I didn't cry in "Humanism." I didn't cry in "Stanford Prison Experiment." I didn't even cry when Hermione died. But this chapter finally did it for me. "If I were the first person in the universe who ever really cared about someone, then I'd be honored to be that person." That's the kind of moral stand missing in any number of lectures and parables by supposed moral absolutists. It takes quite a bit of deviation from normal thinking to even really comprehend that emotion, let alone spontaneously describe it.

What I love best about HPMOR is that it could so easily have been a Kid Hero parody fic, and even though it skirts pretty close, especially in the earlier chapters, it is never quite a straight up parody. In fact, for all that Harry snarks about his life being one big fantasy cliche, HPMOR takes the Kid Hero genre deadly seriously and plays almost every trope completely straight. Sure, Harry doesn't rush headlong into every danger like most kid heroes, but that's a difference in method, not in spirit. He feels the weight of responsibility just like anyone else who was ever chosen, or chose themselves.

Far more than the science and even the rationality, I love HPMOR because it believes in heroes. Conversations like this one are why I'm not reading a textbook. One day, I'm going to catalog every single discussion about morality, duty, heroism, or wisdom. I genuinely think reading them often will make me a better person, or at least better at being good. So thank you, Eliezer. You really make fiction shine as a teaching medium

After sitting down and going over everything I know about this fic, I believe I've gotten a substantial way towards solving its puzzles. The long version is at my blog here, but here I'll just state without justification the prediction I've come up with:

Voldemort believes fate won't let him defeat Harry until Harry attains the power to vanquish him, which in this case means becoming powerful enough to destroy all of Voldemort's well-hidden horcruxes. And in fact, Harry will become that powerful, by using the differing conservation laws for magic and science to conduct conservation-law arbitrage. Voldemort's plan is to possess Harry once Harry has attained ultimate power, but Harry will prevent Voldemort from winning through complicated means involving multiple currently yet-to-be-fired Checkov's guns.

I have delayed-phase sleep disorder - I would say I "suffer" from it but it's really only a problem when a 3-10 sleep schedule is out of the question (as it is now, since I currently work 9-5). It's simply impossible for me to fall asleep before 2 or 3 am unless I am extremely tired. In addition, I'm a light sleeper, and have never been able to sleep while traveling or, in fact, whenever I'm not truly horizontal. I took melatonin to help with this for a couple years (at a recommended 0.3 mg dose), and it worked extremely well. However, I experienced unusually vivid dreams, and would often wake up feeling groggy. Ultimately, I switched to taking 50 mg 5-HTP an hour or two before bed. The result is that I fall sleep as easily as with melatonin, but wake up feeling far more refreshed. I usually clock 7 hours of sleep a night now, and have brighter and more productive days.

The best sleep aid I've ever used isn't a legal one, though. Luckily, it's widely available here in Canada...

Bentley said. "It is a powerful hormone, and yet people don't realize that it's as 'powerful' as any steroid. I'm sure that many people who take it wouldn't take steroids so glibly.

Unless the quality of the remainder of the article uses an entirely different caliber of reasoning than what you have chosen to excerpt here it should be dismissed as drivel. The (by clear implication, anabolic) steroids that Bentley attempts to equate to melatonin have clear effects that need to be managed or accepted. There has been enough research and practical use of melatonin to reliably establish that whatever the effects of melatonin are they less significant than the effects of anabolic steroids.

Roots of Empathy seems promising, but I don't know whether it's been tested in adults.

EDIT: Fixed link.

Ditto the Kahneman TED talk. Very insightful.

Like Luke, I was UNhappy for a long, long time. Then it hit me one day and I've never been unhappy for very long since. Here's my thoughts on happiness: http://j.mp/RQrYNa

I figured out an exploit to make Horcrux users even more invincible.

A. If you make a Horcrux, you cannot be destroyed unless your Horcrux is destroyed.

B. People can be Horcruxes.

QED if one person turns another into a Horcrux and the other reciprocates then they have foolproof immortality.

This method also has three other benefits over the Dark Lord's attempt, that I can think of. First, it requires only two murders, not seven. Second, it causes twice as many people to become immortal. Third, you'll retain a much larger portion of your soul than you would otherwise, and avoid much of the consequent degeneration.

Quirrelmort is playing on the level below mine, clearly.

Many science fiction writers have postulated the return of feudal social structures, noble houses, monarchies and such in "the future." The democratic era we live in and take for granted could very well have resulted from a drunkard's walk away from long-term social norms., and if we could survive cryotransport, we might find ourselves in nondemocratic, hierarchical societies in Future World.

BTW, I've noticed from watching The Walking Dead series that feminism, progressivism and democracy have to fall by the wayside when our kind of civilization collapses and the strong males have to take charge to keep the surviving hunter-gatherer bands in business. Why couldn't this also happen in a society which manages to maintain high living standards and technological progress?