kilobug comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: palladias 12 December 2013 05:10AM

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Comment author: kilobug 13 December 2013 12:44:49PM 5 points [-]

Eliezer did not gain any of those things. Eliezer cannot read HPMoR and be enlightened, for every piece of enlightenment contained within came from his mind.

I get where you're going, and I mostly agree, but technically it's not 100% exact. Eliezer, like every human, forget things all the time, and reading HPMoR can makes him rediscover things, or can make him see things under a new light. It can also teaches him things about himself, about how his vision of things evolved with time.

Re-reading things (be it "serious" stuff like LW posts/comments, fiction work or even to a point source code) I wrote a while ago regularly enough does "enlighten" me, making me remember things I forgot, making me "propagate" some updating I did since but didn't fully propagate, and improving my internal model of myself.