Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 18, chapter 87

Alsadius

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 87. The previous thread has passed 500 comments.

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, 16, 17.

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

I understood quantum mechanics at 11. Possibly better than I do today, on account of having invented my own theories because I despised the existing ones as hopelessly out on a limb. (Short summary of my quackery: Einstein and quantum physics were/are wrong about light emission and quantized energy, and Rhydberg was right and gave up too quickly.)

My first adult book, at the age of 6, was Carl Sagan's Cosmos. It was startling to reread it as an adult and realize I had -comprehended- it at that age, so familiar was much of the material. I was reading and understanding thermodynamics papers when I was eight or nine. My father loved physics, and we'd discuss Feynmann's ideas on long carrides, of which there were many. I was formulating alternative explanations for light when I was twelve.

I had read the entire Wheel of Time series, or what existed of it at the time, several times by the age of 11. If I had been more interested in Science Fiction than Fantasy, I would have been a rough approximate of the Harry Potter from Eliezer's story. And if I had discovered rationalist literature, I would have devoured it, probably to the detriment of my mental health today; I was so far gone into Spock territory that -Atlas Shrugged- was a wake-up call that I should pay attention to my emotions when I finally read it.

So I find the character more than believable. He's actually rather more emotional and less calculating than I would have been, in his shoes.

I suppose that if any website would have users who could compare to HJPEV, it'd be this one...