After having written "The M3GAN Files" (HPMOR-inspired) and participating a bit on the M3GAN subreddit, a situation arose which I tried to use to teach a point of rationality but I don't seem to be doing very well.

A film critic said he had an insider source which disclosed details of the plot of the forthcoming sequel. Fan discussion tended to take those details as "known". I repeatedly reminded fans that said details were "not confirmed" or "not yet confirmed". I wanted to put across the idea that things can be "not proven".

Within the last 24 hours, an official source has confirmed some of the previously-unconfirmed plot details. So I updated myself to say these parts are now confirmed. (While some other leaks are still unconfirmed.)

This seems to me like a straightforward simple way of demonstrating how beliefs can be updated as evidence comes in. I mean we don't even have to talk about Bayesian inference here, it's just very straightforward: unofficial source = not confirmed, official source = now it's confirmed. What could possibly be so hard to understand about that?

But all I seem to be getting is downvotes and negative replies because I've now been proved wrong for having doubted the rumours. (Except I maintain I was not wrong for having doubted them at that time when I didn't have enough evidence; now that I do have enough evidence, I can update my belief. "Wrong" would be if I had said "these rumours are definitely incorrect", which is not what I said!)

Any ideas how to gently tell them what's going on here, preferably without continuing to look like the bad guy? It seems like a good opportunity that I'm not doing very well at taking advantage of.

I'm designing a course that teaches some or all of the attitudes and techniques Harry uses in HPMOR (and selected HPMOR fanfics) that have a real-world application. It's not necessary to me that these attitudes and techniques be rational - as long as they help you deserve a place in the ranks of the Chaos Legion (for example, the course could try to teach how to make other people's lives surreal using real world techs.)

Whenever I propose the idea to fellow rats it's greeted with lots of enthusiasm, so I do suppose this would be useful to you all. As a start I'm doing research - please answer this question if you're interested in something even slightly adjacent to the project I'm suggesting:

What exactly do you admire about Harry James Potter Evans Verres, and why do you admire it? Anything you mention I will consider teaching to the community, even if I have to learn it first and teach it second.

Chapter 61

There was another pause, and then Madam Bones's voice said, "I have information which I learned four hours into the future, Albus. Do you still want it?"

Albus paused -

(weighing, Minerva knew, the possibility that he might want to go back more than two hours from this instant; for you couldn't send information further back in time than six hours, not through any chain of Time-Turners)

- and finally said, "Yes, please."

Couldn't he simply Obliviate himself if he decides he wants to so that information doesn't attempt to go back more than six hours?

Chapter 101

"Well," the Defense Professor said then, "I have made my point, and you may think on it. Centaur spears can block many spells, but no one tries to block if they see that the spell is a certain shade of green. For this purpose it is useful to know some green stunning hexes. Really, Mr. Potter, you should understand by now how I operate."

Chapter 106

Harry stared at the huge Inferius with a horrible sinking sensation in his stomach, the third-worst feeling he'd ever felt in his life.

He knew then that he'd seen and sensed this procedure before, only without the spoken Latin.
The centaur who'd confronted him in the Forbidden Forest was dead. The Defense Professor had hit it with a real Avada Kedavra, not a fake one.

Given the extent of his magical lore, I would assume so, but I want some confirmation. u/EliezerYudkowsky

I would like to know. I'm thinking of building something like this for the community, I've been a teacher for 10 years and it seems like a likely project for me. It is just in the project's interest that I go to more experienced people first and ask questions or request feedback.

I don't want to discount all the ways I'd use the source material to teach rationality and adjacent skills (such as developing General Chaos-level cheats for the real world) but my first solution is to make the audiobook listener go "how can I apply this to my life?" (and expand from there) when Harry does, thinks, or says something interesting. That's what I mean by using HPMOR as source material.

Arc 1: Thesis

• Chapter One: Frontloading Mysteries
• Chapter Two: Buffering Conflicts (Continuation fic; spoilers
• hapter Three: Resolving Differences
• Chapter Four: Established Patterns May Have Little Predictive Value
• Chapter Five: A Matter of Perspective
• Chapter Six: George Jaxon
• Chapter Seven: Aitiai, Diaphorai, and Alethestate Prophasis
• Chapter Eight: Morse Four
• Chapter Nine: Boxes
• Bonus: Goblins
• Chapter Ten: What Is Beautiful Is Good
• Chapter Eleven: Any Advantage
• Bonus: War
• Chapter Twelve: Opposition [End of Arc 1]
• Chapter Thirteen: Pip's Day Out
• Chapter Fourteen: Azkaban

Arc 2: Antithesis

• Chapter Fifteen: Brute Existent
• Chapter Sixteen: Protagonists
• Chapter Seventeen: Taking Flight
• Chapter Eighteen: Contras
• Bonus: Shichinin
• Chapter Nineteen: Gholas
• Chapter Twenty: Reproduction in Miniature
• Chapter Twenty-One: Opfer Müssen Gebracht Werden
• Chapter Twenty-Two: Press Pass
• Chapter Twenty-Three: Watchers
• Bonus: Digitizations
• Chapter Twenty-Four: Parabolas
• Chapter Twenty-Five: Purchasing Power
• Chapter Twenty-Six: Delta V Over Delta T
• Bonus: Harry and the Centaurs Argue Philosophy
• Chapter Twenty-Seven: Zero Sum
• Chapter Twenty-Eight: Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal
• Chapter Twenty-Nine: Intent
• Chapter Thirty: Ekkyklema
• Chapter Thirty-One: Esse Quam Videri
• Chapter Thirty-Two: Levels
• Chapter Thirty-Three: Walpurgisnacht

Arc 3: Synthesis

• Chapter Thirty-Four: Directoire Exécutif

• Bonus: Science

• Chapter Thirty-Five: Mascon

• Chapter Thirty-Six: Jagannātha

• Chapter Thirty-Seven: Pip Around the World

• Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Ineluctable Modality of the Visible

• Bonus: Draco

• Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Compresence of Opposites

• Chapter Forty: The Thing with Wings

• Chapter Forty-One: Pithos

• Chapter Forty-Two: Commentarii de Bello

• Chapter Forty-Three: Melpomene

• Chapter Forty-Four: Batter My Heart

• Chapter Forty-Five: Homophone

• Chapter Forty-Six: Levee

• Chapter Forty-Seven: Hell

• Chapter Forty-Eight: Antepenultimate

• Chapter Forty-Nine: Penultimate

• Chapter Fifty: Ultimate

• Epilogue

I'm working through the AI audiobook now, and it's a bit of a pain to find the individual chapters.

If there isn't one I'll make it tomorrow .

In chapter 110, in front of the mirror. We know that the Process of the Timeless could have been stopped if Dumbledore had done it earlier, and we know that Dumbledore has a great deal of ancient lore, devises and capability from Flamel and other sources. While the cloak itself probably makes Harry undetectable it is entirely plausible that a Greater Circle of Concealment would fail to hide him from Dumbledore. Furthermore while Harry promised not to take the cloak off, he isn't magically bound to that promise and could change his mind when presented with new information.

So, Harry takes the cloak off reasoning that the only contribution he can make is potentially transmitting information to Dumbledore, and indeed Dumbledore perceives him at a glance. Or hell, thinking about it given the amount of lessons he's received he probably knows the principles of legilimency - attempts to use it on Dumbledore, fails incredibly badly, but the quality of the broadcast was never the point, the broadcast's existence is. Point is, Harry manages to communicate his presence to Dumbledore somehow, who therefore never begins the trap. What happens?

The result "don't mess with time" stopped this endeavour, but how could he have achieved this in the same premice, which is just a piece of paper ? Is there an algorythm and a mathematical formula that allows to create a map or any 3d shape just with numbers that you can modify at will ?

Being re-listening the series again and this still interests me. Harry asks Lupin if his father was a bully and Remus kinda agrees and gives halfbaked excuses.

Why he didn't tel Harryl that Snape was hanging with bloodpurist/deatheaters and was also kinda a bully/bad person too?

Am i missing something, it seems that in this universe everyone kinda agrees that James was fully a dick. I always thought that James bullied Snape for many reasons and one of them was that Snape was pre-deatheater and bloodpurist aka a nasty guy. Of course there is more reasons, like they both competed for Lily and James wanted to push Snape down to elevate himself.

I mean it would make some sense if Lupin would say harry that Snape was a nasty guy/ bully too and James liked to bully the bullies.

The Philosopher's Stone, as stated by QQ has only the power to make transfigurations permanent. Nothing more, nothing less. Given that assumption - the entire plot point of turning Hermione into a Troll-unicorn hybrid should have failed, because it was a magical ritual applied to her body, not a transfiguration, and therefore the stone should have done nothing when placed upon her. Unless what the author meant was that it makes ALL magical modifications permanent - in which case it is a much bigger McGuffin than was portrayed and literally breaks reality immediately.

For eg - if it can make magical powers granted to you permanent then the easiest way to Godhood is brew a potion of felix felicis (or rather not even brew a potion but simply transfigure some water into Felix Felicis and make permanent with the stone), drink it and then put the philosopher's stone upon yourself to permanently gain the superpower of optimal path selection towards a goal.

This was my first attempt at printing and sewing a book and my second ever attempt at book binding. Pretty happy with how it turned out!

I screwed up the borders as I flipped my cutting settings (each triangle is the deathly hallows symbol but wasn’t gonna redo the pattern as it’s all a learning project).

Getting some decent comfort with illustrator now (screwing up my cuts not withstanding) so I’m looking forward to slightly more complex designs.

Harry's stuporfy spell wouldn't have worked if Voldemort had even had a simple protego charm up.

Side note, why didn't Dumbledore let Voldemort be trapped in the mirror? I know he thought only Harry could beat him, but he could have left Harry and Voldemort in the mirror, assembled an entire army, relocated the mirror, and THEN released both Harry and Voldemort.

Throughout the year, Harry receives messages from "Santa Claus", who is later revealed to the reader to be Dumbledore. These messages encourage Harry to cooperate with Dumbledore, but also to be skeptical of his motives. For example, Harry is warned that Dumbledore is obsessed with the Hallows and that he shouldn't be underestimated despite outwardly appearing insane.

I've read in other threads some explanations for this behavior that go something like this: Santa Claus sets Harry up to have low expectations of Dumbledore, which are then exceeded on his first meeting, when Dumbledore shows restraint in handing back the Cloak of Invisibility. In principle, this would condition Harry to trust Dumbledore more in the future, since the initial doubt was misplaced.

Perhaps that was the intent. It's hard to say whether or not it worked, because any effect it might have had was immediately overshadowed by the chicken incident.

I present an alternative explanation. Much later, we learn that Dumbledore has interpreted himself to be Harry's creator, whom the prophecies promise Harry must cast down. Dumbledore strongly considers the possibility that he may need to play the role of Dark Lord to fulfill the prophecies. He remarks that it's good for McGonagall to have instincts more aligned with Harry than his own because he is already thinking in terms of which allies Harry would have in their hypothetical faceoff.

What if Santa Claus' messages were meant to instill doubt rather than discourage it? What if Dumbledore wanted part of Harry to always be skeptical of him? It would make sense if this faceoff were to occur. We saw how very near Harry was to losing against a mentor he trusted. Perhaps Dumbledore was ensuring that he could never be seen as a mentor, but only ever the "mysterious old wizard".

The warning about Dumbledore's preoccupation with the Hallows even sets up a potential villain arc for Dumbledore. He could assume the role of Dark Lord, at least outwardly, by finally succumbing to that hunger for the Hallows. It gives plausibility to his playing the role.

Is there any special significance to Hermione's speech in addition to her christmas wish? This caught my attention:

Harry Potter was frowning, and something tickled at the edge of Draco's recognition.

This may not be the right subreddit for this type of post, but I thought I would try it anyway, given the type of people who hang out in this community.

I am looking for individuals who are interested in participating in a highly detailed, ongoing, text-based adventure where we collaboratively create a story using large language models to guide the narrative development. The concept is straightforward but deeply engaging: I will act as the gamemaster, crafting a unique world and setting up a scenario for you to interact with. As the player, your role will be to decide what action your character takes in the story by replying with your chosen action.

Here’s how it will work in practice: each day, I will send you a detailed email, typically 1-3 pages long, describing what has happened in the world in response to the action you took the day before. This email will function as a narrative-driven simulation of the story's world, where the characters, environment, and events evolve based on your decisions. As the gamemaster, I’ll oversee the entire process, ensuring that the simulation remains consistent, realistic, and filled with compelling challenges to keep the story interesting. However, the twist is that I will use a language model, such as GPT-4o or Claude 3.5 from Anthropic, to help narrate and expand the simulation. This allows for rich storytelling and immersive, finely detailed scenarios that bring the world and its characters vividly to life.

I’ve done this kind of collaborative storytelling with others before and found it to be incredibly fun and rewarding. For this round, I am especially interested in running a story where you take on the role of a tribute in The Hunger Games. The adventure would begin with your character being chosen at the Reaping and would follow your journey through the games. That said, I am also open to exploring alternative story premises if you have a compelling idea you’d like to pitch.

If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, please send me a direct message to express your interest. The process is simple: you’ll commit to playing one turn per day by responding with an action your character takes. I would prefer to work with people who are able to make this a daily habit, as consistency is essential for the story to unfold properly and reach its full potential. While the time commitment is relatively light—likely about 30 minutes or less per day—it is crucial that participants can commit to this effort every single day. The most rewarding stories are the ones that develop over time, spanning several months, rather than wrapping up quickly in just a few weeks.

I understand wanting to be someone close to Harry that he admires but why make such an impact on the whole school if he just planned to continue prussuing his ultimate goal, including his Christmas speach which while reading it it made sense but looking back not so much. why put in such an effort if he really didn't want to be and stay being a great teacher?

The obvious one, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" is apparently a bible quote, which makes me not want to use it, for fear that it might convey the wrong message (especially since the most common interpretation has been influenced by canon HP)

Just want some HJPEV reference to put in my discord status

I suppose Voldemort might have been afraid that HJPEV would somehow survive a killing curse or something because of the prophecy, but that still doesn't explain why he didn't have Sprout cast the imperius curse on HJPEV, which would have been prudent in any case. My own personal headcanon is that part of why DD's plans had to be so complicated and weird was that he needed to steer Time in a direction where Voldie would have power over HJPEV and he, instead of killing him outright, would first make HJPEV take an unbreakable vow. I believe in SD or the fan continuation, time travel past 6h is discovered and bahl's stupefaction is applied to the ressurection stone to make evebts unfold the way they did.

Just thinking idly on it - the idea of time travel in HP (MoR or canon) is that you can't change anything, or at least nothing that would lead to you noticing anything different on your eventual return to the present.

We know that memory-alteration magic is a thing.

So theoretically, a Time-Turner (or equivalent) could cast a spell which uses a recording of the status of the world (which possibly explains the 6-hour time limit), lets a mental copy - something like a Horcrux - simulate walking through it, and if the copy tries to do anything which would result in a noticeably different 'present', it gets rewound and minimally tweaked to not make that choice again. The copy ends up rewinding and rechoosing anywhere from zero to potentially millions of times before it finds a spell-accepted way through back to the present. The spell then makes all the 'updates' in the world - updating the caster's brain-state, teleporting them to where the copy thinks they should be, making any other changes in the world (including to other people's brain-states and memories).

Basically, the solution is self-referential; there is no change made to the world until the 'time-traveler' comes back to the point they left from. If there is some change that the spell can't make (for example, affecting something incredibly heavily shielded against alteration), the mental copy is rewound and blocked from making the choice which led to that being a requirement.

But what if there's some setup whereby whatever the faux-traveler does or doesn't do, this results in some change that the spell can't implement? Well, in those incredibly limited circumstances, the time-travel spell simply fails, or at least appears to. Either there's some kind of backlash, or it just doesn't kick in, from the traveler's perspective. Thus you get the ability to time-lock places like Azkaban, or cast time-lock wards.

So: all the effects (mostly) of 'fixed' time travel, none of the actual chronal warping or dangers of real time loops. The whole thing is just a bit of postcognition, with some mental cloning, guided experiences, mental recombining, and probably some teleportation, matter-shifting, and general magical energy expenditure to produce the expected 'updated' results.

I would bet that some of the restrictions on time travel include things like going back in time and casting some kind of magic that takes hours to build towards a final effect, if the time-travel spell can't adjust the magical field/aura/atmosphere of the real world to make it look like that happened.

Hypothesis: there was a wizard in the past who bet their life that, given a year and unlimited funding, they could create a time-travel spell for their shadowy and incredibly wealthy backers. Having spent the year jiggling around with massively overpowered Worldline-Trackers, Chrono-Nullifiers, and Causality-Bypass-O-Matic rituals, they realized with nine hours to go that they weren't going to make it, and instead decided to (1) cheat, and (2) create the most incredibly obscure and unbreakable tesseract-looping self-modifying spaghetti-rune array in the history of wizardry to cover up what they were actually doing.

Every attempt since to replicate the effect has failed, often explosively and fatally, because the researchers are starting from wrong assumptions, thus making Time Turners the only methods of 'time travel' available to modern wizards, who have no idea how to make more, or even how to adjust the parameters beyond 'fixed time loops' and 'six hours total'. Both of these are deliberate limitations to conserve magical power and information storage requirements, and were probably set arbitrarily based on what the inventor had to hand at the time, and how long it took them to rig up a world-recording spell and pull in a couple of hours of 'time travel capability' while they worked on the reality-update side of things.

(With thanks to John C. McCrae and Douglas Adams)

When Amelia talks to Albus after the Bellatrix breakout, she asks him if he wants to hear a message from 4h in the future. In Minerva's POV, we learn that Albus could go back 6h if he didn't receieve the message and so he was considering whether he might want to go more than 2h back. But just talking to Amelia gave him information. For instance, he could have gone back 6h and told someone that in 10h, Ameloa would use her time turner; thus Amelia would have sent the information that she was using the time turner 10h back.

It seems like a cognitive restriction rather than one that originates from fundamental rules of magic.