= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Locke comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 12 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (692)
General announcement:
I do not lie to my readers.
Almost everything in MoR is generated by the underlying facts of the story. Sometimes it is generated by humor (I can't realistically claim that Ch. 5 would have comic timing that precise in a purely natural universe). Nothing is generated to deliberately fool the readers.
There are two exceptions to this claim I can readily recall - cases where red herrings made it into the text - and they occur in Ch. 21 where my phrasing of Dumbledore's note to Harry was influenced to be overly compatible with the fan theory (which took me quite by surprise) that the notes were sent by Sirius Black. And in Ch. 77 when Mr. Hat and Cloak says "Time -", which was generated to be compatible with the postulate of a Peggy Sue. I may go back and eliminate both of these at some point to make the text herring-free.
Methods of Rationality is a rationalist story. Your job is to outwit the universe, not the author. There are also cases where people have scored additional points by successful literary analysis, e.g. Checkov's Gun principles. But the author is not your enemy here, and the facts aren't lies.
Of course there are various characters running deceptions and masquerades, but that is quite a different matter.
Anything in particular that spurred this announcement?
Oh, and do you ever intend to read the later books?
I'm guessing the large amount of very low probability ideas for Harry's solution in the next chapter.
I've said it many times, and I'll say it again... this is a better solution than most of what's been proposed in the discussion thread so far.
Hopefully i'm not deluding myself by believing that my solution outlined here is equal or superior to Harry's solution whatever it is.
I outlined my solution here
http://lesswrong.com/lw/axe/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/64am
Check out Chapter 24, which mentions "The Rule of Three": Any plot which requires more than three different things to happen will never work in real life.
I'm counting atleast 8 different things that have to go right for your plot to work (steal Draco's wand, steal Hermione's wand, steal Jugson's wand, convince Snape/Quirrel/Dumbledore to cooperate with your plan, convincingly tamper with the wands, sneak back and return Hermione's wand, return Draco's wand, return Jugson's wand)
I could be wrong, but i believe its been noted that Harry has a tendency to bypass the rule of three.
I don't think Harry has even noticed that the rule of three exists yet. He hasn't actually had any of his plans fail, so he has no experience with trying to make sure that they don't. This is why I'm fairly skeptical of his whole "If your plan isn't working, be more clever" attitude - sometimes, clever isn't enough. Dumbledore's inactivity seems a lot more sensible in a lot of cases, as would be expected from someone who's learned the hard way.
sometimes, there isn't enough clever
This is also true.
would you care to elaborate?
His knowledge of the rule's existence is irrelevant. I don't think It was meant to be taken as a limiting boundary on all plans, just good advice that Lucius seemed to trust. And his solution isn't to be merely clever, its to be creative. Harry's point is that a world where evil goes unchecked is barely worth living in, and so there's no real room for compromise. With power like magic that can literally rewrite the laws of physics, no situation is ever really unsolvable if you're creative enough to directly manipulate the rules.
I understand the attitude, but Harry's default plan seems to be to throw complexity at any given problem. That doesn't end well, magic or no magic. And to steal a quote from canon, "the problem is that our enemies have magic too".
Look all I know is that when Harry gets killed by Voldemort in canon nothing was as it seemed. I assume the next chapter will be nearly as suspenseful despite the trial resolution if Eliezer has anything to say about it.