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gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82 - Less Wrong
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I don't think you're trying very hard here.
Privileging the hypothesis of a meaningful afterlife rather than Occam's razor that it doesn't exist or it is the same as ghosts and photographs. (This is one argument against death being good: the wizarding world is in a vastly epistemically superior position to Muggles as far as evidence for life after death goes, but Harry pokes holes in it anyway.)
The mechanisms by which religion and other sadistic beliefs can spread.
Do I really need to explain this one?
Useful for having the patient to investigate and hold off on conclusions (which lead to confirmation bias & backfire effects - you missed those).
That one's just criticizing canon's worldbuilding. (I think. Imaginative suggestions about how that could be related are welcome - perhaps an argument from silence that if the afterlife existed the market would be exploiting it somehow?)
Okay, against an opponent who says that death is good because there is a good afterlife, I can see how this one would work. That's not an argument that death is bad, of course, or clearly an argument against 'accepting death' (whatever JKR meant by that), but it's progress. The chapter itself doesn't mention death at all though.
And your thought is that it's 'sadistic beliefs' that teach that death is not bad? Why does explaining these mechanisms show that death is bad? I'm afraid this seems very indirect to me.
Yes, that one especially, if you have the time and inclination. I recognize that I'm imposing on you here.
The question was, 'how does this relate to the thesis that death is bad'? I mean, if we think death is bad, then in some sense we could take any good epistemic principle as relating to that thesis, insofar as good epistemic principles relate to true beliefs. Is this as direct as we can get?
Education frequently is indirect. If you want direct statements, you wouldn't be reading MoR, you'd be... well, here, reading LW articles and stuff. Not everything is directly relevant, of course; for example, we could view Harry negotiating with the Sorting Hat as isomorphic to negotiating with an Omega in various precommitment scenarios devised for discussing the advanced decision theories like UDT/TDT. Is this directly relevant to arguing against theism and deathism and pro-agism? Not that I can think of.
Is that such a bad thing? If good epistemic principles don't lead to true beliefs, then that would make MoR more propaganda than anything...
Fair enough. Thanks for taking the time.