At last, a reply!

... I think this indicates most readers now believe in Quirrelmort.

I can't think of how Quirrelmort would do all that stuff, so I assumed he wouldn't.

What, all the torturing and so on? Or the horcrux stuff?

Latest Author's Note Update.

There’s a chance here to reach up toward that impossible dream of a better world where people aren’t crazy all the damn time, because believe it or not, nobody’s really tried anything like this before. [...] Science, reason, and rationality – it’s what Muggles use instead of magic, and it’s all we’ve got.

I thought it was really inspiring.

I recently came across an old comment decrying the fact that so many readers fail to conclude that Quirrell is possessed by Voldemort (it's so obvious, anyone who disagrees must be horribly biased, was the idea.)

Could anyone who actually thinks this step forward? I'm kinda curious as to how accurate that comment is, even now.

Aha - I'd wondered why a bunch of people just started following me on Twitter.

@paulorrj

The Twitter devs vetoed that idea back in 2009 -- too much spam potential. Here's my 5-minute effort anyway:

http://www.wmorgan.net/lw_twitter.html

I don't have a Twitter account so the page isn't tested, but it looks like it works -- give it a second to load, though.

Edit: The following JavaScript will turn all Twitter links on this page into follow links. Couldn't figure out how to make a bookmarklet in markdown:

jQuery('a[href*="twitter.com"]')
.addClass("twitter-follow-button");
jQuery(document.createElement("script"))
.attr({"id": "twitter-wjs", "src": "//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"})
.appendTo("head");

The link in the end of text is broken. I've found another one, would you update it?

Check whether it is the same pdf before posting. I believe it is.

n log n calculated correctly is 11% off, so it almost seems like a deliberate trick! I certainly did not know the answer when I set it and thought n log(n) was right, but then looked it up in wik and thought I was confusing it with Stirling's approximation for large factorials.

When I tried n log(n) in my head, I was off by a factor of 10. I realized after the fact is because I did it as log10(4e6) = 66 dB and then 66log(10) = log(4e6). But of course dB are 10log10() and I forgot to divide by 10 at the end.

So I'm guessing Feynman would have gotten within 12% using n log n, and then knowing Feynman, he would have known that n log n underestimates primes and since he was aiming for 10% error he would have taken 10% off his answer and nailed it.

Screw AI, let's just build Feynman when we get the technology. He was a hoot!

What's exactly the next step after I notice I'm confused?

How? How? In retrospect it had been an obvious sort of idea as cunning plots went, but Granger wasn't supposed to be cunning! She'd been too much of a Hufflepuff to use a Simple Strike Hex! Had Professor Quirrell been advising her despite his promise, or...

And then Draco finally did what he should have done much earlier.

What he should have done after the first time he met with Granger.

What Harry Potter had told him to do, trained him to do, and yet Harry had also warned Draco that it would take time to make his brain realize that the methods applied to real life, and Draco hadn't understood that until today. He could have avoided every single one of his mistakes if he'd just applied the things Harry had already told him -

Draco said out loud, "I notice that I am confused."

Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality... Draco was confused.

Therefore, something he believed was fiction.

Granger should not have been able to do all that. Therefore, she probably hadn't. I promise not to help General Granger in any way that the two of you don't know about. With sudden horrified realization, Draco swept papers out of the way, hunting through the mess on his desk, until he found it.And there it was.

In this short piece, Draco searches for some belief that he thought it was true but it couldn't be because he was confused. Is there any step by step or we just begin with it?

Alright, I'll PM you something this month; we can see if you get anything out of it.