwarts and other such institutions (and likely mMs wouldn't either), and they'd have a hard time finding employment in the magical world too. It seems far more likely, given the highly degree of selection in the magical world that you'd see non-magical people rapidly disappear. If anything is shocking it is that they were able to find enough data to draw any conclusions — it probably helped that they could canvas paintings that covered hundreds of years of history — even then they didn't get all that much data.

Anyhow, I think it reads much better if you think of it as an AU that changes some things to partly deconstruct the "magical world masquerades" (in an affectionate manner).

The seemingly endless wish fulfillment Ender's Game references were when it jumped the shark for me.

God The Mental Jumps people that make to like this fic~!

The problem with the use of Mendelian genetics is that the construction they come up with in-story means that there *couldn\'t* ever be squibs. If you have to be mm to be a wizard, and MM or Mm makes you a squib...then two wizards (mm and mm) physically cannot have Mm children.

It\'s a case of the author spouting his ass off way, way out of his area of expertise — and that goes for a lot of the story, like the prison experiment (which was wholly discredited), as well as many other places.

@Kryten Koro: You might want to re-read that part about the genetics. To stay with your terms, MM and Mm didn't make a person a squib, it made them a wizard, while mm made them a squib. As such it was entirely possible for a child to inherit two "m" genes if both of their wizard parents were Mm type. More importantly though, this was in no way the final word in the debate. It was a hypothesis Harry came up with in order to shake Draco's firm beliefs about pure-bloods and the way magical inheritance worked, and it used a small sample size that was barely enough evidence to make Draco question his own beliefs. It wasn't supposed to be ironclad proof presented by the author, and it was even written that Harry thought the real deal was way more complex, but he didn't have the time or resources to research it, nor did he want to at the time, as the goal was to "awaken" Draco, not to turn it into a peer-reviewed paper.

As for the Stanford Prison Experiment, I actually thought it was used brilliantly in the story. Remember, the story takes place in 1992. The experiment only got disassembled and discredited because of its gross methodological errors in the early 2000s, so if Harry read about them in any of his books, he would have taken it at face value. At least this is my Watsonian explanation. The Doylist one is that the author didn't know about the history of the experiment, but considering how much effort he put into everything else, I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt.

How did it use the Stanford Prisoner experiment? Was it part of a conversation about how the House system was dumb? I remember there was some awful knockoff fic (Lily\'s Changes) that made reference to some prisoner experiment so that they could have their \"rational\" character do away with the House system. I don\'t think it was the Stanford Prisoner experiment being referenced. I want to say \"Spanish Prisoner\" experiment, but that can\'t be right because \"Spanish Prisoner\" is the name of a scam...

@Pannic: No, the Stanford Prison Experiment was mentioned regarding Azkaban. It was even used the title of a series of chapters.

Gotcha.