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

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== Harry's Odd sleep Cycle Means something ==
Perhaps it is a clue about his dark side. Maybe it has something to do with Quirrells zombie mode.
* [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/:Non-24-hour_sleephour sleep-wake_syndromewake syndrome|It's actually a real thing]], and probably no more than an excuse to give Harry his time-turner.
** I agree it's probably just an excuse to give him a time turner. Still, I find it easier to believe that they'd give him one when he really required it to function properly (because of a condition that really exists) than I would if he just got one randomly, like happens in some other fan fictions.
 
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== "One killing curse will bring it down!" ==
A critical scene in the first book is that of the trio taking down the troll in the girl's restroom. As Draco has largely supplanted Ron's role in this fic, his method for surviving such an encounter may provide an interesting twist in the future narrative. What's an Avada Kedavra amongst friends, after all? "There is a time and a place for taking your enemy alive, and inside a Hogwarts classroom is usually one of those places." If Draco leaves her be, there's no reason for Hermione to get cornered in a bathroom this time, after all...
* Inevitably, the Killing Curse will be cast through ''REASON'' and ''RATIONALISM''. It's not like unusual castings of it [[The Girl Who Lived (Fanfic)|have no precedents]]...
** Extending this: Harry will be able to cast it through reason and rationalism, but only when taken over by his dark side. We've already seen that it has the necessary priors to develop a logical proof that "anyone who annoys me needs to die", which is not something Normal!Harry is likely to decide.
 
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'''Consequences:''' Dumbledore has less reasons to keep his crush on Grindewald a secret, but it is possible that it is a recent trend.
* Gellert being a man is no longer a problem. Gellert being ''[[A Nazi Byby Any Other Name|Gellert]]'' still is.
 
=== Narcissa died, Dumbledore claims to be the killer. ===
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== The reason everyone is so much smarter in this fanfic than they are in canon is that their ancestors were all exposed to the Wold Newton meteorite from [[Philip Jose Farmer]]'s Wold Newton family stories == It would handily reduce the points of divergence to one without contradicting anything.
 
== Harry Potter is in fact [[DoctorDr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Web Video)|Doctor Horrible]] ==
'''[[DoctorDr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (Web Video)|Doctor Horrible]]''': ''The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.''
 
'''Rational!Harry''': ''I don't want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly organized.''
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== Roger Bacon's Diary is a Horcrux ==
And Rita Skeeter was the sacrifice necessary to turn it into the same. Yes, I think Quirrellmort is enough of a [[Magnificent Bastard]] to actually surreptitiously make a horcrux '''onscreen.''' He's certainly clever enough to make it from an object that has emotional weight to Harry rather than to himself.
* In Canon making a Horcrux doesn't just require a murder but also 'something awful' of an unspecified nature ([[JKJ. K. Rowling|JKR]] knows what this is and apparently when she told her editor what is is it made him feel physically sick). It is possible that Quirrelmort did all of the appropriate Dark Rituals and such beforehand so that it only required Rita Skeeter's murder to finalise the Horcrux's creation.
 
== Snape will switch back over to Voldemort's side. ==
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== This story is secretly a [[Massive Multiplayer Crossover]] ==
 
There are quite a few spells and magical items that are closer to [[Dungeons and Dragons]] than regular Harry Potter. The Comed-Tea is probably from [[Xanth (Literature)|Xanth]], Mr. Hat and Cloak is a [[Exalted|Sidereal]], and there are clearly more people from other universes running around.
 
== Rather than stealing fame from the unwilling by magic, Gilderoy Lockheart will steal it from the willing by reputation. ==
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* Possible evidence for this theory is a floor in chapter 75, which is tiled in pentagons. While it's true that you can use irregularly shaped pentagons to tile a floor, you need some sort of [[Alien Geometries]] to get regular pentagons to tessellate.
* Exactly what chain of events would ever lead Canon!Tracey Davis to ever utter those exact words described in Ch.74? Also, I wouldn't put it past Hogwarts - even Canon!Hogwarts - to have such a pentagonally-tiled corridor.
** Oh, by the way, I'll just leave [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_pentagonal_tiling:Cairo pentagonal tiling|this]] here... Not exactly regular, but close enough, neat and symmetrical pentagons.
 
== Harry's intelligence is the result of accidental, underage magic ==
It is stated in ''[[Harry Potter (Literaturenovel)|Harry Potter]]'' canon that Muggleborns routinely endure incidents with uncontrolled, accidental magic before they'd receive the Hogwarts enrollment letter -- to the point that some Muggle families are relieved to receive it, since it finally explain what has been going on. However, no such history of incidents is mentioned for Harry in ''The Methods of Rationality'' at all, to the point that McGonnagal has to make a demonstration to the Verres. The explanation for this is, since Harry was raised at as rationalist and that magic is so unscientific, he unconsciously suppressed such instinctive magic manifestations and internalized them. Thus, this increased his intelligence to child genius levels, way beyond that of Canon Harry, and also explain why he inherited some traits of his ''adoptive'' father, like the ability to always retrieve the right book he's searching. This had some unknown side effects, though, like his non-24-hours sleeping pattern, and maybe his fractioned personnality too.
 
== How the animagus transformation might work. ==
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This rather neatly explains the animagus transformation: a 4-dimensional object is merely MOVING so a different CROSS-SECTION happens to intersect our 3-dimensional universe; it's not changing shape or mass at all, and the animagus can go on thinking like a human because the human brain is still there, no less a part of the 4-dimensional physical structure than it is when the human-shaped part of the animagus is intersecting our universe.
 
This doesn't explain TRANSFIGURATION, in this specific case of the creation of the 4-dimensional object in the first place, or in general, but it may explain mass-changing shapeshifting like animagi (or the Wolves in [[Luminosity (Fanfic)|Luminosity]] for that matter).
 
* I was thinking of animagi in terms of Alan Moore![[Miracleman (Comic Book)|Miracleman]], specially when it was mentioned that when Bella was imprisoned "her animagus form was destroyed".
 
== Azkaban Island is the last remaining chunk of Atlantis ==
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* Simpler explanation: magic doesn't exist in genes at all. It's passed by heredity, but it finds its own way, independent of any long chains of mere matter.
 
== Narcissa is only dead to Lucius some of the time. When he does to sleep at night, [[Awake (TV series)|he's in another world where Draco died and Narcissa lives]]. ==
[[Actor Allusion]].
 
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It's a supercomputer system with holographic/replicator capabilities a la [[Star Trek]].
 
When it predicts the future during a Divination function call, it actually [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon:Laplacechr(27)s demon|calculates all the particles that are currently within its system and all their interactions frame by frame]] (in other words, the universe is a deterministic system). However, it loses accuracy the further into the future it tries to calculate (perhaps due to the system being open---read: doesn't cover the whole universe---and thus susceptible to outside influences), and so it could predict a showdown between Harry and Voldemort but could not predict the final victor since it would be ''years'' before the actual outcome comes to pass.
 
On the other hand, as long as it's within a few hours, the predictions can be accurate enough to support the [[Time Machine|Time Turner]]. That's right, ''Divination is the basis of the Time Turner''. How, you ask? Well, Magic isn't actually capable of manipulating time/changing the past: It simply ''predicts'' a future version of you that will use the Time Turner and then ''[[Matter Replicator|copies]]'' that version into the current time frame. And when the current version of you uses the Time Turner, the current version is simply erased from existence, leaving behind a future version that's so accurate in composition and behavior that nobody in the world can tell the difference. That's right, Harry has already cloned/killed himself hundreds---perhaps ''thousands''---of times '''[[Nightmare Fuel|without even being aware of it]]'''.
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The founders knew this theory and exploited the hell out of it when they created Hogwarts, its location in Scotland being no mere coincidence. Scotland is historically geologically active, and the millions of years of tectonic activity in that region would provide ample power for both the construction of the castle and the creation and maintenance of its many wards and enchantments.
 
The logical conclusion of all this--neatly packing away all the WMG for Harry's reaction to learning about the Philosopher's Stone--is that [[Fullmetal Alchemist (Mangamanga)|it is made of humans]].
 
Alternatively, as the work-in-work-out potionmaking principle is about capturing the work through something which has been changed by the work, an ingredient would have to be altered by something else's immortality. For example, someone killed by an idea that just won't die.
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* Memory is potentially infinite, but discrete.
* World is fully determinictic, computation from given state of memory always results in same steps.
* To simplify reasoning let's assume that the basis of simulation isn't particles, wave functions or something, but [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model:Actor model|actors]] representing humans and objects from environment. It's an object in memory which has it's internal memory, representing all data about it's current state (memories in his brain, position in the space, current heart rate and so on), which is transformed on each step by simulating computer according to universal rules. One of possible transformation is interaction between actors.
* Amount of one actor's memory is finite and known to simulator (such is real life: at least your memory can't be larger than required for memorizing positions of all particles in your body).
* A certain actor, let's call him Harry, can travel in time using Time-Turner.
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