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mszegedy comments on How Tim O'Brien gets around the logical fallacy of generalization from fictional evidence - Less Wrong Discussion

9 Post author: mszegedy 24 April 2014 09:41PM

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Comment author: mszegedy 25 April 2014 05:13:39PM 2 points [-]

Are you sure you understood the point? I am highlighting a writing technique where you write the same short story over and over again slightly differently to convey a probabilistic model to the reader in a way that is interesting. HPMoR is not quite this; it's a different story every time, with a different lesson every time, that is treated as a sequence of events.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 26 April 2014 01:33:20AM 0 points [-]

Ah yes. There are at least two aspects in the 'war stories': The 'probabilistic' aspect which indeed I didn't mention and the 'no plot, no sense' part which I do see in the failure to double guess and the confusion it leaves the reader in.

One could argue though that as this is repeated and repeated between Harry and Quirrell and thus kind of probabilistic.