Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 12

Xachariah

The new thread, discussion 13, is here.

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. With three chapters recently the previous thread has very quickly reached 1000 comments. The latest chapter as of 25th March 2012 is Ch 80.

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: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.

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:

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

The new thread, discussion 13, is here.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Eliezer Yudkowsky's Author Notes, Chp. 81
This makes me worry that the actual chapter might’ve come as an anticlimax, especially with so many creative >suggestions that didn’t get used. I shall poll the Less Wrong discussants and see how they felt before I decide whether >to do this again. This was actually intended as a dry run for a later, serious “Solve this or the story ends sadly” puzzle – >like I used in Part 5 of my earlier story Three Worlds Collide - but I’ll have to take the current outcome into account when >deciding whether to go through with that.

Let me argue that this chapter was in no way an anticlimax:

We had no way to know which solution Harry might have come up with or picked (I like the hat trick still even though I figured that was not likely the solution of choice).
Neither Harry nor Eliezer are omniscient
Harry was under a lot of time pressure and had less information to work with than the readers
There is a lot of 'motivation' to keep the story interesting which limits the available solution space (i.e., any solution that results in a terrible story is not really an option)
A lot of entertainment is derived from 'watching' HOW things play out. History, movies, fiction, etc. are interesting to me for this reason and not because the main character did everything flawlessly.
If Eliezer does want to do a puzzle plot piece I strongly recommend accounting for fact that many of us read this story to relax and do NOT exercise our full investigative powers on solving story problems as that involves a lot of boring (for me at least) mundane work when done properly.

9

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 12

9

9

9

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 12

9

9