scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/2w52c0.md

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Chapter 105: The Truth, Pt 2

• Author: u/rthomas2 *

• URL: http://www.hpmor.com/chapter/105

• Score: 39

• Created: 2015-02-17T01:00:15

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u/TheLeo3314 [+10] (41 minutes later)

Well... Now I need to go back and re-read every Parselmouth conversation Quirrell and Harry ever had.

u/literal-hitler [+4] (an hour later)

I'm hoping someone will post it on /r/hpmor.

u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)

I believe you can find some threads discussing this theory and all relevant text.

u/Arandur [+1] (3 hours later)

When I did that, I found myself very, very enlightened. Look in my recent comment history for my resultant theory.

u/BadGoyWithAGun [+1] (10 hours later)

Confidence level that parseltongue actually enforces honesty as opposed to being some kind of situation-specific trick by Quirrel?

u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (14 hours later)

My confidence is very high. In terms of narrative, there's a clear purpose to having two characters have a method of communication where you're not just left doubting every word out of their mouth. Also in terms of narrative, there doesn't seem to be much purpose in subverting the newly revealed rules.

u/TheLeo3314 [+1] (11 hours later)

Well after going back and checking some old conversations, plus reading some theories over on r/hpmor, I would say 90%. It would have to be an elaborate trick as at least a couple previous conversations seem to be strong evidence for the inability to lie.

u/eaglejarl [+9] (15 hours later)

Crossposted from /r/hpmor:

So, let me see if I have the sequence of events correct:

1. Dumbledore hides the Stone in Hogwarts

2. Quirrel finds out that the Stone is there and discovers that it's behind some protection that he will need Harry's help to bypass
   

3. Quirrel approaches Dumbledore about a teaching position and is hired. Dumbledore doesn't see through his disguise.
   

4. Quirrel spends an entire year training the students and making them stronger. At no time during this year does he make a try for the stone. He spends particular time building an emotional connection with Harry -- a very strong one. So strong, in fact, that...
   

5. ...Harry is willing to believe Quirrel (with no evidence) about Bellatrix being not-evil, and then help Quirrel commit a major criminal act by breaking her out of Azkaban. Presumably this is so that Quirrel can use her in the canon ritual as a fallback if he can't get the Stone. There are a lot of failure modes here -- Harry could be caught by Aurors, or eaten by Dementors, or just see/hear something that makes him not trust Quirrel anymore. If any of these happen, Quirrel's primary plan (the Stone) is ruined.
   

6. During the breakout, Quirrel uses a cannot-tell-a-lie language to say to Harry "the plan was to have you rule the country." Maybe there's an unspoken "with me as the power behind the throne", but the statement itself still has to be true.
   

7. Quirrel frames Hermione for Draco's almost-murder
   

8. Quirrel kills off Hermione. Possibly this was so that he could later say to Harry "if we get the Stone, I'll resurrect Hermione" but that seems pretty foolish -- killing her has a heavy reputational cost with Harry, and Quirrel could have instead said "I'll resurrect Lily and James, or anyone else you say."
   

9. Two days before graduation, Dumbledore detects that there might be a problem soon, so he sends Snape to guard the door. He does not come himself, or tell the Aurors, or send any backup with Snape.
   

10. Quirrel knows, somehow, that Snape will be there guarding the door and that he will be alone. For some reason, he can't make his attack at any other time. He also can't just say to Harry "hey, help me get this thing that will let us resurrect Hermione, save the life of your dear mentor (me), and hopefully make everyone in the world immortal as per your fondest dream."
    

11. Quirrel decides that he can't beat Snape on his own, implying that Quirrel really is deathly sick, although clearly exaggerating somewhat. (Note that we have reasonably good evidence that Quirrel really is sick because Madame Pomfrey has been treating him all this time and has not noticed anything odd.)
    

12. Quirrel Imperio's Sprout to take out Snape, but decides that she probably won't be able to do it unless Snape is already distracted, even with Quirrel there and able to backshoot Snape because Snape will think that Quirrel is out of it. Quirrel therefore arranges for the Magical Girl Squad and Draco to show up.
    

13. Quirrel fakes a Time-Turned message to Harry, but does it with wizard parchment/quill instead of realizing that Harry would have more likely used paper/pen(cil). This is a pretty significant failure for a super-mastermind who never misses a detail.
    

14. Quirrel has been playing at being so sick that he needs to be carried places. Despite that, his explanation for why he's here is "I saw Snape looking suspicious so I followed him instead of telling anyone else." That's pretty thin, and he has nothing better to offer Harry after all the shooting has died down.
    

The hundreds of hostages deadman switch makes perfect sense as a fallback plan.

Have I got this sequence right? Because it seems way complicated, and like it requires far more than three things to go right. I suppose that can be answered as "well, Quirrel is just that good at playing Xanatos Speed Chess", but it still seems nuts.

u/alexanderwales [+7] Time flies like an arrow (20 hours later)

Have I got this sequence right? Because it seems way complicated, and like it requires far more than three things to go right. I suppose that can be answered as "well, Quirrel is just that good at playing Xanatos Speed Chess", but it still seems nuts.

Yup, it seems absolutely nuts. I am guessing/hoping that there are more details that will make this series of events make sense, but ... I don't know what my alternate hypothesis is which would explain all of Quirrell's actions. Here are two of my best guesses:

• If, as in canon, Voldemort actually did want to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts then perhaps teaching there for the full year satisfies that value and is incidental to his other plans.
• If Voldemort actually does want Harry on the throne then perhaps this is all a setup to staging a miraculous defeat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named by the Boy-Who-Lived and the Philosopher's Stone is incidental to that plan - it only gives a setup for the narrative that Voldemort is trying to craft.

... but I'm not sure that squares with the psychology of Quirrell as we've been shown it, and I still think that his plan is a bit overcomplicated for all that.

u/ishaan123 [+6] Sidebar Contestant (2 hours later)

Problem: Harry would have gladly gotten the stone without being blackmailed if Quirrell had stayed incognito, without so carefully asking questions, for the purpose of saving Quirrell. Edit: Additionally, if the procedure for getting the stone is identical to canon, any student could have been manipulated into doing it (and hpmor!Harry, in particular, could not have done it).

What are the implications concerning Quirell's interests and plot, and the implications concerning what one must do to get the stone, in light of this?

u/paladinneph [+1] (13 hours later)

if you look at part 1, he was staying incognito. ...until harry figured it out. at that point, he knew the jig was up. (how did he know? see my post in the writing characters smarter than you thread- he cheated. the plot demanded that he know and so he did. ...or you know, facial expressions or something -waves hand-)

u/MadScientist14159 [+5] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (15 hours later)

Quirrel can sense Harry's emotions through the scar.

This was stated in the troll chapter.

u/ishaan123 [+3] Sidebar Contestant (15 hours later)

Ah, I suppose I shouldn't assume that Quirrell did the Big Reveal on purpose...but still, I seem to recall Harry outright offering to find the Stone and give it to Quirrell earlier in the chapter. There was no need to stage an overwrought comedy, no need to attempt to impersonate Harry's future self

No matter how brilliant an impersonation, there is a strong possibility that Harry always uses an obscure recognition code when sending messages to himself. I'd normally suspend disbelief about everyone not always using recognition codes as standard practice for the sake of the story (hpmor, enders game, and other "super smart character shows their work" type fiction all in part rely on the character existing in a society which has collectively manged to miss an obvious exploit), except for that Harry already used a recognition code at least once, so Harry at least should have thought of it. It doesn't matter that Harry wasn't using this method, Quirrell should have thought of the possibility that he was. (Edit: Annoyingly, I suppose he might just have fore-knowledge that it would work. Not elegant, but I guess it works.)

And that's only the most visible weirdness, there is so much else in that plot that wasn't necessary given what we know...indicating there is something we don't know. I suppose it's possible the author just didn't think of one or more of these things, but I highly doubt that given the rest of the story.

We have to come up with a hypothesis that excludes him from simply saying "Harry, I'm dying and can be saved via the p-stone which is placed in the 3rd floor corridor, let's go get it". If he wanted a sense of urgency to prevent giving Harry time to think about it or tell anyone he could have simply said "I'm dying now, and I just discovered where the stone is" and it would have been much more plausible than the ruse he actually implemented (which also included that statement, just with a bunch of other silliness tacked on).

And there's an additional problem - even given that he went with the crazy plot, Quirrell could have simply not given away the puzzle about Sprout, and then it would have been invisible Harry waiting by the door after Sprout called the Aurors and sent everyone away. Harry is no stranger to heroic last-ditch efforts and would have taken the Philosopher's stone and used in on Quirrell in a heart-beat if the note from his future self had told him to (assuming Harry can get it himself).

Even if we posit that EY didn't think of the "ask politely" solution or rejected it on some other grounds, would EY have Quirrell orchestrate a plan that would have worked and then leave out one crucial little step unless there was a deeper meaning? Perhaps Sprout wasn't, in fact, memory charmed and Quirrel just said that to prevent her meddling in an otherwise functional plot. What weird constraints are leading to this weird situation?

I think this is either an intentionally constructed puzzle, or something with a lot of hidden structure which isn't being directly shown to the reader. Unfortunately the Time Turner has an annoying habit of making things really unpredictable (for example, neither past Harry nor future Harry did the time turner prank/ the do not mess with time - both were created by some meta-Harry outside of time that we have no access to.) It's quite possible that this self-consistent plot was generated by meta-Quirrell, that our current Quirrell himself has only a vague idea what is going on, and that he is going to take Harry's time turner right now in order to set the self-consistent plot in motion.

u/Nepene [+5] (9 minutes later)

Well crap. Harry is in a really bad situation. Planning helps.

u/None [+3] (10 hours later)

The parselmouth thing reminds me of the Liar Liar thread that was posted here a few weeks ago. Surely its just "to the best of my knowledge" truthfulness, otherwise every equation can be proven/disproven and hence become a small step towards omnipotency.

u/None [+4] (12 hours later)

Aaaaand the power of the Philosopher's Stone turns out to be more-or-less ripped straight from Fullmetal Alchemist.

u/NotUnusualYet [+3] (13 hours later)

Human transmutation! ...I mean, transfiguration.

u/Arandur [+2] (13 hours later)

I wouldn't agree with that.

u/fljared [+2] United Federation of Planets (an hour later)

I'll spitball a theory here:

Parselmouth conversations are not entirely truthful. We have all of one possible, known liar to explain it, and one experimental result to prove it, and it the result could be explained in a number of ways.

u/ketura [+6] Organizer (10 hours later)

I think this comment here proposes an explanation pretty cleanly:

In an ordinary language, each participant in the conversation has his own mental mapping between sounds-spoken-or-heard and concepts-transmitted-or-received. Anyone who wishes to understand or speak the language must learn that mapping. If Alice and Bob have learned somewhat different sound-concept mappings, then the concepts transmitted by Alice will not match up completely with the concepts received by Bob.

Parseltongue is not an ordinary language. You either magically speak Parseltongue or you do not; you cannot learn or choose the mappings between sounds and concepts in Parseltongue. You cannot redefine a word in Parseltongue, so it is impossible to mean one thing by an utterance in Parseltongue and be understood as meaning something different.

u/ZeroNihilist [+2] (8 hours later)

He also said that Parseltongue's truth-forcing effect can't be beaten by Occlumency. Could it be beaten by Obliviation? If not, it would seem it functions as an objective truth test, in which case you could theoretically use Parseltongue's "forced truth" to determine whichever truths you wished.

E.g. "The real function of the Philosopher's Stone is to..."

u/Izeinwinter [+1] (19 hours later)

Does not follow. I mean, I am sure that obliviation will not work to beat parseltounge, because going to the trouble of countering occlumency while leaving the far more common dodge open would be far too stupid for Salazar. But this doesn't imply it's a flawless oracle.

3 obvious options that would counter obliviate without making it an universal oracle:

1: If your mind or memory is tampered with, you loose all facility with parsel-tongue. Yes, especially including if you do it to yourself.

2: You can access obliviated memories via parsel and it spots implanted ones also.

3: Obliviate just does not work on a parsel-tongue.

u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (20 hours later)

Or maybe Obliviate is just a flaw in Parseltongue - secure methods of communication often have those, especially if they're designed by a single person without a lot of modern security-minded training.

It's also possible that Parseltongue predates Obliviate and the False Memory Charm, and so was constructed without those in mind.

u/Arandur [+1] (3 hours later)

Quirrelmort didn't know in advance which experimental result he'd have to explain -- Harry could have tried many various things to test the statement. Simplest explanation is that it's true.

u/kaukamieli [+5] (6 hours later)

Not really. Quirrel knows a LOT about parseltongue and Salazar's secrets from the basilisk. I'd bet Salazar put a backdoor in for himself to lie.

u/bbrazil [+1] NERV (7 hours later)

It's what you believe to be true, so obliviation and/or a false memory charm would let you get around it.

u/2-4601 [+2] (12 hours later)

But Quirrel could have cast a spell on or dosed Harry with a compulsion to tell the truth, then use Parselmouth as a cover so Harry will believe everything he says. It doesn't have to be Veritaserum - legilimency or a weaker, easier to obtain/harder to detect potion would do as well. The latter could be tested by lying in English, so the former is more likely, especially as he's so good at it.

u/Arandur [+1] (13 hours later)

Entirely possible, but that is not a simpler explanation... and there's no evidence for it other than "Quirrelmort appears to be overly evil now."

u/None [+1] (22 hours later)

Anybody else notice Quirrell never actually said what the stone did in parseltongue?

u/ketura [+1] Organizer (a day later)

He did, however, call it the Stone of Transfiguration.

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