Well, my comment compares Luminosity with Radiance, so I'll make it here.
I really like the contrast between Bella and Elspeth. Bella is skilled at knowing herself and has the special power of keeping others from knowing things about her. Her tragedy was heightened by the fact that she had kept her actions secret from her family - hence many of them felt betrayed.
Elspeth on the other hand has the power of letting other people know her. She is skilled at communicating, and presumably particularly skilled at communicating her feelings. In contrast to her mother, she simply cannot easily get away with lying.
I'm looking forward to any lessons that Elspeth (or Alicorn) might present on achieving "radiance" as a piece of instrumental rationality. But I am even more interested in seeing how Elspeth makes use of her radiance to get things done with the assistance of friends and acquaintances in a way that Bella could never have gotten things done by herself, even with vampire superpowers.
Two person game theory provides examples in which the ability to conceal information is beneficial to the agent, as well as cases where being trusted not to be hiding anything is just as beneficial. Opacity vs transparency. The thing is, as the number of players in the game increases from 2 up to dozens, the personal characteristic of transparency becomes more and more valuable, and the characteristic of opacity becomes more and more of a liability. Or at least that is my understanding. It is hard to acquire allies when nobody can really trust you.
Based on the first chapter, Elspeth seems to be someone I would like. Bella, on the other hand, struck me as someone I could respect. Elspeth is 5 1/2 now and Harry is finally out of Azkaban. I'm psyched!
This is Part 2 of the discussion of Alicorn's Twilight fanfic Luminosity.
LATE BREAKING EDIT: Part 3 exists now, so new comment threads should be started there rather than here.
In the vein of the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion threads this is the place to discuss anything relating to Alicorn's Twilight fanfic Luminosity. The fanfic is also archived on Alicorn's own website.
Here is Part 1 of the discussion. Previous discussion is hidden so deeply within the first Methods of Rationality thread that it's difficult to find even if you already know it exists.
Similar to how Eliezer's fanfic popularizes material from his sequences Alicorn is using the insights from her Luminosity sequence.
The fic is really really good but there is a twist part way through that makes the fic even more worth reading than it already was, but that makes it hard to talk about because to even ask if someone is twist-aware with any specific hints is difficult. The twist is in the latter half of the story. If you are certainly not post-twist and want to save the surprise, then you should stop reading here and fall back to Part 1 discussion or to the fic itself.
If you think you're pretty sure you are post-twist and are safe to read the rest of this, try reading this rot13'ed hint and see if what you've read matches this high level description of the twist...
Rqjneq unf qvfpbirerq gur frperg gung Vfnoryyn jnf xrrcvat sebz uvz "sbe uvf bja tbbq" bhg bs srne bs Neb ernqvat Rqjneq'f zvaq. Va gur nsgrezngu, fbzrguvat unf punatrq nobhg gurve eryngvbafuvc gung znl unir pnhfrq lbh gb pel sbe n juvyr, naq juvpu znlor urycf gb rzbgvbanyyl qevir ubzr gur pbzovarq zrffntr bs YJ'f negvpyrf nobhg "fbzrguvat gb cebgrpg" naq "ernfba nf n zrzrgvp vzzhar qvfbeqre" naq gur jnl gurl pna fvzhygnarbhfyl nccyl gb crbcyr jub unir abguvat zber va gur jbeyq guna fbzr fvatyr crefba jub gurl ybir.
If the answer to the hint is obvious, then just to be sure that there is not a double illusion of transparency at work, here is the cutoff point spelled out explicitly:
Gur phgbss cbvag sbe cbfgvat urer vf gung lbh unir ernq hc gb puncgre svsgl svir (va gur snasvpgvba irefvba) be puncgre gjragl rvtug ba Nyvpbea'f jrofvgr jurer Rqjneq jnf cebonoyl vapvarengrq, Vfnoryyn fheivirf na nggrzcgrq vapvarengvba, naq fur unf gb ortha gb jbex bhg jung gb qb jvgu gur jerpxntr bs gur erfg bs ure "rgreany" yvsr.