pedanterrific comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 13, chapter 81 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: bogdanb 27 March 2012 06:07PM

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Comment author: pedanterrific 28 March 2012 02:27:06AM *  4 points [-]

Why, indeed, would wizards with enough status and wealth to turn their hands to almost any endeavor, choose to spend their lives fighting over lucrative monopolies on ink importation

Oh god, why did you have to go there. Whyyyy

Edit: at least you didn't mention the squid

Comment author: Alsadius 28 March 2012 02:36:23AM 3 points [-]

Am I missing something?

Comment author: thelittledoctor 28 March 2012 03:07:44AM *  7 points [-]

This.

But gaze not overlong into that particular abyss.

Edit: In retrospect, TvTropes itself is probably the bigger abyss of the two. So don't gaze overlong into that one either.

Comment author: FAWS 29 March 2012 12:18:14PM 4 points [-]

Could you summarize to spare us from gazing into that abyss?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 March 2012 02:28:40AM 1 point [-]

Wow, I'd totally forgotten where I got that from.

But in this particular case, it's deserved, considering that a certain idea I first encountered in PKH is an element of HPMOR.

(You probably don't want to read through PKH trying to figure it out. No, seriously, it's figureable from the main text and PKH isn't going to help much.)

Comment author: thelittledoctor 29 March 2012 11:14:18AM 1 point [-]

Other than "cheroybbq snzvyvrf znvagnva gurve jrnygu guebhtu neovgenel zbabcbyvrf tenagrq ol gur Jvmratnzbg"?

Comment author: pedanterrific 29 March 2012 02:56:13AM 1 point [-]

Is it 'xrrc gur fbhepr bs lbhe vzzbegnyvgl va bhgre fcnpr'?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 March 2012 06:22:34AM 1 point [-]

Was that in PKH?

Comment author: pedanterrific 29 March 2012 06:27:50AM 1 point [-]

It's mentioned on the Tropes page under How Unscientific. So not that, huh?

Comment author: LucasSloan 30 March 2012 03:57:48AM 0 points [-]

No, seriously, it's figureable from the main text and PKH isn't going to help much.

Jryy vg'f rvgure gung Uneel'f qnexfvqr vf gur sentzrag bs Ibyqrzbeg'f fbhy be gung Qhzoyrqber'f rivy.

Comment author: Alsadius 28 March 2012 03:20:31AM 1 point [-]

Ye gods.

Comment author: Daniel_Molloy 02 April 2012 07:49:36PM 0 points [-]

Oh dear, I cannot stop gazing. It's actually quite a fun read so far, although it seems more like a sloppy first draft than a polished novel. I guess that's to be expected given the lack of editors in fanfic - I've clearly been spoiled by HPMOR and Luminosity.

Comment author: thelittledoctor 02 April 2012 09:28:46PM 1 point [-]

I confess I rather enjoyed the part where Snape's head exploded. There's a certain window of "So bad it's good" in there, before you get to the "So bad it's horrible". As I said in another comment, it's not bad at the start.

Comment author: Locke 28 March 2012 03:15:12AM 0 points [-]

What's wrong with the story?

Comment author: thelittledoctor 28 March 2012 03:24:12AM 0 points [-]

All the same things that are wrong with Chunin Exam Day.

Comment author: Locke 28 March 2012 03:30:46AM 2 points [-]

Never read that either. Is it like Time Braid?

Comment author: pedanterrific 28 March 2012 03:35:49AM 8 points [-]

Time Braid is far, far better than Chunin Exam Day. For many reasons, including not being written by a sociopath.

Comment author: MatthewBaker 28 March 2012 03:44:21AM 2 points [-]

Time Braid is what Chunin Exam Day could have been without a Harem and with a more convincing polyamorous shipping. Its a much better and less drawn out story, for instance there are many other complete AU remakes that go as long and as deeply as HPMOR. However, HPMOR doesn't have the vast amount of fluff and filler that many of the 6/7 multipart fics seem to have(barring SA which I enjoyed greatly).

Comment author: thelittledoctor 28 March 2012 03:49:19AM 1 point [-]

SA?

Comment author: Anubhav 28 March 2012 04:28:36AM 1 point [-]

Self-Actualization.

Comment author: thelittledoctor 28 March 2012 03:48:04AM 0 points [-]

The difference is primarily one of quality. Time Braid is excellent, provided one is willing to accept the rewritten cosmology, while Chunin Exam Day is pretty much universally considered to be refuse.

Comment author: Locke 28 March 2012 04:07:14AM 0 points [-]

I'm still not sure what specifically is wrong with PKH. The first chapter looks interesting so far...

Comment author: thelittledoctor 28 March 2012 04:11:54AM *  1 point [-]

I actually found it fairly enjoyable as well for the first few chapters. I didn't realize how much I hated it until I came to <rot13>Qhzoyrqber'f guvegrragu Ubepehk</rot13>.

Of course, the mere existence of that spoiler may make you want to read more just to find out how on earth such a thing could happen.

Comment author: Locke 28 March 2012 04:17:07AM 2 points [-]

Good prediction.

Comment author: pedanterrific 28 March 2012 02:37:41AM 3 points [-]

Yes, and be glad of it.

Comment author: thelittledoctor 28 March 2012 02:32:59AM 1 point [-]

Yeah, was that a Partially Kissed Hero reference?

For that matter, from what source was "the Ree" drawn? Totoro's from a Miyazaki movie...

Comment author: pedanterrific 28 March 2012 02:37:24AM *  4 points [-]

DO NOT SPEAK THE NAME

The Ree are from Nobody Dies, a Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfiction.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 March 2012 06:34:36AM 8 points [-]

And Hogwarts has ventilation ducts large enough to fit a basilisk!

Comment author: Alicorn 28 March 2012 05:33:12PM 7 points [-]

Snakes can get through spaces much smaller than it looks like they should be able to. It doesn't seem ruled out that a magic snake can do that to a greater extent. So this implies big ductwork but not enormous ductwork.

Comment author: [deleted] 28 March 2012 06:41:15PM 15 points [-]

In fairness, circulating air in a castle whose geometry is best represented by an arbitrarily connected graph (not necessarily acyclic), is a non-trivial engineering challenge. After a few student asphyxiated, they may just have gone a little overboard.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 March 2012 10:22:59PM 13 points [-]

I now declare this to be MoR!canon. (That large magical dwellings in general have large highly-connected, possibly magical air-ducts, by tradition, to prevent the occasional cases where somebody asphyxiated; and that Salazar used this as his excuse for why Hogwarts's ventilation ducts had to be so large.)

Comment author: pedanterrific 28 March 2012 07:07:23PM 8 points [-]

Aguamenti creates water out of nothing, which you can drink. The Bubble-Head Charm could, in theory, work some way other than creating thin air out of thin air, but personally I doubt it does.

Comment author: thomblake 29 March 2012 09:56:53PM 0 points [-]

creating thin air out of thin air

Ha!

Comment author: pedanterrific 29 March 2012 10:03:27PM 0 points [-]

I initially wrote 'create breathable air out of thin air' and then couldn't resist.

Comment author: thelittledoctor 28 March 2012 08:10:29PM 1 point [-]

I never, in Canon, got quite such an impression of Eerie Alien Geometries from the castle as I do in MoR. Thankfully Event Horizon hadn't come out in 1991, or I'd wager a lot of Muggleborns would be very uncomfortable in the upper floors.

Comment author: brilee 29 March 2012 03:47:16PM 0 points [-]

The ventilation ducts in large buildings are roughly 1m^2 in cross-sectional area, branching out to ducts that are roughly.1m^2 in cross-sectional area.

A python is 6 meters long and has a cross-sectional area of .015m^2. Assuming the aspect ratio of the snake body stays roughly constant, a basilisk is 15 meters long, and would have a cross-sectional area of .094m^2. Barely enough to through ventilation ducts.

Comment author: MixedNuts 20 April 2012 03:35:30PM 0 points [-]

I think basiliks are a little thicker than pythons (from the second movie) and much longer than 15 m (from awesomeness).