Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 16, chapter 85

FAWS

The next discussion thread is here.

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 85. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments. Comment in the 15th thread until you read chapter 85.

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: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Preliminaries

I don't think I need to be polite when I'm having everything I write be downvoted and "argued" against by about twelve different people. I'm pretty obviously being treated as a hostile, here, and there's no reason I would want to be polite with people who see no problem being rude to me.

"Pathetic" is vague. I mean that the posters should be ashamed if they actually the counterarguments that they wrote because those counterarguments are very weak. They only appear strong if you read them without critically reflecting on what they're actually saying, or on the implicit assumptions they are making.

By "groupthink" I mean that people are disagreeing with me simply because other people are disagreeing with me and because I already have negative karma. I also mean that they aren't considering my arguments fairly, they're only looking at the issue from a one sided perspective. I'm pretty sure that this is a standard interpretation of what "groupthink" means.

I think I do overuse the word obviously. But the parallels specifically really are obvious.

Substance

Again, illusion of transparency. If you say the community, and the community means "the sum of [all] the individuals" here, then it is not obvious that you do not mean "each and every one of the people who visit this site".

You're playing with semantics and taking quotes literally. I don't think it makes much sense to act as though I think every person on LessWrong is an asshole. I think if you were using the principle of charity you would realize that my comments aren't addressed at everyone on the site. You're willfully being confused here.

No. You can have true conclusions from a fallacious argument or false premises, or true beliefs following from faulty reasoning. And for example, precisely 100% is overconfident that the sun will rise tomorrow, even if it turns out to be correct.

I understand this principle. I wasn't arguing that I'm immune to criticism because I was correct in my conclusion. I was arguing that I shouldn't be criticized because my reasoning process was objectively correct. Nothing that you said here is relevant to what I was contending.

I don't see what fallacies could possibly have to do with that; criticism is a behavior, not an argument or conclusion. And I don't see how that follows, even if it did make sense - I don't expect a generic reader to know much about fallacies, so I don't see how that should necessarily indicate they know less about them.

It is easier to reject a viewpoint if other people do not find that viewpoint credible. Like how all of America hates communism but very few can give substantive arguments as to why it is bad (not that I want to defend communism). It is "common sense" in America that communism is bad. When people hear someone or something being criticized, that makes it easier for them to think of reasons that the thing is bad or wrong and it makes it harder for them to think of how that thing might be good.

As far as I can tell, the large numbers of downvotes started rolling in when you started being rude. That's why I downvoted. And overconfidence is not a mere factual mistake, it's an error in reasoning, which is much more damning of a comment's quality.

No, I started receiving lots of bad karma after a post I made in the earlier thread, and that trend spread to here. I didn't just spontaneously start being rude, I was rude as a result of the way my comments have been received generally. I've received about -30 karma in the last twelve hours, that's not warranted and it justifies a response, even if that response is angry.

I was not under the impression anyone here knows you. Really, try not to take downvotes personally, they just mean your comments are really bad.

Perhaps personally was the wrong word, but there are people going around downvoting everything I write simply because I am the one who wrote it. That is stupid. That makes me want to leave this site. That is bad for rationality. It's also bad because it is mean.

I don't think I need to be polite when I'm having everything I write be downvoted and "argued" against by about twelve different people.

Consider the case where some mugger is pointing a gun at you. That should help give you a more practical perspective. Sure, the mugger doesn't deserve politeness. It isn't fair that politeness is necessary. But you still need to be polite to him if you wish to minimize the chance that he will shoot you in the head.

Sometimes other people really do behaving like dicks and be unreasonable or unfair. Yet that does... (read more)

4thomblake14y

Then expect to be downvoted - anyone else being rude to you will be downvoted as well (not necessarily on net). [...] Leaving aside the common "people are disagreeing with me" interpretation, I still don't think that's what people (non-technically) mean when they use the word "groupthink". "Groupthink" (in the popular usage) implies that there are beliefs common to the group that are not questioned - for example, accusing Less Wrong of "groupthink" because a comment against cryonics was highly criticized would be the common usage. Really, it should not be used that way either though, since it's too similar to the technical meaning of the term but entirely wrong. [...] No, I was not confused about what you meant - I was pointing out how it was not obvious. If you say "Obviously X" and I think X is also obvious to me, then I still might have grounds for arguing that X is not obvious in general. In fact, unless you're talking about something like the color of an object that a particular group of people are currently staring at, it's best to assume that nothing is obvious. If you do use the word "obvious", you should expect objections from people who did not find it obvious, and expect some of them to feel that you are insulting their intelligence. I do not see how I was playing with semantics. Yes, I take what you write literally. If you do not want me to read the words that you write, then do not write them on this website, as I will probably get around to reading all of them eventually. [...] Usually, "if my comment was wrong" refers to its factual accuracy, not the quality of your reasoning. So following an accusation of overconfidence with "that would only make sense if my comment was wrong" is misleading. [...] I'm familiar with that effect, but I don't see how it's a response to either of my statements. [...] Well I, for one, did not read or downvote anything you said in that other thread until I read this one. Now I've gone back and downvoted all the

16JoshuaZ14y

Neither of these gives a licence for rudeness. Having a variety of people argue against a position is not a reason that defense of that position should be less polite. As to downvoting- you yourself said that people should care less about downvoting, so maybe do so? In general, you need to think carefully about what your goals are. If your goals are to convince people then being polite helps. If your goal is to convince bystanders of your position or something similar then being polite still helps, because people are more inclined to take a position seriously when the one arguing for it is calm and polite. At a completely selfish level, being rude makes it harder to accept that one is wrong, due to cognitive dissonance issues and invested-effort/sunk cost issues. So if one wants to become less wrong one should try to be polite for purely selfish reasons.