LessWrong

I wanted it to be an anagram of my name, but that would only have worked if I'd conveniently been given the middle name of 'Marvolo', and then it would have been a stretch. Our actual middle name is Morfin, if you're curious.

Morfin is a Riddle family name, so we can probably rule out Eliezer choosing it for its anagrams. Nevertheless, might as well have some fun:

Tom Morfin Riddle

Mini from toddler
Firm doom tendril
Mind meld for riot
Mind for time lord
Dirt mod of Merlin
MOR died from lint
Mr. Flirted in Doom

What else?

Replying toHarry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96

Spurlock13y

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96

Ah, I missed this, I think you're correct (upvoting you and maltrhin). I suppose that my interpretation is the one EY is trying to trick unobservant readers such as myself into making.

I do still think there's still some wiggle room for that interpretation though: Harry's whole outburst about Trelawney's "He's coming!" prophecy, where he said it couldn't possibly be about him because he's already arrived, would seem to indicate that EY is willing to use prophecies whose proper interpretation is not-quite-literal.

Replying toHarry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96

Spurlock13y

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96

Agreed, but this prediction could be older than the Hallows and their creators.

Replying toHarry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96

Spurlock13y

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96

I interpreted this to mean that long ago, there were 3 Peverell brothers, each of which created one of the Hallows. Harry is descended from this family. Note that it doesn't say that "Pevererll's sons" will necessarily be the ones to use their devices to defeat Death, only that the devices are theirs.

Replying toHarry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96

Spurlock13y

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96

There had been only one thing Remus Lupin had thought of that might help, after he'd received the owls from Professor McGonagall and that strange man Quirinus Quirrell.

Harry was morally certain that Dumbledore, or both Dumbledore and Mad-Eye Moody, were following them invisibly to see if anyone tried for the bait.

It's seems that McGonagall and Quirrell are responsible for Harry spending the day with Lupin, and that Dumbledore knows exactly what they're doing. It's not entirely clear whether McGonagall and Quirrell knew that Lupin would decide to take Harry to Godric's Hollow, but Quirrell at least could probably guess.

All three of these people knew what Harry would find on his parents' grave. I don't recall McGonagall ever encountering Harry's transhumanist ideas, but Quirrell and Dumbledore would certainly know how Harry would choose to interpret the inscription.

Which makes it look as though one or more of these people might be indirectly trying to encourage Harry's efforts to resurrect Hermione.

Replying toHarry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93

Spurlock13y

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93

I believe Snape's "Sunk Costs" hangup is also alluded to in Ch 91:

"Do you intend to declare that your life is now a ruin and that there is nothing left for you but vengeance?"

"No. I still have -" The boy cut himself off.

"Then there is very little advice that I can give you," said Severus Snape.

Replying toHarry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 21, chapters 91 & 92

Spurlock13y

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 21, chapters 91 & 92

I like this theory. But it's worth noting that Moody claimed that Voldemort could legilimens without making eye contact. EY seems pretty big on Conservation of Detail, so there's a good chance that this will turn out to be important. Of course, Conservation of Detail also weighs in favor of this eye-locking episode being important, so I suppose it could go either way.

Or both: perhaps sightless legilimency is handicap-inducing like wandless magic, so eye contact might be required to read a witch as powerful as Minerva.

Replying toLW Women: LW Online

Spurlock13y

LW Women: LW Online

Yeah you're right. I think part of what I was wondering was whether it does make sense to group those 2 things under one heading, or just how strongly they're correlated.

Now that you mention it, I seem to recall reading on Yvain's blog that he's also hyper-sensitive to negative criticism, so there's another data point for it not being tied all that strongly to gender.

Edit: Aforementioned Yvain blogpost

Replying toLW Women: LW Online

Spurlock13y

LW Women: LW Online

Well, if nothing else comes out of this exchange, at least I can now relate to the OP that much better.

Replying toLW Women: LW Online

Spurlock13y

LW Women: LW Online

The important question is whether this interpretation is true.

Fair point. I think I was using this as a proxy for truth, the same way you might ask "do economists believe X?" instead of "is X true about the economy?". But also I was up late.

Why? All you've shown is that this correlation doesn't fully screen off gender.

True. It is possible that empathic ability is affected by both gender and analytical disposition directly, rather than gender by-way-of analytical disposition. Or more realistically, that empathic ability is affected by analytical-ness as well as other, orthogonal personality traits, and that these might be gender-correlated as well. This interpretation seems messy from a complexity standpoint, but... (read more)

Luke is doing an AMA on Reddit

Spurlock

14y

I'm sure most of us are used to just being able to badger him about things in the comments here on LW, but for anyone interested here's the link.

Merry Newtonmas LW. Have some rationalist music.

Spurlock

14y

Related to: So You've Changed Your Mind

Basically my band did an album whose theme was "change your mind", largely inspired by the LW sequence. It's not Bayes Theorem in rhyming form, but the subject matter and spirit of it should (hopefully) resonate with LW readers.

Anyway, for obvious reasons I'm curious what you'll think of it, and so in the spirit of giving here's a direct link to download the album for free. If you don't want to download the whole thing immediately, you can also stream each song via Bandcamp.

Sound-wise, you'll probably like it if you like 90s rock/pop/alternative.

[LINK] New experiment observes macroscopic quantum entaglement

Spurlock

14y

Two Diamonds Linked by Strange Quantum Entanglement

So You've Changed Your Mind

Spurlock

15y

This is something I wrote, sort of in brain-dump mode, in the process of trying to organize my thoughts for a song I'm working on. I don't think it covers any new ground for this community, but I was somewhat taken with the way it turned out and figured I'd go ahead and post it for LW's enjoyment.

So you've changed your mind. Given up your sacred belief, the one that defined so much of who you are for so long.

You are probably feeling pretty scared right now.

Your life revolved... (read 1018 more words →)

META: Meetup Overload

Spurlock

15y

Does anyone else think we need a better way of dealing with meet-ups? I totally understand that meeting face to face is an (at least arguably) important next-step in the rationalist-community-building project, but the fact is the front page, which was originally for all the most content-rich, accessible, and noteworthy articles is now being filled with blurbs that are irrelevant to 95% of the readership.

I can see why these posts would need to be highly visible if the meetups are going to work at all, but I think we should get the ball rolling on figuring out a better way to handle location-specific posts. For example, mandatory-but-private location setting in your profile (at least to the country, possibly to the state/province/etc for larger areas), which would subscribe you (with opt-out available) to any happenings in that area. That's just the first idea, like I said the idea is just to get the discussion going.

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Spurlock

So You've Changed Your Mind

Merry Newtonmas LW. Have some rationalist music.

META: Meetup Overload

Luke is doing an AMA on Reddit

Spurlock

Luke is doing an AMA on Reddit

Merry Newtonmas LW. Have some rationalist music.

[LINK] New experiment observes macroscopic quantum entaglement

So You've Changed Your Mind

META: Meetup Overload

Spurlock

So You've Changed Your Mind

Merry Newtonmas LW. Have some rationalist music.

META: Meetup Overload

Luke is doing an AMA on Reddit

Spurlock

Luke is doing an AMA on Reddit

Merry Newtonmas LW. Have some rationalist music.

[LINK] New experiment observes macroscopic quantum entaglement

So You've Changed Your Mind

META: Meetup Overload