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JoshuaZ comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 13, chapter 81 - Less Wrong Discussion
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How do you determine that a puzzle is completely fair and isn't solved? Is that a meaningful category?
In retrospect you're not supposed to think "well, how was I supposed to know about the sauerkraut" but "oh, that makes sense, I wish I'd thought of that."
So the key is to make the puzzle only seem obvious in retrospect? This sounds like you want puzzles that actively trigger hindsight bias. Not exactly a promotion of rationality.
Not hindsight bias, just an asymmetrically easy verification. Imagine a large subset sum problem: answers can all be found logically, it's very hard to find an answer, and it's very easy to verify an answer. Any such problem can trigger hindsight bias of the form "that clearly would have been easy to solve; I just wasn't trying", but that's a flaw of the biased person not the problem.
Well, not obvious in retrospect, that would be silly. I really don't understand how you're arguing with me about the fact that puzzles can be easy or hard without adding sauerkraut.
The issue isn't that puzzles can be easy are hard. The issue is that a good hard puzzle is still solvable. It takes no talent to make a puzzle that no one solves. The difficulty in making a puzzle that's worthwhile is making it in the narrow band of puzzles that are tough enough to be interesting but are still solvable.
Right, and what I'm saying is make the puzzle hard enough that nobody figures the whole things out, spoiling the chapter when I actually read it. It's okay if people think of partial solutions, but when the whole chapter is basically posts A, B, and C glued together then it's a disappointment.
If part can't be figured out then it falls into that category, doesn't it? I'm confused by what you are saying and wonder if there's some set of terminological differences here. Perhaps we should carefully define our terms?
I don't think this argument is worth it, it looks fairly silly in retrospect. Really, how to classify the puzzle isn't the important part; what's important is the outcome I consider favorable. That outcome involves plenty of discussion and theories (I have no complaints in that regard) and then a solution that is better than any of them.
And really, come to think of it, this chapter did deliver on this in some ways. If only because the events of the chapter consisted of several moves, while the theories only tried to predict Harry's first move. So I feel more content now having thought things over than I was initially. And you are probably right that most ways to "fix" the problem would end up making things worse: most puzzles that people write are bad because they are too hard, not because they are easy.
Anyway, it strikes me that there are more interesting things to discuss, like wondering whether Mr. Hat-&-Cloak is actually Imperiused Flitwick polyjuiced into Lucius Malfoy. So hopefully there is not too much confusion left over on your end.