Oscar_Cunningham comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Unnamed 27 May 2010 12:10AM

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Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 02 June 2010 06:22:51AM 1 point [-]

What kind of evidence would convince you that you were in a story?

Comment author: Nisan 02 June 2010 06:56:37AM 6 points [-]

The events in a story fit into a narrative. If I were in a story, I might be able to make especially accurate predictions by privileging hypotheses that make narrative sense. Dumbledore did this on an intuitive level, and it is the reason for his success.

Comment author: marchdown 27 November 2010 03:02:45AM 0 points [-]

This is basically an attempt to formalize genre savviness.

Comment author: Desrtopa 27 November 2010 03:25:54AM 1 point [-]

And of course, if you really were in a story and tried it, story logic dictates that you would almost certainly end up being wrong genre savvy

Comment author: Will_Newsome 10 July 2010 07:35:46AM *  13 points [-]

If something totally crazy seemed like it was about to happen and the world was at stake, like a technological singularity was about to occur or something, and I was called to work for the team of great minds that were trying their hardest to stop the destruction of the entire universe, dropping out of high school in the process, and meeting a beautiful girl who had been living literally a few houses down from me for the last 4 years without my knowing about it, who just so happened to be doing an essay on transhumanism for her English class and would just love to interview someone who was doing work for the Singularity Institute.

Oh wait...

Comment author: kodos96 02 June 2010 06:53:25AM 4 points [-]
Comment author: NancyLebovitz 02 June 2010 07:21:21AM 3 points [-]

I'm not sure, considering the number of different kinds of story there are even in our world, and especially considering that entities which could create our world will probably have sorts of fiction we haven't thought of, and may have sorts of fiction we can't think of.

However, Eliezer may come up with something which would plausibly convince Harry.

Comment author: Perplexed 27 November 2010 03:16:00AM 2 points [-]
  • Talking animals
  • Beanstalks of unusual size
  • A pair of boxes, one containing $1000 ...
  • Black comedy
  • Poetic justice
  • People living happily ever after.