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ArisKatsaris comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8 - Less Wrong
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I completely missed that looping thing too - I had assumed the aching thing was the usual fight-or-flight response ('the gun felt like it weighed a hundred pounds and shook like a sick puppy as I pointed it at him').
I do, however, give myself credit for thinking, 'surely Hermione isn't stupid enough to buy that Merlin story based on a shapeshifter changing their appearance immediately after telling that someone they were distrusted because of their appearance.'
The interesting thing to me is that Cloak-and-Hat's claim he can make arrangements at other schools ties in with Harry's standing offer from the letter-leaver to take a Portkey to that American school, which sounded like a Quirrel thing to do, and that odd bit about 'time' - well, wizards already have time travel on the scale of hours, why not years?
Quirrel being a time traveler (I am sure someone must have thought of this before) would explain a lot. His sickness could be due to the time travel (maybe sharing with an uncooperative body?), it'd explain his power, it'd also explain his very good priors for what is going on, and out of universe, Eliezer has recommended time travel Harry Potter fanfiction. Whether Quirrel is a time-traveling Harry himself, I'm not sure. That may be a step too far, although it would explain the 'don't cross the streams' stuff with HarryxQuirrel.
Ugh, several points of bad logic.
There's nothing about Harry Potter-style time travel that causes sickness or bouts of weakness, even short ones. This is evidence against Quirrel's central mystery being long-distance time-travel.
It would NOT explain it! There's nothing in Harry Potter-style time travel (either canon or MOR!verse) about not touching or interacting with past versions of yourself. This is again evidence against Quirrel's mystery being long-distance time-travel, not in favor of it.
You're making false assumption based on other movies and series that have nothing to do with the rules of time-travel as established in Harry Potter!
That's the only thing it would explain. But all your other points actually point against time-travel.
Travel often involves danger in Harry Potter; Floo ports can be unpleasant, likewise Port keys, and when apparating, one can 'splinch' oneself. Time travel with the heavily restricted Time turners is quite complex and hence possibly dangerous, as MoR has already shown. In the HP time-travel fic Eliezer recommended, each instance of multi-decade time travel damages the protagonist ever more, until during its settings, one more travel back will probably kill him upon arrival.
(And logic? In a fiction universe where we can trust nothing?)
I must have missed this. Where is it written that you can touch your past self, mingle magics with your past self, cast spells in your past self, etc.?
Eliezer has said that Tom Riddle (aka Voldemort aka Professor Quirrel) taught himself occlumency in his third year by getting a time turner and leglimizing himself.
Oh. Hm. That's a good point then.
Cool! (Where did he say that?)
http://lesswrong.com/lw/30g/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/30d1
(Took me a long time to dig that up.)
Thankyou! My googling didn't turn anything up and I've reread all of MoR itself in the last couple of days (except the bits I didn't like) so I was failry sure it wasn't in the story itself.
I notice that I myself replied to Eliezer in that thread. Over the last five years or so I seem to have lost the ability I once had to remember nearly perfectly every conversation I participated in. Shame. :)
This is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. If we're not supposed to use our logic here, then the whole thing is pointless.
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. You have a number of time-travel interactions in both canon and MOR!verse where you could attempt to find any such hint of a prohibition, sense of "Doom", bouts of sickness is relation to time-travel, etc, etc.
If you can't find such evidence of a prohibition, or the other phenomena you describe, then that is evidence against there being such a prohibition or such phenomena.
You don't use logic because you're "supposed to".
I won't downvote you, but I was tempted to, for seemingly intentional lack of clarity in your objection. Making us guess at what you mean seems a waste of our collective time.
By the phrase "if we not supposed to use our logic" I meant "if we can't apply our logic to make testable predictions about plot-points and revelations in subsequent chapters".
Is that more agreeable with you?
If we're going to divert to this tangent then I'll say that yes, in fact, often people do use logic because they are "supposed to". You could make the normative claim that you're not "supposed to" use logic because you're "supposed to". But the descriptive one is as false as the normative one is arbitrary.
And wasn't intended meaning.
And intended meaning of ArisKatsaris fits perfectly well in context.
I don't think it was. If there is any notion of consequences at all, there are methods to be developed for steering consequences where you want them to go, it's not a matter of social or genre convention to break this principle.
I don't believe you parsed the context correctly.
Non sequitur
Privileging the hypothesis - that mingling with your past self is harmless. It's the rare timetravel fiction (fanfiction or otherwise) where such interactions are harmless; usually, it's disastrous in some respect. In the absence of an actual example that it is not disastrous, like the Tom Riddle citation, our priors are not 50/50 or outright assuming it's harmless.
No. Please read the grandparent again. I cannot explain more clearly without explaining basic logic itself. The reply simply does not follow.
The remainder of what you say here could be made as a reply to the great grandparent where it would at least fit (even if I would still disagree based on priors).