Prediction: Voldemort ends up in Hermione’s super-immortal body and claims it doesn’t break his promise because Harry was the one who triggered it. This scenario is the only explanation I can think of for why Voldemort is prioritizing Hermione’s body over his own, giving Harry all his options back, advertising his moment of weakness, and generally behaving like a second-rate Hollywood villain. Confidence: 25%.
This scenario is the only explanation I can think of for why Voldemort is prioritizing Hermione’s body over his own, giving Harry all his options back, advertising his moment of weakness, and generally behaving like a second-rate Hollywood villain. Confidence: 25%.
So, Voldemort has two approaches to the “prevent Harry from destroying the universe” plan. First is killing Harry, second is turning Harry away from destructive paths.
He might reasonably be uncertain of how the first plan will work. Harry is Tom Riddle, and that means killing Harry might just put him in the Horcrux system, and now Good Tom and Bad Tom are having a psychic battle instead of a physical or a magical one. Given that Bad Tom has the upper hand in physical and magical battles, being reluctant to fight a psychic battle instead seems appropriately cautious.
The second plan involves niceness, which Voldemort is not very practiced at. It does have the upside of having another sane individual to play chess with, and with Hermione keeping Harry from doing anything too crazy the stars are safe (indeed, safer, because now there’s a second Riddle working to improve things). But, more importantly, because Voldemort hasn’t tried this one much before, he doesn’t know how and when to expect it to go wrong. So he makes rookie mistakes.
This would explain mistakes particular to being nice, like fortifying Hermione’s body first, but it does not explain more general errors like letting Harry keep his wand and pouch.
it does not explain more general errors like letting Harry keep his wand and pouch.
“Hey, long term ally! I’m going to make your friend immortal because I’m a guy that’s profitable to work with! But first strip naked and give me your wand.”
In an alternate universe that no longer exists. (That is, Ch. 109 is different now.) I do agree that a retcon is involved makes that less probable.
But in the intervening minutes I’ve thought of a better explanation: Voldemort is thinking about a new and difficult subject, and that’s consuming enough of his attention that he is making general errors.
Overall, the plausibility relative to the alternate theories—that Voldemort is pretending to lose—is indeed low. But given the fearsomeness of an intelligent Dark Lord, basically the only hope that Harry has is somehow surprising Voldemort, and this surprise seems more plausible than a partial transfiguration surprise.
He says in Parseltongue that his reason is to for her to help Harry. I don’t believe Harry’s fears about perfect Occlumens, because Slytherin would have known about their existence and not made such a mistake (I’m putting 90% on Parseltongue being a secure communications method between Voldie and Harry).
Hm. I did not properly account for that. Specifying “girl-child friend’s counsel and restraint” and “that she is a part of this world for you to care about” is definitive in that Voldemort intends to restore Hermione as Hermione. For my theory to work, this would have to be a long-term gambit that Harry has made immediate; but this would not explain why Voldemort has made so many tactical, i.e. short-term, errors. So I agree this is strong evidence against my prediction. New confidence: 1%.
EDIT: If someone can explain how to add strikethrough to my original confidence, that would be helpful.
Hm… this isn’t a dig at you or anything, just a thought I’m having trouble answering for myself right now, but how low does one get to set the probability of a prediction, and still call it a prediction? At which point—seems it’s not 50% - should you rather say “I’m predicting this won’t happen?”
If your prediction is lower than 50%, what you’re really saying is, “Of all the hypotheses I that have been elevated to my attention, this one is most likely; however, I am so uncertain that I am more likely to be wrong than right.”
Or in other words, to paraphrase Eliezer, I’m fairly sure that random person’s name isn’t Klein, but I’m very sure it’s not Ktlzybplq.
Imagine that Eliezer has 100 possible ways to complete this puzzle. 25% means that the combined weight of all the other possibilities outweighs the one I’ve outlined, but I am still privileging the one significantly over a typical possibility. (However, lerjj has convinced me that I was most likely wrong to do so.)
It’s useful to be able to simply focus on probability values it makes things less complicated than always having to shift when the probability goes beyond 50%.
Prediction: Voldemort ends up in Hermione’s super-immortal body and claims it doesn’t break his promise because Harry was the one who triggered it. This scenario is the only explanation I can think of for why Voldemort is prioritizing Hermione’s body over his own, giving Harry all his options back, advertising his moment of weakness, and generally behaving like a second-rate Hollywood villain. Confidence: 25%.
So, Voldemort has two approaches to the “prevent Harry from destroying the universe” plan. First is killing Harry, second is turning Harry away from destructive paths.
He might reasonably be uncertain of how the first plan will work. Harry is Tom Riddle, and that means killing Harry might just put him in the Horcrux system, and now Good Tom and Bad Tom are having a psychic battle instead of a physical or a magical one. Given that Bad Tom has the upper hand in physical and magical battles, being reluctant to fight a psychic battle instead seems appropriately cautious.
The second plan involves niceness, which Voldemort is not very practiced at. It does have the upside of having another sane individual to play chess with, and with Hermione keeping Harry from doing anything too crazy the stars are safe (indeed, safer, because now there’s a second Riddle working to improve things). But, more importantly, because Voldemort hasn’t tried this one much before, he doesn’t know how and when to expect it to go wrong. So he makes rookie mistakes.
This would explain mistakes particular to being nice, like fortifying Hermione’s body first, but it does not explain more general errors like letting Harry keep his wand and pouch.
“Hey, long term ally! I’m going to make your friend immortal because I’m a guy that’s profitable to work with! But first strip naked and give me your wand.”
He already did that. After he absorbed the lesson about being nice. So I still don’t see how being nice explains away these errors.
In an alternate universe that no longer exists. (That is, Ch. 109 is different now.) I do agree that a retcon is involved makes that less probable.
But in the intervening minutes I’ve thought of a better explanation: Voldemort is thinking about a new and difficult subject, and that’s consuming enough of his attention that he is making general errors.
Overall, the plausibility relative to the alternate theories—that Voldemort is pretending to lose—is indeed low. But given the fearsomeness of an intelligent Dark Lord, basically the only hope that Harry has is somehow surprising Voldemort, and this surprise seems more plausible than a partial transfiguration surprise.
If he wanted that, he could have achieve it directly by transfiguring his own body to look like Hermione’s and using the troll and unicorn on himself.
He might fail the ideological turing test for being Hermoine.
But how is that different from ending up in Hermione’s body via Horcrux?
It allows for honesty in Parseltongue when hinting at his plan earlier.
He says in Parseltongue that his reason is to for her to help Harry. I don’t believe Harry’s fears about perfect Occlumens, because Slytherin would have known about their existence and not made such a mistake (I’m putting 90% on Parseltongue being a secure communications method between Voldie and Harry).
Hm. I did not properly account for that. Specifying “girl-child friend’s counsel and restraint” and “that she is a part of this world for you to care about” is definitive in that Voldemort intends to restore Hermione as Hermione. For my theory to work, this would have to be a long-term gambit that Harry has made immediate; but this would not explain why Voldemort has made so many tactical, i.e. short-term, errors. So I agree this is strong evidence against my prediction. New confidence: 1%.
EDIT: If someone can explain how to add strikethrough to my original confidence, that would be helpful.
You can retract your entire post in the bottom-right corner.
Hm… this isn’t a dig at you or anything, just a thought I’m having trouble answering for myself right now, but how low does one get to set the probability of a prediction, and still call it a prediction? At which point—seems it’s not 50% - should you rather say “I’m predicting this won’t happen?”
If your prediction is lower than 50%, what you’re really saying is, “Of all the hypotheses I that have been elevated to my attention, this one is most likely; however, I am so uncertain that I am more likely to be wrong than right.”
Or in other words, to paraphrase Eliezer, I’m fairly sure that random person’s name isn’t Klein, but I’m very sure it’s not Ktlzybplq.
I’ve spent too long on LW, I think—I saw “Ktlzybplq” and assumed it was rot13.
It’s almost Mxyzptlk.
Heh, had the same thing. I already figured it wouldn’t be rot13, but I was still uncertain enough that I went and checked.
Imagine that Eliezer has 100 possible ways to complete this puzzle. 25% means that the combined weight of all the other possibilities outweighs the one I’ve outlined, but I am still privileging the one significantly over a typical possibility. (However, lerjj has convinced me that I was most likely wrong to do so.)
Right. What I was thinking, except for some reason I had a complete block on putting that thought into words. Thanks.
It seems like it would be determined by the relevant maximum entropy distribution.
It’s useful to be able to simply focus on probability values it makes things less complicated than always having to shift when the probability goes beyond 50%.