I just got a Kindle Paperwhite. I'm still in the process of learning how to interact with the device. In case you have a Kindle, can you give me a few pointers?

1) How do you organize the relationship between the Kindle and Evernote?
2) How easily is a Kindle damaged by falling to the ground? Is it important to use a case to prevent damage?
3) Do you have tips for good PDF conversion. Especially for textbooks?
4) Anything useful to know as a new Kindle user?

Assuming no faster-than-light travel and no exotic matter, a civilization which survives the Great Filter will always be contained in its future light cone, which is a sphere expanding outward with constant speed c. So the total volume available to the civilization at time t will be V(t) ~ t^3. As it gets larger, the total resources available to it will scale in the same way, R(t) ~ V(t) ~ t^3.

Suppose the civilization has intrinsic growth rate r, so that the civilization's population grows as P(t) ~ r^t.

Since resources grow polynomially and population grows exponentially in t, as t goes to infinity the resources per person R(t) / P(t) ~ t^3 / r^t goes to zero. And since there is presumably a lower limit on the resources required to support one member of the civilization, r must approach 1 as t goes to infinity. This could mean, for instance, that each person has only one child before dying, or that everybody is immortal and never has children.

Of course these conclusions are pretty well-known round here, but I thought the scaling argument was neat and I haven't seen it before.

This seems likely to be a problem even if we get FAI, since certainly some people's CEVs include having children, and even with a starting population of a single person with such values, we'll run up against resource limits, if the premises hold. (I suppose those future people lucky enough to live under FAI will just have to dry their tears with million-utilon bills.)

Another thought: Perhaps we could use relativity to get around this. If we expand outward at the speed of light, subjective time for people close to the edge will be greatly reduced, so each person could grow up, travel to the frontier at near lightspeed, and have their 2 children or whatever. To the rest of us I think this'll look like increasingly many people crammed at the edge of the sphere, through length contraction. (I haven't studied relativity, so this might be wrong.)

365tomorrows recently published a hard science-fiction story of mine called "Procrastination", which was inspired by the ideas of Robin Hanson. I believe LessWrong will find it enjoyable.

Native speaker here; I think it's acceptable. It gives a connotation along the lines of, "had it not been for the fact that he would die, he would have no other reason for doing X."

"Power of unicorn'ss blood to presserve life makess excellent combination with troll'ss healing. Only Fiendfyre and Killing Cursse sshall girl-child fear, from thiss day."

What, not basilisk venom? In canon, that was also a way to destroy a horcrux.

I am also updating towards the theory that what we are seeing in this chapter and the last is some sort of illusion; either the mirror or hpmor!legilimency. The biggest piece of evidence against it is Eliezer's assurances that the story will not lie to us because he wants the plot to be solvable; he was very careful to point out that Draco's false memory was, in fact, false.

After reading comments in /r/hpmor, I've realized that Professor Quirrell has a superior move in the previous chapter, which has hopefully updated or will update soon.

Be honest, Eliezer; you just got sick of all the naked Harry jokes.

How I laughed when I realised it! When I saw you had made a Good Voldemort to oppose the evil one - ah, how I laughed!

I guess now we know what Dumbledore was laughing about in chapter 17.

The Cloak of Invisibility was torn away from him, and the shimmering black Cloak flew away from him, through the air.

Professor Quirrell caught it, and swiftly drew it over himself; in less than a second he had pulled down the Cloak's hood over his head, and disappeared.

Quirrell can escape the trap because he is no longer reflected in the mirror, being hidden by the True Cloak of Invisibility. All he has to do is walk out of the reflection, which he did.

Into the hand of the Albus Dumbledore flew from his sleeve his long, dark-grey wand, and in his other hand, as though from nowhere, appeared a short rod of dark stone.

Albus Dumbledore threw these both violently aside, just as the building sense of power rose to an unbearable peak, and then disappeared.

The Mirror returned to showing the ordinary reflection of a gold-lit room of white stone, without any trace of where Albus Dumbledore had been.

After reading Reddit, my interpretation of this scene is that Dumbledore realized Quirrellmort would not be affected by the trap, and that the only result would be that Harry would be trapped eternally outside of Time. Dumbledore makes a split-second decision to sacrifice himself in order to save the boy, throws the Elder Wand and the Line of Merlin Unbroken out of the mirror's reflection so that they will not be trapped with the headmaster, and trades places with Harry just before the Process of the Timeless (the rising sense of power) finishes. Albus Dumbledore is now trapped inside the mirror forever, and Harry Potter is back in the real room with Professor Quirrell.

I think we're meant to take this as everyone being outside the mirror. If anyone is inside, it's real!Dumbledore, but he probably has a method of getting out. That's how I read it, anyway:

P.S. how do you quote this? It won't let me copy off of FanFiction.net for some reason.

I want to spend a few weeks seriously looking into cryonics: how it works, the costs, the theory about revival, the changes in the technology in the past 60 years, the options that are available.

I want to become an expert in cryonics to the extent that I can answer, in depth, the questions that people typically have when they hear about this "crazy idea" for the first time. {Hmm...That sounds a little like bottom-line reasoning, trying to prepare for objections, instead of ferreting out the truth. I'll have to be careful of that. To be fair, I will need to overcome objections to get my family to sign up. Still, be careful of looking for data just to affirm my naive presumption.}

What should I read?

I just realized why some spells were causing Harry dread, apprehension, and anxiety in chapter 104. It's not because Professor Sprout is controlled by Professor Quirrell (which she is), since other spells of hers fail to trigger the effect and yet one of Tonk's spells does. It's because Quirell is using metamagic to influence the outcome of the battle! He empower's Sprout's brown bolt so that it tears through Professor Snape's shield, and he quickens her stunner so that Snape can't dodge. Then he empowers Tonk's spell to ensure that she will take out Sprout.

In retrospect, this makes perfect sense. There are too many people involved, and combat is inherently chaotic; there is simply no way Quirrell can predict exactly how the fight will go. But he can be there, using gentle nudges to actively steer it towards the small region in outcome-space that ranks high in his utility function, and hope that Harry Potter is too distracted by the battle to notice (which he was; his deduction that Quirrell is behind the plot never once mentions this fact). As a bonus, this explains how Sprout can defeat Snape, when normally we wouldn't expect her to stand a chance.

Why are they having a normal conversation and occasionally switching to Parseltongue to confirm the more important bits? Why not conduct the entire conversation in Parseltongue? Seems like the best way to ensure full cooperation leading to superior outcomes for both parties. Harry has already sneaked one lie past Quirrell, and he has no idea how much of what Quirrell said is true outside of the parts he deliberately chose to speak in Parseltongue.