You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Benquo comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: NancyLebovitz 25 July 2013 04:36AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (524)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: BT_Uytya 26 July 2013 08:23:30PM *  2 points [-]

It's not very useful measure.

So, there is Lesath Lestrange, an original character. Which is more likely: "Lesath thinks that Harry is his Lord" or "Lesath is a 3-level (or any specific number instead of "3") player who wants to decieve Harry, and also he is H&C which is possible because he knows how to fool anti-obliviation wards"?

Your approach will just say "I don't know what to make of it. We have already departured from the canon and I can't work here" with a sad look on face.

EDIT: I re-read my comment, and it seems to be arrogant and condescending. I didn't intend it to be so, and not sure how I should change it, so I figured I should just apologize beforehand. Your approach to assigning priors is reasonable one, it just lacking some vital parts.

Comment author: Benquo 26 July 2013 11:10:44PM 2 points [-]

I agree that it's an incomplete measure. As you point out, we would need some measure of the complexity of divergences from Canon, which requires a more general measure.

Another way to put it would be, I don't think it's unreasonable in a fanfic to assign all the details prescribed in Canon a complexity of zero.

Comment author: BT_Uytya 26 July 2013 11:15:30PM 1 point [-]

This seems reasonable indeed.

(if you are interested, the thing you are pointing at is conditional Kolmogorov complexity)