MichaelHoward comments on Rationality Quotes August 2012 - Less Wrong

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (426)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 August 2012 07:09:06AM 6 points [-]

"Given the nature of the multiverse, everything that can possibly happen will happen. This includes works of fiction: anything that can be imagined and written about, will be imagined and written about. If every story is being written, then someone, somewhere in the multiverse is writing your story. To them, you are a fictional character. What that means is that the barrier which separates the dimensions from each other is in fact the Fourth Wall."

-- In Flight Gaiden: Playing with Tropes

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

Comment author: MichaelHoward 18 August 2012 12:31:42AM *  2 points [-]

"She heard Harry sigh, and after that they walked in silence for a while, passing through an archway of some reddish metal like copper, into a corridor that was just like the one they'd left except that it was tiled in pentagons instead of squares."

"she was trying to count the number of things in the room for the third time and still not getting the same answer, even though her memory insisted that nothing had been added or removed"

I'm curious though, is there anything in there that would even count as this level of logically impossible? Can anyone remember one?