jslocum comments on Rationality Quotes August 2012 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Alejandro1 03 August 2012 03:33PM

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Comment author: jslocum 17 August 2012 03:11:43PM *  14 points [-]

(Conversely, many fictions are instantiated somewhere, in some infinitesimal measure. However, I deliberately included logical impossibilities into HPMOR, such as tiling a corridor in pentagrams and having the objects in Dumbledore's room change number without any being added or subtracted, to avoid the story being real anywhere.)

In the library of books of every possible string, close to "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" and "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationalitz" is "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Logically Consistent Edition." Why is the reality of that books' contents affected by your reticence to manifest that book in our universe?

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 17 August 2012 11:49:23PM 3 points [-]

Absolutely; I hope he doesn't think that writing a story about X increases the measure of X. But then why else would he introduce these "impossibilities"?

Comment author: Desrtopa 17 August 2012 11:56:12PM 5 points [-]

Because it's funny?

Comment author: [deleted] 17 August 2012 03:54:10PM 0 points [-]

It is a different story then, so the original HpMor would still not be nonfiction in another universe. For all we know, the existance of a corridor tiled with pentagons is in fact an important plot point and removing it would utterly destroy the structure of upcoming chapters.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 August 2012 09:41:24PM 2 points [-]

Nnnot really. The Time-Turner, certainly, but that doesn't make the story uninstantiable. Making a logical impossibility a basic plot premise... sounds like quite an interesting challenge, but that would be a different story.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 18 August 2012 04:30:40PM 1 point [-]

A spell that lets you get a number of objects that is an integer such that it's larger than some other integer but smaller than it's successor, used to hide something.

Comment author: VincentYu 18 August 2012 05:04:57PM 3 points [-]

This idea (the integer, not the spell) is the premise of the short story The Secret Number by Igor Teper.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 18 August 2012 07:54:30PM 6 points [-]

And SCP-033. And related concepts in Dark Integers by Greg Egan. And probably a bunch of other places. I'm surprised I couldn't find a TVtropes page on it.