I meant "if I was in roughly Harry's situation in HP:MoR"
Can you expand on what part of his situation would do that? What is the scenario in question? Someone shows up at your door tomorrow and tells you that you are a wizard? I'm still not clear what situation is the one in question.
for decision theoretic reasons I never expect to find myself as a muggle in any story.
What do you mean? I can understand the argument that random muggles aren't likely to be simulated to full fidelity and so entities that have enough processing power to act as observers shouldn't expect themselves to be random bystanders in a story about people they never meet. But this has nothing to do with decision theory so you seem to be driving at some other point.
It's really hard for me to answer your first question. Basically everything about HP:MoR has been optimized to be a good story, so I'm tempted to answer "everything", but I realize that isn't helpful. But for some reason I find listing things aversive. Um. Um?
The simulation fidelity thing is actually I think equivalent to the decision theory thing; or at least, fidelity of simulation is directly correlated with decision theoretic significance. I don't anticipate being understood and thus can't muster up the energy to try to be understood, recursively. I'm sorry. But the simulation thing is basically close enough, yeah.
(The HPMOR discussion thread after this one is here.)
The previous thread is over the 500-comment threshold, so let's start a new Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread. This is the place to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic and anything related to it. The latest chapter as of 09/09/2011 is Ch. 77.
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: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. The fanfiction.net author page is the central location for information about updates and links to HPMOR-related goodies, and AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.
As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
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: