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Acrinoe comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 7 - Less Wrong
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Two Questions/Guesses
1) Prof. Quirrell pointed out that Harry was especially vulnerable to the "Finite Incantatem" spell (to removed his transfigured armor). How does the canon mechanics of this spell work from a tactical standpoint? Is it area of effect or targeted on a per spell basis? Can a weak 1st year dispel a casting done by Headmaster Dumbledor or does caster strength play a role in its effectivity? Depending on the answers, Harry's vulnerability could be mitigated by pure strength or recursive spell depth or minor covering spells to absorb the dispelling castings. 'Just saying. :)
2) In terms of world building, I wonder if Harry is considering that he's got good evidence of living in a "matrix style" simulation with the reality glitches that is the existence of magic. It seems to me like just so many reality "cheat codes", hence Harry's inability to derive underlying principles in the operation and physics of magic. Indeed, the whole hero/quest/prophecy shtick would also count heavily towards a simulation argument.
He already tried on "computer simulation" - but discarded it when he found out how the time-turner worked.
I'm personally wondering when Harry figures out that he's actually a fictional character :)
While it might be a bit too mind-screwy for MoR, I can't help but to think that it would be amazing if, say, Harry confronted Eliezer on allowing Azkaban to exist within his universe just so that the latter could have an interesting and important location to use in his story. Something like Non-Player Character. Omake opportunity, perhaps?
The obvious response is to include in the trigger warning a statement for any sufficiently advanced intelligence or humans with philosophical reservations about imagining other conscious beings that the story includes suffering, descriptions of suffering, and people reflecting on the suffering of others in detail.
Awesome idea. :)
And discarded it without good reason.
I think Ch21 (near the end) played with this idea already. How many potential first week has Eliezer thought through before settling on that one, I wonder.
As I understand it, Finite Incantatem is an Area Effect spell, while Finite is targeted.
Additionally, strength definitely factors in--again, as I understand it.
edit: Strength has to factor in somehow. Even ignoring the ridiculous unbalancing effect that would have, they're in Hogwarts. If it would cancel every spell in the area, regardless of strength, Hogwarts itself would be affected with every cast.
Haven't really thought about it until now, but I'll assume that Finite is a brute-force method requiring strength proportional to the original spell to cancel (so a Transfiguration that takes minutes would require a mass casting to cancel, perhaps) and sometimes won't work at all, while specialized counter-jinx just works if the caster has sufficient strength to cast it.
Depends... if the original spell took time/effort due to it being, well, for lack of a better word "delicate", then finite should work easily on it, while a simple spell that you can just pump more and more power into should require a really strong finite to cancel.
At least, that's how I'd imagine it.
He's considered the simulation argument before, in chapter 14 when he gets the time turner. As for magic being "glitches," I'm not a programmer, but the magic seems too consistent not to be a part of the intended program.
Glitches seem like a bad analogy, but cheat codes seem like potentially a pretty good one. Perhaps the developer console of the universe speaks bad Latin.
Could be. Especially since the truth of the matter is that Harry is in a simulation, a story in our world. Whether he finds out is another matter. I doubt it from a literary perspective.
And, indeed, a story in which past events are occasionally edited.
Heh. Yes. Harry has thought about sending a signal to himself and can see through the illusions of dementors. What would happen if he found out about the edits?
I doubt it's going to happen, but it would be awesome.
The kind of simulation that Harry is in (that is, a piece of fiction) is admittedly not one where the initial conditions are established and it is calculated forward from there, such that X2 rather than X1 happening at time T1 necessitates Y2 rather than Y1 happening at time T2.
So, agreed, editing the chapter that describes T1 from X1->X2 doesn't necessarily cause evidence (e.g., Harry's memories) of X1 at T2 to change, so in principle he could notice the difference.
Which would in and of itself be a useful piece of information about the nature of the universe, I guess. He'd know that his perceived present is not in fact contingent on his past, but is instead separately created by some sort of external creator, who for whatever reason creates the illusion of such contingency.
As a literary choice, I disagree about its awesomeness... this kind of narrative self-reference is good for a kick-in-the-head, but it's difficult to maintain any kind of worthwhile narrative thereafter.
Then again, EY has already devoted many many words to the idea that a set of values can be both arbitrary and worthwhile, so perhaps he'd relish the challenge of writing a compelling Harry aware of his own fictional nature and constructing a meta-ethics that can survive that awareness.
Perhaps he'd also become aware of himself as a derivative work from a canon character who is less intelligent, rational, less powerful, and less American.
Anyway, like you, I doubt it's going to happen. That said, if anyone in that world has that awareness right now, it's Dumbledore, who is at the very least aware of the power that narrative tropes have in his universe.
I'm reminded of Sophie's World. The notion of writing SW fanfic in which Sophie, at the end of that book, finds herself in some SW fanfic is itself kind of amusing.
That's true, and part of why I doubt it will happen. I meant that the idea is awesome and the reactions of the characters would be fun to read, not that it would actually make the book better.
Metafiction.
The fact that the author did not mention the obviously relevant simulation hypothesis in 68 chapters (am I correct?) also suggests that he might have bigger plans with it.
Mentioned in passing in chapter 14:
Best wishes, the Less Wrong Reference Desk.
Thanks! All right, that rules it out. It is a bit weird, because I think the quote ends with a non sequitur. If we live in a Turing-noncomputable universe, we can build a computing device (hypercomputer) that can run the simulation of another Turing-noncomputable universe. (*) So the non-Turingness of a Universe is orthogonal to its simulatedness.
(*) Not always, but this is irrelevant here.
More directly, making something close enough to a time-turner to fool the residents is certainly Turing-computable.
ETA: Especially if you're in charge of computing the residents!