trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Chapter 68: Self Actualization, Pt 3
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:45.312Z

Hermione wasn't feeling very nice right now, or Good either, there was a hot ball of anger burning inside her and she wondered if this was something like Harry's darkness (though it probably wasn't even close) and she shouldn't have felt that way over some silly little game but -

Her whole army. Two soldiers had beaten her whole army. That was what she'd been told after she woke up.

It was a little too much.

"Well," Professor Quirrell said. From up close the Defense Professor didn't look quite as healthy as he had the last time she'd been in his office; his skin looked paler, and he moved a little slower. His expression was as stern as ever, and his gaze as penetrating; his fingers tapped sharply on his desk, rap-rap. "I would guess that of the three of you, only Mr. Malfoy has guessed why I've asked you here."

"Something to do with Noble and Most Ancient Houses?" said Harry from beside her, sounding puzzled. "I didn't violate some kind of crazy law by firing on Daphne, did I?"

"Not quite," the man said with heavy irony. "Since Miss Greengrass did not invoke the correct dueling forms, she is not entitled to demand that you be stripped of your House name. Although of course I would not have permitted a formal duel. Wars do not respect such rules." The Defense Professor leaned forward and rested his chin on steepled hands, as though sitting upright had already tired him. His eyes gazed at them, sharp and dangerous. "General Malfoy. Why did I call you here?"

"General Potter against the two of us isn't a fair fight anymore," Draco Malfoy said in a quiet voice.

"What?" blurted Hermione. "We almost had them, if Daphne hadn't fainted -"

"Miss Greengrass did not faint from magical exhaustion," Professor Quirrell said dryly. "Mr. Potter shot her in the back with a Sleep Hex while your soldiers were distracted by the sight of their general flying into a wall. But congratulations nonetheless, Miss Granger, on almost defeating two Chaotic Legionnaires with a mere twenty-four Sunshine Soldiers."

The blood flaming in her cheeks grew a little hotter. "That - that was just - if I'd only figured out he was wearing armor -"

Professor Quirrell gazed at her from over touched fingers. "Of course there are ways you could have won, Miss Granger. There always are, in every lost battle. The world around us redunds with opportunities, explodes with opportunities, which nearly all folk ignore b

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Chapter 58: TSPE, Constrained Cognition, Pt 8
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:45.244Z

A/N: A movie trailer for Army of Darkness, resembling the one Harry saw, is THV1KkPXIxQ on YouTube.

The key quote is as follows, spoken by a man of modern times to listeners from the Middle Ages:

"All right you primitive screwheads! Listen up! You see this? This... is my boomstick!"

In darkness absolute, a boy stood holding his wand to the solid metal wall of Azkaban, essaying a magic that only three other people in the world would have believed possible, and that none save he alone could wield.

Of course a powerful wizard could've cut through the wall in seconds, with a gesture and a word.

For an average adult it might have been a matter of a few minutes' work, and afterward they would have been winded.

But to accomplish the same end as a first-year Hogwarts student, you had to be efficient.

Luckily - well, not luckily, luck had nothing to do with it - conscientiously, Harry had practiced Transfiguration for an extra hour every day, to the point where he was ahead of even Hermione in that one class; he'd practiced partial Transfiguration to the point where his thoughts had begun taking the true universe for granted, so that it required only slightly more effort to keep its timeless quantum nature in mind, even as he kept a firm mental separation between the concept of Form and the concept of substance.

And the problem with that art having become so routine...

...was that Harry could think about other things while he was doing it.

Somehow his thoughts had managed to not go there, to not confront the obvious, until he was faced with the prospect of really actually doing it in just a few minutes.

What Harry was about to do...

...was dangerous.

Really dangerous.

Someone-might-actually-genuinely-get-killed dangerous.

Facing down twelve Dementors without a Patronus Charm had been scary, but merely scary. Harry could have cast the Patronus Charm, would have cast it as soon as he thought he was in danger of not being able to do so, as soon as he felt his resistance beginning to fail. And even if that hadn't worked... even so, unless the Dementors had been instructed to Kiss anyone they found, failure shouldn't have been fatal.

This was different.

The Transfigured Muggle device could explode and kill them.

The interface between the technology and the magic could fail in any number of ways and kill them.

The Aurors could get in a lucky shot.

It was just, well...

Seriously dangerous.

Harry

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Chapter 113: Final Exam
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:42.654Z

The gibbous moon riding higher in the cloudless sky, the stars and wash of the Milky Way visible in all their majesty within the darkness: All these illuminated thirty-seven skull masks gleaming above black robes, and the darker-clad Lord Voldemort, whose eyes shone red.

"Welcome, my Death Eaters," spoke Lord Voldemort's voice, smooth and high and terrible. "No, do not look at me, you fools! Eyes upon the Potter child! Ten years, it has been, ten years since we last met. Yet you answer my call as though it were yesterday..." The Dark Lord Voldemort came near to one hooded figure, tapped fingers upon the mask. "In a hastily Transfigured mockery of a Death Eater's true armor, with a childish Charm to distort your voice. Explain, Mr. Honor."

"Our old masks and robes..." said the robe whose mask the Dark Lord had tapped. Even through the distorting timbre of the mask, the fear in it was audible. "We... we were not fighting in them, Master, with you gone... so I did not maintain their enchantments... and then you summoned me to appear here, masked, and I... I always held faith in you, Master, but I did not know you would return this very day... I am truly sorry to have displeased you..."

"Enough." The Dark Lord moved on to stand behind another figure, that seemed to tremble, though it kept its mask facing the Boy-Who-Lived, and its wand held level. "I might think more kindly of such neglect, if you had pursued my agenda by other means... Mr. Counsel. Yet I return to find - what? A country conquered in my name?" The high voice climbed higher. "No! I find you playing ordinary politics in the Wizengamot! I find your brothers still abandoned in Azkaban! It is a disappointment to me... I confess myself disappointed... You thought I was gone, the Dark Mark dead, and you forsook my purpose. Is that right, Mr. Counsel?"

"No, Master!" cried that masked figure. "We knew you would return - but, but we could not fight Dumbledore without you -"

"Crucio."

A horrible scream tore out of the mask, piercing the night, it continued for long, long seconds.

"Get up," the Dark Lord said to the figure that had collapsed upon the ground. "Keep your wand on Harry Potter. Do not lie to me again."

"Yes, Master," sobbed the figure, as it pushed itself...
Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:42.516Z

Blah blah disclaimer blah blah Rowling blah blah ownership.

A/N: The "Aftermath" section of this chapter is part of the story, not omake.

You think your day was surreal? Try mine.

Some children would have waited until after their first trip to Diagon Alley.

"Bag of element 79," Harry said, and withdrew his hand, empty, from the mokeskin pouch.

Most children would have at least waited to get their wands first.

"Bag of okane," said Harry. The heavy bag of gold popped up into his hand.

Harry withdrew the bag, then plunged it again into the mokeskin pouch. He took out his hand, put it back in, and said, "Bag of tokens of economic exchange." That time his hand came out empty.

"Give me back the bag that I just put in." Out came the bag of gold once more.

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres had gotten his hands on at least one magical item. Why wait?

"Professor McGonagall," Harry said to the bemused witch strolling beside him, "can you give me two words, one word for gold, and one word for something else that isn't money, in a language that I wouldn't know? But don't tell me which is which."

"Ahava and zahav," said Professor McGonagall. "That's Hebrew, and the other word means love."

"Thank you, Professor. Bag of ahava." Empty.

"Bag of zahav." And it popped up into his hand.

"Zahav is gold?" Harry questioned, and Professor McGonagall nodded.

Harry thought over his collected experimental data. It was only the most crude and preliminary sort of effort, but it was enough to support at least one conclusion:

"Aaaaaaarrrgh this doesn't make any sense!"

The witch beside him lifted a lofty eyebrow. "Problems, Mr. Potter?"

"I just falsified every single hypothesis I had! How can it know that 'bag of 115 Galleons' is okay but not 'bag of 90 plus 25 Galleons'? It can count but it can't add? It can understand nouns, but not some noun phrases that mean the same thing? The person who made this probably didn't speak Japanese and I don't speak any Hebrew, so it's not using their knowledge, and it's not using my knowledge -" Harry waved a hand helplessly. "The rules seem sorta consistent but they don't mean anything! I'm not even going to ask how a pouch ends up with voice recognition and natural language understanding when the best Artificial Intelligence programmers can't get the fastest supercomputers to do it after thirty-five years of hard work," Harry gasped for breath, "but what is going on?"

"Mag

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Chapter 76: Interlude with the Confessor: Sunk Costs
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:42.467Z

Rianne Felthorne descended the stairs of roughened stone and crude mortar, keeping a Lumos lit through the distances between fire-sconces, holding aloft her wand through the gaps from light to light.

She came to the empty rock cavern pierced by many dark openings, lit by a torch of ancient style that fired as she entered.

There was no one else there, as yet, and after long minutes of nervous standing, she began the spell to Transfigure a cushioned sofa large enough for two people to sit, or maybe even lie down on. A simple wooden stool would have been easier, she could have done that in fifteen seconds, but - well -

Even when the sofa was fully conjured, Professor Snape still hadn't arrived, and she sat down on the left side of her sofa with her pulse hammering in her throat. Somehow she was only becoming more nervous, not less, as the delay stretched.

She knew this was the last time.

The last time before all these memories went away, and Rianne Felthorne found herself in a mysterious cavern, wondering what was going on.

There was something about it that felt like dying.

The books said a properly done Obliviation wasn't harmful, people forgot things all the time. People dreamed, and then woke up without remembering their dreams. Obliviation didn't even involve that much discontinuity, just a brief instant of disorientation; it was like being distracted by a loud noise and losing track of a thought you couldn't seem to remember afterward. That was what the books said, and why Memory Charms were fully approved by the Ministry for all authorized governmental purposes.

But still, these thoughts, the thoughts she was thinking right now; soon nobody would have them anymore. When she looked ahead in the future, there was nobody to complete the thoughts she wasn't finished thinking. Even if she managed to tie up all the loose ends in her mind over the next minute, there wouldn't be anything left of it afterward. Wasn't that exactly what you would find yourself reflecting on, if you were going to die in the next minute?

There came the sound of muffled steps...

Severus Snape emerged into the cavern.

His eyes moved to her sitting on the sofa, and a strange expression crossed his face; strange because it wasn't sardonic, or angry, or cold.

"Thank you, Miss Felthorne," Snape said quietly, "that was considerate of you." The Potions Master took out his wand and performed the usual pri

...
Chapter 87: Hedonic Awareness
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:42.280Z

Thursday, April 16th, 1992.

The school was almost deserted now, nine-tenths of the students having gone home for the Easter holiday, just about everyone she knew missing. Susan had stayed behind, her grand-aunt being quite busy, as had Ron for reasons she didn't know - maybe the Weasley family was poor enough that feeding all the children for an extra week would've been a noticeable strain? It all worked out well enough, since Ron and Susan were just about the only ones left who'd still talk to her. (At least that she wanted to talk back to. Lavender was still nice to her, and Tracey was, um, Tracey, but neither of them were quite relaxing to spend a free hour around; and in any case, neither of those two had stayed over for the Easter hols.)

If she couldn't go home - and she wasn't allowed to go home, her parents had been lied-to and told she'd had Glowpox - then an almost-empty Hogwarts was the next best thing.

She could even visit the library without people staring at her, since there were no lessons and nobody was trying to do schoolwork.

It would be a mistake to think that Hermione drooped about the corridors weeping all day long. Oh, she'd cried a lot the first two days, of course, but two days had been enough. There were parts of Harry's borrowed books about that, how even people who were paralyzed in car accidents weren't nearly as unhappy as they'd expected to be, six months later, just like lottery winners weren't nearly as happy as they'd expected. People adjusted, their happiness levels went back to their happiness set point, life went on.

A shadow fell over where Hermione was reading her current book and she whirled around, the wand hidden on her lap coming up to point directly at the surprised face of -

"Sorry!" Harry Potter said, hastily holding up his palms to show his left hand empty, and his right hand holding a small red-velvet pouch. "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you."

There was an awful silence, her heartbeat increasing and her palms starting to sweat as Harry Potter just looked at her. She'd almost talked to him, on the first morning of the rest of her life; but when she'd come down to breakfast Harry Potter had looked so awful - so she hadn't sat down beside him at the breakfast-table, just quietly eaten in her own little bubble of nobody else sitting next to her, and it had been horrible, but Harry hadn't come to her, and... she just hadn't

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Chapter 81: Taboo Tradeoffs, Pt 3
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:42.224Z

In rising half-circles of dark stone, a great sea of upraised hands.

The Lords and Ladies of the Wizengamot, in plum-colored robes marked with a silver 'W', stared down in stern rebuke at a young girl trembling in chains. If they had, in any particular ethical system, damned themselves, they clearly thought quite highly of themselves for having done so.

Harry's breath was trembling in his chest. His dark side had come up with a plan - and then rotated itself back out again because speaking too icily would not be to Hermione's advantage; a fact which the only-half-cold Harry had somehow not realized...

"The vote carries, in favor," intoned the secretary, when all the tallying was done, and the upraised hands fell back down. "The Wizengamot recognizes the blood debt owed by Hermione Granger to House Malfoy for the attempted murder of its scion and ending of its line."

Lucius Malfoy was smiling in grim satisfaction. "And now," said the white-maned wizard, "I say that her debt shall be paid -"

Harry clenched his fists beneath the bench and shouted, "By the debt owed from House Malfoy to House Potter!"

"Silence!" snapped the woman in too much pink makeup sitting next to Minister Fudge. "You've disrupted these proceedings quite enough already! Aurors, escort him out!"

"Wait," said Augusta Longbottom from the top tier of seats. "What debt is this?"

Lucius's hands whitened on his cane. "House Malfoy owes no debt to you!"

It wasn't the world's most solid hope, it was based on one newspaper article from a woman who'd been False-Memory-Charmed, but Rita Skeeter had seemed to find it plausible, that Mr. Weasley had allegedly owed James Potter a debt because...

"I'm surprised you've forgotten," Harry said evenly. "Surely it was a cruel and painful period of your life, laboring under the Imperius curse of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, until you were freed of it by the efforts of House Potter. By my mother, Lily Potter, who died for it, and by my father, James Potter, who died for it, and by me, of course."

There was a brief silence within the Most Ancient Hall.

"Why, what an excellent point, Mr. Potter," said the old witch who'd been identified as Madam Bones. "I, too, am quite surprised that Lord Malfoy would forget such a significant event. It must have been such a happy day for him."

"Yes," said Augusta Longbottom. "He must have been so grateful."

Madam Bones nodded. "House Malfoy could

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Chapter 116: Aftermath, Something to Protect, Pt 0
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:41.861Z

At first Anna had been gratified to see the final Quidditch Cup go on so long - as a Gryffindor she was a bystander at the House Cup thing, it wasn't like Gryffindor ever won. In contrast, last year's World Cup of Quidditch, to which her family had bought some very expensive tickets, had been over in ten minutes which was awful. Modern Quidditch games had become too short, the Snitch caught much too quickly. It was a widely-talked problem among aficionados: broomstick enchantments had advanced, while the Snitch stayed the same regulation speed, with the result that Quidditch games had become shorter and shorter. At professional levels the sport of Quidditch had been reduced to a contest of who had the deepest pockets for their Seeker's experimental racing broom, and the rest of the players might as well have been watching from the stands.

Everyone knew something had to be done, the situation had been getting worse for centuries and now it was intolerable. But the International Confederation of Wizards' Quidditch Committee was mired in all the usual acrimony of the I.C.W., screaming disputes between Germans and Bulgarians, and somehow nobody could agree on exactly how to fix the rules. To Anna the correct course seemed obvious, just make the Snitch fast enough to restore the four-hour or five-hour games of the early nineteenth century and the Golden Age of Quidditch. Except the Belgians thought the duration of a professional game should be two hours like in La Belle Époque when Belgium had dominated Quidditch, and the lunatic Italians wanted to go back to the week-long Quidditch games of the fourteenth century, and Britain's even crazier blood purists kept on talking up the occasional day-long Quidditch match as proof that broomsticks couldn't really have improved since everything was better in the old days which was not how the Interdict of Merlin worked.

She was one hundred percent on the side of Harry Potter that it was time for Hogwarts to give up on those gibbering slowpokes and just change the rules, starting here and now. But not by eliminating the Snitch, that was going all the way back to eleventh century Kwidditch. It didn't matter if Headmistress Hufflepuff had first introduced the innovation because one of her students had wanted to play the game but not been suited to the usual roles. Snitches had caught on internationally because it was more excit

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Chapter 96: Roles, Pt 7
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:41.467Z

A/N: For those who have not read canon: The wooden sign has somewhat changed, but the inscription here is the same as in J.K. Rowling's original.

The fourth meeting:
(4:38pm, April 17th, 1992)

The man wearing the worn, warm coat, with three faint scars etched forever into his cheek, observed Harry Potter as closely as he could while the boy looked around politely at the rows of cottages. For someone whose best friend had died yesterday, Harry Potter seemed strangely composed, though not in any way reminiscent of unfeelingness, or normality. I don't wish to talk about that, the boy had said, with you or anyone. Saying 'wish' and not 'want', as though to emphasize that he was able to use grownup words and make grownup decisions. There had been only one thing Remus Lupin had thought of that might help, after he'd received the owls from Professor McGonagall and that strange man Quirinus Quirrell.

"There's a lot of empty houses," the boy said, glancing around again.

Godric's Hollow had changed, in the decade since Remus Lupin had been a frequent visitor. Many of the old, peaked cottages looked deserted, with green leafy vines growing across their windows and their doors. Britain had contracted noticeably, in the aftermath of the Wizarding War, having lost not only the dead but the fled. Godric's Hollow had been hard-hit. And afterward still more families had moved elsewhere, to Hogsmeade or magical London, the deserted houses too uncomfortable a reminder.

Others had remained. Godric's Hollow was older than Hogwarts, older than Godric Gryffindor whose name it had taken, and there were families which would reside here until the end of the world and its magic.

The Potters had been one such family, and would be again, if the last Potter so chose.

Remus Lupin tried to explain all that, simplifying it as best he could for the young boy. The Ravenclaw nodded thoughtfully and said nothing, as though he had understood it all without need of questions. Perhaps that was so; the child of James Potter and Lily Evans, the Head Boy and Head Girl of Hogwarts, would hardly be stupid. The child had certainly seemed highly intelligent, for the little time that they had spoken in January, though at that time Remus had done most of the talking.

(There was also that business with the Wizengamot which Remus had heard rumors about, but Remus didn't believe a single word of that, any more than he...