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[LINK] Collaborate on HPMOR blurbs; earn chance to win three-volume physical HPMOR

6 ete 07 September 2016 02:21AM

Collaborate on HPMOR blurbs; earn chance to win three-volume physical HPMOR.

 

I intend to print at least one high-quality physical HPMOR and release the files. There are printable texts which are being improved and a set of covers (based on e.b.'s) are underway. I have, however, been unable to find any blurbs I'd be remotely happy with.

 

I'd like to attempt to harness the hivemind to fix that. As a lure, if your ideas contribute significantly to the final version or you assist with other tasks aimed at making this book awesome, I'll put a proportionate number of tickets with your number on into the proverbial hat.

 

I do not guarantee there will be a winner and I reserve the right to arbitrarily modify this any point. For example, it's possible this leads to a disappointingly small amount of valuable feedback, that some unforeseen problem will sink or indefinitely delay the project, or that I'll expand this and let people earn a small number of tickets by sharing so more people become aware this is a thing quickly.

 

With that over, let's get to the fun part.

 

A blurb is needed for each of the three books. Desired characteristics:

 

* Not too heavy on ingroup signaling or over the top rhetoric.

* Non-spoilerish

* Not taking itself awkwardly seriously.

* Amusing / funny / witty.

* Attractive to the same kinds of people the tvtropes page is.

* Showcases HPMOR with fun, engaging, prose.

 

Try to put yourself in the mind of someone awesome deciding whether to read it while writing, but let your brain generate bad ideas before trimming back.

 

I expect that for each we'll want 

* A shortish and awesome paragraph

* A short sentence tagline

* A quote or two from notable people

* Probably some other text? Get creative.

 

Please post blurb fragments or full blurbs here, one suggestion per top level comment. You are encouraged to remix each other's ideas, just add a credit line if you use it in a new top level comment. If you know which book your idea is for, please indicate with (B1) (B2) or (B3).

 

Other things that need doing, if you want to help in another way:

 

* The author's foreword from the physical copies of the first 17 chapters needs to be located or written up

* At least one links page for the end needs to be written up, possibly a second based on http://www.yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/

* Several changes need to be made to the text files, including merging in the final exam, adding appendices, and making the style of both consistent with the rest of the files. Contact me for current files and details if you want to claim this.

 

I wish to stay on topic and focused on creating these missing parts rather than going on a sidetrack to debate copyright. If you are an expert who genuinely has vital information about it, please message me or create a separate post about copyright rather than commenting here.

I'm planning a rationalist technique-demonstrating sequel to HPMOR. I know about the Virtue of Silence. Are there any skills I should leave out?

0 b_sen 01 March 2016 04:13AM

Details and central discussion are here on Reddit, but I want to also reach the part of the LW community that would be interested in weighing in but doesn't regularly use /r/HPMOR or /r/rational.  Keeping the discussion centralized on Reddit would be preferred, but if you'd really rather comment / PM here then go for it.

HPMOR and the Power of Consciousness

-3 Algernoq 25 November 2015 07:00AM

Throughout HPMOR, the author has included many fascinating details about how the real world works, and how to gain power. The Mirror of CEV seems like a lesson in what a true Friendly AI could look like and do.

I've got a weirder theory. (Roll for sanity...)

The entire story is plausible-deniability cover for explaining how to get the Law of Intention to work reliably.

(All quoted text is from HPMOR.)

This Mirror reflects itself perfectly and therefore its existence is absolutely stable. 

"This Mirror" is the Mind, or consciousness. The only thing a Mind can be sure of is that it is a Mind.

The Mirror's most characteristic power is to create alternate realms of existence, though these realms are only as large in size as what can be seen within the Mirror

A Mind's most characteristic power is to create alternate realms of existence, though these realms are only as large in size as what can be seen within the Mind.

Showing any person who steps before it an illusion of a world in which one of their desires has been fulfilled.

The final property upon which most tales agree, is that whatever the unknown means of commanding the Mirror - of that Key there are no plausible accounts - the Mirror's instructions cannot be shaped to react to individual people...the legends are unclear on what rules can be given, but I think it must have something to do with the Mirror's original intended use - it must have something to do with the deep desires and wishes arising from within the person.

More specifically, the Mirror shows a universe that obeys a consistent set of physical laws. From the set of all wish-fulfillment fantasies, it shows a universe that could actually plausibly exist.

It is known that people and other objects can be stored therein

Actors store other minds within their own Mind. Engineers store physical items within their Mind. The Mirror is a Mind.

the Mirror alone of all magics possesses a true moral orientation

The Mind alone of all the stuff that exists possesses a true moral orientation.

If that device had been completed, the story claimed, it would have become an absolutely stable existence that could withstand the channeling of unlimited magic in order to grant wishes. And also - this was said to be the vastly harder task - the device would somehow avert the inevitable catastrophes any sane person would expect to follow from that premise. 

An ideal Mind would grant wishes without creating catastrophes. Unfortunately, we're not quite ideal minds, even though we're pretty good.

Professor Quirrell made to walk away from the Mirrror, and seemed to halt just before reaching the point where the Mirror would no longer have reflected him, if it had been reflecting him.

My self-image can only go where it is reflected in my Mind. In other words, I can't imagine what it would be like to be a philosophical zombie.

Most powers of the Mirror are double-sided, according to legend. So you could banish what is on the other side of the Mirror instead. Send yourself, instead of me, into that frozen instant. If you wanted to, that is.

Let's interpret this scene: We've got a Mind/consciousness (the Mirror), we've got a self-image (Riddle) as well as the same spirit in a different self-image (Harry), and we've got a specific Extrapolated Volition instance in the mind (Dumbledore shown in the Mirror). This Extrapolated Volition instance is a consistent universe that could actually exist.

It sounds like the Process of the Timeless trap causes some Timeless Observer to choose one side of the Mirror as the real Universe, trapping the universe on the other side of the mirror in a frozen instant from the Timeless Observer's perspective.

The implication: the Mind has the power to choose which Universes it experiences from the set of all possible Universes extending from the current point.

All right, screw this nineteenth-century garbage. Reality wasn't atoms, it wasn't a set of tiny billiard balls bopping around. That was just another lie. The notion of atoms as little dots was just another convenient hallucination that people clung to because they didn't want to confront the inhumanly alien shape of the underlying reality. No wonder, then, that his attempts to Transfigure based on that hadn't worked. If he wanted power, he had to abandon his humanity, and force his thoughts to conform to the true math of quantum mechanics.

There were no particles, there were just clouds of amplitude in a multiparticle configuration space and what his brain fondly imagined to be an eraser was nothing except a gigantic factor in a wavefunction that happened to factorize, it didn't have a separate existence any more than there was a particular solid factor of 3 hidden inside the number 6, if his wand was capable of altering factors in an approximately factorizable wavefunction then it should damn well be able to alter the slightly smaller factor that Harry's brain visualized as a patch of material on the eraser -

Had to see the wand as enforcing a relation between separate past and future realities, instead of changing anything over time - but I did it, Hermione, I saw past the illusion of objects, and I bet there's not a single other wizard in the world who could have. 

This seems like another giant hint about magical powers.

"I had wondered if perhaps the Words of False Comprehension might be understandable to a student of Muggle science. Apparently not."

The author is disappointed that we don't get his hints. 

If the conscious mind was in reality a wish-granting machine, then how could I test this without going insane?

The Mirror of Perfect Reflection has power over what is reflected within it, and that power is said to be unchallengeable. But since the True Cloak of Invisibility produces a perfect absence of image, it should evade this principle rather than challenging it.

A method to test this seems to be to become aware of one's own ego-image (stand in front of the Mirror), vividly imagine a different ego-image without identifying with it (bring in a different personality containing the same Self under an Invisibility Cloak), suddenly switch ego-identification to the other personality (swap the Invisibility Cloak in less than a second), and then become distracted so the ego-switch becomes permanent (Dumbledore traps himself in the Mirror).

I can't think of a way to test this without sanity damage. Comments?

HPMOR Q&A by Eliezer at Wrap Party in Berkeley [Transcription]

38 sceaduwe 16 March 2015 08:54PM

Transcribed from maxikov's posted videos.

Verbal filler removed for clarity.

Audience Laughter denoted with [L], Applause with [A]


 

Eliezer: So, any questions? Do we have a microphone for the audience?


Guy Offscreen:
We don't have a microphone for the audience, have we?


Some Other Guy: We have this furry thing, wait, no that's not hooked up. Never mind.


Eliezer: Alright, come on over to the microphone.


Guy with 'Berkeley Lab' shirt: So, this question is sort of on behalf of the HPMOR subreddit. You say you don't give red herrings, but like... He's making faces at me like... [L] You say you don't give red herrings, but while he's sitting during in the Quidditch game thinking of who he can bring along, he stares at Cedric Diggory, and he's like, "He would be useful to have at my side!", and then he never shows up. Why was there not a Cedric Diggory?


Eliezer: The true Cedrics Diggory are inside all of our hearts. [L] And in the mirror. [L] And in Harry's glasses. [L] And, well, I mean the notion is, you're going to look at that and think, "Hey, he's going to bring along Cedric Diggory as a spare wand, and he's gonna die! Right?" And then, Lestath Lestrange shows up and it's supposed to be humorous, or something. I guess I can't do humor. [L]


Guy Dressed as a Witch:
Does Quirrell's attitude towards reckless muggle scientists have anything to do with your attitude towards AI researchers that aren't you? [L]


Eliezer: That is unfair. There are at least a dozen safety conscious AI researchers on the face of the earth. [L] At least one of them is respected. [L] With that said, I mean if you have a version of Voldemort who is smart and seems to be going around killing muggleborns, and sort of pretty generally down on muggles... Like, why would anyone go around killing muggleborns? I mean, there's more than one rationalization you could apply to this situation, but the sort of obvious one is that you disapprove of their conduct with nuclear weapons. From Tom Riddle's perspective that is.

I do think I sort of try to never have leakage from that thing I spend all day talking about into a place it really didn't belong, and there's a saying that goes 'A fanatic is someone who cannot change his mind, and will not change the subject.' And I'm like ok, so if I'm not going to change my mind, I'll at least endeavor to be able to change the subject. [L] Like, towards the very end of the story we are getting into the realm where sort of the convergent attitude that any sort of carefully reasoning person will take towards global catastrophic risks, and the realization that you are in fact a complete crap rationalist, and you're going to have to start over and actually try this time. These things are sort of reflective of the story outside the story, but apart from 'there is only one king upon a chessboard', and 'I need to raise the level of my game or fail', and perhaps, one little thing that was said about the mirror of VEC, as some people called it.

Aside from those things I would say that I was treating it more as convergent evolution rather than any sort of attempted parable or Professor Quirrell speaking form me. He usually doesn't... [L] I wish more people would realize that... [L] I mean, you know the... How can I put this exactly. There are these people who are sort of to the right side of the political spectrum and occasionally they tell me that they wish I'd just let Professor Quirrell take over my brain and run my body. And they are literally Republicans for You Know Who. And there you have it basically. Next Question! ... No more questions, ok. [L] I see that no one has any questions left; Oh, there you are.


Fidgety Guy: One of the chapters you posted was the final exam chapter where you had everybody brainstorm solutions to the predicament that Harry was in. Did you have any favorite alternate solution besides the one that made it into the book.


Eliezer: So, not to give away the intended solution for anyone who hasn't reached that chapter yet, though really you're just going to have the living daylight spoiled out of you, there's no way to avoid that really. So, the most brilliant solution I had not thought of at all, was for Harry to precommit to transfigure something that would cause a large explosion visible from the Quidditch stands which had observed no such explosion, thereby unless help sent via Time-Turner showed up at that point, thereby insuring that the simplest timeline was not the one where he never reached the Time-Turner. And assuring that some self-consistent set of events would occur which caused him not to carry through on his precommitment. I, you know, I suspect that I might have ruled that that wouldn't work because of the Unbreakable Vow preventing Harry from actually doing that because it might, in effect, count as trying to destroy that timeline, or filter it, and thereby have that count as trying to destroy the world, or just risk destroying it, or something along those lines, but it was brilliant! [L] I was staring at the computer screen going, "I can't believe how brilliant these people are!" "That's not something I usually hear you say," Brienne said. "I'm not usually watching hundreds of peoples' collective intelligence coming up with solutions way better than anything I thought of!" I replied to her.

And the sort of most fun lateral thinking solution was to call 'Up!' to, or pull Quirinus Quirrell's body over using transfigured carbon nanotubes and some padding, and call 'Up!' and ride away on his broomstick bones. [L] That is definitely going in 'Omake files #5: Collective Intelligence'! Next question!


Guy Wearing Black: So in the chapter with the mirror, there was a point at which Dumbledore had said something like, "I am on this side of the mirror and I always have been." That was never explained that I could tell. I'm wondering if you could clarify that.


Eliezer: It is a reference to the fanfic 'Seventh Horcrux' that *totally* ripped off HPMOR despite being written slightly earlier than it... [L] I was slapping my forehead pretty hard when that happened. Which contains the line "Perhaps Albus Dumbledore really was inside the mirror all along." Sort of arc words as it were. And I also figured that there was simply some by-location effect using one of the advanced settings of the mirror that Dumbledore was using so that the trap would always be springable as opposed to him having to know at what time Tom Riddle would appear before the mirror and be trapped. Next!


Black Guy: So, how did Moody and the rest of them retrieve the items Dumbledore threw in the mirror of VEC?


Eliezer: Dumbledore threw them outside the mirrors range, thereby causing those not to be sealed in the corresponding real world when the duplicate mode of Dumbledore inside the mirror was sealed. So wherever Dumbledore was at the time, probably investigating Nicolas Flamel's house, he suddenly popped away and the line of Merlin Unbroken and the Elder Wand just fell to the floor from where he was.


Asian Guy: In the 'Something to Protect: Severus Snape', you wrote that he laughed. And I was really curious, what exactly does Severus Snape sound like when he laughs. [L]


Person in Audience: Perform for us!


Eliezer: He He He. [L]


Girl in Audience: Do it again now, everybody together!


Audience: He He He. [L]


Guy in Blue Shirt: So I was curious about the motivation between making Sirius re-evil again and having Peter be a good guy again, their relationship. What was the motivation?


Eliezer: In character or out character?


Guy in Blue Shirt: Well, yes. [L]


Eliezer: All right, well, in character Peter can be pretty attractive when he wants to be, and Sirius was a teenager. Or, you were asking about the alignment shift part?


Guy in Blue Shirt: Yeah, the alignment and their relationship.


Eliezer: So, in the alignment, I'm just ruling it always was that way. The whole Sirius Black thing is a puzzle, is the way I'm looking at it. And the canon solution to that puzzle is perfectly fine for a children's book, which I say once again requires a higher level of skill than a grown-up book, but just did not make sense in context. So I was just looking at the puzzle and being like, ok, so what can be the actual solution to this puzzle? And also, a further important factor, this had to happen. There's a whole lot of fanfictions out there of Harry Potter. More than half a million, and that was years ago. And 'Methods of Rationality' is fundamentally set in the universe of Harry Potter fanfiction, more than canon. And in many many of these fanfictions someone goes back in time to redo the seven years, and they know that Scabbers is secretly Peter Pettigrew, and there's a scene where they stun Scabbers the rat and take him over to Dumbledore, and Head Auror, and the Minister of Magic and get them to check out this rat over here, and uncover Peter Pettigrew. And in all the times I had read that scene, at least a dozen times literally, it was never once played out the way it would in real life, where that is just a rat, and you're crazy. [L] And that was the sort of basic seed of, "Ok, we're going to play this straight, the sort of loonier conspiracies are false, but there is still a grain of conspiracy truth to it." And then I introduced the whole accounting of what happened with Sirius Black in the same chapter where Hermione just happens to mention that there's a Metamorphmagus in Hufflepuff, and exactly one person posted to the reviews in chapter 28, based on the clue that the Metamorphmagus had been mentioned in the same chapter, "Aha! I present you the tale of Peter Pettigrew, the unfortunate Metamorphmagus." [L] See! You could've solved it, you could've solved it, but you didn't! Someone solved it, you did not solve that. Next Question!


Guy in White: First, [pulls out wand] Avada Kedavra. How do you feel about your security? [L] Second, have you considered the next time you need a large group of very smart people to really work on a hard problem, presenting it to them in fiction?


Eliezer: So, of course I always keep my Patronus Charm going inside of me. [Aww/L] And if that fails, I do have my amulet that triggers my emergency kitten shield. [L] And indeed one of the higher, more attractive things I'm considering to potentially do for the next major project is 'Precisely Bound Djinn and their Behavior'. The theme of which is you have these people who can summon djinn, or command the djinn effect, and you can sort of negotiate with them in the language of djinn and they will always interpret your wish in the worst way possible, or you can give them mathematically precise orders; Which they can apparently carry out using unlimited computing power, which obviously ends the world in fairly short order, causing our protagonist to be caught in a groundhog day loop as they try over and over again to both maybe arrange for conditions outside to be such that they can get some research done for longer than a few months before the world ends again, and also try to figure out what to tell their djinn. And, you know, I figure that if anyone can give me an unboundedly computable specification of a value aligned advanced agent, the story ends, the characters win, hopefully that person gets a large monetary prize if I can swing it, the world is safer, and I can go onto my next fiction writing project, which will be the one with the boundedly specified [L] value aligned advanced agents. [A]


Guy with Purple Tie: So, what is the source of magic?


Eliezer: Alright, so, there was a bit of literary miscommunication in HPMOR. I tried as hard as I could to signal that unraveling the true nature of magic and everything that adheres in it is actually this kind of this large project that they were not going to complete during Harry's first year of Hogwarts. [L] You know, 35 years, even if someone is helping you is a reasonable amount of time for a project like that to take. And if it's something really difficult, like AIs, you might need more that two people even. [L] At least if you want the value aligned version. Anyway, where was I?

So the only way I think that fundamentally to come up with a non-nitwit explanation of magic, you need to get started from the non-nitwit explanation, and then generate the laws of magic, so that when you reveal the answer behind the mystery, everything actually fits with it. You may have noticed this kind of philosophy showing up elsewhere in the literary theory of HPMOR at various points where it turns out that things fit with things you have already seen. But with magic, ultimately the source material was not designed as a hard science fiction story. The magic that we start with as a phenomenon is not designed to be solvable, and what did happen was that the characters thought of experiments, and I in my role of the universe thought of the answer to it, and if they had ever reached the point where there was only one explanation left, then the magic would have had rules, and they would have been arrived at in a fairly organic way that I could have felt good about; Not as a sudden, "Aha! I gotcha! I revealed this thing that you had no way of guessing."

Now I could speculate. And I even tried to write a little section where Harry runs into Dumbledore's writings that Dumbledore left behind, where Dumbledore writes some of his own speculation, but there was no good place to put that into the final chapter. But maybe I'll later be able... The final edits were kind of rushed honestly, sleep deprivation, 3am. But maybe in the second edit or something I'll be able to put that paragraph, that set of paragraphs in there. In Dumbledore's office, Dumbledore has speculated. He's mostly just taking the best of some of the other writers that he's read. That, look at the size of the universe, that seems to be mundane. Dumbledore was around during World War 2, he does know that muggles have telescopes. He has talked with muggle scientists a bit and those muggle scientists seem very confident that all the universe they can see looks like it's mundane. And Dumbledore wondered, why is there this sort of small magical section, and this much larger mundane section, or this much larger muggle section? And that seemed to Dumbledore to suggest that as a certain other magical philosopher had written, If you consider the question, what is the underlying nature of reality, is it that it was mundane to begin with, and then magic arises from mundanity, or is the universe magic to begin with, and then mundanity has been imposed above it? Now mundanity by itself will clearly never give rise to magic, yet magic permits mundanity to be imposed, and so, this other magical philosopher wrote, therefore he thinks that the universe is magical to begin with and the mundane sections are imposed above the magic. And Dumbledore himself had speculated, having been antiquated with the line of Merlin for much of his life, that just as the Interdict of Merlin was imposed to restrict the spread an the number of people who had sufficiently powerful magic, perhaps the mundane world itself, is an attempt to bring order to something that was on the verge of falling apart in Atlantis, or in whatever came before Atlantis. Perhaps the thing that happened with the Interdict of Merlin has happened over and over again. People trying to impose law upon reality, and that law having flaws, and the flaws being more and more exploited until they reach a point of power that recons to destroy the world, and the most adapt wielders of that power try to once again impose mundanity.

And I will also observe, although Dumbledore had no way of figuring this out, and I think Harry might not have figured it out yet because he dosen't yet know about chromosomal crossover, That if there is no wizard gene, but rather a muggle gene, and the muggle gene sometimes gets hit by cosmic rays and ceases to function thereby producing a non-muggle allele, then some of the muggle vs. wizard alleles in the wizard population that got there from muggleborns will be repairable via chromosomal crossover, thus sometimes causing two wizards to give birth to a squib. Furthermore this will happen more frequently in wizards who have recent muggleborn ancestry. I wonder if Lucius told Draco that when Draco told him about Harry's theory of genetics. Anyway, this concludes my strictly personal speculations. It's not in the text, so it's not real unless it's in the text somewhere. 'Opinion of God', Not 'Word of God'. But this concludes my personal speculations on the origin of magic, and the nature of the "wizard gene". [A]

[FINAL CHAPTER] Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 122

6 Gondolinian 14 March 2015 04:00PM

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 122, which is the final chapter of the story.

Happy once-in-a-century Pi Day!  (3/14/15 == 3.1415)

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 121

2 Gondolinian 13 March 2015 07:01PM

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 121.

Plans for next chapter release:

The last chapter will post on March 14th, 2015, at 9AM Pacific (4PM UTC).
Thank you all for reading.

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 120

1 Gondolinian 12 March 2015 07:03PM

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 120.

Plans for next chapter release:

The next update will be on March 13th, 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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 119

4 Gondolinian 10 March 2015 06:10PM

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 119.

Plans for next chapter release:

Ch. 120 will post on March 12th, 2015 at 12PM Pacific Time (7PM UTC).

The next long chapter will be Ch. 122, posting on March 14th, 2015 at 9AM Pacific / 4PM 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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 118

2 Gondolinian 09 March 2015 07:05PM

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 118.

Plans for next chapter release:

Ch. 119 (9800 words) will post on March 10th, 2015 at 11AM Pacific (6PM UTC)
Note that the current chapter count goes to Ch. 122.

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.

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

2 Gondolinian 08 March 2015 07:00PM

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.

HPMOR Wrap Parties: Resources, Information and Discussion [link to Main post]

2 TylerJay 05 March 2015 09:15PM

Posted to Main. X-posting for visibility

I know a lot of people don't check Main very often. Wanted to make sure everyone interested saw this. 

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 116

4 Gondolinian 04 March 2015 08:11PM

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 116.

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 114 + chapter 115

3 Gondolinian 03 March 2015 06:02PM

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 114, and also, as a special case due to the exceptionally close posting times, chapter 115.

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113

8 Gondolinian 28 February 2015 08:23PM

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 113.

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.


IMPORTANT -- From the end of chapter 113:

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 3rd, 2015,
the story will continue to Ch. 121.

Otherwise you will get a shorter and sadder ending.

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 shown him to have;
he cannot develop wordless wandless Legilimency in the next 60 seconds.

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 simplest 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 full 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 saying 'the best solution'
or 'the solution I like' or 'the solution I think we should use',
and you should 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.
Asking someone "What would an optimal player think is the best move?"
should produce answers no better than "What do you think is best?"

So what I mean in practice,
when I say Harry is allowed to attain his full potential as a rationalist,
is that Harry is allowed to solve this problem
the 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.

The rules on Fanfiction dot Net allow at most one review per chapter.
Please submit *ONLY ONE* review of Ch. 113,
to submit one suggested solution.

For the best experience, if you have not already been following
Internet conversations about recent chapters, I suggest not doing so,
trying to complete this exam on your own,
not looking at other reviews,
and waiting for Ch. 114 to see how you did.

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

Ch. 114 will post at 10AM Pacific (6PM UTC) on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015.


ADDED:

If you have pending exams,
then even though the bystander effect is a thing,
I expect that the collective effect of
'everyone with more urgent life
issues stays out of the effort'
shifts the probabilities very little

(because diminishing marginal returns on more eyes
and an already-huge population that is participating).

So if you can't take the time, then please don't.
Like any author, I enjoy the delicious taste of my readers' suffering,
finer than any chocolate; but I don't want to *hurt* you.

Likewise, if you hate hate hate this sort of thing, then don't participate!
Other people ARE enjoying it. Just come back in a few days.
I shouldn't even need to point this out.

I remind you again that you have hours to think.
Use the Hold Off On Proposing Solutions, Luke.

And really truly, I do mean it,
Harry cannot develop any new magical powers
or transcend previously stated constraints on them
in the next sixty seconds.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 112

4 Gondolinian 25 February 2015 09:00PM

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 112.

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 111

3 b_sen 25 February 2015 06:52PM

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 111.

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.

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

3 Gondolinian 24 February 2015 08:01PM

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 109

5 Gondolinian 23 February 2015 08:05PM

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 109.

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 108

5 b_sen 20 February 2015 09:53PM

New long chapter! Since I expect its discussion to generate more than 160 comments (which would push the previous thread over the 500 comment limit) before the next chapter is posted, here is a new thread.

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 108 (and chapter 109, once it comes out on Monday).

EDIT: There have now been two separate calls for having one thread per chapter, along with a poll in this thread. If the poll in this thread indicates a majority preference for one thread per chapter by Monday, I will edit this post to make it for chapter 108 only. In that case a new thread for chapter 109 should be posted by whoever gets a chance and wants to after the chapter is released.

EDIT 2: The poll indicates a large majority (currently 78%) in favor of one thread per chapter. This post has been edited accordingly.

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapters 105-107

6 b_sen 17 February 2015 01:17AM

Two new short chapters! Since the next one is coming tomorrow and we know it'll be short, let's use one thread for both.

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 105 (and chapter 106, once it comes out tomorrow).  EDIT: based on Alsadius' comment about thread creation for MOR chapters, let's also use this thread for chapter 107 (and future chapters until this nears 500 comments) unless someone objects to doing so.  Given that this is the final arc we're talking about, thread titles should be updated to indicate chapters covered.

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 104

8 b_sen 16 February 2015 01:24AM

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 104.

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, January 2015, chapter 103

7 b_sen 29 January 2015 01:44AM

New chapter, and the end is now in sight!

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 103.

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.

Using Doulingo 'Immersion' feature to translate HPMOR

8 efim 25 December 2014 08:25PM

I have been using (alongside other learning tools) Duolingo for more than a year now and with considerable success in learning Spanish language.

I used immersion for learning purposes, but just recently it dawned on me that I could use it to translate HPMOR into different languages while simultaneously promoting it in wide audience.

My first attempt was uploading first untranslated chapter (on hpmor.com listed Spanish translation up to 24th chapter). 

Half of it got translated before the upload drowned in new more recent uploads from other people.

First idea was to get 'commercial' license to keep uploaded chapter on top, but right now i'll try to break chapters into smaller chunks, since uploads up to 500 - 700 sentences get fully translated.

Because Doulingo for free lets you upload only web-pages I will gather english chunks in a vk.com group (google docs can't be uploaded to Duolingo).

I am posting this to make public commitment to continue to post chunks of untranslated chapters of HPMOR to Duolingo and get roughly translated texts out of it.

Even though Doulingo translations usually are quite good I suspect that there got to be some kind of checking.

What could be the solution? Could we organize e-mail broadcast for native Spanish speakers in LW to read and check translated chunks? They could be stored on google docs and be available for correction.

And also if\when I succeed in translation of a full chapter of HPMOR into spanish, how could it be added to hpmor site? 

 

[edit to add links]

vk group with english and spanish chunks:https://vk.com/hpmor_en_to_sp_by_duolingo

latest duolingo chunk (ch.25 part 2): https://www.duolingo.com/translation/b665ba41aa75970134b14adb81de9fcf

first duolingo chunk (ch.25 full): https://www.duolingo.com/translation/7921153db4ef97a13e5c308151d0f8ae

 

P.S this project might not work, if Duo users won't find content interesting enough.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, July 2014, chapter 102

7 David_Gerard 26 July 2014 11:26AM

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:

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.

Consider giving an explanation for your deletion this time around. "Harry Yudkowsky and the Methods of Postrationality: Chapter One: Em Dashes Colons and Ellipses, Littérateurs Go Wild"

3 Will_Newsome 08 July 2014 02:53AM

My stupid fanfic chapter was banned without explanation so I reposted it; somehow it was at +7 when it was deleted and I think silently deleting upvoted posts is a disservice to LessWrong. I requested that a justification be given in the comments if it were to be deleted again, so LessWrong readers could consider whether or not that justification is aligned with what they want from LessWrong. Also I would like to make clear that this fanfic is primarily a medium for explaining some ideas that people on LessWrong often ask me about; that it is also a lighthearted critique of Yudkowskyanism is secondary, and if need be I will change the premise so that the medium doesn't drown out the message. But really, I wouldn't think a lighthearted parody of a lighthearted parody would cause such offense.

 

The original post has been unbanned and can be found here, so I've edited this post to just be about the banning.

Harry Yudkowsky and the Methods of Postrationality: Chapter One: Em Dashes Colons and Ellipses, Littérateurs Go Wild

-7 Will_Newsome 06 July 2014 09:34AM

 

"If you give George Lukács any taste at all, immediately become the Deathstar." — Old Klingon Proverb

 

There was no nice way to put it: Harry James Potter-Yudkowsky was half Potter, half Yudkowsky. Harry just didn’t fit in. It wasn't that he lacked humanity. It was just that no one else knew (P)Many_Worlds, (P)singularity, or (P)their_special_insight_into_the_true_beautiful_Bayesian_fractally_recursive_nature_of_reality. Other people were rolesand how shall an actor, an agent, relate to those who are merely what they are, merely their roles? Merely their roles, without pretext or irony? How shall the PC fuck with the NPCs? Harry James Potter-Yudkowsky oft asked himself this question, but his 11-year-old mind lacked the g to grasp the answer. For if you are to draw any moral from this tale, godforsaken readers, the moral you must draw is this: P!=NP.

 

One night Harry Potter-Yudkowsky was outside, pretending to be Keats, staring at the stars and the incomprehensibly vast distances between them, pondering his own infinite significance in the face of such an overwhelming sea of stupidity, when an owl dropped a letter directly on his head, winking slyly. “You’re a wizard,” said the letter, while the owl watched, increasingly gloatingly, “and we strongly suggest you attend our school, which goes by the name Hogwarts. 'Because we’re sexy and you know it.’”

 

Harry pondered this for five seconds. “Curse the stars!, literally curse them!, Abra Kadabra!, for I must admit what I always knew in my heart to be true,” lamented Harry. “This is fanfic.”

 

“Meh.”

 

And so, as they'd been furiously engaged in for months, the divers models of Harry Potter-Yudkowsky gathered dust. In layman’s terms...

 

Harry didn’t update at all.

 

Harry: 1

Author:  0

 

 

(To be fair, the author was drunk.)

 

Next chapter: "Analyzing the Fuck out of an Owl"

...

Criticism appreciated.

Cognitive Biases due to a Narcissistic Parent, Illustrated by HPMOR Quotations

11 Algernoq 24 May 2014 07:25PM

A pattern of cognitive biases not yet discussed here are the biases due to having a narcissistic parent who seeks validation through the child’s academic achievements.

HPMOR clearly shows these biases: Harry's mother is narcissistic, impressed by education, and not particularly smart, and Harry does not realize how this affects his thinking.

Here is my evidence:

The Sorting Hat says Harry is driven by "the fear of losing your fantasy of greatness, of disappointing the people who believe in you" (Ch. 77). Psychology texts say that this fear is what children of a narcissistic parent usually feel. The child feels perpetually ignored because the narcissistic parent seeks validation from the child's accomplishments but refuses to actually listen to the child, spurring the child to ever greater heights of intellectual achievement. 

The text supports this view: “Always Harry had been encouraged to study whatever caught his attention, bought all the books that caught his fancy...given anything reasonable that he wanted, except, maybe, the slightest shred of respect” and “Petunia wrung her hands. She seemed to be on the verge of tears. "My love, I know I can't win arguments with you, but please, you have to trust me on this … I want my husband to, to listen to his wife who loves him, and trust her just this once - " (Ch. 1) describes a narcissistic, anxiously needy mother, an avoidant father, and a son whose parents provide for his physical needs but neglect his need for respect (ego). “If you conceived of yourself as a Good Parent, you would do it. But take a ten-year-old seriously? Hardly.” (Ch. 1) 

Harry goes Dark when the connection to his family is threatened. For example: "The black rage began to drain away, as it dawned on him that...his family wasn't in danger [of legal separation]" (ch. 5) indicates that Harry went Dark even though no one’s life was threatened. The cost of Harry’s Dark Side is becoming an adult at a young age: Harry says, “Every time I call on it... it uses up my childhood.” (Ch. 91). This is consistent with spending nearly all free time studying (instead of wasting time with friends) to impress Harry’s mother.

Typically, children of narcissistic parents inherit either narcissistic or people-pleasing traits. I predicted that if my theory is correct then Harry would have a narcissistic personality. To test this, I found a list of personality traits that describe a narcissist (by Googling “children of narcissistic parents” and clicking the first link), and compared with Harry’s personality as described in HPMOR. I got a 100% match. Questions and answers are as follows: 

1. Grandiose sense of self-importance? Check. Harry plans to “optimize” the entire Universe, expects to “do something really revolutionary and important” (Ch. 7), and is trying to “hurry up and become God” (Ch. 27).

2. Obsessed with himself? Check. He appears to only care about people who are smarter or more powerful than him -- people who can help him. He also has contempt for most students and their interests (Quidditch, etc.)

3. Goals are selfish? Check. Harry claims to want to save everyone, but he believes the best way to help others is to increase his own power most quickly. I address two possible objections below:

Harry’s involvement in the Azkaban breakout was selfish, because Harry could not risk losing Quirrell’s friendship: “ It was a bond that went beyond anything of debts owed, or even anything of personal liking, that the two of them were alone in the wizarding world” (Ch. 51). This, again, mirrors a child’s relationship with a narcissistic mother: the child cannot risk losing the mother’s protection. Harry also had selfish reasons for hearing Quirrell’s plan: “There was no advantage to be gained from not hearing it. And if it did reveal something wrong with Professor Quirrell, then it was very much to Harry's advantage to know it, even if he had promised not to tell anyone.” (Ch. 49)

Harry’s efforts to save Hermione are also selfish because Harry sees Hermione in the same way he sees his mother -- weak in many ways and bound by emotions and convention, but someone Harry must impress and protect. Harry’s statement that “it’s disrespectful to her, to think someone could only like her in that way” (ch. 91) makes sense because Harry is disgusted by the Oedipal implications. If Harry’s mother was not narcissistic, then Harry would not have worked so hard to impress Hermione and would have been less disgusted by the thought of being sexually attracted to her.

4. Troubles with normal relationships? Check. Harry is playing high-stakes mind games with the people he is closest to (Quirrell, Draco, Hermione, Dumbeldore), which is not normal friend behavior. Harry has contempt for nearly everyone else.

5. Becomes furious if criticized? Check. When Snape mocked Harry in Potions class, Harry tried to destroy Snape’s career. Quirrell explained, “When it looked like you might lose, you unsheathed your claws, heedless of the danger. You escalated, and then you escalated again” (Ch. 19).

6. Has fantasies of unbound success, power, intelligence, etc.? Check. Harry wants to conquer the entire Universe with the power of his intelligence, and has plans for how to fill an eternity, including to “...meet up with everyone else who was born on Old Earth to watch the Sun finally go out…” (Ch. 39).

7. Believes that he is special and should only be around other high-status people? Check. Harry avoids average students when possible, and certainly does not hang out with them for fun. “Note to self: The 75th percentile of Hogwarts students a.k.a. Ravenclaw House is not the world's most exclusive program for gifted children” (Ch. 12). 

Harry’s association with the (presumably non-special) students in his army is not an exception because minimal text is devoted to Harry instructing them, while much text explains how powerful and high-status the students in the army have become. For Harry, it appears that the army is a tool to use and an opportunity to show off, not an opportunity to give back and help friends improve their skills for their own sake.

8. Requires extreme admiration for everything? Check. Harry takes anything less than admiration for his brilliance as an insult, and responds by striving for new levels of intellectual achievement and arrogance, until the others recognize his dominance. “And I bit a math teacher when she wouldn't accept my dominance” (Ch. 20). Quirrell’s lesson on how to lose described how to avoid making powerful enemies, not how to empathize and care for others -- the insatiable need for admiration is merely delayed and repressed, not corrected.

9. Feels entitled - has unreasonable expectations of special treatment? Check. Harry requires subservience from the school administration, and special magic items such as the time-turner. “McGonagall said, "but I do have a very special something else to give you. I see that I have greatly wronged you in my thoughts, Mr. Potter...this is an item which is ordinarily lent only to children who have already shown themselves to be highly responsible” (Ch. 14).

10. Takes advantage of others to further his own need? Check. Harry justifies his actions toward Draco by saying "I only used you in ways that made you stronger. That's what it means to be used by a friend." (Ch. 97)

11. Does not recognize the feelings of others? Check. One example is Harry not realizing how Neville felt about the prank on the train to Hogwarts. Another is Harry’s remarkably clueless question to Hermione, “Er, can I take it from this that you have been through puberty?" (Ch. 87) Harry has not learned empathy yet: “Harry flinched a little himself. Somewhere along the line he needed to pick up the knack of not phrasing things to hit as hard as he possibly could” (Ch. 86). 

12. Envious or believes they are envied? Check. Quirrell said to Harry, “You have everything now that I wanted then. All that I know of human nature says that I should hate you. And yet I do not. It is a very strange thing.” (Ch. 74)

13. Behaves arrogantly? Check. “Minerva's body swayed with the force of that blow, with the sheer raw lese majeste. Even Severus looked shocked.” (Ch. 19) I can’t think offhand of a single instance when Harry is not arrogant. 

Therefore, I conclude that Harry and Harry’s mother are both narcissistic. If you want further reading on this topic, look up "The Drama of the Gifted Child" by Dr. Alice Miller (Google for the .pdf) for a more detailed description of a child’s typical relationship with a narcissistic parent.

I am sharing this because it reveals a pattern of cognitive biases that many people (like me) who enjoyed HPMOR, and their parents, probably have. Specifically, there is a strong bias toward either narcissistic or people-pleasing habits, and a difficulty with recognizing and following one’s own desires (because the Universe, unlike a parent, never tells people what to do). One possible reason for studying science is to defend against a parent’s emotional neediness and refusal to provide ego-validation by building an impenetrable edifice of logical truth. Unfortunately, identifying the parent’s cognitive biases does not stop their criticism. A more pleasant strategy is to recognize the dynamic, mourn the warping of childhood by the controlling parenting, set appropriate boundaries in the future, and draw validation from following one’s own goals instead of an internalized parent’s goals.

HPMOR hypothesis: Harry will use Timeless Decision Theory to resolve some of the time-turner paradoxes

-7 Punoxysm 08 April 2014 03:38AM

Evidence:

 

  1. The obsession with precise times in the last few chapters, the prominence of time-turners in the plot in general, and Harry's vow to revive Hermione all indicate use of time-turners in the final arc.
  2. EY has involved many of his favorite ideas and themes (especially from the sequences) into HPMOR already. Timeless Decision Theory is without a doubt among his most prominent interests.
  3. Harry has already gained two superpowers (super-patronus and partial transfiguration) by virtue of, well, being a proponent of EY's favorite themes essentially. Why not a third?
  4. One specific concrete use would be to coordinate an indefinite number of selves in the way that Harry failed to during the prime-factoring experiment in the early chapters. Why did that experiment fail? Not because time is impossible to mess with, but because one of the Harry's messed up. But since then, Harry has been pushing the bounds of paradox. If he could firmly pre-commit to follow through on a course of action (perhaps with an unbreakable oath?) he could have an indefinite number of Harry's coordinate on some action. There are many ways this could be useful.
Comments? Criticism?

 

Rationality & Low-IQ People

17 kokotajlod 02 February 2014 03:11PM

This post is to raise a question about the demographics of rationality: Is rationality something that can appeal to low-IQ people as well?

I don't mean in theory, I mean in practice. From what I've seen, people who are concerned about rationality (in the sense that it has on LW, OvercomingBias, etc.) are overwhelmingly high-IQ.

Meanwhile, HPMOR and other stories in the "rationality genre" appeal to me, and to other people I know. However I wonder: Perhaps part of the reason they appeal to me is that I think of myself as a smart person, and this allows me to identify with the main characters, cheer when they think their way to victory, etc. If I thought of myself as a stupid person, then perhaps I would feel uncomfortable, insecure, and alienated while reading the same stories.

So, I have four questions:

1.) Do we have reason to believe that the kind of rationality promoted on LW, OvercomingBias, CFAR, etc. appeals to a fairly normal distribution of people around the IQ mean? Or should we think, as I suggested, that people with lower IQ's are disposed to find the idea of being rational less attractive?

2.) Ditto, except replace "being rational" with "celebrating rationality through stories like HPMOR." Perhaps people think that rationality is a good thing in much the same way that being wealthy is a good thing, but they don't think that it should be celebrated, or at least they don't find such celebrations appealing.

3.) Supposing #1 and #2 have the answers I am suggesting, why? 

4.) Making the same supposition, what are the implications for the movement in general? 


Note: I chose to use IQ in this post instead of a more vague term like "intelligence," but I could easily have done the opposite. I'm happy to do whichever version is less problematic.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101

7 palladias 12 December 2013 05:10AM

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 99, 100, and 101The previous thread is at nearly 500 comments. 

There is now 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.) 

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.

Also: 1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  10,  11,  12,  13,  1415,  16,  17,  18,  19,  20,  21,  22,  23,  24,  252627

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.

True Optimisation

-3 LearnFromObservation 03 September 2013 03:50AM

Hello less wrong community! This is my first post here, so I know that my brain has not (obviously) been optimised to its fullest, but I've decided to give posting a try. 

Recently, someone very close to me has unfortunately passed away, leading to the invitable inner dilemma about death. I don't know how many of you are fans of HPMOR, but the way that Harry's dark side feels about death? Pretty much me around death, dying, etc. however, I've decided to push that to the side for the time being, because that is not a useful of efficient way to think. 

I was raised by a religious family, but from the age of about 11 stopped believing in deities and religious services. However, I've always clung to the idea of an afterlife for people, mainly because my brain seems incapable of handling the idea of ceasing to exist. I know that we as a scientific community know that thoughts are electrical impulses, so is there any way of storing them outside of brain matter? Can they exist freely out of brain matter, or could they be stored in a computer chip or AI? 

The conflict lies here: is immortality or mortality rational? 

Every fibre in my being tells me that death is irrational and wrong. It is irrational for humanity to not try and prevent death. It is irrational for people to not try and bring back people who have died. Because of this, we have lost some of the greatest minds, scientific and artistic, that will probably ever exist. Although the worlds number of talented and intelligent people does not appear to be finite, I find it hard to live in a world where so muh knowledge is being lost every day.

but on the other hand, how would we feed all those people? What if the world's resources run out? As a transhumanist, I believe that we can use science to prevent things like death, but nature wasn't designed to support a population like that. 

How do we truly optimise the world: no death and without destruction of the planet? 

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 27, chapter 98

2 Vaniver 28 August 2013 07:29PM

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 98The previous thread is at nearly 500 comments. 

There is now 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.) 

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.

Also: 1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  10,  11,  12,  13,  1415,  16,  17,  18,  19,  20,  21,  22,  23,  24,  25, 26.

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97

5 palladias 15 August 2013 02:18AM

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 97The previous thread is at nearly 500 comments. 

There is now 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.) 

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.

Also: 1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  10,  11,  12,  13,  1415,  16,  17,  18,  19,  20,  21,  22,  23,  24,  25.

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96

6 NancyLebovitz 25 July 2013 04:36AM

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 96The previous thread is at almost 300 comments. 

There is now 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.) 

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.

Also: 1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  10,  11,  12,  13,  1415,  16,  17,  18,  19,  20,  21,  222324,  .

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 24, chapter 95

6 palladias 18 July 2013 02:23AM

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 95The previous thread has passed 300 comments. 

There is now 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.) 

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.

Also: 1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  9,  10,  11,  12,  13,  1415,  16,  17,  18,  19,  20,  21,  22, 23, 24.

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.

HPMoR the Youtube Series! But in need of advice

-1 wobster109 09 July 2013 02:50PM

Hi Less Wrong! I was wondering if you have experience with video editing? I want to record footage and a soundtrack, and then overlay them on each other, and I'll also need to be able to do special effects, such as to float someone in the air. Is there a video editing program that you'd recommend?

 

Edit - Please let me know if you'd like to act in it and are able to get to Madison, WI on weekends :)

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 23, chapter 94

8 elharo 08 July 2013 12:04PM

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 94. The previous thread has passed 200 comments. 

There is now 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.) 

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 12345678910111213141516171819202122.

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.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93

5 [deleted] 06 July 2013 03:02AM

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 93. The previous thread has passed 300 comments. 

There is now 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.) 

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.  Also: 1234567891011121314151617,18,19,20.

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.

[HPMOR][Possible Spoilers] Gedankenexperiment: Time Turner Meta-Informational Relativity

1 stcredzero 05 July 2013 07:33PM

Some people have been asking the question about the 6-hour limit on time turners in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.  Apparently, if a character, let's say it's Amelia Bones, goes back in time N hours and relays a piece of information about the future to another character, say Dumbledore, then Dumbledore cannot go back in time more than (6-N) hours.

The 6 hour limit is a useful rule to keep the HPMOR universe from becoming over-complicated with time travel, however several people have brought up the following objection. The claim is that Amelia Bones, by traveling back in time and saying that she has information she hasn't yet revealed, has already revealed information about the future in the form of Metadata: That the future still exists N hours in the future and that Amelia Bones was in it, etc. I will show, however, that this is not the case. 

Imagine that Amelia Bones has traveled back in time from 1 hour in the future, but she is confused about the time after having apparated across time zones and mistakenly tells Dumbledore that she has information for him from 4 hours in the future. Call this Scenario A. Now imagine that the same scenario happens, but that Amelia is not mistaken about the time. Call that Scenario B. 

The thing to note here, is that, from the informational point of view of Dumbledore, provided he doesn't have some additional side-channel information, Scenario A and Scenario B are indistinguishable. (In the same sense that being in an accelerating room is indistinguishable from being in a gravity field in General Relativity.) This is what I mean by "time turner meta-informational relativity." Provided that the act of arriving at some time and place with a time turner doesn't itself leak information about how far in the future you arrived from, meta-information about the future is not the same as information. The time-space coordinate meta-information conveyed when Amelia Bones tells Dumbledore, "I used a Time Turner and I have information about the future," is smeared out over the possible 6 hours. This tells us that meta-information cannot be the same as particular information about the future. 

Additional consequence: From this, we can hypothesize that *any* time-indeterminate information conveyed to the past will be "smeared out" over the possible range of times, and that further backwards-time travel is limited by the closest possible value. So, if Amelia came from 3 hours in the future and related a piece of information that leaves it ambiguous if she came from 1 to 5 hours in the future, Dumbledore should still be able to travel 5 hours into the past -- provided he is not also in possession of information that lets him narrow Amelia's possible departure time. 

Additional additional consequence: given the above is true, time turners can be used to empirically expose one's possession of such side information. I can imagine this being used for some clever deductive feat. 

EDIT: To address some confusion about indistinguishability: 1) This is in the context of a specific point in space-time. 2) A given piece of information can only distinguish Scenario A and Scenario B if it's plausibly consistent with Scenario A but not Scenario B, or vice versa. So the paths of single neutrinos or configurations of air molecules aren't going to be able to do this. However, if there was a leak in a canister of a gas (let's say helium) at the time of Scenario A (4 hours in the future) but not at Scenario B's time, then there would be additional data available in the form of an implausibly large number of helium atoms in Amelia Bone's clothes. 

 

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 20, chapter 90

9 palladias 02 July 2013 02:13AM

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 90The previous thread has passed 750 comments. 

There is now 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.) 

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.  Also: 1234567891011121314151617,18,19.

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.

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