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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2
ETA: There is now a third thread, so send new comments there.
Since the first thread has exceeded 500 comments, it seems time for a new one, with Eliezer's just-posted Chapter 33 & 34 to kick things off.
From previous post:
Spoiler Warning: this thread contains unrot13'd spoilers for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality up to the current chapter and for the original Harry Potter series. Please continue to use rot13 for spoilers to other works of fiction, or if you have insider knowledge of future chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
A suggestion: mention at the top of your comment which chapter you're commenting on, or what chapter you're up to, so that people can understand the context of your comment even after more chapters have been posted. This can also help people avoid reading spoilers for a new chapter before they realize that there is a new chapter.
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Comments (696)
Ch. 33:
The three-way tie, while clearly dramatically convenient for Eliezer, and adequately foreshadowed, is just so boring.
Was anyone else briefly confused because they had forgotten that the war was continuing even after the awarding of the Christmas Wish?
Re 1: It would work better if I hadn't had to wait a week to see it. Such is the difficulty with installment fiction.
Re 2: Yes, I'd forgotten that as well.
Also, very disappointed about the skipping of about a month or so there. If Eliezer doesn't explicitly fill in the gaps, I'm considering writing a MoR fanfic (tentatively titled "MoR: Battle School") after at least the wars are over and intervening events are solidified, to fill in that time.
Go for it. Most people complain about the pace being too slow - I think you might even be the first to complain about it being too fast - but that's certainly one way to fix it, if you're inspired with the vision of a battle. There's a chance though hardly a certainty that I would answer questions before you wrote, or declare the story canon afterward.
Well I hadn't been complaining about the pacing before, so the sudden jump over a significant period seemed wrong. Surely these people would have done all sorts of interesting learning / use of magic over the course of the battles, and Harry and Draco would have been doing science to it, and there would have been interesting developments in Quirrell's classes.
Thanks for the offer - I will surely pester you with questions when I get around to it.
Phrase recognised, giggling performed.
Now I want biscuits.
You mean biscuits.
Yes.
I believe it is customary to call fanfiction of fanfiction "cookies".
So could we then call fanfiction of fanfiction of fanfiction "crumbs"?
I guess. Or "chips", maybe.
What do you think about paperclips?
In general? Or as a term for fanfiction of fanfiction of fanfiction?
Both, of course. Though, in the context of this topic, only the latter is relevant.
As a term for fanfiction of fanfiction of fanfiction, I don't think it's a good one. I mean, as awesome as paperclips are, if we called everything "paperclips" it might get a little confusing. I suggested "crumbs" because that's what's left after you eat a cookie, but I'm not seeing what this has to do with paperclips.
I thought it might help promote paperclip awareness, but now I agree with your reasonable point about saturating terminology for everything with the same word, and the confusion it would generate.
Your thought processes are getting better too! c=@
In the case of HP fanfiction, that should be "biscuits".
Ch 34 is here! http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/34/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality
Ch. 34:
Presumably, by Occam's Razor of Fiction (or whatever the appropriate TVTrope is), Mr. Hat-n-Cloak = Santa Claus?
I was betting Mr. Hat-n-Cloak = Quirelmort. (Remember that after the little scene Harry witnessed, he had to rush off. Perhaps to catch up and meet with Zambini? And the ultimate purpose of this was to arrange for Harry to further mistrust Dumbledore? At least, that was my very first thought, although now I'm thinking there were probably easier ways to accomplish that.)
Snape also seems like a wildcard possibility here - Zabini suspects him, anyway.
(OTOH, Quirrell knew Zabini was a quadruple agent, which could have intrigued him enough to want to see if he could be a quintuple...)
It might also be possible that even Eliezer hasn't decided who Mr. Hat-n-Cloak is yet--as he's mentioned previously, sometimes his fiction "writes itself." Thus, I suspect that Eliezer will not decide the character's identity until he advances the story a little more.
The famous Schrödinger's Hat.
I don't think there is any Occam's Razor of Fiction. The rule is to do what's awesome, not what's simple or minimal.
I've definitely found that if two mysterious shadowy figures show up, they're the same person more often than not. Must be on TVTropes somewhere.
The Law of Conservation of Detail. [TVTropes link, obviously.]
And you'd better believe Methods of Rationality obeys it.
What would the incentive to become a traitor before the battle of Chapter 33 be? Before Quirrell added the ability to switch sides, you'd just be helping your army (which you've already developed a bond with in the first battle), and therefore yourself, lose. I'd expect this to strongly outweigh the fun of being a spy.
I just Googled for "airsoft betrayal" and "paintball betrayal." I found no stories of similar events in either sport. (I did however find one person hypothetically talking about betrayal in laser tag, even though many/most systems ignore friendly fire.)
I assumed that successful traitors could acquire individual Quirrell points faster than their loyal teammates, making for another Prisoner's Dilemma situation.
This is almost certainly not socially viable though.
It would be truer if armies were based on houses - and as traitors are official Quirrell-endorsed part of the game, revenge is officially forbidden, and armies don't correspond to any social structure that inspires loyalty, it's doubtful that people would be terribly loyal.
I tried to assume that too but that doesn't seem to answer all the questions. The allocation of students to teams seems to be stable so presumably we have some sort of iterated PD going on. If you've betrayed your army in battle 4 then what happens between battle 4 and battle 5? Is there some sort of default assumption that everyone reverts back to being loyal?
I know of people who have betrayed their teams in games of Assassin, generally aiming for personal glory by taking everyone out single-handedly.
A.k.a. Killer, for anyone who may recognize the older game.
Blaise notes to Hermione that most of the traitors in Sunshine are actually double agents, trying to help Sunshine by fooling Dragon and Chaos into thinking they have additional help... and so on. The real traitors (the ones whose treason matters) are all shown to have realistic-ish motivations.
"Team killing" is annoyingly common in online FPS games...
In online FPS games you (usually) have no long-term bond to your team, no long-term rewards and punishments, and for that matter no long-term identity at all.
You don't see team-killing in league-style tournaments spanning months, where players get to know each other.
I just caught up on the last ten chapters.
I feel like the entertainment value is trending up, perhaps because most of the transparent lectures-for-the-reader material is off the author's chest, or that the characters are taking on a reality of sorts in his head. Sometimes the cuteness is formed of stock elements, but I feel like there are also real moments of discovery and invention in the interactions.
I actually liked the didactic parts - generally speaking, I read sf for the infodumps. When I want character or prose style I go for actual literature.
On page 96 of the PDF version, the $ signs need to be escaped, in "an unconditional gift of $5 was twice as effective as a conditional offer of $50"). As it is now, the text between the $ signs is typeset in math mode.
(I post this here as I have no contact info for the PDF maintainer.)
Something cool on the PDF: the end of chapter 27. 503-504.
What does "Xanatos" (as mentioned several times in the current Author's Note) mean? I'm not familiar with that reference.
P.S. That's one sexy PDF! And wow, 641 pages — I think that's already about the length of the sixth book.
Xanatos is a mastermind from Gargoyles whose convoluted plots usually relied on the heroes stopping one scheme in order for the real objective to be attained. He became eponymous for such plots, especially on TV Tropes. (Sorry in advance for wasting your next few days.)
Eliezer's Timeless Decision Theory solution to The Prisoner's Dilemma is compelling.
It's something I've thought about for a long time. There must be some solution to the bloody thing - my gut instinct tells me to cooperate, even when dealing with a paperclip maximizer, but all of my justifications wind up being little more than mathy ways of saying 'Honor'. And to be perfectly frank, I'm not convinced that the story's solution is much more than that either. Just replace "acts honorably" with "holds true to TDT".
That said, I do hold myself to TDT, because to do otherwise would be dishonorable (honor being a part of my utility function)... but here I'm seeing a chicken-and-egg problem. Is 'honor' simply a manifestation of TDT?
I'm presuming that many of you have some thoughts on the matter, so I'm leaving my half-formed ideas here for comment.
Who'd've thunk they'd ever read a Harry Potter fanfic and enjoy it?
Well, it doesn't actually add up to honor. If you're in a True Prisoner's Dilemma and you predict that the paperclipper will cooperate out of honor, TDT says to defect and reap the benefits. It's only when two TDT agents meet that mutual cooperation is on the table.
(Nitpick: TDT and UDT should cooperate as well. Etc.)
EDIT: This comment is mistaken. If by HonorBot we mean an agent that predicts what the other agent will do, and then cooperates with all cooperators and defects against all defectors, then TDT indeed cooperates with HonorBot. TDT does not cooperate with CooperateBot, though, so TDT is not HonorBot.
Only if you try to act honorably to the honorable and dishonorably to the dishonorable do you have something like TDT.
And you must do this in a way that makes you appear honorable to others who use the same algorithm.
Reputation effects are one way to change the payoffs so it's no longer a Prisoner's Dilemma. But if this particular interaction is more important than the reputation effects, TDT still defects against an honorable paperclipper who isn't TDT or higher.
TDT says: I cooperate iff (you will cooperate iff I cooperate).
Honorable says: I cooperate iff you will cooperate.
It seems to me that, although Honorable is suboptimal if it meets an unconditional cooperator, TDT will cooperate with it because it meets the condition that TDT cares about.
On reflection, your conclusion is obviously right: playing PD against Honorbot is simply playing Newcomb's Dilemma, so TDT cooperates.
I was misled by the recent realization that TDT doesn't actually work out to "I cooperate iff (you will cooperate iff I cooperate)".
The big speech by Quirrel troubles me.
I thought we had Word of God that Quirrel was in some way Voldemort (Quirrelmort), and that we should've become certain of that early on (especially with the Voyager horcrux implied).
But the speech doesn't make sense for me. If Voldemort was so close to winning, if it took a freak Black Swan to defeat him and his followers, if magical England is still utterly incompetent, if many of his followers are still at large (as we know from canon they are), if...
Given this situation, why doesn't Voldemort just start over? The plan worked perfectly the first time; why not just do it again, and put a little poison in Harry's drink or something? There are a bazillion ways Harry could be killed, as Harry himself demonstrates in the killer-instinct lesson. The magical protection he has is very weak indeed.
If a magical England all bearing a 'Light Mark' would be so unstoppable and take over the magical world, and by implication then can take over the mundane world, why doesn't Voldemort just take over magical England the way he planned to, and then impose the Light/Dark Mark on everyone?
Why is he instead apparently doing his damndest to prevent anyone from succeeding the way 'he' almost did, and apparently pushing Draco or Harry to become benevolent dictators?
I don't understand it at all. I can't reconcile Voldemort's past with Quirrel's past with Voldemort's past goals with Quirrel's future goals and so on. I am, as the LW phrase goes, confused.
My impression is that in MoR Voldemort was a passionate young revolutionary in the first war, but since then he's gotten older and his outlook has changed. He sees the muggles as the greatest threat now, and he recognizes that his history means he can't take power in his own name without a long and devastating series of wars that would leave the magical world exhausted and vulnerable to this outside threat. So it would be rather convenient if he could sway Harry to his way of thinking and arrange for the wizarding world to unite under a leader who sees him as a mentor...
I can't reconcile that theory with the combined Voldemort-Quirrel history. (I did think of it after the discussion about scientists nearly dooming humanity.)
I don't think it works. Quirrelmort snuck into NASA in the '70s, when the Voyagers launched. That is, decades before his defeat. Quirrelmort knew of Voyager, knew where to find it, knew what building, what campus, how to defeat the many security systems, and so on. This bespeaks an intimate and long-standing interest in NASA's projects. Given the horcrux is a large fraction of his life, it also means Quirrelmort trusts rockets a great deal. Which means he trusts in The Power of Science.
Nukes, nuclear winter, and other existential risks were definitely common knowledge in the '70s. Quirrelmort couldn't've possibly missed them, especially with things like Project Orion. So, he knows muggles can kill all humanity and also wizards; he believes they might do it; and yet, it's only after the Black Swan of Harry that Quirrelmort suddenly realigns all his priorities?
Well, I'm sure a good author could write that and make me believe it. But I'm not going to make myself believe just to explain away Quirrel's speech.
I agree with ewbrownv's theory in most particulars except for the part where Voldemort experiences a shift in personality post-Harry Potter. I think it more accurate to say that for a very long time it has been his goal to unite Magical Britain/Humanity under one leader who was capable of dealing with the threat posed by Muggles and Science. He initially tried to united them by force and fear, but has come to think that it would be easier/better to united them behind the much beloved Harry Potter, who he thinks he can control.
This is the natural next step - he wants to become the éminence grise. I don't like this either. It's not faster. I don't see any plausible way of Harry leading and unifying magical Britain within less than 5 years, and the world would take longer, and humanity even longer. So Quirrelmort loses a good 10 years or so (and remember, he's already lost 11 years just to Harry growing old enough to enter Hogwarts). It may not be easier, since Quirrelmort has to expend a tremendous amount of effort to hide himself and plot circles around everyone. And better? He will forever be at Harry's whims, which undoes a lot of Harry's value as figurehead.
Indeed? I would hope that Quirrel by this point has been disabused of any notions that Harry is easy to control. I certainly have.
I think there was a personality shift along with the change in strategy. Voldemort was too arrogant and power-hungry to be anything but the leader - he needed to learn to lose before he could be content to pursue his goals in this subtler way.
Voldemort's motives have been a mystery from the start - why would he become a Hogwarts teacher, and what does he want with Harry Potter? He must be working on some kind of plot, but what? It's not a sneak-in-and-kill-people kind of plot, judging by his behavior.
To me, the speech and the conversation with Harry afterwards aren't further mysteries - they provide some of the best clues we've gotten so far about what Quirrelmort is thinking. He sees a conflict between wizards and muggles and is trying to make sure that the wizards win. Coming to Hogwarts to teach battle magic and mentor Harry Potter could fit with that motivation, and ewbrownv does a pretty good job of filling in some more of the details.
Somehow I rather doubt that Quirrelmort believes what he says in public speeches to the unwashed masses.
There's other evidence, including his chp. 20 "Those fool Muggles will kill us all someday!" diatribe to Harry.
There seems to be a consensus that if there were war between wizards and muggles, the wizards would lose.
This isn't obvious to me, but I might be assuming more intelligence (both information and skill at using it) on the wizard side than they've got.
However, if we assume that wizards are reasonably competent (insert bitter laughter from anyone who's read the original books), what could they do?
My impression is that wizards don't need human civilization. It seems to me that their ability to pass unseen and destroy memories would be enough to destroy a lot of infrastructure. Would it be that hard for wizards to rule what was left?
What's the use of human weapons if you need magic just to enter wizard population centers?
Anyone who remembers the books better than I do, go ahead and tell me if there's some way for humans to resist.
One reasonably powerful wizard defector to the Muggle side could enlist other wizards via subterfuge or magical control, and such wizards could create magical items to aid the Muggles. If the Muggles were sure that they could trust such a defector, they could hand em a nuke and have em wipe Hogsmeade off the map in spite of all its anti-Muggle protections.
There are plenty of Muggle-borns, half-bloods, wizards married to Muggles, and wizards merely fond of Muggles a la Arthur Weasley, that in an all-out war, there would be considerable numbers of potential defectors.
By contrast, a Muggle defector to the wizarding side would be harder to come by per capita, and also less useful, as Muggles don't have special abilities that let them be particularly useful to wizards.
Um, I rather thought the whole point of MoR was to falsify this claim. Unless you're claiming rationality is not "special" because anyone can in principle have it.
On the other hand, wizards don't have the mental flexibility to see how muggles can be useful to them.
Rationality isn't particularly common among Muggles. Like, at all. I was thinking more about the physical tools, anyway - there's nothing stopping a wizard from using Muggle tech as long as they don't have lots of magic going on nearby (or I would have expected some Muggle-born child to complain offhand about how they can never make the TV work over summer holidays and their parents are annoyed about all the brownouts). Whereas Muggles cannot use wizarding tools one bit - or even see wizarding locations.
Muggles could just destroy the planet rather than conquering the wizards. Note the "heap of ash" comment in Quirrell's speech, which echoes what he said in chp. 20 about nukes.
People have used scorched earth attacks against their enemies, but that's if the enemies have defined territory. Does it seem reasonable that governments would engage in a nuclear spasm which would mostly destroy human territory? This is a real question.
I can imagine a nuclear spasm happening, but I was around during the cold war, and read relevant science fiction.
I realize there were some close calls[1], but is the world still as delicately balanced? Could wizards make sure the nukes stayed in their silos? My guess is that wizards have the power, but possibly not the organizational ability.
[1] Fanfiction about the unlikely absence of WWIII being the result of wizard activity?
A muggle society that doesn't know about wizards is vulnerable to sneaky tactics involving mind control and memory alteration. But in an open battle cannon!wizards don't stand a chance against a competent military force - they have superior mobility and medical care, but in every other respect magic is hopelessly inferior to technology.
Of course, a war isn't a battle. To predict how the war would go we have to explain why the muggles don't already know about wizards, which requires a drastic re-write of large sections of cannon. Any adequate justification is going to require giving the wizards god-like abilities of information control, which could easily give them the ability to win a wizard-muggle war as well.
I can't see any reason for wizards to engage in open battle against muggles.
A muggle society that does know about wizards would still be vulnerable to mind control and memory alteration-- the wizards themselves are vulnerable to such tactics. Covert defection is so easy for wizards it's almost surprising they've got as much large-scale organization as they do.
I believe that muggles do know about wizards (though perhaps no very accurately), they just don't talk about it any public sort of way. However, this is deduction, not canon.
One thing to check in canon would be the scene where the Wizarding minister pops in to the British PM and gives him a status report. I can't remember whether it is implied that PMs are routinely obliviated after their terms are up.
From the flashback scene near the beginning of Book 6 Chapter 1, where the Muggle PM first meets Cornelius Fudge:
So it's implied that no Obliviation is needed. On the other hand, I wouldn't it past Eliezer to decide that this is not credible in a story for adults. And after all, Fudge never really answered the question.
Thanks for the lookup. Yes, that implies that a limited number of muggles thought to be 'safe' are permitted to know about the wizarding world.
In canon, IIRC, LV actually did want to become a Hogwarts teacher.
Regarding personality shifts; is it possible that this is another point of departure, and we're looking at a LV who made fewer Horcruces? Again IIRC, there seemed to be a linear relationship depicted in canon between Tom Riddle's physical and mental decay and the number he created.
Correct - that's the source of the supposed curse on the Defense position.
Albeit I understood EY's latest Author's Note to be saying that there was no curse on DADA in MoR canon. Is that a misreading?
I read it as stating that there was a curse, and everybody had noticed it, and acted accordingly (McGonagall trying to keep Quirrel through the entire year, Quirrel refusing to stay the next year.)
Ah! That makes more sense. I was reading it as "were there a curse, and everybody had noticed it, it would be god-damned fixed by now to avoid having to pay every DADA professor a zillion Galleons of danger money".
Right, the issue is that JKR didn't seem to notice that there was a curse when she was writing the first book or so, and so it was made more explicit earlier in MoR.
Well, all the bits after finding out about Voyager could be done with the liberal use of Imperius, legilimency and other magic.
Alright, I'll modify my intimately familiar claim. He needs to be only reasonably familiar. Up in the top few percentiles of Americans/Englishmen vis-a-vis space knowledge, but not much much higher.
However, if you assume he got in just by using Imperius, this reinforces my point about the respect Quirrelmort needs for Science. A normal arrogant wizard wouldn't even bother to ask his pet muggle NASA technician to disable all the alarm systems. ('Alarm systems? What are those? I don't detect any wards or magical traps, therefore I can just walk in and make a horcrux.')
Apparate to wherever it's being stored, Horcrux it, apparate out. Even if there is an alarm to set off, you're in virtually no danger.
And risk the materials in the storage being thrown out as possibly contaminated or damaged beyond tolerances?
(Actually, can one apparate somewhere one has not been?)
Only if you're suicidal. It's stated that you can't, because you'd likely end up overlapping with some object; I suspect there's a good chance you could, if the target area was in space, but I wouldn't want to try it on the ground.
Another crime of the wizarding world - they are why it still costs thousands of dollars per ounce to put stuff into space.
Truly, they have much to answer for!
Choosing not to help is not, generally, considered a crime. There are of course exceptions in the case of imminent loss of life, but sending things to space is not one of them.
So while it may be, in a sense, their fault - it isn't a crime.
Depending on the magical system he could well bypass them accidentally. In the Buffyverse, for example, runes designed to protect against magical detection also work against any form of modern surveillance. In the HP universe I would expect Harry's cloak to protect against any visual detection technology and a Voldemort strength anti-detection spell would probably also be sufficient. Pressure sensitive plates would be a different matter but may also be the sort of thing that a wizard would expect. In fact, a competent wizardly burglar would quite possibly levitate as a matter of course while on a job.
I agree with your analysis.
But gwern's description of Harry's victory over Voldemort as a "black swan" doesn't satisfy me. The canon explanation - that the Power of Love auto-defeats all dark magic, and either no one had ever noticed this before, or Voldemort just assumed no one would use that strategy despite its obvious game-winning power because Evil Cannot Comprehend Good - doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would cut it in Methods.
One remote possibility is that Voldemort realized he'd inspired so much hatred that he'd never be able to unite the magical world without first breaking its power so badly it would be useless to him, so he found a kid with Dark Lord potential, stuck enough of his soul into him that he felt in control, and then faked his own death in such a way as to make his chosen heir the sort of hero whom everyone would rally around. This is probably too complicated for a smart Slytherin who'd seen The Tragedy of Light to try, but there's got to be some sort of weird explanation for why Voldemort lost ten years ago, and why he lost to a kid with precisely the sort of plotting ability and mastery of Muggle methodology Voldy needs for his plots.
Ooh, thanks for reminding me about Light in this context. I shall now be re-reading to determine if there's evidence that Quirrell remembers being Voldemort, or whether he's just been overwritten with V's utility function and not his memories. We're owed a few more Obliviation-based bombshells.
The story that Quirrell tells about Voldermort going to learn about martial arts strongly implies that Q has access to at least some of Voldemort's memories.
Clearly happening in MoR, at least to some extent. AFAICT, Quirrel honestly can't tell why Harry wouldn't want to be a dark lord, and Draco's completely incapable of grokking Harry's motivations; pretty much whenever Draco tries he gets it wrong. Quirrell also won't understand why Harry wouldn't just flee, rather than sticking around to fix things.
Or voldemort is two steps ahead of us, he's realized that Harry Potter is a crazy muggle-loyal scientist, and there is now only one potential leader who could save the magical world.
Hermione Granger.
If that were true, he would already have lost the minute he ran through the "intent to kill" exercise.
Along with the appearance of Mr. Hat and Cloak, it was yet another moment that made me feel highly disappointed that (I had become aware that) WoG had explicitly stated Q=V. It used to be very fun to consider and compare the possibilities of Q being V versus Q not being V and EY being messing with readers versus some third option such as an ongoing conflict between Q and V's personalities in the same body.
I don't suppose Memory Charms are available IRL?
EDIT: After reading chapter 37, squeeing, and promptly running off to TVTropes to list it as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, I would like to state that the above disappointment has significantly increased.
Booze?
I recently had reason to use it for that purpose. I don't recommend it, and it only takes out a few hours anyway.
Another theory of Quirrelmort (which Psy-Kosh came up with) is that Quirrelmort identifies with Harry because he transferred part of himself to Harry when he gave him the scar, so now his ambition is for Harry to become a Dark Lord. In other words, Voldemort split into Quirrell and Harry, and now the one part is trying to make sure that the other part carries out his plan.
This theory is compatible with the wizard v. muggle war theory, if the plan is for Harry to become a Dark Lord and lead the wizards against the muggles.
Hm... I suppose that might actually address the issues.
But wait, this doesn't explain why Quirrelmort would wait 2 decades for Harry to finish the job of taking over the world rather than do it himself, and then groom Harry without any distractions. I mean, Quirrelmort still seems to be quite competent, and we see ever less of zombie-mode. (Besides, isn't leadership all about delegation?)
A very good point. I wonder if that's intentional on Eliezer's part, or if he's simply forgotten to write about zombie-Quirrell because he (z-Q) is uninteresting.
We had a hint that Quirrell is in some way Voldemort, but how exactly? We haven't been given information from anyone but Quirrell on that. They went to the same dojo. Physically, that's nearly all we've been told, by an unreliable source. The only other physical hint is Quirrell's zombie/alertness transition.
The questions are these: Are they two distinct individuals? How distinct and why? Have they always been so or not so? And is each aware of the other?
Here's another idea, no more motivated than the idea that Q=V. Perhaps when "tuning in", Quirrell is not channeling Voldemort. Rather, Quirrell has a "mysterious dark side" which feeds him ideas when he is in zombie-mode. Neither the former Quirrell, or the remains of Voldemort were powerful enough to impact magical Britain sufficiently to satisfy their goals. Additionally, their goals did not match perfectly. A trade was made; a partial exchange of utility functions, and perhaps something more.
Voldemort's magical knowledge was vast and useful; if someone thought himself to be terribly clever, and thought that he was less of a fool than the now-failed Dark Lord, and sought power, he might make a deal with the devil; confine the mind to a tightly sealed box instead of destroying it. In exchange for this life-saving act, knowledge. And with every exchange, there could be some influence on each other's values. Maybe he's already admitted that he's going to lose - the mind will get out of the box by the end, and he will cease to be distinguishable. But as a new challenge, he bet he could transfer the best of his knowledge and goals to Harry Potter before then, enough to defeat whatever would grow from his mental corpse.
Or not. All sorts of things are possible with the little information we have. The most mysterious repeating phenomenon that's notable right now is Quirrell's zombie-mode. For just his political views and most of his behavior, being Voldemort is not the simplest explanation.
I like your utility-exchange idea. That explains the problem of why Quirrel isn't seeking power in his own right - because to do so is to inevitably hand power over to the Dark Lord. Hence, he seeks to fashion a better and uncorruptible replacement. Power wouldn't necessarily help him find or groom a protege.
The utility function exchange might be going too far. The trade might just be one of the classic 'loan' or Faustian bargain: Voldemort lends his accumulated skill and knowledge to Quirrel for 15 or 20 years, and in exchange, Quirrel hosts Voldemort (as he did in canon!) and at the end turns over his body to Voldemort and/or merges with him.
At least, this seem to work as well to explain the issues (if there has already been a utility exchange, how have Quirrel's values changed?).
My problem exactly.
That would be an awesome way for the plot to go. Very "archetypal". The closest analogy would be Baron Harkonnen taking over Alia. I'm almost sad that you posted it, because now Eliezer will either use it or invent something else, and either case would be disappointing.
I'd like to think Eliezer isn't the kind of writer who would avoid an idea simply because one of his readers came up with it, especially since there are no legal issues with that here.
No, if he doesn't use it, hopefully that's because he has an even better one.
What if, in accordance with the Tournament's goal of providing an interesting challenge and spectacle without massacring all competitors, the dragons were actually subdued or sedated in some less-than-obvious way?
For that matter, the ability to melt a snitch (which is small, apparently made of gold which has a relatively low melting point, and not specifically designed to be indestructible) isn't the same as the ability to kill a well-prepared wizard.
Depending on the soldiers' motivations, would it make sense for them to secretly adopt/publicly declare allegiance to 'the side that is going to win' ?
Would it make sense for one of the general's (probably Harry) to encourage their soldiers to adopt/declare this?
At this point, wouldn't it be stupid for draco/hermione to not coordinate their use of spies against harry? It only makes sense for them to agree to not use spies against each other.
Is Harry going to make a [realtime] prediction market for the battles?
Not sure if Eliezer has mentioned or considered this... but these stories should totally be the lead in parables to his book of rationality, G.E.B. style. Just read the whole thing yesterday, really enjoyed / enjoying it. Favorite concepts: intent to laugh, Draco's "most people are stupid, and you have to look good in front of them anyway", and transfiguration of parts.
If Robin Hanson were here he would undoubtedly call this "hero porn."
That would be fun, but Rowling's lawyers probably wouldn't like it...
(Plus it would require him to order the nonfiction chapters in line with the lessons being conveyed in the HP chapters, and he may prefer to structure it differently.)
I don't know; he makes enough fun of her that he might be able to slide in under parody...and the inevitable court case would be great publicity for the book!
I'm not sure it's inevitable. She might not even sue, or Eliezer could work out some sort of license agreement with her. Alternatively, he could change all the names and so forth.
But yes, I would think he would be likely to win such a case, both because it's a parody and because he's made transformative use of the work, turning it from fantasy into lessons about rationality.
Nitpick: It's still fantasy. It's a very different fantasy, though.
How long do you want the book to be?
For all those who say that the 'unconventional ship' hinted at is Hermione/Griphook, I'd just like to say that's preposterous, and there is no way Eliezer would include such a thing in the story.
Where is this talk of unconventional ships?
The conversation refers to the AN for chapter 34:
That's.. just you, right?
huge grin
Of course not. He would never do that. It's completely preposterous!
The Durmstrang houseboat from Goblet of Fire, must be the unconventional ship.
*ducks*
Durmstrang houseboat/Beauxbaton carriage
Hermione/Griphook isn't completely wrong enough to qualify.
Professor Summers/Author insert?
Can you do worse? Try harder.
Sadly, the best I can come up with is Lensman!Harry / James Randi.
No, wait. Gandalf / Obi-Wan Kenobi.
But Nicolas Flamel is married!
And I'm still not sure if that's completely wrong enough to qualify. I tried to get some wrongness from the perspective of canon and some just plain squick into each of those suggestions.
I was being silly - the joke was that this was the only thing I chose to object to out of the list.
The relevant trope being I Take Offense To That Last One. Or, depending on perspective, Arson Murder And Jaywalking. Warning: TV Tropes (obviously).
At this rate, if the FAI problem isn't solved before nasty AI's arise accidentally, I think the immediate cause of failure will be TV Tropes.
Maybe an acausal ship? Say, Harry / Riddle?
Only on Less Wrong does the phrase "acausal ship" make sense.
I'm not sure it even makes sense here...
Sinhababu's 2008 Pacific Philosophical Quarterly article is the definitive essay on acausal ships.
(I wonder how many of those (that consist only of canon characters) have already been done. Probably all of them.)
Btw, after some complaints about suspension of disbelief, I substituted Michael Shermer for James Randi.
Aww, I liked that element, and it doesn't seem that implausible as such things go; I once heard an apparently sincere conspiracy theory that holds that the reason nobody has ever won Randi's million-dollar prize is because he uses his own prodigious psychic powers to stop them from doing so.
Agreed
Aw, why? Randi looks more wizardly (and must be shipped with Dumbledore at some point, they're perfect for each other, they're both wise accomplished old white-bearded gay wizards...), and I don't see why Shermer requires less suspension of disbelief. (The main thing that made me confused there was figuring that if Randi were really a wizard but still the Randi we know, he'd probably have long ago tried to scientifically investigate magic as Harry intends to, and made some of the same discoveries and many more, and possibly become a supremely powerful and well-known wizard. Am I on the right track or have I overlooked something else implausible that people complained about?)
That was the complaint.
Personally I think a lot of people are confusing expert skepticism with expert science, but if the reader says you're messing with their suspension of disbelief, the reader is always right. Substituting Michael Shermer just makes it a Shout Out instead of an actual conspiracy theory.
I did have some issues there, but I don't think it was that serious.
The $1M prize is a clever way of finding muggleborns! (though of course anyone doing real magic is whisked away and declared a failure)
Okay, cat!McGonagall/Dobby and Crabbe/Fawkes are both completely wrong enough to be competitive.
But of course, it's more impressive if the completely wrong ship is less high-entropy - that is, if you don't have to dip so low in the search ordering to find it.
Incidentally, I tried to look it up, and as far as I can tell, this particular ship has been done exactly once before. Surprising, considering how near the characters are in canon. I suppose it's just that wrong.
The problem is that the pairings feel too reasonable higher up in the search ordering. For example, I considered Moaning Myrtle / ?, Hagrid / ?, and Trelawney / ? but couldn't find other high-search-order matches at fanfic-SL4. With students characters I found it especially difficult, as magical teenagers are just too plausibly randy + weird.
Firenze/Hagrid?
What about a high-entropy but suitable ship, like Sorting Hat/Voyager Horcrux? The intelligence without sentience and non-intelligent vital spirit seem like a perfect match for each other.
A relationship with a non-sentience doesn't seem to me to be something I'd really call a "relationship" in that sense.
The problem is 'wrong' and 'worse' here operate on multiple dimensions and are highly subjective. Fred/George is one way to go.
That can't possibly be original.
It's so, so not.
There are 252 results on FanFiction.net for Fred/George fics genre-tagged with "Romance". I'm sure that's vastly underestimating the true number of fics with Fred/George twincest.
Hedwig/Quirrelmort. Dog!Sirius/Firenze. Cat!Mcgonagall/Nagini.
Three way between Kreature, Umbrage, and Filch. Actually, make it a four way by adding a Dementor. (Since we know from book 6 that they have some means of breeding)
There, is that worse enough? :)
Hermione/Umbridge/dementor.
+Haggrid
It's true, every orgy is better with a half-giant.
MoR!Harry / canon!Harry. Must be done. (Maybe a three-way with Clarence the Angel, who was clearly responsible for bringing them together.)
There were some sparks between Harry and the Sorting Hat.
Or there could be something between Fred, George, Hermione, and time-turned Hermione, which would be a completely inappropriate use of a Time-Turner, but I suspect it's been done and thus would fail the originality requirement.
Yes, it came with illustrations.
My sketchy knowledge of fanfic subculture is showing. What does 'ship mean?
I thought it meant making a character more wonderful than it is in canon, but apparently not.
It's short for "relationship", but it's also used as a verb, which means to portray or want two (or more) characters to be romantically and/or sexually involved.
Examples:
"I ship the Whomping Willow and the Devil's Snare." = "I am amused by imagining those two plants in a relationship" or "in at least one derivative creative work, I have represented those two plants as being in a relationship."
"This fic contains only canon ships." = "This work of fanfiction romantically pairs characters in the same arrangements they have in the source work."
Thank you. I would have assumed that non-canon relationships were slash, which goes to show how fringy I am.
Is there a word for making a character more wonderful than they are in canon?
I think slash refers especially to non-canon gay relationships, and fiction centered around or involving such relationships. (It may actually refer to gay male relationships in particular, I'm not quite sure. I only know the basics of fanfic terminology.)
"Femslash" seems to have some currency as the lesbian equivalent of "slash". I've also seen "slash" used to refer to both types of gay relationships. I've also seen it used to refer to sexual content (straight or gay), and sometimes specifically to gay sexual content (to the point where some people say PG-rated fic with gay couples is not slash - in particular there's a tripartite division with "gen", "het", and "slash", where the first has no sex, the second has straight sex, and the third has gay sex). I don't think non-canonicity is part of any definition I've seen.
It may be just me, but I get the impression that it's not really slash if the characters in question are gay in canon, even if not for each other. I might argue that, say, Ben Bruckner / Melanie Marcus (both canon!gay, opposite sexes) would count as slash, but I expect that's a minority position.
Some sorta Sue.
Warning: TV Tropes.
Mary Sue being the generic version. Warning: TV Tropes
Wikipedia for the TV Tropes-phobic
I was going to say Mr. Hat and Cloak/Blaise's Mom. Except that I'm kinda hoping that Mr. Hat and Cloak IS Blaise's Mom.
Just occurred to me: if magic ability is genetic, it should in theory be possible to use gene therapy/retroviruses/etc. (and perhaps some magic) to make all the Muggles into wizards! (Or at least all the ones yet to be conceived or something.) I can just imagine Harry creating a Plague of Magic.
I don't think he likes chaos quite that much.
Good idea. For some reason I immediately thought about Muggles exterminating wizards with a gene-engineered disease.
Almost certainly not in the timeframe of the fic. I think that 1995 was about the first time we successfully used a retrovirus to cure a human disease, and we still don't have the tech to create a contagious disease to do so.
Oh, good point. I always forget that HP isn't technically in the present day.
He could easily overwhelm any wizarding army/faction by raising an army of magically enabled Muggles, once he can access the technology. Since there are only tens of thousands of magical people in Britain, just converting 500 muggles to wizards would make Harry the dominant force in the magical world.
That's an interesting move, though it leaves out the organizational challenge and the amount of time needed for training.
And it seems unlikely that such a force could be kept secret from the wizarding world....
It's true that it would take many years, but the payoff would be huge. It seems all but inevitable that someone smart (i.e. Harry, Draco, Hermione, Dumbledore, or Quirrelmort) will do it eventually.
The payoff would be.... ill-defined.
How sure are you that you can retain control? That one of your more ambitious and inventive upgraded muggles won't try setting up on their own? That one of them won't get hold of your give-wizardry magic and share the wealth?
When you see "So You Want to Be a Wizard" on WikiLeaks, it's too late.
You could make taking your Mark a price of being given magic.
No! It was pointed out how a wizard has to study hard before doing magic. So magic enabled Muggles would be rather useless or dangerous. No way to raise an army. (Also he would have to be accepted as the leader of an Muggle group)
More interesting is the opposite way, of removing the magic gene or disabling it. A vaccine against magic.
Eliezer, is there any chance any speaker at the Singularity Summit might open or close with "Happy happy boom boom swamp swamp swamp!"? For numerous reasons, I think it would be most hilarious if Ray Kurzweil could be persuaded to do so.
I disagree. It would be much funnier if Randi did it.
Harry wins. At least, I am presuming he is actively trying to weaken the Draco/Lucious alliance and enforce cooperation between Draco and Hermione. Losing a game to achieve that would perhaps be the first example of Harry doing something that wasn't motivated by his ego.
Now, I don't recall, is there any tangible motivation for the generals to keep winning these games now that the wish has been decided?
They do still win Quirrell points, which translate to House points among other things. (Harry probably doesn't care about House points, especially with Hermione's wish, but he does care about impressing Quirrell.)
Unity. Which is more powerful? Unity within an army or an alliance between two? Hermione and Draco seem to have granted Harry complete internal unity within Chaos while leaving themselves open to betrayals from their soldiers or from each other. A best case outcome gives them a 2:1 advantage over Chaos but they must expend effort monitoring for internal or external betrayal. I would estimate that 2 spies in each of Sunshine and Dragon would give Harry a win.
The other aspect to consider is that the battle is now a game for points not a fight for mock survival. This reduces the extent to which having many enemies is a disadvantage. In fact, the game format is almost exactly the same as some Laser Tag formats. I play that from time to time and am extremely good at it. When it comes to team formation I always seek to have a far smaller team than the opposition. Partly because I like a challenge and partly because having lots of enemies gives me more chances to score. Sure, I'll end up getting shot more but if I take out 10 enemies for every 1 that shoots me I get a lot of points. When considering team score there is a balance to be found between having more opponents to shoot and having more on the team to be shooting. This is completely different from the strategy I would use for a team elimination game.
The Chaos players need to manoeuvre themselves such that they have access to the weaker players from Chaos and Dragon while not bothering much with the powerful, more skilful wizards. This differs from non-scored games in as much as hurting the enemy is barely relevant. Chaos is probably all going to die, they just need to get cheap points scored while they do so. Having a few traitors (or the potential for traitors) in the background causing distraction helps create openings for productive suicide assaults.
From the Author's Notes:
The question that most interests me is not single vs. multiple departure, but rather known vs. unknown departure. If the set of points of departure is finite and known in full to the readers, then we can draw on canon evidence to help make inferences about the world of the fic. If not, we have only the fanfic itself to draw upon.
As a reader, I would rather have more information available. But this would require the author to have potentially unbounded knowledge of canon, depending on whether Word Of God was included, and at minimum to have read all the books.
I find it odd that Eliezer writes this fic without having read all of the books, but it's his life and his fic. And for the purposes of complying with canon, I believe that careful perusal of Wikipedia and other fan-made sites should be sufficient.
The biggest danger is poor characterisation of characters who don't show up in what Eliezer has read. Reference sites are good at explaining what people did, but poor at describing what they were like. However, I don't think that Eliezer is using any such characters, is he?
And therefore, I agree with you that it would be nice if Eliezer spelt out his points of departure; having not read all of the books should not stop him. Unfortunately, I think that some of his rules (such as the rule against anything to stupid for a book for adults) are pretty open-ended. (And how to apply them is very unclear; why is Peter Pettigrew as Scabbers stupider than the rules of Quidditch, for example?)
The following is my speculation about where the plot of the story is going. It is just speculation, but on the off-chance that any of it is correct and non-obvious, it will contain spoilers.
Solid control by a central authority seems to be more difficult for magic folks. (e.g. A few dozen Death Eaters nearly brought down the government). I assume this is because Apparition makes control of transport impossible, everyone having wands makes control of dangerous weapons impossible, and the Imperius curse makes central authority untrustworthy and spreads paranoia.
Voldemort realized that the situation doesn't have a democratic/liberal/libertarian solution and that an enlightened despotism is the only way to prevent another Dark Lord from rising up every few decades to seize control. Because of this, Voldemort, who really is a Light Lord, used his campaign of terror to try to take control of the Ministry of Magic, and impose his absolute, magically enforced rule over everyone.... Until he was defeated by baby Harry. Now, he is using his new form and identity to identify the best possible new Light Lord at Hogwarts (hence the war-games).
He will groom the new candidate to be his replacement, then stage his return as evil Voldemort, be defeated by the new Light Lord, who will bring peace and order as the absolute dictator.
Premise...
Conclusion?
...unless you use a Mark. Which only a dictator can require.
Yep, thanks Pavitra.
There were still traitors. Snape was Marked, and spied. Karkaroff was Marked, and ran.
I suspect that the Mark, like many things, is rather more powerful in MoR than in canon.
My point, if it wasn't clear, is that since "solid control by a central authority" is harder for magic folks, they can't rely on a soft-touch liberal democratic rule. They would have to rely on harder methods of keeping the peace--some kind of ubiquitous magical monitoring system.
Right, so a magical dictator can only achieve about the level of central authority that a Muggle democracy has. Meanwhile, magical Stalin is simply not possible. (That doesn't stop Dark Lords from trying to become magical Stalin, because they are irrational. But they never succeed, even though they cause a lot of problems while they try.)
However, I very much doubt that MoR!Voldemort will turn out to have been Light All Along (I don't know the proper TVTrope name for that). This would require major departures from canon as to how he went about it in 1980. Or at least he would have to have been very confident, extremely unimaginative, and positively jesuitical in using his ends to justify his means.
A Dark (or Light) Lord could centralize way more than Stalin ever did, thanks to the Marks. (How much do we know about how they work, other than they need to be taken willingly?)
Akrasia cure: Self-cast the imperius curse.
Or better yet, use it as a decision-theory precommitment.
Eliezer said he was writing Methods because he was having trouble writing his Rationality book.
Now, I find this confusing. If you're having trouble writing, the last thing you need is another book, competing for your attention. Perhaps if the second book had been more scholarly, he could have procrastinated from it by writing the rationality book, but this isn't the case here.
Equally, if it's rapid and constant feedback he needs, I'm sure we could find some, somewhere on the internet. -We'll all buy the book anyway, and a plausible pre-commitment should be easy with the aid of UDT/TDT.
So the only possible conclusion: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is the rationality book!
Consider:
Positive Proof. With the aid of magic, probably even p=1 now.
I look forward to the sequel; Eliezer Yudkowsky and the Unfriendly AI.
This is not generally true. This is true iff the reason you are having trouble writing is because there are too many other demands on your time. If you can sit down to write, with nothing else to do for the next six hours, and plunk out a pathetic WPM because you're blocked or distractable or frustrated or depressed - then this isn't the case. In such a case many writers find that the way to get over the block is to write something else - something they can write copiously, enjoyably, without running into the same problems. Such as Harry Potter fanfiction.
But my theory is interesting; how can the supporting evidence not be true?!
On a more serious note, did Eliezer enjoy writing the Sequences?
"Enjoy" isn't necessarily the relevant metric from which to predict productivity. I enjoy drawing my webcomic, and it only takes me a couple hours to do each one, but I haven't the patience to do more than one page a week - not because I don't enjoy it, but because my brain resists too much of the same thing spaced together too closely. Conversely, I don't think I could be said to "enjoy" some of the pointless Flash games that have eaten entire days of my life singlehandedly, but I went on playing them anyway.