gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82 - Less Wrong
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I think the main thing you're missing is that nothing bad happens to me if I don't win. This could serve as a mantra for a whole lot of things in life that are worth trying.
'Nothing bad happens to' two-boxers either. Do I really need to explain that loss of a gain is as bad as a gain of a loss?
Dumbledore would say that is why you go for multiple gains in parallel.
I didn't understand what you meant so I asked on IRC and you seem to be referring to multiple plots.
Yes, that is the story reference. As it applies here, is there any reason that Eliezer could not attempt to win multiple awards?
Yes. First, the Constitution specifies that if a work is ever successfully nominated, it cannot be nominated again, so MoR can only be done once. (Examining the categories carefully, pg 6-7, it may or may not be technically possible that MoR could be nominated in one year for Best Novel and then Eliezer himself - on the strength of fandom arising from MoR - nominated for 'Best Fan Writer'.)
Second, the rules get very complex on pg 8 about multiple categories, which is why I did not bring it up before:
I... don't actually know what all that means. Clause 3.8.4 seems to indicate that putting MoR up into multiple award categories would have the effect of splitting and diluting all votes, which seems like a bad thing.
Actually I'm pretty sure that's not what Clause 3.8.4 is saying. I think it means that you can't have two entries on the ballot for MoR under the same category just like you can't have two entries for "Obama" for president.
That would be kind of funny though. Would you like to vote for:
"Have you got anything without spam?"