see 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: see 28 March 2012 09:46:13PM *  11 points [-]

Let's quote the current author's notes:

One thing I did notice was that many readers (a) neglected simple solutions in favor of complex ones, (b) neglected obvious solutions in favor of nonobvious ones, and (c) suggested that the correct hints had been put there for deliberately deceptive purposes.

General announcement: I do not lie to my readers. Almost everything in HPMOR is generated by the underlying facts of the story. Sometimes it is generated by humor – I can’t realistically claim that comic timing that precise would occur in a purely natural magical universe. But nothing is there to deliberately fool the readers.

Methods of Rationality is a rationalist story. Your job is to outwit the universe, not the author. If it taught the lesson that the simple solution is always wrong because it is “too obvious”, it would be teaching rather the wrong moral. There are some cases where people have scored additional points by successful literary analysis, e.g. Checkov’s Gun principles. But the author is not your enemy, and the facts aren’t lies.

Now, yes, it is possible that Eliezer Yudkowsky's Author Note on this very chapter is a lie, and he will suddenly reveal a whole series of barriers to paying the debt that will shut off everything from arbitrage to time turners to Dumbledore using the Philosopher's Stone in the manner allowed in canon, without having given us any previous hints as to what they are. But I think Eliezer Yudkowsky is not lying, and that at least one of the many simple solutions proposed (or another simple solution) will work.

Comment author: ajuc 28 March 2012 10:06:10PM 2 points [-]

So everybody except Harry are holding idiot balls?

Comment author: RobertLumley 28 March 2012 11:01:21PM 17 points [-]

I think that's an inescapable result of the idiot world J. K. Rowling made. There is just so much in cannon that makes so little sense.

Comment author: anotherblackhat 29 March 2012 03:10:52AM 9 points [-]

Doing something stupid, or just being an idiot in general isn't the same as holding the idiot ball.

the person carrying the idiot ball is often acting out of character, misunderstanding something that could be cleared up by asking a single reasonable question or performing a simple problem-solving action, but that he isn't doing solely because the writers don't want him to. It's almost as if the character is being willfully stupid or obtuse.

Comment author: see 28 March 2012 10:35:05PM 5 points [-]

There are at least three methods of paying off the debt relatively easily, mentioned earlier in this discussion, that are fundamentally unavailable as ways of making money for the vast majority of wizards on the Wizengamot. One, using the Philosopher's Stone, is explicitly mentioned in the very comment you replied to.

So, no, I don't think the people in the story are holding Idiot Balls.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 29 March 2012 07:01:11AM 2 points [-]

In terms of the knowledge that Muggles have culturally accumulated, yes. They're at least 500 years behind the times.

Comment author: Percent_Carbon 29 March 2012 07:17:46AM 5 points [-]

It varies. There are trains and gaslamplikethings and indoor plumbing.

Comment author: [deleted] 30 March 2012 08:54:13PM 0 points [-]

I'm willing to bet most of them run on a non-negligible ammount of magic, though.

Comment author: pedanterrific 30 March 2012 09:20:47PM 3 points [-]

Descending through the illusory roof while invisible was a strange experience, and then Harry found himself in a metal corridor lighted with a dim orange light - which, Harry realized after a startled glance, was coming from an old-fashioned mantled gas lamp...

...for magic would fail, be drained away after a time, in the presence of Dementors.

But the others, maybe. Or maybe not; we also have

Minerva gazed up at the clock, the golden hands and silver numerals, the jerking motion. Muggles had invented that, and until they had, wizards had not bothered keeping time. Bells, timed by a sanded hourglass, had served Hogwarts for its classes when it was built.

Comment author: [deleted] 30 March 2012 10:02:08PM 2 points [-]

I revise my position. 500 years seems to be excessive, in many areas. I would guess that the Hogwarts Express, and potentially even the toilets do rely on some level of magic, though.

Comment author: bogdanb 01 April 2012 01:40:43PM *  0 points [-]

My understanding was that most of the “modern” items (excepting things like the lamps in Azkhaban) are magic-based items, they simply got the ideas from muggle items. There’s no obvious indication that Minerva’s clock was purely mechanical; the one Trelawney used had voice recognition, for example.

Even torches are a “muggle-inspired technology” if you think about it. Purely magical lighting would be a glowing globe, or even unexplainably-lit rooms like the Wizengamot hall, there’s no reason to have it shaped like a torch (albeit proximity self-lighting and ever-burning) unless you got inspired by real torches and just went on with tradition, and at least many of those are probably not created by enchanting a manufactured torch. (Given how many there are in Hogwarts, and that you seem to find them even in rooms that didn’t exist yesterday, I’d guess the weird self-building architecture just includes most of them by itself.)

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