Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 23, chapter 94

elharo

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 94. The previous thread has passed 200 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, 19, 20, 21, 22.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.

That would not be wise: He should retroactively precommit to not steal the Marauders Map regardless of whether the Map is stolen, just as one should one-box on Newcombs problem.

This isn't quite Newcomb's Problem, though.

Consider this: You have essentially the same set up, and you're a one-boxer, so you walk up and take your million dollars out of box B.

And then Omega comes back and says, "Oh, by the way, want to open Box A too?"

And you say, "Um. Okay?" And open Box A, and get a thousand dollars. Or not. Doesn't really matter - you already have your million dollars, so you have nothing to lose by opening Box A.

This differs from the traditional two-boxing argument in one very important respect: you get new info... (read more)

6drethelin13y

On the contrary, you should precommit to being responsible for all apparently bad occurrences if you happen to gain the ability to travel through time because if you can trust anyone to try to fix them while making them seem like they were bad to you it will be you.

-3solipsist13y

Suppose my best friend loses her cell phone, gets lost in the woods, and dies. I could pre-commit to not travel back in time and steal her cell phone. It would be easy commitment to make, because Time-Turners are fictional. Would making that commitment help save my friend?