Comment author: solipsist 08 July 2013 01:17:58PM *  13 points [-]

In chapter 94, Harry knows about Important Things that we haven't seen him learn.

Harry to Dumbledore:

If the enemy can notice you running off to consult the Weasley twins during class after Hermione was arrested, and find out about their magic map and steal it, then they can wonder why I was guarding Hermione Granger's body.

From Harry's internal monolog:

Obvious problem 1, the Dark Lord is supposed to have made his horcrux in 1943 by killing whatshername and framing Mr. Hagrid.

Harry has never been told about Horcruxes, nor the Marauder's Map. How does he know about them?

Has Harry been busy offscreen?

Or, is this exposition cut from Chapter 86?

(Also, isn't Horcrux capitalized in canon?)

EDIT: Chapter 94 was edited to remove Horcrux references.

Comment author: fiddlemath 09 July 2013 04:56:21AM *  13 points [-]

Ah, there it is!

Harry time-turned to just before the troll attack. (In the one-and-a-half minutes when he went into Hermione's room.) This is probably pretty clear -- he's been keeping everyone else out of that room, and the centrality of the time-turner in this story more or less demands that Harry do so. Harry would have done this even if he couldn't come up with a plan in his previous six hours, just so he'd have another six hours to think, or do what he deemed needful to preserve Hermione's body.

Somewhere in there, he talked to the twins, and poorly obliviated them. Evidence:

  1. Why does Harry know about the Marauder's Map? When else has Harry learned plot-significant information off-camera?
  2. Obliviation, and Memory Charms in general, and Harry's horror of them, are repeatedly mentioned in the story, and haven't really been used that much yet.
  3. Harry has just learned that he has access to learn obliviation.
  4. Quirrell suggests that obliviation is within his abilities, but barely -- and so Harry is likely to botch it if he attempts it.
  5. Who else in the story is likely to have performed a botched obliviation on the Weasley twins -- such that they have vague memories of having the map, but no complete ones? Every potential foe is powerful enough to perform obliviation properly.

Besides, it'll be a narratively nice, dark moment when Harry uses a spell whose existence he abhors on two of his best remaining friends and allies...

Comment author: Leonhart 16 June 2013 11:55:08AM *  4 points [-]

You're confusing "evil" with "unsympathetic".

I don't think he is.

Perhaps "evil" here just means a object-level match against some entries in Nega-Frankena's list of of disvalues, including: death, apathy and stasis, sickness and enervation, pain and frustration of all or certain kinds, unhappiness, blight, malcontent, etc; untruth; delusion and lies of various kinds, incomprehension, folly; ugliness, discord, monstrosity in objects contemplated; numbing experience; morally bad dispositions or flaws; mutual contempt, hatred, enmity, defection; unjust distribution of goods and evils; mania and obsession in one's own life; helplessness and experience of impotence; pointless abnegation; enslavement; strife, terror; tedium and repetition; and bad reputation, disgrace, shame, etc.

Comment author: fiddlemath 08 July 2013 02:03:25AM 0 points [-]

I found this deeply amusing. And made an audio version. I do not fully understand, myself.

Meetup : Mountain View: More on Reinforcement

0 fiddlemath 22 April 2013 03:18AM

Discussion article for the meetup : Mountain View: More on Reinforcement

WHEN: 23 April 2013 07:30:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: 167 Jasmine Ct, Mountain View, CA

More from Karen Pryor's Don't Shoot the Dog, as we only got through about half of it last time. Including:

  • A (fast!) review of last week's stuff
  • How to train responses to specific cues
  • Methods for training away an unwanted behavior

Though they sound straightforward, that the ability to do the last two tasks are the primary atoms that let you program your brain -- to institute appropriate, perhaps-unintuitive behaviors at the right time, and to get rid of such behavior. If we can do this -- practice doing it, make a habit of this practice -- then we can make ourselves more awesome in fine detail.

I'd love to have a conversation about what it'd look like to take these ideas seriously. And, since we only did one round last time, let's play a bit more of the Training Game. Maybe with a little more structure. :j

See you there!


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Discussion article for the meetup : Mountain View: More on Reinforcement

Meetup : Mountain View: Reinforcement

1 fiddlemath 15 April 2013 05:15AM

Discussion article for the meetup : Mountain View: Reinforcement

WHEN: 16 April 2013 07:30:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: 167 Jasmine Ct, Mountain View, CA

I just read Karen Pryor's Don't Shoot the Dog. It's full of things relevant to our interests, like:

  • how to learn skills and good habits
  • how to unlearn unwanted behavior and bad habits
  • how to attach behavior to a trigger

and so on. I suspect this is fundamental stuff if you're interested in becoming an excellent human.

I'll basically present the contents of Don't Shoot the Dog, highlighting those points most salient to our interests. I'd love to have a conversation about what it'd look like to take these ideas seriously..

And also, let's play the Training Game, therein described, which sounds silly and enlightening. "Silly and enlightening" is my favorite combination. :D

Hope to see you there!


If you're in the San Francisco Bay area, consider joining the Bay Area Less Wrong mailing list. Regular meetups in Mountain View and Berkeley, and other events, are announced and discussed there.

Discussion article for the meetup : Mountain View: Reinforcement

In response to comment by fiddlemath on Fermi Estimates
Comment author: AnnaSalamon 07 April 2013 06:10:21AM 21 points [-]

Fermi's seem essential for business to me. Others agree; they're taught in standard MBA programs. For example:

  • Can our business (or our non-profit) afford to hire an extra person right now? E.g., if they require the same training time before usefulness that others required, will they bring in more revenue in time to make up for the loss of runway?

  • If it turns out that product X is a success, how much money might it make -- is it enough to justify investigating the market?

  • Is it cheaper (given the cost of time) to use disposable dishes or to wash the dishes?

  • Is it better to process payments via paypal or checks, given the fees involved in paypal vs. the delays, hassles, and associated risks of non-payment involved in checks?

And on and on. I use them several times a day for CFAR and they seem essential there.

They're useful also for one's own practical life: commute time vs. rent tradeoffs; visualizing "do I want to have a kid? how would the time and dollar cost actually impact me?", realizing that macademia nuts are actually a cheap food and not an expensive food (once I think "per calorie" and not "per apparent size of the container"), and so on and so on.

Comment author: fiddlemath 07 April 2013 08:14:25AM 8 points [-]

Oh, right! I actually did the comute time vs. rent computation when I moved four months ago! And wound up with a surprising enough number that I thought about it very closely, and decided that number was about right, and changed how I was looking for apartments. How did I forget that?

Thanks!

Comment author: fiddlemath 07 April 2013 03:09:47AM 1 point [-]

This would avoid camaraderie, team spirit and reputation management being organisational factors.

Er, why would you want to do this? Do you have a specific management domain in mind, where these things actually don't matter?

If not, perhaps you can just watch what happens in carefully-selected, massively-multiplayer games? Eve, maybe?

In response to Fermi Estimates
Comment author: fiddlemath 06 April 2013 09:33:13PM 16 points [-]

I've run meetups on this topic twice now. Every time I do, it's difficult to convince people it's a useful skill. More words about when estimation is useful would be nice. 

In most exercises that you can find on Fermi calculations, you can also actually find the right answer, written down somewhere online. And, well, being able to quickly find information is probably a more useful skill to practice than estimation; because it works for non-quantified information too. I understand why this is; you want to be able to show that these estimates aren't very far off, and for that you need to be able to find the actual numbers somehow. But that means that your examples don't actually motivate the effort of practicing, they only demonstrate how.

I suspect the following kinds of situations are fruitful for estimation:

  • Deciding in unfamiliar situations, because you don't know how things will turn out for you. If you're in a really novel situation, you can't even find out how the same decision has worked for other people before, and so you have to guess at expected value using the best information that you can find.
  • Value of information calculations, like here and here, where you cannot possibly know the expected value of things, because you're trying to decide if you should pay for information about their value.
  • Deciding when you're not online, because this makes accessing information more expensive than computation.
  • Decisions where you have unusual information for a particular situation -- the internet might have excellent base-rate information about your general situation, but it's unlikely to give you the precise odds so that you can incorporate the extra information that you have in this specific situation.
  • Looking smart. It's nice to look smart sometimes.

Others? Does anyone have examples of when Fermi calculations helped them make a decision?

Meetup : Mountain View: Board Game Night

1 fiddlemath 04 April 2013 06:33AM

Discussion article for the meetup : Mountain View: Board Game Night

WHEN: 09 April 2013 07:30:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: 278 Castro St, Mountain View, CA

It's been four whole weeks since we last played board games! How has this happened!?

The Quixey office has quite a few board games, so we won't be short, but you're more than welcome to bring anything else you might like to play. I will ensure that both Zendo and The Resistance are available. :)


If you're in the San Francisco Bay area and reading this, consider joining the Bay Area Less Wrong mailing list. Regular meetups in Mountain View and Berkeley are announced and discussed there, and other events of interest to the local community.

Entering the Quixeyplex: Our doors will be locked in the evening, and it's not always the case that someone's watching them for passerby. If you need to be let in, you can call me at 608.698.2959.

Discussion article for the meetup : Mountain View: Board Game Night

Meetup : Mountain View: Cure Light Aversions

1 fiddlemath 01 April 2013 05:02AM

Discussion article for the meetup : Mountain View: Cure Light Aversions

WHEN: 02 April 2013 07:30:00PM (-0700)

WHERE: 167 Jasmine Ct, Mountain View, CA

In the time I've spent volunteering with DI, I've learned a few fun improv games. I also know a few other tricks for evoking helpful, unusual social atmospheres. Let's try these:

  • The Repetition Game - this sounds absurd. It feels absurd, too, but maybe not how you'd expect. You should try it.
  • Various improv games. I know several, and will be prepared with more. If you have some favorites, let's do those, too.
  • Comfort-Zone Expansion: a brief, mild round of comfort-zone expansion.

Aaron and Jess will open the doors at 7:00pm; we'll get started at 7:30.

If you're in the San Francisco Bay area and reading this, consider joining the Bay Area Less Wrong mailing list. Regular meetups in Mountain View and Berkeley are announced and discussed there, as are other events of interest to the local community.

Discussion article for the meetup : Mountain View: Cure Light Aversions

Meetup : Mountain View: Invoking Curiosity

1 fiddlemath 26 March 2013 08:54AM

Discussion article for the meetup : Mountain View: Invoking Curiosity

WHEN: 26 March 2013 07:30:00AM (-0700)

WHERE: 278 Castro St, Mountain View, CA 94041

Get Curious is an explicit injunction to practice becoming curious whenever it's useful. Or pleasant, I suppose. I've just started, in the very most tiny way, to think and play with this, and I have a couple more ideas about how we could try to practice this skill. I want to bounce these ideas off of people and see if they work for anyone else. I really want to know if anyone has alternate suggestions for inducing curiosity that work for them.

In any case, Let's Try It, and see what comes of it.

Moreover, invoking curiosity seems like a skill that could be fruitfully practiced for something like 5 minutes a day. I'm very interesting in putting together some social mechanism to practice this and similar skills; I'd quite like to set one up at the meetup.


(Standard mailing list plug)

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, consider joining the Bay Area Less Wrong mailing list Regular meetups in Mountain View and Berkeley are announced and discussed there, as are other events in the local community.

Discussion article for the meetup : Mountain View: Invoking Curiosity

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