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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!)
Meetup : Yale rationality group meeting.
Discussion article for the meetup : Yale rationality group meeting.
The Yale rationality group will be holding a meeting this Sunday, October 5 at 2 pm in JE seminar room K22. The meeting should last roughly an hour (at most two). Tentative agenda: we'll be (re)introducing ourselves to each other, discussing some organizational matters, and doing some group exercises on goals and getting stuff done. All are welcome.
Discussion article for the meetup : Yale rationality group meeting.
Meetup : Yale: Initial Meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Yale: Initial Meetup
Hi. If anyone who goes to Yale is interested in meeting up, I'll be in Bass Cafe on Sunday, February 16, from 2 to 4 pm. I'll bring my copy of Good and Real for identification purposes.
Discussion article for the meetup : Yale: Initial Meetup
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.
On the 'starfield' spell:
Are we seeing the stars from the perspective of the Voyager probe?
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 24, chapter 95
I often get this confused, but isn't it supposed to be the Pioneer probe?
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 24, chapter 95
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.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 24, chapter 95
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.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 24, chapter 95
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.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 24, chapter 95
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.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 24, chapter 95
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.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 24, chapter 95
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?).)
WWHJPEVD?
Um.. I feel like I'm in the out-group now. What does this (and the stuff below) mean?
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.
Was this the "PUA Controversy"?
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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.