i still feel very bad for draco. i really hope that harry gets to speak to him again by the end of the story. and that wizards bring humanity to the stars. and all of the rest of it

It seems that Albus received a prophecy that clearly wasn't for him. One, he wasn't Harry's mentor, nor the one that made him, nor is he one of Harry's most most most precious people. It was Quirinus dear whom made and mentored Harry, that even when his true identity was known, Harry questioned 'why' and begged him to not go and just stay. Albus, darling, it's not you, its Q.Q.

Bruh this better not actually be Pettigrew you trying to let off the hook

I enjoyed your inclusion of a version of Nobby and Sgt Colon - it was wonderfully appropriate. GNU STP
And this is an amazing FF so thank you for sharing your creativity.

Wow.
Oh wow.
Talk about powerfully written.

Hold the fuck up. Why is peter pettigrew a good guy now? Just cus it seems more plausible? Or is harry wrong? This seems off.

If all divinations are saying that the world will end, there is an interesting conclusion that seems plausible. It might be the case that divination magic can only peer into futures where magic still exists. Thus, it might be possible to save the world by destroying magic. I'd like to see a sequel based on this idea. Significant Digits was good, but I wasn't a fan of the ending, especially when the blatant disregard for muggle life kicked in.

ugg too confusing

Ooof!.
So. Much. Responsibility!
.

I'm reading/listening to this for what i think is the 7th time, and only now have i paid attention to the author's notes. I didn't know that eliezer wanted to do an anime of hpmor, that fills me with so much joy ! He IS aware that so many scenes of the story could be epic if they were drawn anime style ! So epic in fact, that this has actually become one of my life's goals.

I have nothing to my name, and no influence whatsoever. But know, Eliezer, that no matter how much time it will take me, i intend to make that anime happen. I have a few naive plans to get resources and influence, and it is likely that it won't bear any results. But it's something that i want to do anyway.

I thought it would take some convincing, both on your side and J.K Rowling's, but now that i see you were already willing to do it all along ! My determination is redoubled. See you later, Eliezer.

I have to admit this idea of the extremely narrow solution space for humanity to survive just bugged me. In fact it bugged me so much, I went back, retook the final exam, and solved it in the time allotted with a completely different solution to anything anybody had published before, and wrote something appropriate to the setting. I see the solution space explode with possibilities within one whether Harry lives or dies. So I wrote and went back and filled in the details, and I tell you, you set this one up.

Really don't like the idea that Sirius is the bad guy and Peter is the good guy

Poor Harry, he's had a hell of a year.
Nice to see this wrapping up well

Author, you are bloody brilliant. Colon and Nobbs. Very Pratchett-esque.

Nice

An end to Azkaban, movements to end death in the wizarding world, potentially unleashing Hermione on the Dementors... all wonderful news, if not potentially problematic. Good to see Harry remembered the wondering Bellatrix Black. As for "Peter Pettigrew"... I'm really hoping someone realizes Sirius Black is who he says he is and his name is cleared.

He killed my Pet Rock ! LMAO ! :-D

:-) awesome sauce

Ha. I was right about 'not serious' actually being 'not Sirius'. AND right to question whether your Sirius was good or bad. Mr. Grim, I suppose?

I think Amelia finally realized what Harry can do and that he shouldn't be underestimated :) I love that he'll use the stone like that! No more Azkaban!

Peter Pettigrew being the innocent one. Wow . . . . I did not see that coming.

I'm sure Harry will figure out a way to get healing to Muggles before too long. It requires creativity, probably a breakthrough new drug or something to conceal what is actually happening, but that's a solvable problem.

I love his resolutions, and I really hope we get to see Hermione destroying the dementors. That would be amazing.

I don't get it. Sirius confunded Peter to change into Sirius. So Sirius!Peter went to Azkaban while innocent and Sirius was actually a Death Eater?

I kind of resent what you did to Sirius here... damn, you must HATE that character.

Incorrect form of "it".
Currently: "its"
Correctly: "it"

Chapter 119:

Harry folded up the parchment and put its back into the envelope, frowning thoughtfully, then took the grey-ribboned scroll from the Headmistress. When the long grey wand in Harry's hand touched the ribbon, it fell away at once; and Harry unrolled the scroll, and read it.

And again, Daaaayum.

TWENTY TIMES

CJT:
This:
studies of effectiveness are primarily paid for by profit-driven funding, with the result that they are rewarded for positive reports rather than accurate reports.

is backwards. Profit-driven funding produces fewer false positives than e.g. NIH funded studies, because drug companies would rather not spend the fairly considerable amount of money it takes to conduct clinical trials on drugs that are not going to work. Academic scientists, OTOH, want to get published, and negative results aren't published.

This isn't just me speculating; the matter has been studied and the results are as I wrote.

On a different topic, Harry doesn't dare release the stone to the Wizarding world either, for the same reasons. Not to mention little details like e.g. how much information can a brain hold? A thousand year's worth? What about population pressure? How long until the Wizarding world thinks of the same things as the Muggle world would have? Taking Harry's advanced Muggle studies courses will make this faster. It won't make it more likely, because it was already inevitable.

Mou, can't we make it that Peter confunded Sirius into believing to be Peter?
And who knows what Peter brewed wrong for a permanent(?) polyjuice potion-

I'm sorry that Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality ended but at the same time I'm happy with the ending. Even going with books I've read with original information property this is top tier. Rather than an ending really it was showing a beginning. A beginning of a hopeful future that doesn’t really have an end.

I think that's where I was disappointed with the original books. Even though the story was good and was one of my favorite series growing up I still didn't like the ending.

There is much I'd like to say about this story. First of all no other story has changed me as a person as much as this one. It got me into reading the LessWrong blog and other similar material and desiring to be like the main character in his more positive aspects and especially his rationality.

I wouldn't be who I am today without this story more than any other, and that is truly saying something. I'm sure it can be said for many other readers. The most significant part of that was that it helped me start truly examining my own thinking and thoughts. It was a long process but to shorten the story it lead me to break away from my most archaic and self-detrimental ways of thinking.

This of course led me to break away from the religion that I was raised in. Many other factors contributed to that, but I would be lying to say that this story and how it changed me had no major impact in that.

I don't know if this story had a part in any other person that changed their life as much as it did mine; however, I wouldn't be surprised. I simply wished to express my own sincere appreciation so you know how much of an impact you've made.

I wish I could show my gratitude by fulfilling some of your requests like putting you in touch with J.K. Rowling or Daniel Radcliffe, helping you arrange production of a movie or anime or help you with angel investing. If any opportunity for me to do any of this I will. Unfortunately I have no way of doing this at the moment. I just hope this review is enough at the moment.

Sincerely Yours in Rationality,

Nathaniel Phillips

Auror Nobbs and Auror Colon - R.I.P. Terry Pratchett

Curiosity can be such a dangerous thing.

It was previously stated that none other "living weapon" but a mountain troll can survive the complete Transfiguration of the body for at least six hours. Leaving aside a question of how Animaguses work and whether canon Peter Pettigrew has to transform to a human every six hours privately - what possibility of survival does it leave to the ring-transfigured Voldemort? And what harm had Harry's Transfiguration done to Hermione Granger's body?

Ch.108:
"I wore the mountain troll as a false tooth while Dumbledore was identifying me to the Hogwarts wards as the Defense Professor." A slight smile. "Other living weapons cannot be Transfigured; they will not survive the disenchantment for the requisite six hours to avoid being traced by Time-Turner. The fact that a mountain troll was used as a weapon of assassination was a clear sign that the assassin had needed a proxy weapon that could be Transfigured safely."

Exorcising a ghost is not very consistent with Harrys view on the importance of life. They clearly have some form of intelligence, and he can't know that a ghost couldn't be used to bring someone back to life properly. If he knew one of the death eaters was still alive would he have killed him to preserve his secrets, even if the death eater disn't pose an immediate threat to anyone?

"auror nobbs and auror colon"

dammit.

Much as I enjoyed the first few chapters - particularly your version of Tracey Davis - and the general idea of teaching people to think rationally, I've felt increasingly frustrated by this story over the past few months. Because I'm stubborn and hoped for later developments to explain or correct the things that frustrated me, I continued to read. But these initially minor things have only grown into larger and more extensive issues.
You've neglected to do the most basic of research into the way HP magic or the Wizarding World work. I counted at least five infractions in this chapter alone. All the avoidance of this issue requires is the skimming of a couple of wiki articles. Harry is even more ridiculously super powered now than he is in latter Canon - and all still at age 11. And you've openly mocked that Canon in your own text more than once, without bothering to try to understand reasons behind things. The Snitch is meant to frustrate, for instance. That's quite literally its purpose. J. wrote the game of Quidditch that way to annoy those who take sport too seriously.
Additionally, as more than one person has already mentioned in reviews, the 'final exam' violated the site's terms of service. And honestly, I find the extensive list of wrap parties and the like to make you sound quite pretentious. You haven't created this world. There's nothing original here. A lot of it is fun to read, but it's not yours. This is just a fanfiction, and one without a particularly satisfactory resolution at that. If you want to celebrate rationality, fine. But please don't act like you're the next Tolkien and expect to be treated like it just because you posted something online.

"conditional upon your defeat of You-Know-Who."

This could probably be phrased more unambiguously as "your defeating You-Know-Who", or "your victory over You-Know-Who", or "the defeat of You-Know-Who at your hands".

at SimonJester
I like your thinking. It does seem like a simpler explanation and it seems to be the sort of thoughts that QV is not likely to have. But why then, would the Goblet of Fire no longer be used as part of the truce to allow dark wizards/witches to teach at Hogwarts? Coincidental timing? It seems likely the Goblet announced the oath-breaking some way; otherwise how would anyone have known about it? So there is possibly a middle ground between the two stories, where the oath-breaking occurred and Perenelle used that as leverage to convince Baba Yaga to change.

Dumbledor misinterpreted the prophecies so he thought that he was mentor Harry would love and Harry might be his downfall, but we know that was Quirrell/Voldemort. This makes me think that Dumbledor sent the Santa Claus notes to make Harry mistrust him because he was trying to bring about a prophecy that said Harry wouldn't be able to trust his mentor but which actually referred to Voldemort. I wonder how many prophecies Dumbledor misinterpreted and what crazy things he did to attempt to fulfill or stop them? I bet a lot of those prophecies would make sense to Harry because he knows so much that Dumbledor never did. For instance, I wonder if the prophecy that Dumbledor interpreted to apply to Harry's pet rock may have been about the resurrection stone, which may have been Harry's through inheritance like the cloak.

Using the stone to stop people to die from old age is not a rational thought through idea. A rational approach would be to restrict the use for injuries, ilness and such. The system as whole needs people dieing at some point. If one really stops all death overpopulation will become a severe problem and in the end the limit of healings per day will become a social problem ...

Thank my lucky stars all these smart men are around to explain things to us poor women-folk! I mean, only being head of investigations in a world that has way more criminal tricks than even the best Mafia don could imagine, only having been secret council to years of time travel, spying and counter - terrorism operations, and knowing full well how utterly unlikely it is that simple "story book" plots involve voldemort, or being the person most trusted to hold council over the most selfish and self serving political players in the country during its greatest power vacuum in decades, with the most powerful magical artifacts in play; well gosh darn it there was certainly no way my poor little head spent any time at all suspecting that nice young potter boy is lying about the whole thing and what a surprise the truth is so complicated!

Yudowsky

Re: cheaper pharmaceutical research
My background is as a biostatistician with experience at most levels of drug development. I generally agree with braindoll and CJT below, but with several specific comments and possible alternate approaches. Rather than clutter up the reviews with the specifics, I will email you.

Re: killing fat cells
I generally agree with braindoll and devinaethnen and personally, reading that sentence made me actually feel fear - fear of misapplied resources and fear of the likely health consequences of such a treatment. Treating effects without treating the causes does not fix the real problems. As an illustration, there is a treatment that does that partially already: liposuction. I know there are body fat stores that liposuction can't target, but still, a look at the reasons liposuction fails as an obesity treatment might reveal some problems with your proposal.

Re: other topics
Insufficient personal knowledge to render a valid opinion.

(not anyone in particular) Reactions:

Previous chapters made me think the writing had overlooked significant things. This chapter covered a lot of those plot holes with a thick spreading of Dumbledore and prophecies. The existence of accurate prophecies is dangerous to a story in many ways, but in this case they are canon and "Dumbledore is using prophecies" is both canon and better than just ignoring them.
Why would Bones and Moody cooperate with a child, no matter how precocious? Dumbledore.
why would any smart wizard believe Harry's story about what happened in the graveyard? Dumbledore's pressure on Bones and Moody.
Why didn't the Aurors investigate more thoroughly? Dumbledore's pressure on Bones and Moody.
How could Dumbledore know how to manipulate effects with ridiculously long chains of events between cause and effect? Prophecies.
Why would Dumbledore sacrifice himself? Prophecies.
How could Harry have won, given the ridiculous imbalance of resources against him? Dumbledore and prophecies.
Why haven't all sane wizards tried to kill Harry after the prophecies of destruction started up? Dumbledore.

Oh, and Colon and Nobbs? "reliable in the usual quality of their work"? Absolutely. Snicker.

I also like Zelazny.

Hi, I just wanted to let you know I have been enjoying this story very much. Recently I saw several reviews complaining about chapters being posted individually on a schedule as opposed to posting everything that is written at once. This and the "final exam" challenge has apparently been percieved by some as "holding chapters hostage" (to me, this phrasing seemed a bit rude/entitled, considering that the thing EY was allegedly holding hostage was his own intelectual property). While I acknowledge the high probability of some negative opinions being expressed here (due to both the large size of this fandom and the fact that people vary, as well as the culture of online interactions), I wanted to say that I, for one, appreciate both the "final exam" challenge and the deliberate pacing that the author chose for these last few episodes. It makes for a much more engaging experience, nurtures a sense of community amongst the fandom and leads me to savour and actively think about something I otherwise would have passively devoured in a night.

Sir Terrence John David Pratchett dies. Cause of safety of world.

Try kickstarting, EY! Might not be the best option, but until an angel investor comes...

" Amelia Bones : beef jerky given human form ''. Ha ha hah, bravo!

You manage to consistently produce such golden nuggets of description every second chapter or so and I consider them a trademark of your writing style. Somehow I'm reminded of when Harry thought of a possible password for the mirror releasing the stone as 'holding a hamster in your left hand while squeezing mayonnaise on top of it' - such great, nerdy, so _your style_ comic breaks - I love them all.

A more understated instance of this style feature was when you opened a recent chapter describing how Harry had woken up with 'the philosopher's stone under his left sock'.

I wish I could put to words what makes such quirky descriptions of yours funny. In any case, they lighten and brighten up the heavy themes of your story in the best possible way. I expect to see at least one such sentence in the final chapter, and hopefully many more!

"What on Earth do I have to do to convince you? "

"To convince me that you harbor no ambitions of becoming a Dark Lord?" said Professor Quirrell, now looking outright amused. "I suppose you could just raise your right hand."

... or spend a few hours in front of the mirror of Noitilov, apparently. Harry's Occlumency barriers have got to be short to hell right about now. Seeing as Quirrell offered to teach Harry Occlumency in the first place, it's likely that the resonance wouldn't affect Legilimency.

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading this chapter thrice. Just one remark: that's 164,000 healings and then some, because there are 30 hours in a day...

It's almost like Harry Potter is foretold to create a Dyson Sphere at some point in time. :)

"The passwords are 'phoenix's price', 'phoenix's fate', and 'phoenix's egg',"

Any connection to the early Star Trek novels by Sondra Marshak, _The Price of the Phoenix_ and _The Fate of the Phoenix_? Excellent stuff, with a plot centered on issues of identity and immortality.

Well, now Harry should assemble a team of internationally famous scientists. His father and Stephen Hawking and everyone those two think should join them.
Heal em up and assemble a think tank you let loose on the Hogwarts Library.
Also I can't wait until he tells his parents that he threatened to magic up a gram of antimatter, is now the Heir of Merlin, the equivalent of the King of Magical England and holds the Death Stick, the most powerful wand in the World.

I loved the Aurors Colon and Nobbs. Thank you, thank you, thank you for making a Discworld reference. Thank you.

Not that it matters very much, but now that Harry is passing this story on to others I feel compelled to remark...

I am still skeptical of Voldemort's version of the 'secret history' of Flamel/Perenelle/Baba Yaga.

Notice that in spite of all that has happened, Harry is *still* making the mistake of uncritically accepting things "Professor Quirrell" said as being true- not just the ones in Parseltongue, but his ordinary statements. Even on subjects where Quirrell speaks of matters he cannot possibly have personal knowledge of, and in which the principal agents are long dead or far beyond his reach.

He still isn't stopping to ask his beloved mentor "how do you know what you think you know?"

The idea that someone as intelligent as Voldemort could be outright *wrong* on such a matter, due to cognitive biases, does not seem to occur to Harry.
_

Now, compare the hypotheses "Perenelle seduced and murdered Baba Yaga, then took on a primary identity of the opposite sex as Nicholas Flamel, inventor of the Philosopher's Stone, while sometimes also appearing as herself" to, say... "Baba Yaga decided to fake her own death and took on the role of Nicholas Flamel."

The big piece of evidence favoring (2) over (1) is that (2) doesn't require two people who've appeared in the same place at the same time to actually be the same person. Sure, we can imagine magical means for that to happen, but for this to work, Perenelle would have to keep up the masquerade of being two people who are routinely seen together by friends and guests. For SIX HUNDRED YEARS. And she'd have to keep up this deception while regularly interacting with the most powerful wizards in the world, because she routinely deals with them so as to trade life extension for lore.

The prior probability of such a scheme working isn't on par with, oh, someone turning into a cat. But it sure doesn't sound very good.

Moreover, it is entirely *unnecessary* for Perenelle to have kept up such a deception. It would have been much easier for her to simply take on a different identity entirely, or to portray herself as the one inventing the Philosopher's Stone rather than making up Nicholas Flamel to do it for her.

And either way she'd be able to just... not try to impersonate two people at once. There's no reason that the now-immortal witch Perenelle needs to have a fictitious immortal spouse, as opposed to just staying single (or, hell, finding someone she really likes and *actually* using the Stone on them).
_

So the question is then, is there any evidence equivalently compelling that would cancel this out? What reason does Voldemort have for assuming Perenelle went to such improbable lengths to conceal the fact that *she,* and not this other entirely fictitious male wizard, was the owner of the Philosopher's Stone?

I honestly can't think of anything except an overwhelming bias on Voldemort's part that we know he applies even when it is massively to his own detriment to do so.

Namely, the TOTALLY PREDICTABLE idea that Voldemort is unable to conceive of anyone willingly sharing power or sharing the means to become immortal. I mean, this is the same guy whose own "Great Creation" to cheat death had a massive technical flaw that he could *effortlessly* have caught just by using someone else as a lab rat, let alone actually finding someone else who he'd want to share eternity with. And yet the thought of trying this not only didn't cross his mind during the creation of the Horcrux 2.0 network and his time as Lord Voldemort, but... for crying out loud...

EVEN WHEN COASTING THROUGH EMPTINESS FOR NINE YEARS with no distractions, as a bodiless spirit, it apparently didn't occur to Tom Riddle that he should have tried sharing immortality first before assuming his immortality system would work flawlessly.

It's kind of sad, really.

Even when there are great incentives for him to try something exotic like "share immortality," the thought just doesn't seem to cross his mind. Not something he considers and drops, but something he doesn't even think of.

So he comes up with this bizarre, epicycle-riddled explanation that sounds like it came from Luna Lovegood ("Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel are REALLY THE SAME PERSON").

When it's so much more plausible that 'Nicholas' is actually Baba Yaga.

Faking her own death would be child's play for the Dark Lady given that she can permanently transfigure any random rock into a convincing corpse, then establish herself as the 'legitimate' owner of the Philosopher's Stone. This has the added advantage that people won't be actively trying to hunt her down for her past crimes... given that she sought out the position of teaching Battle Magic in the first place, it's quite plausible that Baba Yaga did have some desire to 'go legit.'

For someone with a little empathy and ability to grasp human behaviors (i.e. not Voldemort), this is a far simpler explanation. Nicholas as Baba Yaga's desire for a new identity without a criminal record is far simpler than Nicholas as Perenelle's desire for sheer ridiculous Slytherin-on-crack conspiracy.

So... Hermione will call her phoenix Crookshanks? or Hedwig?

Dude, this has got to be your magnum opus in terms of sheer plot. You could make a heck of a sequel out of the epilogue with Harry finding new uses of his "limitless" power versus harder opponents: political ones. Please? That would be a dream come true for much of this newly made fandom!

Lol pretty sure Radcliffe is done caring about HP.

Well that chapter was pretty jam packed. I was sure he was going to meet up with Hermione this chapter, but oh well. Great use of the stone I must say, and Dumbledore smashing Harry's pet rock because prophecies is hilarious.

Hmm. Not bad, although I have to ask - why doesn't Harry use the Stone of Permanence on Voldemort? It would solve the issue of maintaining the transfiguration, and if magic thinks Hermione is a unicorn with a bad mane-do, then it should still recognize Voldemort as alive, even though he's been permanently transformed.
Also - immortality for all is a bad idea. There is a finite amount of material in the universe, and an exponentially growing population will eventually consume the majority of it. At which point significant unpleasantness will occur.

So...
Hermione is NOT a horcrux? It would have been clever for Voldemort to make her into one while he was resurrecting her. Given all of Hermione's new superpowers, I hope Harry decides to use the stone on the obliviated fragment of Voldemort he is carrying around, so no that one has to find out the hard way.

I just have to say no story has captivated me more than what you have written. I started this epic saga last week and I don't know how many of your followers could stand to wait so long, when I can barely wait a few more days. You have a true talent and it is much appreciated. Thank you for this. Thank you so much

The revelation of the true powers of the philosopher's stone strikes me as something which is profoundly "ending the world" dangerous. The fact that HP wanted to build a "high security" hospital with "very powerful guards" indicates that he knows that the philosopher's stone would be deeply and profoundly coveted by everyone in the world. It's something literally worth fighting wars for. It could literally be the trigger of an international magic world war, the exact type of cataclysm that would destroy the world.

He should have - much like Flannel, devised some sort of cover story for a new cure, e.g. the discovery of a new spell that can be cast only by the Boy-Who-Lived which reverses death.

HPMOR has been overall more satisfying than the original, and that's something I have never been able to say about any other fanfiction. I have also greatly enjoyed reading the Sequences, which I would never have found without HPMOR.

The one thing I could not go without commenting on is "Assaults on obesity that involve directly killing fat cells, rather than futile attempts to mess with the surrounding metabolic processes." Up until you wrote this, I was happy to leave the problem of FAI in your hands. Now I am worried that you lack the vision for identifying causes instead of symptoms.

Obesity is a symptom that is strongly correlated with other symptoms of poor health outcomes. Just because the various causes of obesity are complex and sometimes very difficult to address, that doesn't mean we should put our strongest efforts into treating the symptom instead of the cause. For the very few whose obesity is caused by problems with the "surrounding metabolic processes," it does in fact make sense to treat those problems.

For the majority, however, the causes are mental and/or societal. (When I say "mental" here, I am referring both to mental illnesses as well as things like bad habits or incorrect beliefs about food.) Killing those people's fat cells would not address the core issues that caused them to gain the fat, so unless they have also addressed those issues separately, they will simply gain it back again. The majority of obese people would therefore become dependent on this fat-cell-killing drug/procedure to repeatedly restore health to their bodies, even while the very thing that is damaging that health continues. While that sounds like great news for the people selling the treatment, it means a) stratifying obesity into a "have-not" problem, which would leave those whose obesity comes from poor nutrition and/or poor education in an even lower status than before, and b) leaving some portion of people to continue living with mental anguish due to a mental illness (e.g. depression, anxiety, effects of abuse) being potentially ignored in favor of simply making the body non-fatty.

In the same way that you might seek to kill mosquitoes to prevent them from spreading diseases, I encourage you to instead back such quests as the curing of mental illnesses, the general improvement of the quality of the food supply for impoverished people, the cultural reform to focus more on healthy, naturally-tasty ingredients instead of pouring sugar into processed by-products, and nutrition education that teaches people through their mouths and hands (e.g. give the schools and parents of small children really good food so children get a taste for nutritious things, bring back cooking lessons in schools and communities, stop encouraging the stupid cultural notion that children hate vegetables - they certainly hate poorly-prepared vegetables, but so do a lot of adults - etc.).

I am glad that you want to address so many problems in the world, but you should focus your efforts on those that will cause a lasting improvement in the world, rather than encouraging people to keep on harming their bodies because they can scrub away the consequences later.

... Holy Shot doesn't cover it.

All of harry's arguments against breaking the statute of secrecy could just as easily apply to a wizard as they could a muggle.

A wizard could transfigure antimatter,
A wizard could transfigure the plague,

In fact a wizard could do all of these while a muggle could do absolutely non, any situation that destroys the world through magic has to involve a wizard,

The statute of secrecy only prolongs the inevitable, yes 8 billion people are more likely to destroy the world through magic than a couple thousand, harry is not bound to not destroy the world NOW he is bound to not destroy the world period. and the statute of secrecy does nothing to avoid that.

Keeping the statute of secrecy is not rational. the rational thing to do would be to just bind all magical beings with a contract either like the one harry has, or to only use spells/transfigurations that have been green-lighted by the wizengamot. (basically Interdict of Merlin 2.0).
After all a muggle can't end the world. binding/blinding them is not rational. binding magical people makes much more sense.

and not only that, harry thinks of all the bad things that muggles could do with magic, but he ignores all the good. not only is this very out of character for him, it also ignores the ONLY route that could actually save the world. (not simply prolong its death) after all, wizards have never been to space.

I'm still not convinced that this is the real ending. For one, the password is impertinence for goodness's sake! Also, things are going way too well. There's, like, 3 chapters left, and chapter 122 is a long one at that. Furthermore, Moody's reaction is too... unMoody. I'm not even as paranoid as he is, but had I been in his shoes, my first reaction would to shoot first, ask questions later. The mirror's role is too small to be true. What does extrapolated volition have to do with time? Answer: nothing. However, extrapolated volition can be understood (as I did) as something along the line of estimation of free will according to past actions. Eh, pardon me but this seems to fit disturbingly well with the too-good-to-be-true thing that's going on here. Also, Draco will definitely find out the true culprit behind his father's death sooner or later. Different from the adult wizards who doesn't have an ounce of logic, Draco was trained by Harry himself in rationality. And he knows Harry well. More importantly, he knows Harry's style well.. He could smell the fishy stench of Harry's story a mile away. It's not too much of a giant leapt to deduct that Harry was the one that defeated Voldemort, because Boy-who-lived, duh. And his father was found mysteriously dead by some UNKNOWN, NATURAL means right at the crime scene, in Death Eaters' grab. To Draco, unknown and natural practically means muggle science, and who knows the most about muggle science and also happened to be at the crime scene? Oh yeah.
Even if he doesn't figure it out (highly unlikely, in my opinion), his blood purism is going to get so much worse.
That and Sirius is dead. I happen to like him, thank you very much. His role in Order of Phoenix was the only thing that help me waddle through Harry's teenage angst to the end.
And Slytherin won. In the final match between Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Ravenclaw didn't even stand a chance. Gryffindor were busy arguing on the sideline. Ravenclaw is Harry's house. Slytherin is Tom's house. Herminone's robe was in Gryffindor's colour. Though inside Harry, there are embodiments of all 4 houses, the most prevalent ones are Ravenclaw and Slytherin, as his final decisions are usually a toss-up between those 2 houses. If that's not foreboding, I don't know what is.
Although, Hufflepuff may still have a chance. Eh, Super Hufflepuff was briefly mentioned.
However, my house pride dictates that I be happy over my house's victory. So, yay, Slytherin?
Also, Poe's law, man. Poe's law.

So yes, I'm impressed, slack-jawed and all that jazz. I am absolutely sincere when I say that this is amazing stuff, really. But in the back of my mind, there is exactly one thought:

Screw this large-magnitude world-changing BS, I wanna see him meet Hermione again!

Sorry.

And thanks.

An open letter to Harry Potter J-E-V

"One hundred and thirty-four thousand healings per year."

Utterly optimistic. You don't have nearly enough competent healers to operate around the clock in this fashion. It would take time and LOTS of problems to organise. 10 healings per day IF you are VERY lucky in that enterprise, . And as soon as Gringotts know where the tons of extra gold come from, they'll find a sure way to stop it and to hell with the Stone.

And if you don't have the power to save everyone - and you don't have the power to save even all the British wizards, you don't, the single Stone is patently not enough - you are then forced to choose. This one over that one. True, the wizards seems tough, immune to diseases and prone to die only either of old age or in battle or testing new spells/skills. True, they don't have many children (by the way, if they are suddenly immortal, even for some unreal reason the Stone is enough to keep them all immortal, there go your future children. Because you can't increase your total numbers beyond the Stone's capacity), but still, there are a lot of wizards in the world.

So, who is to live and who is to die? Medics in the situation of scarce recourses do have to play god and triage and decide, but it's not a job for everyone and are you willing to delegate that?

Also, you can't give it to Muggles (all 7 billion of us, yeah, how many healings per year again?) because we Muggles might think of bad things to do with the Stone? First of all, a simple Obliviation takes care of that. Second of all, you yourself propose to introduce more Muggle Studies in the Hogwarts curriculum, how do you keep other WIZARDS from thinking the bad dangerous things to do with the Stone? A Muggle can think of quarks? Can't a wizard read? What about Draco who is fascinated by Muggle sciences? What about someone, anyone else who is ever so slightly interested?

And I am still waiting for the explanation as to how you'd acquired all the magical talent to manipulate the nanotubes into nooses. A partial transfiguration is a mighty thing, but you'd demonstrated that you don't possess a natural talent as Hermione clearly did. You should have had to train to manipulate such nooses, train for months if not years considering your young age and declared dependence of magical strength on the age.

I can't see the final arc as rational.

awesome

Judging by some characters from JKR's non-HP stories, she may be already familiar with HPMOR or at least be favorably disposed. Reviewers who thinks EY is out of line - you are wrong, regardless of the above.
My hope for the next chapter is that Sirius is alive, innocent and not a Pettigrew. He was a sympathetic character ITB (bulling being a Griffindor trait and general arrogance that of Noble House) and it doesn't kill this story to keep him.

I'm surprised that no one so far has commented that the line of merlin had no reaction as distinct from the visceral reaction when Harry grasped the elder wand. We know that Bones was concerned at a lack of reaction and that Voldemort hasn't been killed, only transfigured. Moreover, we've also been handed an explanation for how the elder wand could recognise Harry on a platter.
From the notes we know that Harry lasts until his seventh year, but what might be the effects if the line of merlin is broken

I feel like he's going to have to pull some sort of Merlin and "turn off" transfiguration so that nobody blows up physics. Which of course would be a problem with the Stone... hm...

Adding another small off-topic comment about fat cells - there is already a well-known solution that kills fat cells and removes them from the body, called lyposuction. If it doesn't produce the desired results - then simply killing fat cells shouldn't be much different.

"He thought he could see the shape now of the immediate future, could see it stretching out before him like a golden pathway lit with sunlight."

For some reason this reminds me of Leto Atreides II and his Golden Path.
Amazing chapter. Really.

The chapter was good, but all I could think about last night was your author's note rather than your words.
WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!
You (or at the very least your model of Quirrel) MUST have realized how it would cause people to react? Claiming that you (low status fanfic author) have made fiction so great it should be made into a movie and you put in contact with the highest status people (fandom gods)? And implying that your characters are so intelligent that this means you can manage millions and should be put in contact with a billionaire?
Do you realize the harm this does to you?

After an enjoyable chapter, the self-aggrandizing nature of your latest author notes left a bad taste in my mouth. I think you're just aiming too high, grabbing for too much. I guess I don't really blame you. I might try it, too, in your position. We must all capitalize upon the opportunities with which we are presented. But just because you wrote a long and amusing take on the Harry Potter tale, it does not follow that you ought to be given the keys to the kingdom. (Or introduction to influential people. Or money to fund your other ideas.)

I am not sure how keeping the statue of secrecy helps in long term. There are several problems with that:
1) Statue of secrecy is temporary - science, methods of surveillance, methods of collecting and analysing data keep improving every year. There are also muggleborns - while Hogwarts systems seems designed to destroy family bonds and any ties with their former lives, it is not perfect. It is inevitable that sooner or later it will fall
2) Providing perfect health and immortality to all magical creatures, but throwing muggles under the bus? If anything it will make wizard attitudes against muggles (and by extension muggleborn) much worse. And from moral standpoint - Harry talked a good talk when trying to convince Voldie to be 'good', but when it comes to doing something about it, he is just as much a wizard supremacist.
3) Since status of secrecy fall is inevitable and there won't be any preparation, it will lead to total war for sure. After all how several billion muggles will feel about small race of immortal beings, who could have cured all illnesses, but decided to now? From utilitarian muggles' standpoint wiping out wizards to the last one, as long as it gets them the philospher's stone is even moral one - it is after all trading hundreds of thousands (maybe) lives for billions
4) How exactly statue of secrecy prevents some enterprising muggleborn from transmuting some up quarks anyway?

I just wanted to write the strongest praise I know for this, which is the following: if I could wipe reading this from my memory to read it again for the first time, I would.

From what we know of dementors, wouldn't it be sufficient to tell everyone that Azkaban was closed, and that the dementors would cease to exist within hours if [condition] was met?

Holy fuuuuuck!

I'm -really- starting to understand how this magickal system works. Since time is an illusion of change, shouldn't someone like Harry be able to bring back Dumbledore from the mirror trap just as he's able to partially transfigure, by imagining it abstractly and deeply enough?

I don't suppose the Phoenix's egg room will contain a cryogenically preserved Narcissa Malfoy.

I do suppose Harry will try to use the Stone to un-inferius an inferius, presumably the dog first because it's non-human. Since he will be successfull, he will of course save the centaurs from whatever happens to people who are bitten or otherwise killed by an inferius, at least if it's contagious and not just regular death at the hands of an undead.

(This ought to help solve some of the "possible future" problems that Harry has. I could just hear the centaur thinking, while being shot at with Killing Curses, "oh no, we're in this one!".)

They can always tell the stray Squibbs about the Big Secret, right? If Harry's theory of a magical chromosome is correct, at least.

Dragon Army! I get it!

I guess I'm the only one who's thinking of how quickly the hospital is going to fill up, how ugly people are going to become in the face of immortality, how utterly chaotic the entire world (countries: politics, politics, politics) is going to become, and how, riding on the wave of glory coupled with complete anarchy and disaster, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres shall remake the world in the way he deems fit. Oh jeeze, it's 2012 all over again!

Regarding the investment/project ideas, I'm going to echo concerns raised by previous posters. I am not confident that these ideas have been sufficiently thought through.

Specifics:

- Robotic vehicle fleets in _non_ conforming environments have been an area of active research for a while now. Robotic vehicle fleets in _conforming_ environments are already in service in factories, if I understand correctly. This is a well-studied problem, and a literature search and patent search will turn up a list of approaches that have been shown to be useful and a list of places/situations where they are currently being used.

- The problem with pharmaceuticals in the US and EU isn't regulation - the regulation was sorely needed, as there are strong financial pressures to let side effects be discovered after the fact. Thalidomide is the usual case study for this, but I'm sure there have been more recent cases. The actual difficulty is twofold: First, funding for pharmaceutical research is primarily profit-driven, so research on conditions that aren't profitable to treat (due to rarity or for some other reason) are de-prioritized. Second, studies of effectiveness are primarily paid for by profit-driven funding, with the result that they are rewarded for positive reports rather than accurate reports. The most widely-publicized workaround I've heard of is prematurely terminating any study with initial results that are negative, and only reporting the studies with positive results (which will be present due to statistical variation even for ineffective treatments). I'm sure there are many more forms of shennanigans happening as well. Workarounds are more regulation (forcing studies to report results whether or not they were completed) and/or decoupling of funding and outcome (university research conducted at arm's length rather than sponsored research).

Resolving these difficulties would require legislation that costs large corporations money, so don't hold your breath.

- Killing fat cells would result in large numbers of dead cells in the body. That is not healthy (to put it mildly). I'm puzzled as to why you consider messing with metabolism to be a worse solution. Why _shoudn't_ we manipulate the mechanisms that tell us when to feel hungry, if we can figure out how to do so? And why do you dismiss all such approaches as "futile" out-of-hand?

- As has been pointed out, we already have movable houses - they're called "mobile homes", and hook into more-or-less standardized power/water/sewage hookups in trailer parks. Larger units are constructed from multiple trailers (typically two side-by-side with the internal partition removed). Other variants of this involve buying used shipping containers for pennies on the dollar and turning them into houses or storefronts or what-have-you (this is widely done, as selling them at their destination is often more cost effective than shipping them back).

Modular architecture in general was studied extensively several decades ago. For the cost-effective variants, look up "pre-fab housing". I presume you're looking for something applicable to the developing world rather than the first world; to see what works well there, look at what the residents are already doing.

- Regarding quad-copters with lasers, building a system that is resistant to accidents and abuse is a monumental challenge. A fixed laser emplacement that is not capable of firing below head height would be a safer variant. It would still be overkill, though. We already have an area-denial system for insects: it's called mosquito netting. We also have many ways of dealing with the small number of bugs that make it inside the netting (fans, flypaper, bug zappers, and bug coils come to mind, and I'm sure there are more). Consult camping enthusiasts and volunteers who visit tropical areas for more information. When in doubt, a simpler solution is probably both cheaper and more reliable.

- Regarding cryptocurrencies... you seem to be trying to do several things at once. Using cryptographic keys _as_ currency is a neat idea, though it has its vulnerabilities that are nontrivial to circumvent. Trying to implement something like bitcoin, on the other hand, is a terrible idea. Fiat currencies have only the value that consumer confidence gives them. This is normally achieved by having an organization back them; government-issued currencies are backed by the government's ability to tax and the government's ability to control the size of the money supply, store points are backed by the parent company's assets, and so forth. Bitcoin was backed by warm fuzzies and wishful thinking. The result was a speculative bubble which then collapsed. The backing used for your currency experiment is important.

Generalities:

- If an idea would be profitable, you can safely assume that someone's tried a variant of it. Most likely many variants have been tried. The very first thing to do, before planning further, is to see what was tried, what worked/didn't work, and why it didn't catch on.

- If an idea would solve/mitigate an important problem, you can safely assume that variants of it have been proposed before (along with other mitigation/solution approaches you haven't thought of). A comprehensive review of these proposals is once again the very first thing to do before going past the idea stage. It will turn up considerations that you've missed and will provide the set of ideas against which your proposal will be compared.

Long story short, any time a person comes up with a Really Good Idea, the rational response is _suspicion_ about that idea, because most of the time there are show-stopping problems that aren't immediately obvious.

I really want an omake for all the fan-submitted solutions to The Final Exam, with your "bad ending" in there somewhere but with no indication of which one it is.

Ascend you to merely an angel? Dear lord, I bet the powers that be will ascend you to Dark Lord more than anything.

im severly disapointed in how free and easy you made the stones abilites work that easy.

jsut wondering but did no one ever THINK THAT with the stone in the hands of century old wizards.. the IDEA of it being able to DO the immortality transformation diddnt even come to their minds? in the books it was a complicated POTION that was entirely reliant on a complicated processes that was severly time intensive that you ahd to constantly use.

ah well still like how everyone is turning into true elves... and now jsut ahve to get worried aobu the murdering.

bit disapointed int he constnat science only advances when you let monsters run amok learning stuff then you kill them and take their reasurch and use it... that jsut...

hmm cute little reversial on the magic and transforming thing. only seeing as Tonks is directly related to Sirius.. it REALLY makes far mroe sense for Sirius to have had the ability.

Harry's pet rock dying was ESSENTIAL TO THE WORLD NOT ENDING? XD
Also, "For it was said once that you might need to raise your hand against your mentor, the one who made you, who you loved;" I hope you're pleased that I'm screaming in agony.
Also also, in regards to your author's notes: With respect, Mr. Yudkowsky, I'm quite sure I don't know what you're plotting. Unless - this is just a guess, mind - you're trying to take over the world?

Intriguing chapter! Albums was certainly an ambitious old coot. I wonder if Harry will one day free him to show him his new world.

I would LOVE this story to be made into a Film..

This is one of the best storyline (book) I ever read in my 53 years... :))))))

I love the podcast so I can hear the characters.. but could not wait for all this to be on the podcast.. heard it will take until next December to all be put on audio..

Thank you for bringing so much Rationality into a story..

emma e. emerson :))) of nyc.

It's Remus Lupin's birthday. For the record.

I went over to the author's note and looked at some of those 'angel investing' ideas. This is more about the author than it is about the story, but:

Yudkowsky's background is as an AI researcher and quite widely read general-issue nerd. He is quite intelligent and very committed to thinking in ways that are both logical and unconventional.

BUT.

At times like this, it is worth reflecting that there are most likely important areas of science and engineering that he simply doesn't know very much about. Where 'they say it can't be done' not because they aren't good Bayesian rationalists, but because they know physical facts about the world that *strongly* influence their priors.

There are areas where Yudkowsky harbors views that ring my alarm bells for "he thinks this because of important facts he lacks the background to know," but where I myself do not have the requisite background, and would not presume to speak of them, in matters such as economics.

However, if by *some means,* Yudkowsky finds himself in a position to actually invest serious time and money into schemes like the ones listed in his author's note... He would be very well advised to either listen carefully to actual experts in the relevant fields before spending that serious time and money.

For example, the 'movable modular house' idea... Ultimately, that already exists, and it's called a mobile home. Most people don't live in mobile homes if they can help it. Making minor modifications to how a mobile home *works* (such as making it larger and assembling it from multiple modules) isn't going to change the basic dynamic.

And if even I can point this out, it seems likely that a real, professional real estate expert or architect will have other, more penetrant comments to make on why Yudkowsky shouldn't spend much time or effort trying to make modular movable houses a reality.

Likewise, drone helicopters that shoot 'pest' bugs... Let's just say I'm pretty sure that is not a thing-Harry-Potter-would-do. Not if Harry Potter had taken an Unbreakable Vow to take no chances with causing total destruction of major ecosystems.

Regarding A/N: I don't believe there is going back from holding yourself to higher standards. It's not really done for other people - you just start imagining better text and can't help but try to live up to it. 'tis a curse of all budding writers.
Some break down and stop writing. Others continue to plow on. With weight of standards on their back.

By the way, writing good erotica is hard actually. Better stylists than you tried and failed at writing porn.

- you could write series of books of reasonable format, or, should we say, "seasons". Once you've finished a season, you can release it in on schedule. Than a hiatus while you write second season.

I must say, I laughed for a full minute straight when you said that Amelia Bones was "beef jerkey given form". That sounded like something out of "Wizard People, Dear Reader", and I freaking loved it.

Great improvement over the last few chapters. Tbh, the last few chapters could have probably been covered without giving more than a paragraph to each one. None of them seemed important enough to the plot to give any time to (although they were important to the characters, but you can show that without giving a whole chapter).

What I am learning from this story is that FAI is a serious problem, and that what I must do about it is to smash all the Pet Rocks I find.

Thank you for all the joy and happiness your work gives!
This chapter was like a second New Year!

Someone mentioned the rape jokes,.. I think this adds realism to the text. Imho, they should stay in the text, as some sad part of reality. (One of my best friends was raped, so this is not some hollow talk).

"I want an omake of Auror Nobbs and Auror Colon investigation.
PLEASE." [2]

I really didn't get the

Beep. Tick. Whirr. Ding. Poot.
Splat. Boing. Splat. Splat.

Perhaps I'm stupid but I just didn't get it. Why would Moody, Minerva and Bones just accept what Harry said without further questions. "So you did defeat Voldy. Fine, to the next topic.."

Great chapter!
Hope they don't forget Sirius in Azkaban...

Are you planning on ever releasing a print version of this? I'd love to have something that I can physically annotate and that I can read without having to look at a screen.

So. 6 billion muggles thinking about how to do strange Transfigurations (but without any capabilities to actually perform them) will lead to the inevitable destruction of the world, but tens of thousands of wizards - who are now *immortal* and have infinite time to stumble upon Muggle science, and who can actually do Transfigurations - thinking about it is perfectly safe? And about two second before that, he even proposed adding advanced Muggle Studies classes, and never revoked that. (And on a side note, before he thinks about adding advanced Muggle Studies, how about getting someone competent to teach basic Muggle Studies first? Because right now their best minds don't know the difference between a rocker and a rocket.)

But I think the decision to not implement #4 may have saved the world in another way altogether. What do you think happens when it is announced that magic exists and that wizards have the key to immortality, but they can only heal 134K people or things per year and wizards get priority? That's less than 1% of the world's population that could get access to something that practically everyone would want. War, or even nuclear war, breaking out would not be farfetched in that scenario.

Rational mind or not - Harry's going to be a case study for physchologists for the next gazillion years ...

Yet we still have no answers as to why Dumbledore set fire to a chicken.
Also, I got confused at first when Amelia Bones was referred to as the "old witch" while McGonagall (whom I've always pictured as the older one) was in the room.
And how did they get their hands on the rod and wand in the first place? Last time we saw the two objects, Dumbledore had thrown them and I assumed Voldemort would have picked them up.
But still, excellent chapter, with Harry back to his old self in top form (not that I didn't like the past couple chapters, but there wasn't much of the payoff that everyone's been craving like starved dementors). I laughed my head off at Hermione's diagnosis and I screamed when I realized what Dumbledore did to Harry's pet rock and I got choked up at Dumbledore's completely wrong assumption he'd be the fallen mentor Harry loved. Basically, all the feels, for the win.

A long time ago, I argued that the prophecies couldn't be real, because it would legitimize for your readers the notion that the people who accomplish great things are imbued with an aura of destiny. Surely you wouldn't want to teach that lesson, when you've been the victim of that irrational habit of thought in your professional life? But now I see that your Mary Sue story was actually a cunning plot to manufacture an aura of destiny for yourself. HPMOR is your prophecy. Well played, Chosen One.

Amelia Bones: "Are you the true holder of the Line of Merlin Unbroken?"
Harry: "Yes."
Amelia Bones: "You cannot be Dumbledore's heir! Your hesitancy has told me that you are weak and unused to bargaining, and will probably fold if I push back."
Harry: "No, I won't"
Amelia: "Yes, you will."
Harry: "No, I won't"
Amelia: "Yes, you will."
Harry: "No, I won't"
Amelia: "Yes, you will."
Harry: "Yes, I will."
Amelia: "No, you won't."
Harry: "OK, then."
Amelia: "Very well, you are now on double-secret probation as Chief Warlock."
Moody: "Crap"

...
Surely you knew what people's reactions would be to to those last few lines of author note!
Many won't recognize the joke and will see this as an unimaginably high status claim, the pinnacle of arrogance! It makes it harder to treat you seriously or to recommend this work to others.

Hey, you asked for people to put you in touch with Rowling and/or Radcliffe, and I know that at least Jo is busy on twitter and often replies to people. Send her a tweet

I'm in tears. Wow. Everything just came together. Just like that.

Wow...

Albus was really a dark wizard. He did not only set a chicken on fire... he kill Harry's pet rock!

Yet another great chapter.

Awesome.

Oh and of course, I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours

Aww-you killed off my favorite Dr. Who! :)

Very intricately tied together, all these plot threads! You are truly a master plotter, Less Wrong!

I am curious why you chose to exonerate Peter Pettigrew and make Sirius Black a real baddie. Guess he's not Harry's godfather after all.

Why can't the Philosopher's Stone itself be duplicated by transfiguration, maybe using it as a template to change some raw material into a perfect copy of the Philosopher's Stone? Then all humanity could be healed and rejuvenated. The original could be used to make all the copies permanent.

But then, what about the rest of the universe? Aren't there intelligent beings out there, some of them magic-wielding? Might not someone out there take exception to what Harry is doing, or to Harry's mere ability to destroy the universe?

Oh man, I cried when I read Dumbledore's letters-I didn't even get that emotional for the actual series. That was just too sad and beautiful.
The problems with people not noticing were wrapped up well too.

If I had one, and one singular problem, it would be Evil-Sirius and Good-Pettigrew, because I quite liked Sirius Black's original character and can't quite imagine him joining Voldie, so I hope there's still some remaining twist there.

Unfortunately I can't help with any of the requests at the bottom, but this was an amazing story-pretty much by now on the same level, maybe even higher than, the original HP, and I'm going to miss it so much when it ends. There's never been a better fan work, and probably never will be.

Regarding the Authors note, my proposed solution to both obstacles 1 and 2 is to start writing under a new pen name.

While you will lose many readers - especially in the short term - you will gain freedom to write whatever grabs your fancy with less external pressure.

I shall keep an eye out for new fiction authored by Skyzer

The mirror can survive the world's destruction.

People can go inside the mirror.

History repeats itself, eh?

Wonder what Harry will say to the Atlanteans - unless they are us, in a massive time loop, with the Mirror the real turner, the only constant apex of reality.

The motherboard of the Matrix.

Great chapter.

I think not trusting the Elder Wand is a key piece of information. The past master is a stone on the current master's finger. If it is not to be trusted, there is a good deal of room for error here.

"Tiny points" inside the stone souls aka FMA?

I love this fanfiction, every chapter gives me a headache as I try to understand all the Harry thinks

Meaty

There is a charm to detect where a person's soul is located and Dumbledore DIDN'T MENTION IT when he was trying to prove to Harry that souls are real! HOW COULD DUMBLEDORE BE THAT...

Black Death is a bacterium, yersinia pestis. Maybe you were thinking of smallpox?

Purrr...
that was a good chapter.
Awesome, in fact.
I'm trying and failing to imagine what some one looks like after being repeatedly hit in the face with a planet.

About the ideas your authors' note:

All-robotic car fleets (cars that operate in environments where only other conforming robotic cars are around).

- Not a bad idea, but not in my opinion a high-leverage one for changing the world. For instance, not really related to FAI.

Cheaper pharmaceutical research and development outside of the US and European regulatory regimes.

- As a statistician, I can agree that the current regulatory regimes are not on the pareto front of ethics and statistical efficiency. But this is not at all an easy problem. It would take some real work to figure out better protocols, with some risk of screwing up; and then you have to actually use the protocols to develop drugs, which is yet more expensive and risky; and then you have to use and/or sell those drugs, which means either avoiding the US and Europe or going back to the current regulatory bodies and getting them to agree you've done your homework.

Financialization of venture capital using non-US equity laws or cryptoequities.

- No comment. I'm not an expert in this area.

Assaults on obesity that involve directly killing fat cells, rather than futile attempts to mess with the surrounding metabolic processes.

- I'm not an expert in this area, but wow, I can think of a lot of ways this one could go wrong, and basically zero ways to ensure you'd see those problems coming before going a long way in the wrong direction.

Movable houses that can be shifted between modularly designed house-foundations.

- I am reasonably confident that this is a silly idea; that is, that even if all the hurdles could be overcome (which is a big "if"), its appeal to EY would still be way higher than its appeal to the average person.

Trying to convince an otherwise residable country with available land to create a special district with econoliterate tax and finance laws (e.g., consumption taxes and land value taxes rather than capital-gains taxes and sales taxes, legal cryptofinance).

- Magic wand solutions in economics have a bad track record. Not that these are bad ideas, but that the devil is in the details, and the details are never done in the ideal manner.

Cryptocurrencies that incorporate some form of inflation targeting or NGDP level targeting.

- This is the best idea so far IMO. But... a lot of the cryptocurrency enthusiasm that allowed Bitcoin to take off (at least, as far as it did) came from goldbuggery. Deliberately swimming against this current is going to be hard. I wish you the best of luck.

Continuously audited bank accounts.

- I don't even really know what this means.

Quadcopters armed with anti-mosquito lasers, especially if the same system is adaptable to target wasps/hornets/etcetera and other pests.

- Several points. This is a temporary fix because mosquitos would evolve to evade these. If you actually work out what a bunch of these would cost, it's not actually very cheap I think. Wasps are good for the ecosystem; they kill agricultural pests. Generally, seems like a giant boondoggle or worse.

...

Generally, seeing this list slightly decreases my estimate of EY's awesomeness, which was "slightly awesom" before seeing this list (if the average person is 0 and Elon Musk is 6 then EY would rate between 1 and 2). And that is true even though the mere courage to post this list is positive net awesomeness.

I think the pharmaceutical one and the cryptocurrency one are the best ideas, and the robot ones might also be fun. But in terms of the pharmaceutical one, Bayesian dogmatism, to the level where you can't find what's valid in points made by non-Bayesians, is not a good place to start. (Whereas it might be a great place to start for the robot ones.)

You passed up two chances to save Malfoy? Tch.

And of course it's 1991, so Harry can't have seen Torchwood: Miracle Day...

"If anyone can put me in touch with J. K. Rowling or Daniel Radcliffe, I would appreciate it."

I think you'd better remove the rape jokes first, or that meeting will be "Edward Nygma Meets Bruce Wayne".

Loving this - one thing that seems rather obvious though is that Harry will have to see about space travel and colonisation in this potential future if he's going to start saving even just every witch and wizard from now on. Overpopulation is already a problem without adding immortality-granting-devices to the situation. I love how Voldemort's defeat was just the beginning while Voldemort saw himself as never ending and the most important one of all.

Bwahaha, Aurors Colon and Nobbs...
Excellent update, one of my favourite chapters yet.

Oh dear... Harry, you will need the best experts at Transfiguration inside the hospital. Stone can make Transfiguration permanent; Stone cannot Transfigure. And Minerva isn't going to cope with this alone. And, Stone-Transfiguration doesn't cure mental-health problems. And, make sure Bellatrix is not dead.
Thank you. Good day, good night, and good luck.

I wonder if you got tired of all of our ecstatic reviews... Hm, maybe you don't even read them... Anyway. This chapter is unbelievably good and I'm really impressed at every word of it. Thank you very much for your talent and the time you take to share it with us!

I love the Dumbledore bit. A rational explanation for his many seemingly insane and inane acts. THe reactions to Harry's defence of Dumbledore's sanity were just delightful.

This is ... better than bloody brilliant! Though I think you may have divulged too much of your long game, I really like the direction this is going in. It's turning out better than I had even hoped.

Eliezer Yudkowsky is my new favorite author. Well, he's been so for some time but I haven't said it out loud before. This blending of sci-fi thinking with a fantasy palette of possibilities has been the most rewarding reading I've done since the mid-1990s.

The story is making no sense anymore...

I want an omake of Auror Nobbs and Auror Colon investigation.
PLEASE.

Just send Hermione a Patronus. No need to freak about her going to Azkaban.

"Hey, Herm, chill. Tour the world with Tzar (or whatever you name it as you Follow the Phoenix). Just don't go to Azkaban. It's being shut down, and we can kill the Dementors together on our honeymoon. Talk soon."

And, if you can resurrect people, start with Merlin, then the Peverell brothers, then *maybe* Flamel, then any great headmaster you can talk to via portrait, then David Monroe for god sakes, then your parents, and *maybe* Lucious. Hermione can direct research for spell components; you can get bone fragments and grow them, and make blood of enemies from their DNA.

If Phoenixes came out of the mirror, and it's a perfect reflection, they can go into it. Go in, grab Dumbledore. 50/50 shot; worth a try.

Speaking of the mirror building alternate realities, how about you clone the world, destroy it safely, and leave Earth in one piece?

May as well pull out warp drive, additional stones, a phoenix (if they'll only come to you "normally" once), giant jugs of phoenix tears (to save / accelerate stone work) and JK Rowling to break the fourth wall and co-author the next 7 books.

Then, O Savior of the Mirror, please bring us:

X-men
Mutant powers
Flight without broomstick enchantments
Kind ETs
Good AI
Perfect nanotech controlled by the good AI that allows people to do/eat whatever and be fine
Perfect security
Magic that can pierce the 4th wall and make our world magical
A horcrux finder-and-destroyer
A Voldemort-personality-modifier
Robin Williams with the unicorn troll powers
Joan Rivers with the same
Alexander the Great
King Tut

And gurl, gimme a sammich!

I feel you could begin a whole new story with all the nuggets and potential plot lines in this chapter. The start of a whole new era... Thanks for the update..

Oooooh... Yeah... That's the fix I needed.

Auror Nobbs and Auror Colon, eh?
Does it mean that not only us, lucky Roundworld-dwellers, get to live forever? Does it mean that The-Boy-Who-Will-Live-And-Live is going to immortalize Discworlders (and everyone else across the Multiverse for that matter?) I wonder what Discworld's Death has to say about it... Surely not HO HO HO?

(Great chapter though. A bit wet with all that sobbing, but still great)

winning the final battle might have been hard, but its childs play compared to running the wizarding world in the aftermath: its good to see that the stone is being put to good use

The most straight forward way to transfigure something into all up quarks would be to convert all of the protons and neutrons to delta particles which have quark content uuu. The delta's will promptly decay into protons and pi particles. The nuclei will not survive the coulomb repulsion between the resulting protons, let alone the possible kinetic energy that will be released during the delta decay, and the nuclei will fission. Over a slightly longer time scale, if some of the nuclear fragments still persist, some protons will decay int neutrons and positrons, or absorb an electron to become a neutron.

It will still be a smaller boom than if you converted the proton and neutrons intro anti-protons and anti-neutrons.

Good chapter! Respectable length!

Can't wait to see Hermione's reaction to all this.

Huh. I still don't get what the pet rock was for.

So the way Dumbledore talked about it, it seems like most prophecies work on if/then conditions or something. Otherwise he could hardly have averted some of them. Or are prophecies avertable in this world after all? How does that work?

I'm extremely put out that we never got to hear all these prophecies beforehand, this way it just feels like a convenient excuse for all of Dumbledore's erratic actions. A hand wave in trope speak.

Heh. Hoping to get Hermione a phoenix are we? Clever boy. Though I wonder what requires Hermione to know about her new immortal unicorn status in one weak.

I don't get at all why Harry is being so secretive about the whole Voldi/David thing. At first I thought he was worried that Amelia & co. would take the stone and lock it away if they found out he had it, and so he had to construct a story that gave him no opportunity to get near the stone. As he has just now revealed that he has the stone, that was obviously not the case. So why lie about it? The more information your allies have, the better. If he's worried about partial transfiguration getting out he can just tell them that he took down Voldi with some special power that should stay secret, they'll understand. Mcgonagall already knew anyway. I really really hope he isn't doing it to honour Tom's memory or something similarly idiotic.

I wonder why the hell Dumbledore believed the stone couldn't go public? I'd have thought it to be due to his anti-immortality obsession, but Harry doesn't seem to agree.

I note that we still don't know what happened to Draco's mom (though I suspect we'll find out very soon), we still don't know what Quirrel's backup plan was in case Harry went to the headmaster in the middle of the year and started talking about the feeling of doom, and we still don't know what the fuck happened in the third floor corridor, or why Quirrel didn't just ask for Harry's help fetching the stone.

Now the story is getting interesting! New trials and challenges outside of cannon for Harry to deal with are always welcome. I look forward to your next chapter.

I'm really hoping for a distant ending. Like, one taking place a few thousand years in the future.

Hot damn, ten outta ten, possibly the best chapter in the entire novel. I think you're being hilariously optimistic about everything in your A/N though.

Merlin's most worn out jizz-stained undergarments!

I have no idea whatsoever how I could ever have doubted your mad writing skillz. Kudos.

Now excuse me while I go piece together my recently blown mind.

I heard the shout out to Nobbs and Colon!
Terry Pratchett! Awesomeness!

Overall, I am still utterly amazed by this story.

Nice! I am glad that Harry stopped himself before going to fourth. The possibilities are terrifying

"Beep. Tick. Whirr. Ding. Poot" Excellent chapter - excellent 119 chapters! Bravo!

So *that's* how you're going to wrap everything up in five chapters . . . If I find a way to have this story printed nicely, it's going on my shelves between Vinge and Zelazny. Just thought you ought to know.

Now that is what the heck I'm talking about!

Assume that each use of the Stone removes 50 years. It takes 3:44 to use. 50 years is 50*365*24*60*601576800000 seconds. 3:44 is 224 seconds. The ratio is 7039286 (approx.). In other words, the Stone can on average remove 7039286 seconds of aging per second of time. Almost the entire world population could stop aging, but since Harry cannot do that without revealing magic, all of the worlds magic users and magical beings can be restored continuously and still have other times to use the Stone.

Uh. Wellllllllll. Aim for the stars, man.

Godspeed.

I really like where this is going! :)
I hope you win the award! This amazing story deserves it! :)

It is very interesting seeing someone use fanfiction to promote a research institute, or casually ask for introductions to influential people such as JKR and Daniel Radcliff, or prospects of anime or movie. Also, a little strange, considering the audience... using the popularity of a fanfic for such reasons seems ethically grey. But then again, people use social media for such things, and online communities could (broadly) be part of that.

On the content side of your story.. .actually, I stopped reading a while ago. I need to remember to push unsubscribe...

best of luck to you, writer and entrepreneur, you.