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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Use the Try Harder, Luke - Less Wrong
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The strength of a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality.
(Let's call a conceptually impossible possible world a "ficton", with the notion that Reality is one particular ficton, in the same way that mathematical truth is one logically impossible possible world.)
Fictons containing the Force are non-reductionist; reductionist fictons don't contain the Force. To the extent that I expect physical explanations for things, I don't expect there to be a Force. So trying to explain the Force with little mindochondria is futile - it's not something that you should be able to explain. It's like trying to use gravity to explain why Mercury suddenly decided to move out to Pluto's orbit; the whole point of gravity is that it tells you where Mercury is supposed to be, and that's not it. See also, "A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation".
"So trying to explain the Force with little mindochondria is futile"
Like trying to explain magic with the presence of a particular gene? :-D (BTW, yes, I know that that gene is not the cause of magic in HPMOR, but similarly midichlorians are not the cause of the Force in Star Wars).
And as an extension:
"In the world where midichlorians are needed to explain the Force, the Force simply doesn't exist in the first place."
A parallel statement about HPMOR can be constructed from that: "In the world where a gene is needed to explain magic, magic simply doesn't exist in the first place." which can be subsequently paraphrased as: "in a world where magic exists, a particular gene is not needed to explain it.". Magic exists in the HPMOR universe. If the gene marker is not needed for it, am I correct in assuming that Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres will discover this at a certain point during the course of the story? Am I also correct in assuming that Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres will reach the further conclusion that, since his universe contains magic, he is living in a work of fiction?