Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

** There's a couple examples, but the most obvious I can remember right now is the Weasley family, which includes Arthur (who pities non-magical people in the nicest way possible, isn't it fascinating the way they've figured out how to live without spells, etc), Molly (who doesn't approve of her husband's tech hobby, and the first words we heard out of her was talking about all those muggles running around ''in a muggle train station''), and the kids (who just think their dad is weird and don't care about the whole subject much, plus Ron who is... Ron). The Weasleys are decent people who certainly don't buy into blood purism, but they still don't... really see non-wizards as equals. I don't think Arthur even takes muggle tech that seriously, it's just all funny little toys to him.

* What was the black thread in Chp 28 that nearly killed Harry?

** {{spoiler|The author bragged about his Voldemort using the Pioneer Plaque as a Horcrux in the Author's Notes on [[Fan Fiction]].net.}} Those notes have since be replaced by notes for the fifty-some-odd chapters since that time.

*** Perhaps those author's notes {{spoiler|didn't mean Voldemort literally, but simply meant that Quirrel was the primary powerful dark character with antagonistic schemes.}} (though I had no opportunity to read those notes myself)

** [[Artifact Title]], plain and simple.

** He's still almost exclusively referred to as only Potter anyway, probably because the full name is a mouthful and he's still Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived to most of the wizarding world.

** It takes a hell of a lot of mental fortitude to hold to your philosophical beliefs enough to say it's ok for someone you have no grudge against and are talking to at that very moment (no writing it off as a statistic or just not thinking about it) to die at the end of a conversation. Especially when it's not like utilitarianism tells him that the hat ''should'' die either; ''at most'' it tells him that if the hat isn't interested in life, it's not as much of a tragedy. But he wouldn't happily sit by and let Dumbledore die just because he said it was his time and was ok with it, so I don't think there's even that.

*** Utilitarianism did tell him that the hat should die. The hat wasn't just neutral about living. It was against it.

** "The perfect crime" is simply a label for any crime that is not discovered to be a crime. And it's not just any eleven-year-old boy we're talking about.

* Why was Draco shocked to discover how wizardry is inherited? Why did he think it will drive a wedge between him and his dad? Mendelian inheritance actually ''proves'' Lucius' blood purity in both theory(magic is in the blood) and strategy(inbreeding preserves magical ability, outbreeding dilutes it). Wouldn't it be more divisive to learn it's really Magic Goes Away or Muggle Tech suppressing magic? Sure, he can no longer justify killing muggleborns like Hermionie, but they're actually just descendants of forgotten squibs. Am I missing something here?

*** That would makes sense if Draco were upset about socio-politics like house Malfoy losing power to Grangers of the world. But he was upset about having to "sacrifice" a false belief and either disagree or pretend around Lucius. Except the belief Was. Not. False. He doesn't have to pretend or argue. Their relationship is not in danger and he doesn't need to test the patronus. It makes no sense for him to feel he does.

**** Lucius' and Draco-pre-experiment's belief was predicated on wizardry being passed strictly through purebloods interbreeding with purebloods, and anyone else who had access to magic having acquired it through some illegitimate means that was making magic weaker over time. Aside from other less obvious differences, Draco having "sacrificed" his belief in strict blood purism means that if Draco were to, e.g. learn Lucius had been somehow misled into believing he had found the source of non-pureblood's magic and was preparing to spend a good chuck of resources eliminating it, would now have to either plead ignorance and watch his father blow resources on something he knows to be futile, or risk confronting his father about the nature of magic transmission which could lead to Lucius possibly cutting Draco out of the family or at least out of real power, or worse. Draco is anguished because at first he only sees that Harry has made it impossible for him to in good conscience support fully the positions of his father, and has to have it pointed out that he's also made it possible for Draco to avert a crisis he wouldn't have even noticed as his old self.

** The reason for that is pretty simple - Harry and Draco are both kids, so even if they are supposed to be smart for their age in this story, it doesn't change the fact that some things elude them. Draco understood that muggleborns aren't making magic weaker, but he couldn't see that they were descendants of squibs since Harry didn't convey this one to him. And honestly, they didn't need to be descendants of squibs - if wizard had a child with a completely non-magical muggle, the resulting child would be a carrier of the wizarding gene, but couldn't use magic. If the gene was still there after a few generations, everyone would forget that there was a wizard in the family, but that doesn't stop the possibility of two carriers getting lucky (or not) and having a child that is capable of using magic.

* One thing that bugs me is Harry's 26 hour sleep schedule. No explanation is given for it whatsoever. Everything else makes sense to me; I'm willing to accept that canon!Harry was mentally oppressed by the Dursleys that he flinched away from the sort of studying that would have let his genius flourish, but the sleep schedule just seems like a reason to give him a Time Turner. Okay, that's obviously what it is, but usually there's an explanation regardless.

** With the Dursleys: Harry gets worked to the bone and is forced to wake up early to do things like prepare breakfast or suffer the consequences of the Dursleys' wrath. If he had natural Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (or rather, a strong predisposition towards developing it), he would have had it tormented out of him and wouldn't even have noticed the difference with no comparison group beyond Dudley and some normal people. With the Verreses: Harry gets treated fairly, but Mr. Verres and Petunia might not have been willing to cause Harry the sort of stress and immune suppression that forcing him to stay awake during the day for several months would have taken, which can be necessary by the time Acquired Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome is noticeable enough to cause social and health problems. Since state schools are notoriously horrible when it comes to getting an excellent education, and cheap, desperate-for-payment tutors were available, the typical reason for going through sleep retraining (school, or jobs for older people) no longer applies.

* If the capacity for magic is based on a single recessive allele, how do 2 wizarding parents have a Squib? The theory Harry comes up with is that Squibs have a dominant allele that prevents them from using magic but can still pass on the magic recessive allele. Since a wizard has to have 2 copies of the recessive allele, a wizard parent doesn't have a dominant allele to pass on. If Harry's theory is correct, there are three possible ways to produce a Squib:

** C) Mom was schtupping a Muggle on the sly. This one seems the most plausible. Its not hard to imagine a wizarding family arranging a quick marriage to avoid a scandal. That's a lot of bastards, though.

*** It could be the result of an Epistatic Gene. The squib is missing the gene so even if they have the two recessive alleles they are unable to express it.

** This is freaking magic. Ahem: "the Universe doesn't care how ''you'' think magic should work any more than it cares how you feel about gravity.''

** You know what, there's a bigger issue at hand. How come no one else has tried to pick apart the magic system before now? There should be some sort or archive of mad rambling from some wizard tinkerer that should have caught Harry's eye at some point.

*** Because very few wizards have any ounce of logic or scientific background. Scientific method just isn't something that's taught to wizards, so that just leaves muggle-borns, and most people still aren't very scientific. The wizards are told the rules, and they follow them without seeing why. Also, Harry was only able to do partial transfiguration based on an in-depth knowledge of quantum physics, something wizards just don't know anything about. Also, that's kind of the entire point of the fanfic, isn't it? That in the actual canon of [[Harry Potter]], no one actually does try to scientifically approach science; if they did, they'd notice that a lot of things don't quite make sense. So the author is running with that and showing one person who actually does try to apply science to magic, and is baffled when no one else has even tried what seems obvious to him.

**** But if it's only a theory to begin with and the only thing in it's favor is that it hasn't been proven wrong, then how can Harry be so sure that Timeless Physics would allow partial transmutation in the first place? Isn't that the equivalent of taking a controversial theory as [[The Colbert Report|pure truthiness]] and not accepting an answer otherwise, even if it does cause the meltdown of reality as we know it? That seems like a big ass case of Harry Bias right there, especially right after Harry learned his lesson about playing around with Transfiguration and "DO NOT MESS WITH TIME" even earlier.

***** Harry didn't have to ''know'' that timeless physics was right, he was ''experimenting''. He was testing the hypothesis that partial transfiguration is a conceptual limit and he tried several views/approaches - several were disproved, one of them happened to be right. That's how science works, you check your ideas with experiments.<br />As for safety issues? Did you miss the part where, after he goes to Minerva&Dumbledore, he apologizes to Hermione and later admits that what he was doing was crazy/very dangerous?

** In Chapter 77, Eliezer places a saying of Godric Gryffindor at 1202 C.E. So it may simply be that he has deliberately chosen that century, for reasons of his own.

* Harry is supposed to be an English science fiction fan in 1991-1992. Admittedly it was cancelled in 1989, but...where are the Doctor Who references?

*** [[Star Wars]] is special, [[No True Scotsman|obviously.]]

*** In chapter 28, "phasers" are one of the things Hermione tried to transfigure and Harry lists Captain Picard as one of his heroes in chapter 52. (I wonder if Harry hated missing TNG's fifth season while being without televisions at Hogwarts. Maybe he had his parents tape it for him.)

** Harry is more into science fiction literature rather than television. There are exceptions, but generally most of his references are to literary work.

** When was the theory submitted to peer review? These things are often sent to be studied by the scientific community before it is submitted to the general public.

* Where did the author even get the idea that partial transfiguration is impossible or even difficult? Canon is constantly describing the effects of students making mistakes when trying to tranfigure an object - mistakes that leave parts of the object in its transfigured state and parts in the original. Surely this wouldn't be hard to replicate on purpose.

** One should note that Transifguration in HPATHM is stated to work differently than the main one, having [[No Ontological Inertia]] and even a first year can transfigure anything into anything else if given enough time and is allow to concentrate. Also, "failed" ones in the books results in, say, a badly cup transfigured from a rat will have brown fur or something that effects the entire cup rather than just part of the cup.

 

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