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

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

By Word of God, we know that horcruxes exist in the HPMoR universe. It seems like by now we ought to be able to start figuring out what a horcrux is.

In Canon, a horcrux is a fragment of a soul. But it stands to reason that this will not be the full answer in MoR, as it's a fairly serious violation of the author's beliefs. So if we're to disregard supernatural and religious concepts, the obvious first idea is that horcruxes are storage media for some portion of a brain's data.

The problem is that most of what makes up a brain has been strongly hinted to not be the answer, either. It certainly looks like Harry is a horcrux in this universe, and Harry already thought of that possibility in different terms, yet the Sorting Hat says with 100% confidence that there is no extra "mind, intelligence, memory, personality, or feelings" in Harry's head. And I'm disregarding out of hand any clever-schoolboy loopholes like "The horcrux is Harry's foot!"

What is left of a brain, if mind and intelligence and memory and personality and feelings (and a soul) are eliminated? It would be fitting, though a bit precious, if the answer were somehow "rationality", if you could come up with a sensible reason to say that a person's decision-making algorithms don't fall under any of those five categories. But I certainly can't; "mind" by itself seems pretty all-encompassing to me.

But I'm new to Less Wrong and not yet very well read about the art of rationality, so it could be that this will be an easy question for some of you. What explanation remains that would describe what a horcrux is? Are there accepted theories out there that I haven't seen? Or is it maybe time to start questioning my premise that Harry is a horcrux in the first place?

It certainly looks like Harry is a horcrux in this universe, and Harry already thought of that possibility in different terms, yet the Sorting Hat says with 100% confidence that there is no extra "mind, intelligence, memory, personality, or feelings" in Harry's head.

I would add that in Cannon, Harry is a horcrux, which adds a fair amount of weight to the idea.

Some possibilities for why the hat would make the statement;

Harry's scar isn't a horcrux.
A horcrux is nothing like a ghost, mind, intelligence, memory, personality, or feelings.
The so

... (read more)

3gRR14y

We can try to assume that a horcrux is literally a fragment of a soul, in the Hofstadterian sense. It is then indeed an abstract algorithm (or a set of them), and it need not include memory and separate intelligence, although it would include personality and feelings. Extrapolating on what we know about how the Source of Magic interprets things, we should expect inanimate object horcruxes to be generally passive, while alive horcruxes to incorporate the algorithms into their own minds, although still somewhat separate. [It'd be cool to read about how a horcruxed software would behave.]

3JoshuaZ14y

I would guess that the author sees conservation of energy as pretty important also. I would not be at all surprised if souls really exist in the HPMoR universe.