You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Normal_Anomaly comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 12 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Xachariah 25 March 2012 11:01AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (692)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 25 March 2012 01:38:46PM 17 points [-]

My model of EY says that he would want the evidence he gave us to point to the true culprit--more evidence ought to make finding who did it easier, not harder. If EY chose that time deliberately to point at Quirrell, it's further evidence that Quirrell did it.

Comment author: faul_sname 26 March 2012 04:03:46AM 4 points [-]

And his comment to the effect that he doesn't intentionally mislead readers, made about 4 hours after this one, implies that it may have been in reference to the above hypothesis.

Comment author: TobyBartels 31 March 2012 10:13:42AM 0 points [-]

More specifically, from my model of EY: If some information, rationally interpreted, is (internal to the story) evidence for a hypothesis, then this is good evidence (external to the story) that EY intends this hypothesis to be true. And if some information, interpreted according to a common bias, is (internal to the story) evidence for a hypothesis, then this is good evidence (external to the story) that EY intends this hypothesis to be false. Not only is he not trying to trick us, after all; he's trying to teach us rationality skills. So he can put in red herrings; we just shouldn't fall for them!