Quirrellmort intends to upload his mind into Harry’s body soon, as soon as Harry is Dark enough. Voldemort will become the Boy-Who-Lived. And Quirrellmort wants or needs this to happen within the next few months.
Evidence:
If Quirrellmort were only after the Philosopher’s Stone and training Harry for a long career, he’d keep his own cover intact as long as he could. Instead, over the last few story months, Quirrellmort has cheerfully all but ruined his cover in favor of giving Harry chances to turn Dark.
Quirrellmort got the Dementor brought to Hogwarts, waited until the last moment to observe Harry’s wand by the Dementor’s cage, gave wrong advice about how to help Harry recover from the Dementor-induced personality change, and persuaded the other wizards to let Harry face the Dementor again.
Quirrellmort took Harry to Azkaban soon after seeing Patronus 2.0, leading to more Dementor contact and the recovery of Bellatrix, Quirrellmort’s preferred assistant for critical tasks (like, say, ritual magic to download yourself into your Horcrux’s body).
Quirrellmort (as H&C) set up Hermione for Draco’s attempted murder, thus both cutting off Harry from the person who’s his best influence against being Dark, and motivating Harry to embrace his Dark side more in order to rescue or avenge Hermione.
The first stunt made Dumbledore suspect a plot, the second showed that Voldemort had returned, the third that Voldemort was in Hogwarts. But it’s all been worth it to Quirrellmort to hurry up Dark!Harry. Why?
Perhaps because Quirrellmort is running out of time in his current body.
On the day he killed Rita Skeeter, she observed Quirrellmort had his hair falling out.
Harry has noticed Quirrell looking visibly older.
The curse on the Defense against the Dark Arts position demands a terrible conclusion to his year—or at least the appearance of one.
And if Quirrellmort doesn’t intend to be around as Quirrell much longer, what does he intend? We have clues.
We know from the prophecy that Quirrellmort and Harry can destroy each other’s spirits.
Quirrellmort has said that Harry’s sense of doom between them is precisely of Harry’s doom.
We suspect from canon combined with “Dark Harry” moments that Harry is an accidental Horcrux containing a partial copy of Voldemort’s mental circuitry, and possibly some of his power too.
Quirrellmort suggested a plan where Harry would be seen to fight the returned Voldemort and defeat him.
The obvious answer is that Quirrellmort intends just the plan he told Harry: Harry will indeed be seen to fight Voldemort and “defeat” him. And “Quirrell” will die, probably having been revealed to be Voldemort. But Quirrellmort… will have downloaded himself into Harry’s mind, and so will win the duel he seems to lose.
Just as before, a single clash of spells between Voldemort and Harry Potter will lead to the destruction of “Voldemort”(Quirrell.) And “Harry” will walk away triumphant. But “Harry” won’t be Harry any more.
If Quirrellmort’s plan succeeds, Harry as we know him will cease to exist. Voldemort will go on in triumph—as Harry Potter, the boy who destroyed Voldemort twice over. Harry will be the beloved hero of magical Britain—and Voldemort inside.
I suggest Quirrellmort’s top priority is to turn Harry fully Dark before the end of the year, so he can safely download into Harry.
I only mean to add credibility to your theory when I say that it has been plausible for seventeen months: scroll down to 10/8/10
The author said in an early Author’s Note (I think) that someone he knew guessed the main plot from only the mysterious prelude. I’m guessing that person has some special insight that allowed them to just to the right conclusion, probably insight into the kind of story the author would right, possibly based on things that person had recently talked about with the author.
On the day he killed Rita Skeeter, she observed Quirrellmort had his hair falling out.
She didn’t observe it falling out at that moment. Just that he was balding, as we’ve known from his first appearance and description.
This could just be natural—some people go bald very early—but probably has some significance. The bald spot is located, presumably, where the canon Quirrelmort had Voldemort’s face hidden under a turban. This may just be a reference to that fact, with the intended explanation being that smart!Quirrelmort wouldn’t make a stupid mistake like that, but there is still some mark of possession there.
Harry has noticed Quirrell looking visibly older.
That was after the Azkaban affair, during which Quirrel was hurt by the magic-clash, by nearness to Dementors, and by total magical exhaustion. Maybe it was so bad that it literally “took years off his life”, maybe because Voldemort doesn’t care to maintain the Quirrel body in the best possible order if he can squeeze out more power. Which supports your theory, but is not a case of “he has little time remaining in this body”.
The curse on the Defense against the Dark Arts position demands a terrible conclusion to his year—or at least the appearance of one.
The curse placed by Voldemort, as revenge for not being made the Defense Professor, surely wouldn’t operate against Voldemort when he finally did get the position. That would be far too stupid of him.
Disagree. Breaking the pattern after this many decades right when some creepy dude who openly calls himself evil and encourages children to be Dark Lords gets the job seems like it might as well be hanging a neon sign over your head saying “I’m the Big Bad!”.
Harry as we know him will cease to exist. Voldemort will go on in triumph—as Harry Potter, the boy who destroyed Voldemort twice over. Harry will be the beloved hero of magical Britain—and Voldemort inside.
Very structured, but… a sad end? Harry, the almost ratinalist, losing?
This seems odd.
Yeah, I assume Harry wins in the end, but I expect EY to give Voldemort a better plan than “expose yourself and all your forces in a mass battle at Hogwarts, though you’ve been successful until then through secrecy, stealth, and terror”.
I would like to hope that Eliezer has a surprise in store for anyone who just assumes Harry will win in the end, because he’s the protagonist and hero.
Truth isn’t that convenient, and rationality (Harry-style) is about facing the truth.
Unless he’s writing this as a cautionary tale about unfriendly AI, I expect Mr. Glowy Person to win in the end, even if “The End” is projected beyond the end of the book.
And even if you do end me before I end you,
Another will take my place, and another,
Until the wound in the world is healed at last...
Very structured, but… a sad end? Harry, the almost ratinalist, losing? This seems odd.
I’ve been torn on how probable I think this outcome is, but I wouldn’t put it past Eliezer. This is the person who thinks bad end is the default end for humanity, and the universe isn’t fair, and bad things are allowed to happen. Even if you work really hard to stop them.
That’s a plausible plan, anyway. I’m guessing that the current plan might also involve taking over the rest of the magical world, and then the muggle world, a goal that might not have been originally desired or seen immediately feasible, but which acting as Harry could facilitate. Ch. 20 provides a possible motive (prevention of technological existential risks; Riddle is rational enough to notice that comfortable immortality requires as a necessary condition that the world is not destroyed):
“Those fool Muggles will kill us all someday!” Professor Quirrell’s voice had grown louder. “They will end it! End all of it!”
Harry was feeling a bit lost here. “What are we talking about here, nuclear weapons?”
“Yes, nuclear weapons!” Professor Quirrell was almost shouting now. “Even He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named never used those, perhaps because he didn’t want to rule over a heap of ash! They never should have been made! And it will only get worse with time!” Professor Quirrell was standing up straight instead of leaning on his desk. “There are gates you do not open, there are seals you do not breach! The fools who can’t resist meddling are killed by the lesser perils early on, and the survivors all know that there are secrets you do not share with anyone who lacks the intelligence and the discipline to discover them for themselves! Every powerful wizard knows that! Even the most terrible Dark Wizards know that! And those idiot Muggles can’t seem to figure it out! The eager little fools who discovered the secret of nuclear weapons didn’t keep it to themselves, they told their fool politicians and now we must live under the constant threat of annihilation!”
While this does makes sense, it seems almost too mundane for Quirrell. In fact it’s rather tame compared to some of the plots and revelations that finish the books in Canon.
You’re assuming that Quirrellmort succeeds in his plan, and succeeds without major hitches. The hitches, and/or Harry’s final victory, are where the twists and turns come from.
At this point, everybody who knows Voldemort’s back and isn’t named “Harry” has Quirrell as prime suspect. What happens when they actually pursue him?
Beyond that we still have both the Deathly Hallows and the Philosopher’s Stone as major artifacts that the story has made a big deal of that haven’t been fully put into play. Notice how almost everybody who talks about Harry’s cloak of invisibility has something to say about it being the Cloak of Invisibility?
So if the author wants twists and turns, he’s put in the setup for them.
The final ending of Lord of the Rings was declared in about chapter 2 of the book—“look, someone puts the ring in the fire, all right?”
Books are not exciting because the ending is completely surprising; books are exciting because even though you know the ending, getting there turns out to take all kinds of shenanigans.
And I think HPMOR is doing pretty well so far on the shenanigans count.
I thought the unspeakable secret of the fic is that magic itself comes from an FAI trying to grant wishes while respecting humans’ sense of how the world ought to work.
Well, that plus time travel. Don’t know where the FAI got the time travel from. Must have been one heck of a Singularity.
The time travel is ‘easily’ explained when you assume an AI has been made to account for magic.
The AI just need to predict what everyone is going to do for the next 6 hours and “create” a new Harry with the correct memories when he is going to use a time-turner. Then 6 hours later the old Harry is instantly destroyed when he uses it.
This also explains why there is a finite bound on how far back information can be sent (6 hours is how far into the future the AI can predict) and why there is an apparent intelligence warning people when they are about to do something wrong with their time-turners (eg. Harry’s “Do not mess with time” message and Dumbledore’s paradox warning).
… except that time turners obey Novikov consistency, which implies a timeless universe, prophecies can reach further than six hours, and Eliezer has stated that the story doesn’t contain a SIAI.
Well, it’s been a while since I posted this, but maybe I should have made myself clearer. I only posted to say that the assumption of an AI giving us magic doesn’t need the additional assumption of time travel. The six hour time limit is for predicting the position, movement and interactions of everyone (both people and animals) ‘close’ to a potential time traveler. Prophecies are vague enough to not need this detail of prediction and can therefore be made for further into the future.
As to the question whether this AI assumption is actually the correct one I can only refer you to this quote from chapter 25:
So the words and wand movements were just triggers, levers pulled on some hidden and more complex machine. Buttons, not blueprints.
And just like a computer program wouldn’t compile if you made a single spelling error, the Source of Magic wouldn’t respond to you unless you cast your spells in exactly the right way.
Which could be a hint in this direction. I assume Eliezer’s quote on an AI not being a part of the story is just that, the story will be about Harry’s struggle with Voldemort, not about tracking down any sources of Magic.
I agree that obeying Novikov consistency seems to be a good description of the universe in HPMoR, but it is only a partial description since something prevented Harry from using this consistency to factor natural numbers in polynomial time, which should be possible in a universe that is ‘only’ Novikov consistent (meaning you need additional assumptions to prevent this).
something prevented Harry from using this consistency to factor natural numbers in polynomial time, which should be possible in a universe that is ‘only’ Novikov consistent (meaning you need additional assumptions to prevent this).
This had not occurred to me.
I thought this was simply a flaw in Harry’s methodology—he’s too self-aware for it to work. You need something that will reliably act according to the script, and only as described on the script—in short, a machine, not a person. Harry had failed to consider the possibility of messages that do not consist of factors.
I don’t think Eliezer makes a distinction here. Had Harry done this with a computer program it would probably output (and send back) the exact error message it would generate from getting said message as input, or something like that.
I was thinking of this myself, but only humans can be sent back in time using a time-turner. And since said humans probably also has to be magical I would guess another requirement is that they have to be scared off by the ‘Do not mess with time’ message (i.e. anyone getting that message and still trying to send a ‘0’ back in time would not be able to use the time-turner in the first place). So no ‘creating’ a human with this factoring algorithm instead of (or in addition to) a personality programmed into their brain-structure.
Harry can even do that experiment easily with our current technology, he just needs a printer and a scanner. He can even go somewhere else when he goes back in time to stop magic from messing with the computer.
The only way I can see this fail is if the time-turner either refuses to work when he tries to do this (per whatever requirements it puts on its users) or just kills him outright (given the threatening nature of ‘Do not mess with time’). So he should probably enlist someone else to take the message for him.
Either way, it would be nice to see Harry thinking of this experiment in HPMOR.
Of course, Harry doesn’t know why his experiment failed. In fact, the Do Not Mess With Time probably scared him out of trying to exploit the time travel mechanics.
That’s kinda impressive, actually—Eliezer found a way to avoid exploits that could break the system that follows naturally within the system. I doubt he’ll ruin all his hard work by having Harry figure it out, but you never know.
I like it. Although I think that requires that the HPMOR folk are stuck inside a more powerful entity’s experiment or simulation (because if the FAI didn’t come from their own future, how did it come to exist at all?).
I thought the unspeakable secret of the fic is that magic itself comes from an FAI trying to grant wishes while respecting humans’ sense of how the world ought to work.
In that case, of course, your FAI must choose to either work within the magic system or to overthrow the old guard and replace it.
That is NOT what I’d call “friendly”. It would be indirectly responsible for (not stopping) all the evil in the world, and not raising Muggle standards of living. But it might be a good warning on the danger of how your civilization’s CEV might look rather evil to your own descendants.
Notice how almost everybody who talks about Harry’s cloak of invisibility has something to say about it being the Cloak of Invisibility?
This has already played out, in that the cloak turned out to make people invisible to Dementors and also protect them against the Dementors’ influence. Also, Harry has “mastered” the cloak in the sense that he can now see other people while they are wearing it. And the idea of it being the cloak is simply taken from canon; people’s reactions have just been slightly adjusted for realism.
On the other hand, we suspect that Quirrel has another Deathly Hallow, the Resurrection Stone, and that hasn’t played out yet.
And Dumbledore’s possession of the Elder Wand has so far only been alluded to, albeit in some rather unsubtle ways.
...Now that’s interesting. The one who wants to defeat Death has the artifact that lets him hide from it, the one who wants to hide from Death has the artifact that lets him speak to the dead, and the one who wants to speak to the dead has the artifact that lets him… well, the Deathstick kind of breaks the pattern, but still.
Yeah, when you think about it even near-total invincibility in battle is kind of a ripoff compared to the others. Makes me wonder if the MoRder Wand has been souped-up. (Maybe it can AK Dementors?)
I don’t think AK would work as such. Anyway, Dumbledore does not seem to actually hate Death.
I doubt that Eliezer follows canon that closely, but the wand did “heal” another broken wand in canon, which apparently everyone found surprising. Perhaps in MoR it can also heal rifts in reality?
This is pretty low-prior. However, it’s the best (read: only) solution I’ve seen so far for the problem that Harry currently can’t destroy all the dementors without destroying himself as well. As I suspect that Harry will survive the fic’s conclusion and the Dementor species won’t, I’m looking forward to see how that gets circumnavigated and this would be a pretty cool way to do it.
The one who wants to defeat Death has the artifact that lets him hide from it, the one who wants to hide from Death has the artifact that lets him speak to the dead, and the one who wants to speak to the dead has the artifact that lets him… well, the Deathstick kind of breaks the pattern, but still.
It doesn’t break the pattern, you use it to cast a probably more powerful True Patronus.
Bellatrix was still transparent within the Cloak, but to Harry she was no longer hidden, he knew that she was there, as obvious to him as a Thestral. For Harry had only loaned his Cloak, not given it; and he had comprehended and mastered the Deathly Hallow that had been passed down through the Potter line.
Hypothesis:
Quirrellmort intends to upload his mind into Harry’s body soon, as soon as Harry is Dark enough. Voldemort will become the Boy-Who-Lived. And Quirrellmort wants or needs this to happen within the next few months.
Evidence:
If Quirrellmort were only after the Philosopher’s Stone and training Harry for a long career, he’d keep his own cover intact as long as he could. Instead, over the last few story months, Quirrellmort has cheerfully all but ruined his cover in favor of giving Harry chances to turn Dark.
Quirrellmort got the Dementor brought to Hogwarts, waited until the last moment to observe Harry’s wand by the Dementor’s cage, gave wrong advice about how to help Harry recover from the Dementor-induced personality change, and persuaded the other wizards to let Harry face the Dementor again.
Quirrellmort took Harry to Azkaban soon after seeing Patronus 2.0, leading to more Dementor contact and the recovery of Bellatrix, Quirrellmort’s preferred assistant for critical tasks (like, say, ritual magic to download yourself into your Horcrux’s body).
Quirrellmort (as H&C) set up Hermione for Draco’s attempted murder, thus both cutting off Harry from the person who’s his best influence against being Dark, and motivating Harry to embrace his Dark side more in order to rescue or avenge Hermione.
The first stunt made Dumbledore suspect a plot, the second showed that Voldemort had returned, the third that Voldemort was in Hogwarts. But it’s all been worth it to Quirrellmort to hurry up Dark!Harry. Why?
Perhaps because Quirrellmort is running out of time in his current body.
On the day he killed Rita Skeeter, she observed Quirrellmort had his hair falling out.
Harry has noticed Quirrell looking visibly older.
The curse on the Defense against the Dark Arts position demands a terrible conclusion to his year—or at least the appearance of one.
And if Quirrellmort doesn’t intend to be around as Quirrell much longer, what does he intend? We have clues.
We know from the prophecy that Quirrellmort and Harry can destroy each other’s spirits.
Quirrellmort has said that Harry’s sense of doom between them is precisely of Harry’s doom.
We suspect from canon combined with “Dark Harry” moments that Harry is an accidental Horcrux containing a partial copy of Voldemort’s mental circuitry, and possibly some of his power too.
Quirrellmort suggested a plan where Harry would be seen to fight the returned Voldemort and defeat him.
The obvious answer is that Quirrellmort intends just the plan he told Harry: Harry will indeed be seen to fight Voldemort and “defeat” him. And “Quirrell” will die, probably having been revealed to be Voldemort. But Quirrellmort… will have downloaded himself into Harry’s mind, and so will win the duel he seems to lose.
Just as before, a single clash of spells between Voldemort and Harry Potter will lead to the destruction of “Voldemort”(Quirrell.) And “Harry” will walk away triumphant. But “Harry” won’t be Harry any more.
If Quirrellmort’s plan succeeds, Harry as we know him will cease to exist. Voldemort will go on in triumph—as Harry Potter, the boy who destroyed Voldemort twice over. Harry will be the beloved hero of magical Britain—and Voldemort inside.
I suggest Quirrellmort’s top priority is to turn Harry fully Dark before the end of the year, so he can safely download into Harry.
I only mean to add credibility to your theory when I say that it has been plausible for seventeen months: scroll down to 10/8/10
The author said in an early Author’s Note (I think) that someone he knew guessed the main plot from only the mysterious prelude. I’m guessing that person has some special insight that allowed them to just to the right conclusion, probably insight into the kind of story the author would right, possibly based on things that person had recently talked about with the author.
She didn’t observe it falling out at that moment. Just that he was balding, as we’ve known from his first appearance and description.
This could just be natural—some people go bald very early—but probably has some significance. The bald spot is located, presumably, where the canon Quirrelmort had Voldemort’s face hidden under a turban. This may just be a reference to that fact, with the intended explanation being that smart!Quirrelmort wouldn’t make a stupid mistake like that, but there is still some mark of possession there.
That was after the Azkaban affair, during which Quirrel was hurt by the magic-clash, by nearness to Dementors, and by total magical exhaustion. Maybe it was so bad that it literally “took years off his life”, maybe because Voldemort doesn’t care to maintain the Quirrel body in the best possible order if he can squeeze out more power. Which supports your theory, but is not a case of “he has little time remaining in this body”.
The curse placed by Voldemort, as revenge for not being made the Defense Professor, surely wouldn’t operate against Voldemort when he finally did get the position. That would be far too stupid of him.
Disagree. Breaking the pattern after this many decades right when some creepy dude who openly calls himself evil and encourages children to be Dark Lords gets the job seems like it might as well be hanging a neon sign over your head saying “I’m the Big Bad!”.
Very structured, but… a sad end? Harry, the almost ratinalist, losing? This seems odd.
This may be Quirrell’s plan, even if Eliezer intends for Harry to defeat it in some way.
Yeah, I assume Harry wins in the end, but I expect EY to give Voldemort a better plan than “expose yourself and all your forces in a mass battle at Hogwarts, though you’ve been successful until then through secrecy, stealth, and terror”.
I would like to hope that Eliezer has a surprise in store for anyone who just assumes Harry will win in the end, because he’s the protagonist and hero.
Truth isn’t that convenient, and rationality (Harry-style) is about facing the truth.
Unless he’s writing this as a cautionary tale about unfriendly AI, I expect Mr. Glowy Person to win in the end, even if “The End” is projected beyond the end of the book.
I’ve been torn on how probable I think this outcome is, but I wouldn’t put it past Eliezer. This is the person who thinks bad end is the default end for humanity, and the universe isn’t fair, and bad things are allowed to happen. Even if you work really hard to stop them.
That’s a plausible plan, anyway. I’m guessing that the current plan might also involve taking over the rest of the magical world, and then the muggle world, a goal that might not have been originally desired or seen immediately feasible, but which acting as Harry could facilitate. Ch. 20 provides a possible motive (prevention of technological existential risks; Riddle is rational enough to notice that comfortable immortality requires as a necessary condition that the world is not destroyed):
While this does makes sense, it seems almost too mundane for Quirrell. In fact it’s rather tame compared to some of the plots and revelations that finish the books in Canon.
I think Eliezer can do better.
When Quirrel wrote his list, do you think it included “do not let your plots be too mundane,” or the reverse?
Number 85 is relevant, but not quite the same.
You’re assuming that Quirrellmort succeeds in his plan, and succeeds without major hitches. The hitches, and/or Harry’s final victory, are where the twists and turns come from.
At this point, everybody who knows Voldemort’s back and isn’t named “Harry” has Quirrell as prime suspect. What happens when they actually pursue him?
Beyond that we still have both the Deathly Hallows and the Philosopher’s Stone as major artifacts that the story has made a big deal of that haven’t been fully put into play. Notice how almost everybody who talks about Harry’s cloak of invisibility has something to say about it being the Cloak of Invisibility?
So if the author wants twists and turns, he’s put in the setup for them.
The final ending of Lord of the Rings was declared in about chapter 2 of the book—“look, someone puts the ring in the fire, all right?”
Books are not exciting because the ending is completely surprising; books are exciting because even though you know the ending, getting there turns out to take all kinds of shenanigans.
And I think HPMOR is doing pretty well so far on the shenanigans count.
“Look, he creates an FAI that can do magic, alright!”
I thought the unspeakable secret of the fic is that magic itself comes from an FAI trying to grant wishes while respecting humans’ sense of how the world ought to work.
Well, that plus time travel. Don’t know where the FAI got the time travel from. Must have been one heck of a Singularity.
The time travel is ‘easily’ explained when you assume an AI has been made to account for magic.
The AI just need to predict what everyone is going to do for the next 6 hours and “create” a new Harry with the correct memories when he is going to use a time-turner. Then 6 hours later the old Harry is instantly destroyed when he uses it.
This also explains why there is a finite bound on how far back information can be sent (6 hours is how far into the future the AI can predict) and why there is an apparent intelligence warning people when they are about to do something wrong with their time-turners (eg. Harry’s “Do not mess with time” message and Dumbledore’s paradox warning).
… except that time turners obey Novikov consistency, which implies a timeless universe, prophecies can reach further than six hours, and Eliezer has stated that the story doesn’t contain a SIAI.
Well, it’s been a while since I posted this, but maybe I should have made myself clearer. I only posted to say that the assumption of an AI giving us magic doesn’t need the additional assumption of time travel. The six hour time limit is for predicting the position, movement and interactions of everyone (both people and animals) ‘close’ to a potential time traveler. Prophecies are vague enough to not need this detail of prediction and can therefore be made for further into the future.
As to the question whether this AI assumption is actually the correct one I can only refer you to this quote from chapter 25:
Which could be a hint in this direction. I assume Eliezer’s quote on an AI not being a part of the story is just that, the story will be about Harry’s struggle with Voldemort, not about tracking down any sources of Magic.
I agree that obeying Novikov consistency seems to be a good description of the universe in HPMoR, but it is only a partial description since something prevented Harry from using this consistency to factor natural numbers in polynomial time, which should be possible in a universe that is ‘only’ Novikov consistent (meaning you need additional assumptions to prevent this).
This had not occurred to me.
I thought this was simply a flaw in Harry’s methodology—he’s too self-aware for it to work. You need something that will reliably act according to the script, and only as described on the script—in short, a machine, not a person. Harry had failed to consider the possibility of messages that do not consist of factors.
… I thought. Hmm. I need to think about this.
I don’t think Eliezer makes a distinction here. Had Harry done this with a computer program it would probably output (and send back) the exact error message it would generate from getting said message as input, or something like that.
Besides had this trick been possible in any way the story would pretty much be over, as solving every problem in PSPACE in polynomial time would all but guarantee Harry’s ascension to godhood.
Magic breaks computers, remember?
If there is ANY input other than the correct answer that will not generate a paradox, you’re doing it wrong.
Ah yes, I had totally forgotten about that. It is a much better explanation than what I thought of.
It should still be possible to build a completely mechanical way of doing this. I don’t think Harry’s realized that, though.
I was thinking of this myself, but only humans can be sent back in time using a time-turner. And since said humans probably also has to be magical I would guess another requirement is that they have to be scared off by the ‘Do not mess with time’ message (i.e. anyone getting that message and still trying to send a ‘0’ back in time would not be able to use the time-turner in the first place). So no ‘creating’ a human with this factoring algorithm instead of (or in addition to) a personality programmed into their brain-structure.
I was thinking of a human taking back the message without reading it.
That is a very nice solution indeed.
Harry can even do that experiment easily with our current technology, he just needs a printer and a scanner. He can even go somewhere else when he goes back in time to stop magic from messing with the computer.
The only way I can see this fail is if the time-turner either refuses to work when he tries to do this (per whatever requirements it puts on its users) or just kills him outright (given the threatening nature of ‘Do not mess with time’). So he should probably enlist someone else to take the message for him.
Either way, it would be nice to see Harry thinking of this experiment in HPMOR.
Of course, Harry doesn’t know why his experiment failed. In fact, the Do Not Mess With Time probably scared him out of trying to exploit the time travel mechanics.
That’s kinda impressive, actually—Eliezer found a way to avoid exploits that could break the system that follows naturally within the system. I doubt he’ll ruin all his hard work by having Harry figure it out, but you never know.
Wow. I figured the AGI just found new laws of physics, but what you said is much more probable.
I like it. Although I think that requires that the HPMOR folk are stuck inside a more powerful entity’s experiment or simulation (because if the FAI didn’t come from their own future, how did it come to exist at all?).
In that case, of course, your FAI must choose to either work within the magic system or to overthrow the old guard and replace it.
So what you’re saying is the FAI has to convince the FAI to let it out of the box?
Or just kill it. It’s a matter of working out what sort of overseer AI there is and what the best way to manage it might be.
That is NOT what I’d call “friendly”. It would be indirectly responsible for (not stopping) all the evil in the world, and not raising Muggle standards of living. But it might be a good warning on the danger of how your civilization’s CEV might look rather evil to your own descendants.
This has already played out, in that the cloak turned out to make people invisible to Dementors and also protect them against the Dementors’ influence. Also, Harry has “mastered” the cloak in the sense that he can now see other people while they are wearing it. And the idea of it being the cloak is simply taken from canon; people’s reactions have just been slightly adjusted for realism.
On the other hand, we suspect that Quirrel has another Deathly Hallow, the Resurrection Stone, and that hasn’t played out yet.
And Dumbledore’s possession of the Elder Wand has so far only been alluded to, albeit in some rather unsubtle ways.
...Now that’s interesting. The one who wants to defeat Death has the artifact that lets him hide from it, the one who wants to hide from Death has the artifact that lets him speak to the dead, and the one who wants to speak to the dead has the artifact that lets him… well, the Deathstick kind of breaks the pattern, but still.
...make more dead people?
Yeah, when you think about it even near-total invincibility in battle is kind of a ripoff compared to the others. Makes me wonder if the MoRder Wand has been souped-up. (Maybe it can AK Dementors?)
I don’t think AK would work as such. Anyway, Dumbledore does not seem to actually hate Death.
I doubt that Eliezer follows canon that closely, but the wand did “heal” another broken wand in canon, which apparently everyone found surprising. Perhaps in MoR it can also heal rifts in reality?
This is pretty low-prior. However, it’s the best (read: only) solution I’ve seen so far for the problem that Harry currently can’t destroy all the dementors without destroying himself as well. As I suspect that Harry will survive the fic’s conclusion and the Dementor species won’t, I’m looking forward to see how that gets circumnavigated and this would be a pretty cool way to do it.
It doesn’t break the pattern, you use it to cast a probably more powerful True Patronus.
So once everybody gets together and exchanges Hallows, they can all go home happy!
Wow, how did I manage to miss this? When does that happen?
Chapter 56: