Harry gets the Snitch eliminated from Quidditch. Not just in Hogwarts, but in the big leagues as well—they don’t want a Germany vs. Austria on their hands.
All of the celebrity Quidditch players of the world—Victor Krum, Ludo Bagman, Finbar Quigley—are distraught by these sudden and drastic changes to a traditional game they’ve loved for many years. At the ceremony marking the changes, some of them tear up.
The Daily Prophet headline is “BOY WHO LIVED TEARS UP THE STARS”
Eliezer gives all of us a long lecture about how the prior for somebody making celebrities cry is so much higher than the prior for someone literally ripping the Sun apart that the latter hypothesis should never even have entered our consideration, regardless of how much more natural an interpretation of the prophecy it is.
Clever, but you have to balance it against the closely related fact that making celebrities cry is surely much less likely to be the subject of a prophecy than destroying stars.
When Harry received that cryptic note, I thought “watcher of stars” meant the centaur. Now that you propose this hypothesis, I’m inclined to thinking that “tear apart the very stars in heaven” means Harry will defeat Quirrell in such a way that Quirrell will survive, but will never be able to cast that wonderful stargazing spell again. Harry likes that spell more than I think is normal, but removing it sounds like a particularly cruel punishment for an astronomy fan.
I’m not sure how serious this is, but if it were said aloud Harry would hear the difference between the two definitions of “tears,” and wouldn’t be worried about it if that were the case.
Prediction:
Harry gets the Snitch eliminated from Quidditch. Not just in Hogwarts, but in the big leagues as well—they don’t want a Germany vs. Austria on their hands.
All of the celebrity Quidditch players of the world—Victor Krum, Ludo Bagman, Finbar Quigley—are distraught by these sudden and drastic changes to a traditional game they’ve loved for many years. At the ceremony marking the changes, some of them tear up.
The Daily Prophet headline is “BOY WHO LIVED TEARS UP THE STARS”
Eliezer gives all of us a long lecture about how the prior for somebody making celebrities cry is so much higher than the prior for someone literally ripping the Sun apart that the latter hypothesis should never even have entered our consideration, regardless of how much more natural an interpretation of the prophecy it is.
This prediction doesn’t fit very well with the exact text of the prophecy: “apart”, “in heaven”, “end of the world”.
Clever, but you have to balance it against the closely related fact that making celebrities cry is surely much less likely to be the subject of a prophecy than destroying stars.
When Harry received that cryptic note, I thought “watcher of stars” meant the centaur. Now that you propose this hypothesis, I’m inclined to thinking that “tear apart the very stars in heaven” means Harry will defeat Quirrell in such a way that Quirrell will survive, but will never be able to cast that wonderful stargazing spell again. Harry likes that spell more than I think is normal, but removing it sounds like a particularly cruel punishment for an astronomy fan.
I’m not sure how serious this is, but if it were said aloud Harry would hear the difference between the two definitions of “tears,” and wouldn’t be worried about it if that were the case.
OMG, that’s what the centaur meant...