nebulous comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89 - Less Wrong

12 Post author: Vaniver 30 June 2013 01:22AM

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Comment author: robryk 30 June 2013 09:50:27PM *  3 points [-]

"So," Harry said, "you know those really simple Artificial Intelligence programs like ELIZA that are programmed to use words in syntactic English sentences only they don't contain any understanding of what the words mean?"

"Of course," said the witch. "I have a dozen of them in my trunk."

Did she mean that she had muggle computer programs? Or did she mean some magical artifacts that work in the same way, or was this just a simple misunderstanding?

Comment author: nebulous 01 July 2013 01:06:40AM 6 points [-]

I thought she mostly understood his sentence (though of course she hadn't known about ELIZA beforehand) and owned a few magical items that could talk to a limited extent.