I guess it is slightly more acceptable if it's a binary question.
No, that's not what I had in mind. For example, there are questions which explicitly ask for an explanation and answering them with an explanation is fine. Or, say, there are questions which are wrong (as a question) so you answer them with an explanation of why they don't make sense.
It means you stop seeing things from one specific point of view.
I don't think you can. Or, rather, I think you can see things from multiple specific point of views, but you cannot see them without any point of view. Yes, I understand you talk about looking at things "from the perspective of the universe" but this expression is meaningless to me.
"I am perfectly happy to change my mind if you show me proof that I'm wrong."
That may or may not be a reasonable position to take. Let me illustrate how it can be reasonable: people often talk in shortcuts. The sentence quoted could be a shortcut expression for "I have evaluated the evidence for and against X and have come to the conclusion Y. You are claiming that Y is wrong, but your claim by itself is not evidence. Please provide me with actual evidence and then I will update my beliefs".
even though the universe does not think in terms of "left" or "right"
But humans do and I'm talking to humans, not to the universe.
A more general point -- you said in another post
I am irrelevant. My emotions are irrelevant. Truth is not influenced by what I want to be true.
This is true when you are evaluating the physical reality. But it is NOT true when you are evaluating the social reality -- it IS influenced by emotions and what people want to be true.
but I personally would not classify ideas as belonging to people
I don't quite understand you here.
New chapter!
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 102.
There is 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.)
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: