Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 110

Gondolinian

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 110.

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:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

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 110.

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:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Scientists of LessWrong, I have Important Questions for you:

What would happen if Harry donned his invisibility cloak and stepped through the mirror?

(Physics)

Assuming CPT symmetry, Would the mirror universe be composed entirely of antimatter? Would the anti-nitrogen molecule annihilate with dust particles on Harry's cloak, emitting vast quantities of gamma rays?
If so, would the cloak shield Harry from the gamma rays, or would they be "duplicated" the way visible light photons are? If the gamma rays are duplicated, the temperature of Harry would increase very rapidly. Does the invisibility cloak emit black body radiation? At what point would Harry be visible due to black body radiation alone?
If Harry is not annihilate, what is the simplest experiment he could perform to take advantage of reverse-chiral weak interactions?
Assuming the mirror permits electric fields to travel through it, what would the effects be near the surface of the mirror? Would electron on air molecules near the surface of the mirror be torn off and stick with their reflected positrons? Would the mirror become a giant capacitor? If so, how many coulombs of charge would it hold?

(Chemistry)

Assuming the mirror universe is not composed of antimatter, what sorts of fun activities could Harry do with stereoisomers? For example, what schedule 1 drugs could Harry obtain on the cheap?

(Biology)

Assume Harry starts eating in the mirror universe. What sorts of nutritional difficulties will he encounter? For example, would he be able to metabolize proteins? Carbohydrates? Fats? Nucleic acids? Are there any essential amino acids Harry will be missing?
Would the mirror bacteria and fungi be able to metabolize Harry? Who would win in a fight: mirror bacteria or Harry's immune system?

would he be able to metabolize proteins? Carbohydrates? Fats? Nucleic acids? Are there any essential amino acids Harry will be missing?

Only metabolizing fats, glycerol, and the simplest amino acid, glycine. Everything else is chiral, including a hell of a lot of vitamins. Mirror sugars still taste sweet though. I have no idea if mirroring a protease changes its ability to digest protein (for all the good liberating mirror amino acids would do) but know nucleases and starch-degrading enzymes would be useless.

Though for energy alone he could also consu... (read more)

3bramflakes11y

If the mirror universe was antimatter, Harry would be annihilated instantly because his feet are touching the floor, even if the Cloak could shield everything else.