Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 117

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 117.

Plans for next chapter release:

Ch. 118 will post on March 9th, 2015, at 12pm Pacific (7pm UTC).

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 117.

Plans for next chapter release:

Ch. 118 will post on March 9th, 2015, at 12pm Pacific (7pm UTC).

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.

I see several reasons for that, which fall broadly in two different categories (different meaning of "why").

The first set of reasons is grounded into evolutionary psychology, "why" being taken in "why people happen to do it, whatever it's right or wrong". From the genes pov, your children are your greatest asset, since what matters is not having children, but having children who reach adulthood. There has been some evidence that the value we unconsciously assign to children growth with their age (with the resources we spent ensuring they grow healthy) until they reach puberty, that's consistent with that explanation.

The other set of reasons answer to "why should we consider killing children to be worse ?" and to that I've several answers :

children have a higher remaining life expectancy, so killing a 10 years old mean destroying 70 years of life expectancy, while killing a 50 years old mean destroying 30 years (well, not exactly, but not far) ;
children didn't have as much time to enjoy life, so killing a child is unfair (some people do value fairness as a terminal value, and I'm among them) - everything else being equal, if you've two people and together they can live 60 years, it's better to have 30 years each than one living 50 years and the other 10 years ;
children are more vulnerable and less able to defend themselves, and therefore deserve more protection from society ;
many people consider (and I think it holds true to a point, even if I'm not sure how much) that childhood is a part of life that is more full of joy and wonder than adulthood, so depriving someone of his childhood does more harm than depriving someone of the same amount of adult life years ;
children are more psychologically vulnerable and less able to deal with their fear/pain, it's very rare to kill someone suddenly without any pain, so the fear/pain that precedes death is actually worse for a child.

From the genes pov, your children are your greatest asset, since what matters is not having children, but having children who reach adulthood. There has been some evidence that the value we unconsciously assign to children growth with their age (with the resources we spent ensuring they grow healthy) until they reach puberty, that's consistent with that explanation.

The second point is important: it means young adults are more valuable than young children, yet in practice morals sway the other way, with little children being the most valued now that chil... (read more)