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Gondolinian comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113 - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: Gondolinian 28 February 2015 08:23PM

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Tags: fiction hpmor harry_potter fanfiction

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Comment author: Gondolinian 28 February 2015 08:24:11PM *  8 points [-]

IMPORTANT:

This is your final exam.

You have 60 hours.

Your solution must at least allow Harry to evade immediate death, despite being naked, holding only his wand, facing 36 Death Eaters plus the fully resurrected Lord Voldemort.

If a viable solution is posted before *12:01AM Pacific Time* (8:01AM UTC) on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2015, the story will continue.

Otherwise you will get a shorter and sadder ending.

There are more details and suggestions at the end of the chapter.

Question for Eliezer: Would a post to a LessWrong HPMOR discussion thread count as a solution, or must all solutions be posted to fanfiction.net?

Comment author: solipsist 28 February 2015 08:52:22PM 3 points [-]

Another question for Eliezer: can this solution involve some past preparations not explicitly seen on camera? Like, can we say "Harry has a Weasley-provided pink plastic flamingo in his pouch, which he can use to defeat 37 Death Eaters in the obvious fashion."

Comment author: jkadlubo 28 February 2015 08:57:53PM 3 points [-]

I would say no to the Flamingo, but yes to any object ever mentioned in the story (e.g. car engine that he tried to use in the first battle), after all, Harry prepared his pouch for anything and everything that he could fathom.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 28 February 2015 09:45:09PM *  2 points [-]

In pouch, no. Transfigured in his glasses, maybe... but Harry is not allowed to move his hands to touch the glasses.

Unless the glasses already a contain a killing machine operated by eye movements. Then Harry can kill everyone with a blink of an eye. (Undiscriminate killing would also hit Hermione, but she would survive.)

Comment author: TsviBT 28 February 2015 11:01:38PM 4 points [-]

Since they are touching his skin, does he need his wand to cancel the Transfiguration?

Comment author: jkadlubo 01 March 2015 10:13:25AM 2 points [-]

No. He just learned to dispell Transfiguration without a wand when he dispelled the one on Hermione's body.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 28 February 2015 11:43:12PM 2 points [-]

Unless the glasses already a contain a killing machine

in that case he'd have used that in Failure Pt 2 obviously.

Comment author: Sheaman3773 28 February 2015 08:37:35PM *  3 points [-]

Keep in mind the following:

  1. Harry must succeed via his own efforts. The cavalry is not coming. Everyone who might want to help Harry thinks he is at a Quidditch game.
  2. Harry may only use capabilities the story has already mentioned; he cannot develop wordless wandless Legilimency in the next 60 seconds. Of course, Harry may find more clever ways to use abilities he has already been established to have.
  3. Voldemort is evil and cannot be persuaded to be good; the Dark Lord’s utility function cannot be changed by talking to him.
  4. If Harry raises his wand or speaks in anything except Parseltongue, the Death Eaters will fire on him immediately.
  5. If the simples timeline is otherwise one where Harry dies – if Harry cannot reach his Time-Turner without Time-Turned help – then the Time-Turner will not come into play.
  6. It is impossible to tell lies in Parseltongue.

Within these constraints, Harry is allowed to attain his fully potential as a rationalist, now in this moment or never, regardless of his previous flaws.

Of course, ‘the rational solution’, if you are using the word ‘rational’ correctly, is just a needlessly fancy way of ‘the best solution’ of ‘the solution I like’ or ‘the solution I think we should use’, and you usually say one of the latter instead. (We only need the word ‘rational’ to talk about ways of thinking, considered apart from any particular solutions.)

And by Vinge’s Principle, if you know exactly what a smart mind would do, you must be at least that smart yourself.

So what I mean in practice, when I say Harry is allowed to attain his fully potential as a rationalist, is that Harry is allowed to solve this problem any way YOU would solve it. If you can tell me exactly how to do something, Harry is allowed to think of it.

But it does not serve as a solution to say, for example, “Harry should persuade Voldemort to let him out of the box” if you can’t yourself figure out how.

…

I wish you all the best of luck, or rather the best of skill.

Comment author: janos 28 February 2015 08:53:37PM 2 points [-]

March 2nd isn't a Tuesday; is it Monday night or Tuesday night?

Comment author: Sheaman3773 28 February 2015 09:01:48PM 1 point [-]

It clearly stipulates 12:01 am to avoid just this kind of confusion.

Further, the chapter will be posted at 10:00 am on Tuesday.

So the deadline is Monday night.

Comment author: see 01 March 2015 02:35:07AM 5 points [-]

The available dates were Monday, March 2nd, or Tuesday, March 3rd; the "12:01 am" did not distinguish which of those dates was meant by "Tuesday, March 2nd" in the slightest, since both possible dates had their own 12:01 am.

This has been subsequently corrected by EY to "Tuesday, March 3rd" (which was the correct day for the 60 hours promised).

Comment author: TobyBartels 01 March 2015 02:17:44AM *  1 point [-]

The tradition in timetables is to list 11:59 pm for endings (such as we have here) and 12:01 am for beginnings. Eliezer should have followed the tradition; the evidence for my claim is that janos was confused when EY violated the tradition. (Edit: Well, actually, janos was apparently confused by a bona-fide error, not by this.)

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