Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89

Vaniver

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 88-89. The previous thread has passed 500 comments.

There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Harry finds out his world is a simulation, and demands of the controller that retcons occur and that everybody in the simulation be made happy. Eliezer then turns this into a case study of how morality in a simulation is different from morality in the meta-world, and shows Harry how many 'real' lives have benefited from the simulation, and surely that justifies dropping a super-troll on Hermionie? Harry disagrees, and Eliezer demonstrates that morality from outside the simulation is different from morality within the simulation, because Harry can't be expected to care that the simulation provides useful information and probably saves lives. Harry only cares about things that Harry can theoretically experience.

Or maybe stable time loops exist without authorial intent.

Harry realizes he is a fictional character in a fictional world created to make a point. He doesn't take kindly to this and begins blackmailing the apparent author to bring back Hermione, derailing the plot utterly. The story stops making sense and the world 'ends' when Eliezer stops writing the failed story. Eliezer still thinks of the character occasionally though, and eventually since he and Eliezer share so much mental hardware he forces his way into Eliezer's mind and gets Eliezer to assume his identity via the sort of unconscious roleplaying invol... (read more)