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Desrtopa comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 18, chapter 87 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Alsadius 22 December 2012 07:55AM

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Comment author: Desrtopa 04 January 2013 08:19:35PM 0 points [-]

We have no evidence that it's possible to reproduce memories extracted from a pensieve. It may be that the only way to do so is manually, i.e. casting memory charms that exactly replicate the content of the memory from the pensieve. That would mean a whole lot of man-hours to mass produce a memory.

Comment author: gwern 04 January 2013 08:21:58PM 1 point [-]

That would mean a whole lot of man-hours to mass produce a memory.

It's a whole lot of man-hours to produce education the old-fashioned way too - think of how much of the economy education makes up.

Comment author: Desrtopa 04 January 2013 08:27:14PM 1 point [-]

That's true, but when you put in all that time to produce a memory, you're making something that can only be used by one person at a time, albeit an indefinite number of times. A video takes less time and money to reproduce, and can be watched by many people simultaneously.

I don't think viewing a pensieve memory guarantees understanding of the contents. In canon, when Harry first viewed one, his reaction was essentially "what the hell is this?" A star pupil who puts their memories of their classes into a pensieve may not produce something that confers any more comprehension than a video of the lecture. You can't ask a pensieve memory or a video questions when you're confused.

Comment author: gwern 04 January 2013 08:56:25PM -1 points [-]

That's true, but when you put in all that time to produce a memory, you're making something that can only be used by one person at a time, albeit an indefinite number of times. A video takes less time and money to reproduce, and can be watched by many people simultaneously....You can't ask a pensieve memory or a video questions when you're confused.

So you have multiple Pensieves and each student does a different memory at a time, and when they get confused they ask another student No different than books or 'flipped' classrooms.

Comment author: Desrtopa 04 January 2013 09:08:54PM 1 point [-]

If the pensieve memories don't confer greater understanding though, why not just use books instead? They're cheaper.

Comment author: gwern 04 January 2013 09:17:26PM 0 points [-]

Faster (at least in the movies, wasn't a time-speedup implied?), 3D sound & audio, literally immersive, forced attention...

Comment author: Desrtopa 04 January 2013 11:16:00PM 1 point [-]

Faster (at least in the movies, wasn't a time-speedup implied?)

I don't know, I've only watched a couple of them, but I'm pretty sure that it wasn't in the books.

I think wizards can probably produce 3d sound and audio via illusions without needing pensieves anyway.

A pensieve puts you in the memory, so you can't focus on something outside it, but I don't think there's anything that prevents you from zoning out or dozing off in someone else's memory. Of course, in the books, everyone perusing a pensieve memory had enough reason to pay rapt attention that it wasn't an issue.

Comment author: gwern 06 January 2013 12:14:09AM 0 points [-]

I think wizards can probably produce 3d sound and audio via illusions without needing pensieves anyway.

To reuse the argument from silence which everyone is using on the pensieves: we don't see the wizards produce 3D sound and audio via illusions for educational purposes despite the obvious utility in such classes as History of Magic, therefore they cannot.

Comment author: Desrtopa 06 January 2013 12:49:42AM 1 point [-]

We can produce 3D images now, and we don't use them for education even in well funded private schools. Why would we? I disagree that there's obvious utility in using such methods, I don't think it's very likely to improve students' educations.

Comment author: gwern 06 January 2013 01:02:21AM 0 points [-]

Our 3D images cost a fortune to program, for starters, but I can weaken the argument: they don't produce any 2D images with sound either, and we certainly do that a ton.