I just realized how Wizard negotiations are so far ahead of their muggle counterparts. They accidentally stumbled upon the best possible decision theory.
Take the prisoner's dilemma, except this time add in time tuners. Defection will immediately be punished by defection. The only stable time-loops that can exist are cooperate-cooperate or defect-defect. Actors with mutual access to time tuners will literally have to choose as though controlling the logical output of the abstract computation they implement, includes the output of all other instantiations and simulations of that computation. You don't need to be able to perfectly predict the other person's actions when you can actually observe them and change your own answers to match before negotiations happen.
Two nations going into negotiations will have the Prime Minister wake up, read a note saying "cooperate - agree to concession and gain concession " then go into negotiations and finish in ten minutes. This seems well within the purview of normal time travel and not too far into calculating prime factors with a time-tuner. Although, I'm not sure if Robin Hanson's pie problem would result in "Everybody cooperates" or "Do not mess with time." Intuitively I think time tuners would still do a lot of the heavy lifting, or wizards would intentionally setup the negotiations to be time-tuner-solvable. Then again I'm no expert on time traveling wizard decision theory.
Regardless, this explains how wizards were able to come up with so many agreements. The International Warlock Convention of 1289, the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy in 1692, the Warlocks Convention of 1702, etc. These all occurred hundreds of years before the concept of nations in muggle lands, let alone international diplomacy as we know it today. With easy and painless negotiations, and perfect decision theory such things would be trivial. No wonder wizards have been pulling off international cooperation since the dark ages!
No wonder wizards have been pulling off international cooperation since the dark ages!
I always imagined that wizards are pretty much detached from the muggle world and their technological level and standards of living have been roughly constant for at least hundreds of years. And meanwhile their level of societal organization progressed gradually.
Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.
The hiatus is over with today's publication of chapter 73, and the previous thread is approaching the 500-comment threshold, so let's start a new Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread. This is the place to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic and anything related to it.
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. The fanfiction.net author page is the central location for information about updates and links to HPMOR-related goodies, and AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.
As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: