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Desrtopa comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82 - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: FAWS 04 April 2012 02:53AM

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Comment author: Desrtopa 04 April 2012 03:57:40AM * 13 points [-]

That wasn't a dark ritual, it was just a choice. Like any hard choice, it forced him to seriously weigh his values against each other, and it's hard to go through that completely unchanged, but that doesn't mean it completely rewrote his character.

You can love others and acknowledge that there are some things you can't sacrifice, even for love.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 06 April 2012 03:07:35AM 3 points [-]

You can give anything for your heart's desire, except your heart.

--Bujold

Comment author: brilee comment score below threshold [+] (17 children)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 April 2012 06:22:29AM 31 points [-]

Nothing in this story so far represents either FAI or UFAI. Consider it Word of God.

Comment author: Percent_Carbon 04 April 2012 06:41:14AM 7 points [-]

Thank all that is amoral. It is well and good this is made clear.

Wait...

so far

Damn it, all.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 April 2012 08:09:34AM 18 points [-]

And I have no intention at this time to do it later, but don't want to make it a blanket prohibition. Who knows, I could run into a possible metaphor that would, improbably, not suck like a giant black hole.

Comment author: Percent_Carbon 04 April 2012 08:46:24AM * 6 points [-]

No intention?

So the story isn't planned to end with Harry creating a godlike super entity operating outside of time to ensure eternal life for all thinking beings, to download of all consciousnesses throughout history at their point of death, to lay the foundations of magic, and in that way to all at once resolve questions regarding Atlantis, the afterlife, and how to write the happiest, most clearly drunk on wish fulfillment and indulgent to the 'bargaining' stage of grief/acceptance-est ending possible?

Comment author: thomblake 04 April 2012 08:31:32PM 11 points [-]

Surely not, if the story is nearer its end than its beginning, given its pacing so far. Given Eliezer's beliefs about FAI, and that the story is not supposed to lie, Harry attempting to create a godlike AI without years of careful research should result in a Bad End.

Comment author: Percent_Carbon 05 April 2012 05:16:14AM 2 points [-]

I admit I had not considered that when making my ridiculous proposal.

However, EY has suggested that a good and bad end are already written. The bad end of 3 Worlds was 'happily ever after,' so my ridiculous proposal is made no less valid by not meeting your entirely reasonable criteria for a good end, based on teaching a poor moral.

Comment author: Anubhav 11 April 2012 11:45:36AM 2 points [-]

The Atlantis thing was proposed in a chapter titled "Hold Off On Proposing Solutions".

Comment author: Percent_Carbon 11 April 2012 01:02:23PM 1 point [-]

That doesn't mean, "Don't Propose a Solution."

Comment author: smk 04 April 2012 01:33:19PM 1 point [-]

Seems kind of like rehashing old ground covered by Spider Robinson, to me.

Comment author: kilobug 05 April 2012 04:01:37PM 5 points [-]

Oh, that kills my secret hypothesis that the "Source of Magic" was a failed attempt at making a FAI (well, I guess I wasn't the first to think about it anyway). Thanks for dispelling the doubt, anyway.

Comment author: gRR 05 April 2012 07:58:11PM 7 points [-]

Actually, the Word of Eliezer didn't kill this hypothesis yet. He only said nothing in the story represents either FAI or UFAI, in the allegorical sense. But a real FAI/UFAI can still be there.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 30 April 2014 03:36:01PM 0 points [-]

But this comment of EY effectively kills it. If an FAI were the source of magic, then it should become 'represented' in one of the later arcs to explain it.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 04 April 2012 01:30:19PM 0 points [-]

Thank you.

I've thought that some of Harry's earlier exploits put Dumbledore and the teachers in the position of trying to deal with an AI, but I suppose that Harry isn't self-improving enough to be more than a lightweight sketch of the early stages.

Comment author: pedanterrific 04 April 2012 05:40:05AM 5 points [-]

How's that? He doesn't seem very, you know, apocalyptic.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 April 2012 04:28:15PM 2 points [-]

After having read this chapter, I now believe that Eliezer intended Dumbledore to represent a failed attempt at the creation of Friendly AI.

Eliezer would never portray a failed creation of an FAI as someone so impotent and comparatively benign.

Comment author: TimS 05 April 2012 04:36:08PM -2 points [-]

Maybe he wouldn't, but that is a fact about him, not about AI. There's a narrow slice of concept space that includes uFAI that is almost benign. Not that I think it's likely that we could intentionally build such an entity. And we shouldn't want to, for basically the same reasons that we shouldn't want to build uFAI generally.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 April 2012 04:40:47PM * 3 points [-]

Maybe he wouldn't, but that is a fact about him, not about AI.

Yes. I asserted a fact about Eliezer, not about AI or green cheese. No 'but' is required.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 April 2012 04:50:50PM 0 points [-]

You can love others and acknowledge that there are some things you can't sacrifice, even for love.

For example: more love.

Desrtopa comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82 - Less Wrong Discussion

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