I think for me the problem is that I'm not being Bayesian. I can't make my brain assign 50% probability in a unified way. Instead, half my brain is convinced the hotel's definitely behind me, half is convinced it's ahead, they fail to cooperate on the epistemic prisoner's dilemma and instead play tug-of-war with the steering wheel. And however I decide to make up my mind, they don't stop playing tug-of-war with the steering wheel.

For the record, I am not myself a member of the seduction community, and in fact got the first draft of this post badly wrong as a result.

My feelings on the question of goals are best stated here.

All that being said: let us say that I am single, and that all I do is sit in my room and write posts on Less Wrong. And let us say that I have a term in my utility function for being in a happy relationship (which I emphatically do). The one would give me excellent advice by telling me to walk outside my bedroom from time to time, rather than writing for an audience which is a) mostly male, and b) geographically far-flung.

So, in this extreme case, we see that there definitely exists non-manipulative romantic optimization. The only question left to ask is how much more optimization we can get before we run into the scuzzy manipulative stuff. I think you and I would agree that that border should be drawn fairly conservatively. Nonetheless, behind that border there probably exists an art well worth learning for those of us who are alone, and wishing we weren't.

For any future biographers eagerly following this thread to learn of Alicorn's relationship history, we got back together on July 30th at 9:30 PM PDT, when her plane landed.

For any present day folk (especially those in/around Berkeley) eagerly following this thread in order to learn when/whether it is appropriate to hit on Alicorn: go for it =)

Given that T'Pol is from the Enterprise series, I'd discount her as a source of evidence about the Vulcans as depicted in the original series: Enterprise is too far removed from TOS, and everything we see in it might be brain bugs.

Do you remember the telephone game from grade-school? All of the kids would sit in a circle. The first kid would whisper something in the second kid's ear, who would turn around and whisper it to the third kid, and so on. By the time it came back to the first kid, the message had completely changed. Similarly, when you have many writers working on one show, each new writer tries to interpret the work of the writers that came before, and then extrapolate from it.

It's easy to see how this works like that old grade-school telephone game. Writer #1 creates a fictional universe. Writer #2 creates a story set in his interpretation of Writer #1's fictional universe. Writer #3 creates a story which is set in his interpretation of Writer #1's fictional universe, and which attempts to continue his interpretation of the story written by Writer #2. Writer #4 tries to write a story which is consistent with the story written by Writer #3, and which is set in his interpretation of Writer #1's fictional universe, but he's not too familiar with the story made by Writer #2 because he never saw it. It's pretty obvious that by the time you get to writer #50, you've got a real mess on your hands.

But this mess is not entirely random, unlike the telephone game. People have a tendency to simplify concepts in their minds because, well, it's easier that way. We see this most prominently in the case of racial stereotyping, where racists simplify an entire human race into one or two key characteristics. It seems to be an innate tendency that can only be solved through education, which may help explain why racism tends to be inversely correlated to education level. The same mentality which drives racism seems to drive many of these brain bugs. Rather than think critically or thoroughly, it's easier to seize upon the most visible or interesting characteristic and then simplify the situation so that nothing remains but that lone characteristic. And in the Berman-Braga age, simple-minded thinking is the order of the day.

Voldemort's name means "full of death". (Maybe "thief of death".)

Sure? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Voldemort :

Some literary analysts have considered possible meanings in the name: Philip Nel states that Voldemort is derived from the French for "flight of death,"[10] and in a 2002 paper, Nilsen and Nilsen suggest that readers get a "creepy feeling" from the name Voldemort, because of the French word "mort" ("death") within it and that word's association with cognate English words derived from the Latin mors.[11]

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Tom_Riddle :

the most accurate etymology of Voldemort would be the French sentence "Vol de mort" which literally means "Flight of death" (accurate considering the murder waves he commited and as his unique power). It is quite plausible that is the real etymology of his name as J.K. Rowling herself speaks French and had taught it once. The Catalan expression "vol de mort", also means "flight of death" or, since "Vol" may also be from the Latin root "volere" (will or desire), may mean "death wish".

Just remembered a serious objection, originally from Tarhish on reddit:

I had been thinking about this possibility for a while, but now it also requires Dumbledore to have lied about Lily and James hearing the prophecy in the Hall of Prophecy. Because if they did, then it means they were mentioned in the prophecy, and this theory does not, at first thought, seem to allow that.

(from here, it's only 4 months old, you still can upvote that)

This argument can be somewhat handwaved away by "James is ascendant of Ignotus Peverell, and prophecy talks about several possible futures", but still.

Fantastic work, thank you =)

For anyone else unpacking the zip file, note you'll want to create a new directory to unzip it into, not just unzip it in the middle of your home folder.

"The world is not made of things with minds, but of small mindless things that obey regular patterns."

if I saw that situation in the form of a written exam question, I wouldn't think it was very complicated or difficult.

This seems like a symptom of discrepancy between your belief (I know the right thing to do in this situation) and your alief (I am not qualified/experienced enough to know the right thing to do in this situation). Sort of like walking on a narrow ledge 3 feet off the ground vs walking on a narrow ledge 300 feet off the ground. I wonder if there are exercises to work explicitly on aligning one's alief with one's belief. Maybe jimmy can chime in.