Comment author: Lambda 09 January 2014 05:12:58AM 3 points [-]

I've been lurking here for a while, but I'd like to get more actively involved.

By the way, are there any other Yale students here? If so, I'd be interested in founding a rationalist group / LW meetup on campus.

Comment author: CronoDAS 29 October 2012 07:23:25PM *  7 points [-]

When I went to Rutgers, the course on proof theory and model theory was taught by the philosophy department. (And it satisfied my humanities requirement for graduation!)

Comment author: Lambda 31 August 2013 06:23:02AM 1 point [-]

At Yale, the situation is similar. I took a course on Gödel's incompleteness theorem and earned a humanities credit from it. The course was taught by the philosophy department and also included a segment on the equivalence of various notions of computability. Coolest humanities class ever!

I shudder to think of what politics were involved to classify it as such, though.

Comment author: ialdabaoth 19 July 2013 01:03:03AM 3 points [-]

On the 'starfield' spell:

Are we seeing the stars from the perspective of the Voyager probe?

Comment author: Lambda 21 July 2013 09:02:13PM 6 points [-]

I often get this confused, but isn't it supposed to be the Pioneer probe?

Comment author: buybuydandavis 19 July 2013 08:50:25AM 3 points [-]

If his goal was really to prevent Harry from destroying the world, he would just crush Harry like a bug and be done with it. He's killed people for much less.

Comment author: Lambda 21 July 2013 08:50:36PM 2 points [-]

I'm not sure that's possible. If Harry is defeated, it must be in such a way that "only a remnant of him remains," by prophesy. Crushing Harry now would not leave a remnant (even if "remnant" means "legacy," I would argue); therefore, it is not worth trying.

Comment author: BlindIdiotPoster 21 July 2013 09:52:42AM 5 points [-]

Harry has just promised to tear apart the very stars to bring back Hermione. I seriously doubt he would give up an important, possibly necessary resource just because the alternative was lying.

Comment author: Lambda 21 July 2013 08:35:31PM 10 points [-]

Also, Harry's dark side is "very good at lying." Remember Azkaban? Pretty much every proposition he uttered aloud there was a lie, straight up, and told to pursue a greater goal. If Harry can convincingly pretend, for Bellatrix, to be someone other than who he believes himself to be, convincingly feign innocence and fear when discovered by the auror, and convincingly lie to Minerva about his location, then I think he'd have no problem with this particular deception.

On the other hand, choosing the ring in particular as his hiding target strikes me as somewhat foolish and would require highly conjunctive scenario to be successful. If he has to remain in regular contact with the transfiguration target, though, this may be his best option.

Comment author: Velorien 21 July 2013 02:49:34PM 3 points [-]

it's everybody's observations of the world.

Correction: it is Harry's observations of the general public of the wizarding world, which is far from the same thing.

There are many possible worlds in which a number of powerful wizards know for a fact that souls exist, and live their lives accordingly, but which look exactly the same to Harry.

In fact, it's rather probable that a world in which a minority of wizards are aware that souls really exist would look just like this one. Imagine what it's like to be a member of such a minority trying to spread the truth.

"By the way, souls really exist."

"I know - everyone believes in souls."

"No, I mean it - souls actually, literally, exist. So you shouldn't be too sad when people die, because they're just going somewhere else. And you shouldn't be too sad about your baby being stillborn, because it'll have another chance at happiness in the afterlife. And depending on their circumstances, severely disabled people might be better off comitting suicide so they can move on to a healthy existence faster. And- hey, where are you going?"

I'm not saying any of those are necessarily reasonable conclusions to draw from the existence of souls, but it makes the point. Trying to live like this will automatically put you at odds with the rest of society, who will at best treat you like a crazy minority religious sect. So most soul-aware wizards will probably keep it to themselves, resulting in a world where Harry will be unaware of them.

Comment author: Lambda 21 July 2013 08:22:44PM 4 points [-]

But what about Dumbledore? If there were anyone in such a Soul Sect, I'm pretty sure Dumbledore would be one of them. Wouldn't you agree?

But as "Pretending to be Wise" suggests, and as Dumbledore's room of broken wands makes clear, Dumbledore does not, in fact, behave as if souls are real. Now "perhaps" this is all an elaborate ruse on the part of Dumbledore, and he is just pretending to behave-as-if souls are not real. Regardless of how twisty and deceptive Dumbledore is, this particular deception seems wildly out of character for him.

(Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Dumbledore does not behave as if the afterlife is real. It's quite possible to have souls without an afterlife; perhaps they just get garbage-collected if not attached to the world in some matter (whether it's a person's body, or a horcrux, etc.). In fact, I regard this as a likely enough scenario to be worth thinking about (p = 0.6, say?).)

Comment author: drethelin 15 June 2013 02:44:35PM 8 points [-]

WWHJPEVD?

Comment author: Lambda 19 July 2013 01:15:51AM 1 point [-]

Um.. I feel like I'm in the out-group now. What does this (and the stuff below) mean?

Comment author: Quirinus_Quirrell 31 March 2011 12:03:54AM 10 points [-]

I wouldn't exactly call it a cover-up. It looks to me like the actual goal was to ensure that a particular subject wouldn't develop further, by derailing any discussions about it into meta-discussions about censorship. Lots of noise was made, but no one ever published a sufficiently detailed description of the spell, so this did in fact succeed in averting a minor disaster.

Comment author: Lambda 03 December 2012 03:03:05AM 0 points [-]

Was this the "PUA Controversy"?

Comment author: thelittledoctor 28 March 2012 02:02:18AM *  1 point [-]

OMG it's been past seven for two whole minutes and no new chapter Eliezer must be taunting us!

(Edit: I promise this is a joke, please don't downvote me into oblivion.)

Comment author: Lambda 28 March 2012 02:08:07AM *  1 point [-]

The fanfiction.net mirror has chapter 81 posted. Meanwhile, hpmor.com has today's Author's Note up, but not #81 itself. This is a shame, since I think that hpmor.com provides a substantially better reading experience...

Edit: And now it has #81 up too. Sorry about that.

Comment author: diegocaleiro 24 November 2010 08:14:28AM 12 points [-]

Wow, too big an inferential distance Phil. No idea what you are tallking about here "what we think of today as individuality, will correspond to information in the future."

Would you mind giving a few more details? Curiosity striking...

Comment author: Lambda 24 March 2012 03:16:50AM 1 point [-]

Would you mind giving a few more details? Curiosity striking...

I've been lurking for a while, and this is my first post, but:

Would you mind giving far fewer details? Consciously imposed conjunction-aversion striking...

FTFY. Instead of asking for a single detailed story, we should ask for many simple alternative stories, no?

Obviously, this doesn't countermand your complaint about inferential distance, which I totally agree with.

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