knb comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (365)
There was a chapter in which Harry does research to determine which animals are known to be intelligent. I don't remember if unicorns were specifically mentioned, but I think we should assume Harry already knows they are non-sentient by his lack of concern.
(I guess that the new, colder Harry might actually think Quirrell's life is even more valuable than some number of intelligent unicorns--because Quirrell has a lot of extremely valuable knowledge that Harry believes might save many lives some day. But I really don't think this is what Eliezer is going for here.)
Can anybody find this for me? I'm not having luck.
animal intelligence research site:hpmor.com; first hit: http://hpmor.com/chapter/49which is not explained in the chapter, so one looks back to http://hpmor.com/chapter/48 and http://hpmor.com/chapter/47 for the full context of Harry freaking out about talking to snakes and being carnivorous.
Something else not explained there is the namecheck to Paul Breedlove's "Speak and Spell". I suspect the Lady of Flying Squirrels also means something but I don't know what, although the French version of Speak and Spell was called La Dictée Magique, and one of its modules was Les Animaux Familiers.
Just Eliezer throwing in more allusions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squirrel_Girl / http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/SquirrelGirl (this was identified in the discussions for those chapters, and Squirrel Girl actually appeared before in the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover IIRC).
Thanks, I stopped looking too soon!