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I thought the 'trick' was that he started slowly counting out 5 galleons worth of knuts, waited until the adults got bored, and shoveled handfuls of money into his pouch when they weren't looking.
Added Space fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Mar 2, 2017 |
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Mar 2, 2017 18:40
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Harriezer seems at one point to claim that if rationality led him to a conclusion he didn't like he'd say that it wasn't really rational because Rationality is True and Right and Good. This is, of course, completely irrational. A recent update to a much better HP fanfic took at swipe at these chapters: quote:After Halloween, knowing the dementors and Death Eaters were out attacking people indiscriminately, Harry wasn't the only one trying to step up his game. Everyone wanted to learn to defend themselves better against what was out there. Professor Grayson still had them doing practical drills once a week in Defence. One week, they would have a Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw mass duel—still a free-for-all with no organization, but at least with coherent sides. The next week, he would break them up for four-on-four duels, or worse, four-on-two. "All's fair in love and war," he would say with a laughed that sounded unsettlingly like Mad-Eye Moody. He mixed it up quite a bit from week to week.
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Mar 4, 2017 23:21
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blastron posted:I don't understand the box problem. If there's a million dollars in the box if and only if a perfect oracle predicted you were going to open the box, why wouldn't you open that box? Mind-gaming yourself into picking the other box only means the perfect oracle would have predicted you'd mind-game yourself into picking the other box. The hangup is that predicting the future is supposed to be impossible, so there's no reason to believe the oracle's act. Picking both boxes isn't going to change what's in the first box, so you're always better off picking both boxes and snagging some extra money. The problem only becomes difficult if you believe the oracle's power is real. It's like how Turn of the Screw, where a governess claims that the child she is looking after is being injured by a ghost. is only a mystery story if you believe in ghosts.
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Mar 6, 2017 05:29
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My counter would be, under pragmatism, you wouldn't worry about all this physics and causality stuff. If the oracle had a good track record of making predictions, no matter how impossible it may be, it's pragmatic to play along with the oracle. You'd just have to be sure you had a wide enough data set on the oracle's actions to not fall prey to something like a perfect prediction scam.
Added Space fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Mar 6, 2017 |
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Mar 6, 2017 06:04
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I can believe this whole traitor business being a problem. I remember the stupid social maneuvering that went on in the playground, and anyone who's played Mafia or a derivative knows it's more fun to be the traitor. An unguided, mildly violent group activity with eleven year olds descending into chaos seems completely reasonable. However, the writer seems to seriously think this scales to adults. In the books there's a sense that Voldemort is the Trump of his time, exploiting racial tensions that a vocal minority loudly trumpet and a quiet majority secretly agree with. In this fic it's just "Everyone is stupid except me."
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Mar 11, 2017 19:09
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He's saying some do and some don't, to be fair. Earlier Harriezer was wondering if his grandparents would be alive if Lily had used potions on them. Then he climbs on his favorite hobby horse of magical immortality again.
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Mar 17, 2017 17:08
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He's also referencing a common Voltaire quote:Voltaire posted:"Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life. In days gone by, there were people who said to us: "You believe in incomprehensible, contradictory and impossible things because we have commanded you to; now then, commit unjust acts because we likewise order you to do so." Nothing could be more convincing. Certainly any one who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. If you do not use the intelligence with which God endowed your mind to resist believing impossibilities, you will not be able to use the sense of injustice which God planted in your heart to resist a command to do evil. Once a single faculty of your soul has been tyrannized, all the other faculties will submit to the same fate. This has been the cause of all the religious crimes that have flooded the earth." I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to Harriezer here. If I found out the Dumbledore had a life-extending treatment and was hiding it because he was philosophically against the idea, I would also be mad at him. If there were a viable real world method of life extension that was objected to on religious grounds I would be against that very strongly; the way I'm against the anti-vaxxers. However, as with most futurists, they're planning a bit too far ahead.
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Apr 8, 2017 18:10
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Tiggum posted:He's overlooking a pretty obvious point here. If snakes were as intelligent as they seem to parselmouths, muggles would almost certainly know about it. That's an inconsistency that suggests he's missing some key information. When a parselmouth talks to a snake, the snake seems about as intelligent as a human. When anyone else interacts with a snake, the snake demonstrates no such cognitive ability. So either snakes are hiding their intelligence from the vast majority of humans for some reason, or they're not actually that smart and there's some other explanation for why they seem to be to certain individuals. That should be your first avenue of investigation. Hey, Harriezer has a wrong idea and is trying to investigate what wizards know. This is a rare moment of sanity.
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Jun 21, 2017 15:11
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Tiggum posted:Of course, he'd have to ignore that the setting has an actual, confirmed-real afterlife. But he already did that with Harry Potter, so that probably wouldn't stop him. I don't think we were reading the same Disc world. What happened to almost anyone more then 30 seconds after they die was ambiguous. There was only one person who hung around longer than that I can recall and it was implied that it was torment for him.
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Jul 8, 2017 18:03
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SolTerrasa posted:Voldemort is the villain because that he wants to live forever and is willing to do bizarre and transparently evil things in order to live forever. Yudkowsky must have had a really hard time understanding the point of the character. Oh no, he understands - you're only allowed to be condescending and annoying, the plebians become annoying to manage if you're too blatant about their lack of importance.
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Sep 28, 2017 15:06
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I don't know, I've worked in schools. The school head cracking down on the bullied because punishing the bullies is more difficult is distinctly plausible.
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Nov 20, 2017 05:10
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Tiggum posted:This makes me wonder what the war against Voldemort actually looked like in this version of the story because it doesn't seem to make sense. What was Voldemort trying to achieve and how was he going about it? What was Dumbledore actually doing to stop him? That gets explained in the last few chapters. Suffice it to say the answer is stupid and disrespectful to the source material.
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Feb 11, 2018 19:06
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Ugh, Dumbledore burning Narcissa alive is just taking a giant poo poo on that character. Narcissa is alive; Dumby just gave her amnesia and stuck her in a care facility. Still a dick move, but he was fighting a war against Magic Pol Pot.
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Feb 16, 2018 09:24
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No, he hit him with Stuperfy, a stunning spell with a bit of tracking. He learned it from Flitwick, a champion duelist. On the one hand this is kind of clever. On the other, it adds a plot hole for why this superior version isn't the standard.
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Apr 12, 2018 18:24
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The tale of the three brothers is a fairy tale about how to handle problems. You could gain power to challenge your enemies - but power breeds conflict. You could worry endlessly - but this will drive you to madness. You could hide yourself away - but your problem will still be waiting for you. Yud would point out that conflict is only a problem until you crush all your enemies.
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Jul 12, 2018 00:57
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Well, one of the things about HP is that wizarding society secretly agrees with Voldy and would probably have elected him if he had a less bellicose approach. In this context it's hard to create a feel good people banding together ending.
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Jul 21, 2018 02:28
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I'll throw a mention to Harry Potter and the Eagle of Truthiness for being fairly amusing and blessedly short. Also Seventh Horcrux is quite good. Added Space fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Jul 31, 2018 |
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Jul 31, 2018 00:07
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Could we please focus on one mysognistic, egotistical, overpowered wizard named Harry at a time please. 
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Aug 11, 2018 02:54
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This chapter is an anti-twist. Some folks were expecting something besides the Quirrel = Voldemort reveal, despite all the very obvious signs. Nope, the obviously evil person was evil, go figure. The confusion is deliberate, since Quirrelmort is trying to hide his movements of going after the Philosophers Stone.
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Nov 25, 2018 19:35
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So, ideas brought up but not explored - The most obvious is the whole "scientific investigation of magic", which lasted all of one chapter before things defaulted to "whatever the main character imagines is correct". The problem there is, once you raise the mystery, you have to give an answer. Talking about Atlantis or whatever would have detracted from precious dunking on McGonagall time. The making of the "Bayseian conspiracy" to keep advanced magic secret. Harrriezer needs no allies and protects his secrets with brainwashing and murder.
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Aug 20, 2019 10:49
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