KevinC
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I was trying to convey the Litany of Gendlin as the principle the story was based on. The lesson would be "Don't deny or ignore facts, even if there's lots of money in it for you, because the facts are still facts whether you like it or not." I think situations like climate change, peak oil, over-exploitation of aquifers and letting the FIRE sector run rampant over the real economy count as real-world examples.
Yes, I recognized this as a fantasy application of Jim Bell's "Assassination Politics." I think AP would work better in an Iron Age/fantasy setting than in a modern context where anyone with a computer and a 'net connection could donate anonymously to assassination jackpots. In an Iron Age setting, pretty much the only people famous and hated enough to garner significant jackpots would be despotic kings and priests, and their generals. Assassination itself would be as dangerous as the rulers could make it, so it probably would only happen when a king was genuinely tyrannical, or as a substitute for war. In other words, it would take a... (read more)
Not Always to the Swift
Captain Danae Andreadis glanced idly at the image of the Venture Free on one of the screens at her desk. Had she been looking out a window, it would have been a point of light not much brighter than the untwinkling stars. The Argos did not have any windows, since they would represent an unnecessary structural weakness and a breach in the ship's radiation shielding.
Venture Free was exactly like her own ship, the Argos, except for the company logo it bore. Manufactured by the same company according to the same plans. Three habitation rings two hundred meters in diameter rotating around a... (read 828 more words →)
So that's why '42' is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything...
Couldn't a Slytherinny parent who wants their child to become powerful coach their child into wanting to be in some House other than Slytherin? Say, MoR!Lucius, coaching his son in all the ways of seizing power, but telling him awful, awful stories of what it was like to be a Slytherin. "No, no my boy, you do not want to be in that House, whatever you do!" Then, Draco under that Hat goes, "No! No! Not Slytherin! Anything but Slytherin!" And thus, ends up somewhere else.
Thus positioned, he does not automatically have to wear a suspicion-generating Slytherin badge, and he gets to be the wolf... (read more)
I could imagine a Hufflepuff developing some spell to merge or link minds so the group can be even more cohesive and cooperative. A Hufflepuff Borganism could be pretty freakin' scary. "We are One. We are Together. We are Loyal. You should join Us. Yes, yes, you really, really should. What's that? Oh. You just don't know what's best for you. Let Us help you."
Comments cover up to Chapter 46. UN-ROT13'd SPOILERS.
Love the new chapters! Harry's takedown of the Dementor was epic! Yes, I know, that term has been devalued by inflation quite a bit, but in this case its original value and meaning hold. A very nice and emotionally powerful summation of Singularitarian values in Harry's buildup. Also, I didn't stop and try to guess what Harry's Patronus would be, but "the rational animal" is the perfect choice!
One little quibble though. When Dumb-ledore and Harry were trying to guess why Quirrell might want to bring a Dementor to Hogwarts, Dumbles never bothers to mention, "Well,... (read more)
The Wizards can create dimensionally orthogonal pockets of spacetime (for their bags of holding, mokeskin pouches, and TARDIS trunks). If a Horcrux simply has to be hidden where no one can get at it, and doesn't have to maintain a signaling link to the "rest" of the maker's "soul," perhaps Voldy could have made some dimensionally transcendent space (like a BoH or the Mirror of Erised), put a Horcrux in, then destroyed the connecting interface with our reality. Basically, a magical corollary of multiverse cosmology, where the Horcrux is placed in a new "pocket universe" that is then separated from ours so that it cannot be reached even in principle.
I would guess from MoR canon that relativity-compliant signaling is not necessary for a Horcrux to work, since light-lag between Earth and the Pioneer Horcrux would already be significant.
As explained in some of the other comments, there are some good points about it, but it's got some major flaws. One thing I really don't like is that the teachers are House-identified. They're players in the game, and it's OK for them to arbitrarily punish kids from other Houses and show favoritism to their own. That's like making coaches the referees. Hmmm, maybe that's why the House Cup ends up getting decided by something as random as "Who can catch the golden mosquito first?"
An idea I had: Sort kids into the House that's their greatest weakness/what they're least like/the element they need most to improve. So... (read more)
Granting that the jokes you refer to are generally accurate, wouldn't that make the synagogue a better example for a rationalist Cat Herd than some other religious organization where people "think" in lockstep with the Dear Leader? The synagogue would represent an example of a group of people who manage to cooperate effectively even with a high level of dissensus (neologism for the opposite of consensus). Which, as I understand it, is the goal Eliezer is aiming for in this post.