Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.

The hiatus is over with today's publication of chapter 73, and the previous thread is approaching the 500-comment threshold, so let's start a new Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread.  This is the place to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic and anything related to it.

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.  Also: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.  The fanfiction.net author page is the central location for information about updates and links to HPMOR-related goodies, and AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.

As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.

Spoiler Warning:  this thread is full of spoilers.  With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13.  More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it's fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that "Eliezer said X is true" unless you use rot13.

Today's post, Failing to Learn from History was originally published on August 30, 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

There are no inherently mysterious phenomena, but every phenomenon seems mysterious, right up until the moment that science explains it. It seems to us now that biology, chemistry, and astronomy are naturally the realm of science, but if we had lived through their discoveries, and watched them reduced from mysterious to mundane, we would be more reluctant to believe the next phenomenon is inherently mysterious.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was My Wild and Reckless Youth, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

Today's post, The Modesty Argument, was originally published on December 10, 2006. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Factor in what other people think, but not symmetrically, if they are not epistemic peers.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Proper Use of Humility, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

Today's post, The Martial Art of Rationality was originally published on November 22, 2006.  A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Rationality is the martial art of the mind, building on universally human machinery. But developing rationality is more difficult than developing physical martial arts. One reason is because rationality skill is harder to verify. In recent decades, scientific fields like heuristics and biases, Bayesian probability theory, evolutionary psychology, and social psychology have given us a theoretical body of work on which to build the martial art of rationality. It remains to develop and especially to communicate techniques that apply this theoretical work introspectively to our own minds.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them.  It is the first post in the series; the introductory post was here, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort.  You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

BACKGROUND

The sequences - hundreds of posts written by Eliezer Yudkowsky from 2006 through 2009 - contain the core material behind Less Wrong, including many ideas that are often treated as background knowledge in new posts. New LW members are encouraged to read the sequences and many LW regulars have expressed interest in rereading them, but even though the posts are sitting in the archives for anyone to read it takes another step to actually read them.  The sheer number of words can be overwhelming, and many people find that they never quite get around to delving in. To many people, reading new blog posts is fun but going through the sequences is work. And it can be hard to have lively discussions on years-old posts.

As announced here, we are introducing the Rerunning the Sequences series to the discussion section as an attempt to make the sequences more accessible by making them more like new blog posts. We will be going through the sequence posts in order, one post per day, making posts that contain a link to the sequence post and a summary of it.  If you're interested, follow along (the posts will all have [SEQ RERUN] in the title and will be easy to spot), take part in the discussion, and get involved in other ways described below.  If you're not interested, you can ignore these discussion section posts (they all have [SEQ RERUN] in the title and will be easy to spot).


DETAILS

For our purposes, we're currently considering the sequences to consist of Eliezer's 702 posts (listed in order here) beginning with The Martial Art of Rationality, ending with Practical Advice Backed By Deep Theories, and excluding quotes threads.  The list of posts has not been finalized yet - there are still some other posts to exclude (like purely administrative posts) and some more posts to add, perhaps including some posts not by Eliezer (like Robin Hanson's side of the AI Foom Debate). Each day, there will be a post in the discussion section which links to one of these posts and follows the standard template included below.  We'll go through the posts in chronological order, one per day, beginning today (April 19, 2011) with The Martial Art of Rationality. These posts will be clearly identified by the [SEQ RERUN] tag in the title, easy to find under the sequence_reruns tag, and easy to follow with a feed reader by subscribing to the rss feed for the sequence_reruns tag.  Hopefully, this will capture the feel of reading a blog, with a new post to read each day.

Each post also serves as a focal point for discussion. Discussion should take place in the comments to the new post in the discussion section, not the original post, since this is a fresh discussion which is taking place a few years after the original post was made. This will also keep everything in the discussion section, so that the main page doesn't get flooded with comments on old posts.

This is a community-driven effort, and in order for it to work people will need to get involved. Someone needs to make the sequence reruns post each day, and that role is open to anyone who will do it (just like with the open threads and quotes threads). If you're ever wondering where a day's sequence reruns post is, go ahead and make the post. There is a standard template to follow in order to make posting as simple as possible - it shouldn't take more than five minutes (especially after you've done it once).  Instructions (along with the template to copy and paste) are included at the end of this post.  If you have something that you'd like to say about the sequence post, you should put it in the comments to your post rather than in the post itself.

Each sequence reruns post includes a summary of the post that it links to, which is taken from the LW wiki. But many of the posts don't have a summary written yet, and some of the others don't have a good summary yet. So another way to be involved is by writing summaries for the posts that need them and adding them to the LW wiki before we get to those posts. After a sequence reruns post has been made, if it is missing a summary or its summary isn't very good then you could write a new summary for it then and leave it in the comments so that the post can be edited. But it's better to get the summaries written ahead of time.

Finally, there are other issues that can arise with the sequence reruns and ways to make it better.  For instance: deciding precisely which posts to include (e.g., should we include all the posts in the AI Foom Debate?). Things will run more smoothly if folks are involved in coming up with improvements, spotting issues ahead of time, and helping to make the decisions. Discussion about these kinds of issues, and other kinds of meta discussion about the Rerunning the Sequences series, should mostly take place in the comments to this post or in other meta posts, rather than in the comments to individual posts in the series. Discussion in the individual posts should be based on the linked sequence post, rather than on these kinds of meta issues.


POSTING INSTRUCTIONS

To make a post in the Rerunning the Sequences series, you will need to copy and paste a standard template (included below) and add links and information from the original sequence post, the previous Sequence Reruns post, and the LW wiki page which has summaries.  There are 8 things to change in the template, which I've labeled 111111, 222222, …, 888888.

1. Find the previous Sequence Reruns post and find the sequence post that is due for that day (which will generally be the next post listed here)

2. Go to the LW wiki to find a summary of the sequence post (summaries arranged by year: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009); if there are multiple summaries available choose the one that looks best

3. Copy and paste the template below into a text document and make the 8 edits to the template:

111111 the title of the sequence post (e.g., Why truth? And... )

222222 the url of the sequence post (e.g., http://lesswrong.com/lw/go/why_truth_and/ )

333333 the title of the sequence post, again (e.g., Why truth? And... )

444444 the date when the sequence post was originally published (e.g., November 26, 2006 )

555555 the lw wiki page where you found the summary (e.g., http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Less_Wrong/2007_Articles/Summaries )

666666 the summary of the sequence post which you took from the lw wiki (e.g., You have an instrumental motive to care about the truth of your beliefs about anything you care about. )

777777 the url of the previous Sequence Reruns post (e.g., )

888888 the title of the previous sequence post (e.g., The Martial Art of Rationality )

4. Click to create a new article

5. Make the title: [SEQ RERUN] 111111

6. Make the tags: sequence_reruns

7. On the "submit article" page, click where it says "HTML" (edit HTML source) and paste the edited version of the template that you've created.  Click "update."

8. Check and make sure your post looks okay. Does it have the appropriate title and tag? Have all of the strings of numbers been replaced? Was there any special formatting (like italics) in the summary which you need to add to the post?

9. Make the post. If there is a "Post to" option set it to "Less Wrong Discussion" (if there is not, you're already in the discussion section and will automatically post there) and click "Submit."



TEMPLATE

Title: [SEQ RERUN] 111111

Tags: sequence_reruns

Today's post, <a href="222222">333333</a> was originally published on 444444.  A summary (taken from the <a href="555555">LW wiki</a>):</p>

<blockquote>666666</blockquote>

<p><br />Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).<br /><br /><em>This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them.  The previous post was <a href="777777">888888</a>, and you can use the <a href="/r/discussion/tag/sequence_reruns/">sequence_reruns tag</a> or <a href="/r/discussion/tag/sequence_reruns/.rss">rss feed</a> to follow the rest of the series.<br /><br />Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort.  You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go <a href="http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/5as/introduction_to_the_sequence_reruns/">here</a> for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.</em>

Coauthored by Alexandros and Unnamed

The suggestion to bring back the sequences in a format that is more similar to new blog posts was well received, so the two of us have been working to figure out how to make it happen, taking into account the feedback received on that thread.  We've come up with a plan that is ready to be put into action right away, and are presenting it here for further feedback before getting started.  Let us know what you think – both whether it's worth doing, and what specific changes could be made to improve on what we have so far.

The plan is to have a regular “Rerunning the Sequences” feature in the discussion section, with one post each day linking to one of Eliezer's old posts.  We will go through all of Eliezer's posts in order, minus open threads, administrivia, and quotes threads, following the list here.  Starting with "The Martial Art of Rationality" and finishing with "Practical Advice Backed By Deep Theories", we count 702 qualifying posts (with help from Alexandros's scraper), so almost two years' worth of continuous posting.

The new post isn't meant to contain original content, so it will follow a standard template (a draft of which is included at the bottom of this post).  The template includes a one paragraph summary of the article (extracted from the wiki), a brief explanation of how it's part of the sequence reruns, relevant links, and a standardized format for the title and tags.

Like the rationality quotes threads, this is designed to be implemented by the community rather than by software.  It will only work if people are interested and participating.  Someone will need to make the new post each day, and a lot of the time it will need to be someone other than us two.  We'll post an html version of the template with instructions to make it easy for anyone to make a post with just copy, paste, and a few quick edits.  The other way that we'll need folks to contribute, besides making the posts, is by writing summaries of the posts.  The LW wiki already has a lot of post summaries, including the first 28 posts, but many posts still lack summaries.  Things will work more smoothly if those summaries get written in advance and added to the wiki before we get to them.

The main purpose of the Rerunning the Sequences series is to make it easier for people to read or re-read the sequences by putting them in a convenient format that's more like reading new blog posts.   Hopefully, this project will also be complementary to other sequence-related projects.  As we go through the old sequence posts, some people may be inspired to write condensed versions of them, create exercises for them, or even just to add better summaries to the wiki.  And perhaps Eliezer will finally be able to get the karma he deserves for his pre-LW posts.

Another advantage of the sequence reruns series is that it creates a focal point for discussion of the material in the sequences.  It's much easier to have discussions about old posts when a lot of people are reading the same post at the same time.  We've gone back and forth on where this discussion should take place: on the original post or on the new post.  The comments will be about the content of the original post, so it sort of makes sense for them to go there, and that will help keep all of the discussion about that post in one place.  On the other hand, this is a fresh discussion taking place a few years after the original posts, and commenting on the new post would keep everything in the discussion section so that the main page “recent comments” feed doesn't get flooded with discussion of old posts.  Right now the template is written to have comments go on the new post rather than the original post, but this could go either way.  There's a poll on this in the comments; we should decide one way or the other, since haphazardly splitting the discussion between the two places is the worst option.

So, what do you think?  Does it make sense to put these new posts in the discussion section?  To do the whole Yudkowsky oeuvre rather than specific sequences?  To have one post per day?  Do you have a better name than “Rerunning The Sequences” (tag: sequence_reruns, title: [SEQ RERUN])?  Does the post template look okay?  Try to make comments actionable (polls are recommended) so that we can make changes over the next few days and then get started (assuming that there aren't major objections to the whole project).

Unless there are major objections, we'll try to get everything ironed out and start with the first post next Monday (4/18).

Template

Title: [SEQ RERUN] Why truth? And...

Today's post, Why truth? And... was originally published on November 26, 2006.  A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

Why should we seek truth? Pure curiosity is an emotion, but not therefore irrational. Instrumental value is another reason, with the advantage of giving an outside verification criterion. A third reason is conceiving of truth as a moral duty, but this might invite moralizing about "proper" modes of thinking that don't work. Still, we need to figure out how to think properly. That means avoiding biases, for which see the next post.

Discuss here. [???]

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them.  The previous post was The Martial Art of Rationality, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort.  You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. See here for more details.

Tags: sequence_reruns

A Slate article by psychologist Alison Gopnik about how preschoolers have already learned to accept what the teacher says rather than exploring things to develop their own understanding:

[...] Daphna ran through the same nine sequences with all the children, but with one group, she acted as if she were clueless about the toy. ("Wow, look at this toy. I wonder how it works? Let's try this," she said.) With the other group, she acted like a teacher. ("Here's how my toy works.") When she acted clueless, many of the children figured out the most intelligent way of getting the toy to play music (performing just the two key actions, something Daphna had not demonstrated). But when Daphna acted like a teacher, the children imitated her exactly, rather than discovering the more intelligent and more novel two-action solution.

[...]

These experts in machine learning argue that learning from teachers first requires you to learn about teachers. For example, if you know how teachers work, you tend to assume that they are trying to be informative. When the teacher in the tube-toy experiment doesn't go looking for hidden features inside the tubes, the learner unconsciously thinks: "She's a teacher. If there were something interesting in there, she would have showed it to me." These assumptions lead children to narrow in, and to consider just the specific information a teacher provides. Without a teacher present, children look for a much wider range of information and consider a greater range of options.

This experiment is from:

D. Buchsbaum, A. Gopnik, T.L. Griffiths, and P. Shafto (2011). Children's imitation of causal action sequences is influenced by statistical and pedagogical evidence. Cognition (in press). pdf

The other paper cited in the Slate article is:

E. Bonawitz, P. Shafto, H. Gweon, N.D. Goodman, E. Spelke, and L. Schulz (2011). The double-edged sword of pedagogy: Instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery. Cognition (in press). pdf

Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.

The load more comments links are getting annoying (at least if you're not logged in), so it's time for a new Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread.  We're also approaching the traditional 500-comment mark, but I think that hidden comments provide more appropriate joints to carve these threads at.  So as of chapter 67, this is the place to share your thoughts about Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic.

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag.  Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.  Also: one, two, three, four, five, six.  The fanfiction.net author page is the central author-controlled HPMOR clearinghouse with links to the RSS feed, pdf version, TV Tropes pages, fan art, and more, and AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.

As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.

Spoiler Warning:  this thread is full of spoilers.  With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13.  More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it's fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that "Eliezer said X is true" unless you use rot13.

Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.

After 61 chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and 5 discussion threads with over 500 comments each, HPMOR discussion has graduated from the main page and moved into the Less Wrong discussion section (which seems like a more appropriate location).  You can post all of your insights, speculation, and, well, discussion about Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic here.

Previous threads are available under the harry_potter tag on the main page (or: one, two, three, four, five); this and future threads will be found under the discussion section tag (since there is a separate tag system for the discussion section).  See also the author page for (almost) all things HPMOR, and AdeleneDawner's Author's Notes archive for one thing that the author page is missing.

As a reminder, it's useful to indicate at the start of your comment which chapter you are commenting on.  Time passes but your comment stays the same.

Spoiler Warning:  this thread is full of spoilers.  With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13.  More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it's fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that "Eliezer said X is true" unless you use rot13.