Harry teams up with Neville to show some bullies what’s what and makes his first Original Magical discovery utilizing his scientific background!
Original chapters, written by Eliezer Yudkowsky, can be read here and the audiobook chapters, recorded by Eneasz Brodski, can be found earlier in this podcast feed and on the website.
In next week’s episode, we will (finally) do our retrospective on the first “book” of HP MoR.
Album art courtesy of Lorec from The Bayesian Conspiracy podcast’s Discord. Thank you!
Coy on the same Discord manages an RSS feed that compiles the relevant audiobook chapters with the WW MoR counterparts. Just copy and paste that link into your favorite podcast app in the “add by url” option. Thanks, Coy!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Subscribe: RSS
It turns out Mr. Bester’s “resetting” after every obliviation is actually what happens when you erase people’s memories. There’s a real condition called transient global amnesia where you become incapable of forming new memories or holding anything in your short-term memory for 12-24 hours. I actually encountered a patient experiencing this as a result of a bad reaction while rebalancing her psychiatric medication, and it was fascinating. Every 30 seconds she’d ask where we were going, I’d say we were taking her to the ER because she could’t remember things, she’d say ok…and then she’d ask where we were going again. I replicated the exact same conversation with her about ten times in the ten minutes I had her. Prognosis for this condition is usually good, and it usually ends with no ill effects.
Granted, this is a little different than Mr. Bester’s situation, given that he presumably has new memories from the past week every week, but the point is that people who have memories erased do, in fact, start looping like that.
In canon both Bellatrix Lestrange and Narcissa Malfoy are originally of the once enormous Black family.
And about Neville mentioning that Bellatrix had a reason, what he meant is that when torturing his parents she hoped to gain something for it and was attacking her enemies, yet she has done even worse things to people for no other reason than because it caught her fancy. In other words Bellatrix os even more evil than someone who tortures her victims to insanity in the hopes of gaining something.
Next is of course the M- word (or N- word) being unforgivable. Here I want to remark that this was 20-30 years ago and Severus Snape grew up in Slytherin. I don’t know why he actually said it, but I do think that a black person forgiving a white friend that as a teenager in the 50s called them “n**ger” in anger is a good thing. Not an expected or necessary thing by any means (forgiveness is never something you can demand), but definitely not something unforgivable as Brian puts it.
Also, Lily Potter didn’t just not date Snape. They were friends and she never forgave him after that one comment.
Harry Potter is an 11 year old (which is easy to forget because of his intellect) that has never been in love or even infatuated and is giving love advice based on fiction books he read. Of course that advice is worthless. The fact that Severus Snape takes it even remotely serious is in my reading a sign that the poor guy has been emotionally crippled or stunted. Which makes sense if you look at canon Snape’s behavior.
The last ine with Alyssa is definitely making fun of a certain type of fanfiction.
I don’t know if you guys have already considered this, but it would be really cool to include a fact-checking element to the podcast. There are so many times during discussions when you guys come up with questions about the canon story and I end up pausing the podcast at some point to go look it up myself because I am dying for the confirmed answer (this time was about quidditch points as they relate to house points…and in case you’re curious, it’s not as overtly clear as you’d think which I found interesting). I don’t know if anyone else is as neurotic as I am, but if they are, this might be neat to include!
Yeah it’s pretty infuriating that they keep saying blatantly wrong things about canon that could be easily checked with five minutes on a wiki. The Bellatrix thing here, the Chamber of Secrets earlier, etc.
I would be very interested in a segment similar to the one at the end of We’ve Got Worm (and Ward perhaps? I’m only a few episodes into WGW) where Scott makes specific predictions. Hearing about the Rosencrantz and Gildenstern idea is cool but I’d love to hear more small-scale predictions and just similar thoughts in general.
Since you were wondering about the Bester reference in the occlumency instructor:
Alfred Bester was the SF author who first wrote seriously about telepathy and how that would affect society. In particular, he wrote the first novel about a telepathic police force and how criminals might develop techniques to defend their thoughts. (Which made him the first ever Hugo award winner.)
(The psychic cop in Babylon 5 is also named Bester, for the same reason.)
The fact that Lesath Lestrange physical kowtows to Harry is indeed supposed to remind you of Lucius (and other death eaters) doing the same before Voldemort. Remember that rumours of Harry being the next Dark Lord were already swirling around Hogwarts, due to the sorting and Quirrel naming him the most dangerous student — and then Lesath got to have a front row seat to Harry’s I’m-Such-A-Baddass-Theater. After that it’s only natural for him to ask a favour in the way that he’s been taught Dark Lords are to be addressed.
The self-proclaimed “incels” are somewhat misnamed. After all, their celibacy is in now way involuntary; they could, at any time, choose to stop being creepy, entitled fuck-heads who think the world just OWES them a woman to service their sexual desires, in exchange for pretending to be “A Nice Guy” on occasion. Though, at least the incorrect name gives a hint as to the correct treatment: they really should be kept in cells — whether as lab specimens for psychologists to puzzle over or in solitary confinement for the protection of humanity may differ from case to case.
The idea that incels could easily get laid if only they stopped being creepy assholes is ironically pretty much the same misconception that leads to “Nice Guy” behavior in the first place. It turns out that being a good person is not enough to guarantee that you won’t be unattractive and lonely.
Lock them all up and size their brains, the only thing interesting [i]in[/i] incels are their brain[i]cells[/i] afterall. Someone fits society not perfectly in my own view of the world? Keep them in cells. Easy as that. Bam. Perfect world.
I think they explained what Hermione’s problem was. A hundred KG of falling metal. Cause they expanded the weight. If it had detransfigured randomly, it would’ve fallen on them.
Turns out the occlumency thing is REALLY important.(like all the long technical discussions.) You can only read what you can think or feel yourself. That’s why Voldemort, an accomplished legilimens doesn’t believe in love. He’s been reading tons of minds and never seen it. That is why he thinks there are no good people! He’s read hundreds of minds and never seen goodness. The first time he thinks someone may care about someone else is with Harry:”You really care about that girl… care about her in a way they can’t care about themselves…” Because of the resonance he can’t read Harry’s mind and have it staring back devoid of love.