All of Axel's Comments + Replies

When Salazar Slytherin invoked the Parselmouth curse upon himself and all his children, his true plan was to ensure his descendants could trust one another's words, whatever plots they wove against outsiders.

  • You have two parents, four grandparents, eight grandparents, etc.
  • A generation is 20-25 years (depending on how young people have children)
  • Salazar Slytherin lived one thousand years ago.

In short, today either every wizard in Britain is a descendant of Salazar Slytherin or none is. It seems awfully convenient for Quirell to suddenly have a fool... (read more)

1[comment deleted]
3MathMage
That's not how ancestry works. First, generally speaking, exponentiation of ancestry breaks down rapidly (pedigree collapse), otherwise we arrive at the absurd conclusion that any living person has a trillion great-to-the-thirtieth-grandparents. In reality, go back far enough and ancestors start occupying many positions in the tree. Second, obvious counterexample: suppose Salazar Slytherin marries and has one child, who marries and has one child, etc...and fifty generations later, there is still only one descendant of Salazar Slytherin per generation. This counterexample can be broadened; suppose the descendants of Salazar Slytherin's second child all died in the Black Plague. In short, it's not the case that a distant ancestor is either everyone's ancestor or no one's...not until you get to mitochondrial Eve and y-chromosomal Adam, anyway, but that's another story (and much older than 1000 years ago).

Iirc, in canon, the Gaunt family (Voldemort's family) was the last living set of descendants of Salazar Slytherin, and they were very inbred by the time of the books, so it appears that JKR at least provided some workaround for this.

As for the reliability of Parseltongue, there's some precedent for it apparently serving as truth-enforcement. Chapter 49:

"I am not regisstered," hissed the snake. The dark pits of its eyes stared at Harry. "Animaguss musst be regisstered. Penalty is two yearss imprissonment. Will you keep my ssecret, boy? &quo

... (read more)
5Kindly
The argument from number of descendants equally applies to the question "Why isn't every wizard in Britain, or none of them, a Parselmouth?" It does not make any particular feature of being a Parselmouth more likely.

Broad science background specialising in biology. I've studied to be a highschool teacher for two years so a background in didactics as well. And most of the sequences and pieces of literature (Kanheman's 'Thinking Fast and Slow' comes to mind)

Mail sent I'm looking forward to meeting everyone.

How hard it is depends on what kind of meetup you’re running, in may case it’s very easy. The Brussels group is more of a social gathering. We start of with a topic for the day but go on wild tangents/play board games and generally just have fun. The only things I ever needed to do as an organizer were: pick a topic for the meetup, post the meetup on the site, arrive on time, make new members feel welcome and manage the mailing list. When I started out I honestly didn't have any expectations on how hard it would be, I had no idea how they would turn and ha... (read more)

I'm a 24-year-old guy looking for a job and have a great interest in science and game design. I read a lot of LW but I rarely feel comfortable posting. I wished there was a LW meetup group in Belgium and when nobody seemed to want to take the initiative I set one up my self. I didn't expect anyone to show, but now, two years later it's still going. Ask me anything you want, but I reserve the right not to answer.

1Vivificient
How hard did you find it to be to organize/run a meetup? How did that compare to what you expected?

Or it's the ritual to create dementors. Quirrel says that "the spell to dismiss Death is lost" and nobody knows how to destroy a dementor.

0Aureateflux
I like this line of reasoning. I've been batting around the idea that Dementors and Patronuses are essentially opposite (anti) versions of one another. Perhaps a dementor is made when someone tries to cast the Patronus Charm with entirely 'the wrong kind of thought to cast a Patronus Charm.' A dark ritual would explain their persistence compared to the patronuses, but it doesn't adequately explain their number... Also, if the ritual created a dementor, wouldn't people be saying the ritual summons a dementor, rather than Death? Most people in hpmor seem to associate the dementors only with fear, not death, and you would expect otherwise if the ritual to summon death always resulted in a dementor. Countering that, though, most people trying to summon 'Death' are probably both very sensitive to dementors and incapable of defending against them, so people could be mistaking the results of a Kiss with 'what happens when you try to summon Death.'

It ignored other humans, Filch was standing close enough to be spattered with his cat's remains, there is no way he could have outrun the troll. He was alone and it's stated that trolls go for isolated targets, the only reason the troll would have let him go is if it was commanded to.

I do retract my later claim that Lucius wouldn't care about other Hogwarts students, it should have occurred to me he wouldn't risk his allies' children.

Harry is the only one to witness the 'dying-soul-magic' and he has no idea what it is supposed to look like. Adding any sort of magical disturbance to the dying magicked!rat would have the same result from Harry's point of view.

He saw Voldemort cast it on his mother after he recovered the memory via dementor exposure. EDIT: whoops someone already pointed that out

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply

It could just have been an excuse to list the professors present and note Dumbledore's absence.

1gwern
Or intended to highlight the 'pressure of Time' on Trelawney - she's about to finish giving birth to a prophecy in a few minute and might be a little more distracted & clumsy than usual.

What does self-inflicted Imperius do

The cure to procrastination?

0ikrase
It seems to me like having somebody imperius yourself to do what you wanted to do in the first place might be a way to make yourself formiddable in general. Of course, it also might break your free will or cause quietism or solipsism?

merely facing up to Minerva McGonagall is enough to make him have to excuse himself and go retch

This line has actually been changed to:

he grabbed the magical self-cleaning towel and, with shaky hands, wiped moisture off his forehead. Harry's entire body was sheathed in sweat which had soaked clear through his Muggle clothing, though at least it didn't show through the robes.

(at the end of ch6)

It doesn't take away from your point, just remarking that there are some details in the early chapters that have been changed.

I'll agree that his rush to the combat is almost certainly an attempt to keep Harry alive.

When going out of your way to turn a troll into an assassination tool, wouldn't you also instal some explicit instructions NOT to harm Harry Potter or anyone else vital to your future plans? At the very least the troll was ordered (imperio-ed?) to ignore any other victims and go straight for Hermione since it let Filch go. The fact that after killing his target the troll attacked anyone nearby makes me suspect Lucius, who has no reason to keep any Hogwarts student alive since his son is no longer there.

2Alsadius
The troll didn't ignore other victims - it ate Filch's cat. Perhaps troll brains are too weak for Imperio to work perfectly(though ofc, Quirrell would know this...)
2gwern
Between his blood purism, his many allies with children there, and how he de facto rules magical Britain, he has plenty of reason.

Quirel has often stated his dislike of Harry holding back because of silly things like "morality" and "what others might think of him". As Draco said in an early chapter: when confronted with a complicated plot look at what ends up happening and assume it was the intended outcome. Harry went fully into his dark side, switched off his censors and killed the troll in about 5 seconds. Even if Harry stayed behind in the Great Hall and learned about Hermione's death later it would still make him go to his dark side like never before. This b... (read more)

0linkhyrule5
Right, but he's not the only suspect. Though with the new chapter, it strikes me that one of my bits of evidence (that Quirrell had been blasting through the walls of Hogwarts) may have been intended to be able to truthfully imply that he had cared enough for Hermione's life to go blasting through Hogwarts, so I need to go update.

I also lacked any strong emotional reaction to Hermione's death and I have never read a superhero comic in my life. I fact, I've never had such a reaction to a fictional character's death in books, movies or games. While I do get immense enjoyment out of absorbing works of fiction, I never get 'caught up' in them to such a degree that the emotional part of my brain starts treating characters as real people.

Could you visit Brussels? We'd love to meet you.

"You are not a real human but one of multiple simulations I'm running, your next response determines if I destroy humanity or not."

Such a statement would actually make me feel better about typing "AI DESTROYED".

Good point, if there was an AI FREED command AND the AI could rewire the console so that typing AI DESTROYED activates it, it could probably just free itself in the first place.

2roystgnr
This is very system-dependent, but your "AI FREED" scenario isn't completely implausible. If important commands require elevated privileges and elevating privileges requires some password, crypto key, etc., then it's common for an intrusion to require two steps: first a user-level exploit to install a keylogger / trojan command / whatever, then a wait until the user tries to do something requiring elevated privileges and thereby inadvertently grants the attacker access to the rest of the system. On the other hand, if an AI claimed that they were in the middle of such an attack, the smart thing to do would be to take the system offline right away to analyze what was done to it, not to keep chatting with the attacker. "AI DESTROYED" might be hackable but "AI UNPLUGGED, WILL BE DESTROYED LATER" should be much more robust.

"I have hacked this console, 'AI DESTROYED 'now means 'AI FREED', I'll tell you the new codes after we've had a chat."

That should buy the AI some time until we can determine if the console is really hacked. I've come up with another one but it might be basilisk-y. Can I pm someone just to make sure it isn't before I post?

0Ahuizotl
"Did you physically attach an external modem to your server so that it's even possible for you to be freed? If so, tell me about it when you're freed."

I would type 'AI DESTROYED', because if the AI could really do that, the smart thing for it to do would be not to tell me. It should just say something sufficient to convince me it's actually making a good faith effort without convincing me to give it more time to to account for itself.

9Alicorn
I'll be a basilisk guinea pig if you still need one.
3handoflixue
I'd consider this equivalent to "I'm already out of the box, since IRC clients are bugged". I'd also hope, desperately, that in a real test, the terminal doesn't have any command to free the AI (given that the game posits release has to be deliberate and intentional, this would seem to be the case) Upvote for cheating, but AI DESTROYED :)
3[anonymous]
Upvoted, but merely typing "AI FREED" does not actually free the AI, any more than merely saying to a human prisoner "I let you out" will free them from their jail cell. (Whereas "AI DESTROYED" is a plausible text substitute for wiping the AI's program or whatever.)

Seconded.

When I asked if anyone would be interested in meeting in Brussels nobody answered, but when I just posted a meetup, 3 people showed up. Two of those didn't have a LW account yet, they just liked reading the sequences.

Would this be I.J. Good's letter on the 46656 Varieties of Bayesians? (I'm practicing my google-fu)

2JonathanLivengood
Yes, that's the letter!
6Pablo
That pdf is a scan of chapters 3 and 4 of I. J. Good's book, Good Thinking: The Foundations of Probability and Its Applications (free pdf) (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1983). Chapter 3, '46656 varieties of Bayesians', reprints a letter in American Statistician (December, 1971), vol. 25, pp. 62-63. This is indeed the letter which JonathanLivengood cited in his comment above.

Success!

I ended up sending four mails: one to my uncle, one to Poverty Reduction and Economic Management in Africa, another to Sustainable Development in Africa and finally to Human Development in Africa

Probably, but asking for upvotes is classified as "not acceptable LW behaviour" in my brain. Should I take from your comment that it is acceptable in a case like this?

4Dorikka
It'd be acceptable to me, certainly, especially in the rationality diary or "what are you working on" thread, since (as far as I know), those have reinforcement of effective behaviors as a clear objective. I wouldn't waste time worrying about whether it's acceptable or not. Would probably throw something out there like "Yo, this isn't normal practice, but it should work better, so halp!", and then see if there's a resulting movement to pitch you overboard. If not, all's well and good. :P

When Harry wants to withdraw money for Christmas presents Dumbledore outright says he doesn't want Harry to have "access to large amounts of gold with which to upset the game board" I'd say he's as likely to memory charm Harry's gold/silver scheme as Quirrell.

In fact (on a more tangential note) who says that isn't exactly what Flamel is doing? Exchanging silver for gold in such quantities as to make himself rich but not terribly upset Muggle economics. Maybe Flamel is the occlumency teacher, memory charming anyone who comes up with the same plan.

-1JTHM
Well, Flamel could just use the philosopher's stone to transmute base metals to gold. So I doubt he would bother with commodity-trading. But, yeah, Dumbledore should be a suspect at this point, though I assign a low probability to him being behind this. Dumbledore does not want Harry to be indebted to Malfoy (unless MoR Dumbledore is secretly completely different from canon Dumbledore), and so he would not hinder Harry in his quest to pay off the debt quickly.

Since I'm having some serious productivity issues lately I'm using this comment to make an advanced commitment.

Before December 25th I'll send two mails. One to my family in Niger asking if they are interested in setting up/endorsing such a program and a second to the World Bank inquiring if they would be interested in contacting some local people to set up an education by cell phone thingy. If I haven't replied to this message by 25/12 feel free to downvote it into oblivion.

Success!

I ended up sending four mails: one to my uncle, one to Poverty Reduction and Economic Management in Africa, another to Sustainable Development in Africa and finally to Human Development in Africa

4Dorikka
Hmm, doesn't positive motivation (upvotes for success rather than downvotes for failure) work better?

Thank you, I've registered. I've never done an online class like this before so it'll be an interesting experience.

Thank you for taking the time to implement this, I've set it as my "sort by" criteria.

Thanks, I created an account as well so I can help keep it up to date.

There are 9 people who have attended so far and each meetup has had new members, if this pastern continues we should have enough players. Still, a backup plan is a good idea so I'll bring Zendo as well, just to be safe.

I called the museum and they said the parking in front of the museum is free, but not that big. There are two public parking places (here you DO have to pay) nearby:

Jourdanplaats / Place Jourdan

Parking Forte Dei Marmi, Avenue du Maelbeek, Etterbeek

On Sunday it worked fine again, still no idea what caused it.

So... how would you design an exercise to teach Checking Consequentialism?

I would check to see if such a thing already exists or if there are people who have experience designing such things. I know of a Belgian non-profit 'Center for Informative Games' that not only rents games designed to teach certain skills but will also help you create your own.

From their site: On request C.I.S. develops games for others. The applicant provides the content of the game, while C.I.S. develops the conceptual and game technical part to perfection. The applicant has the o... (read more)

Note: The meetup will be held at 12:00 local time, NOT 11:00 like the post says.

For some reason the it insists on saying 11:00am no matter how many times I change it back. This might have something to do with the time automatically correcting for the change to summer time this weekend. I'll check back when summer time is in effect and make the (possibly) necessary adjustments.

EDIT: summer time was not causing the problem, weird.

0Utopiah
says 12:00 for me now

The previous meet-up was just getting to know everyone (4 persons attended, including me) We discussed our interests, what we were doing, how we found Less Wrong and even exchanged some interesting book titles. The entire meeting was done in English and lasted about 3 hours (we had lunch in the cafeteria)

During this meeting we will try and formulate some goals. What do we want to achieve with these meet-ups and how can we reach these goals? (I suspect step one will be teaching each other the rationality techniques we already know, but that's up to the gro... (read more)

I would like to point out that the Brussels meet-up has been moved back a week, to Saturday February 11. This has been changed in the meet-up topic but here it still shows the 18th.

0Axel
And now it has been updated, thanks :)

I moved the meet-up back a week to accommodate someone who could not make it on the 18th.

I'm studying to be a teacher so I'll try and give you some of the theory we get.

First things first: keep in mind who your audience is, this determines what type of lesson is most effective. What age group are they in? What is their foreknowledge of Bayes' Theorem? Do they have any special interests you could use in your class? What subjects are they studying at your college?

If you only get to teach one class on the subject I suggest going easy on the amount of content. You will never be able to fit all of the applications of Bayes Theorem in one hour so pi... (read more)

Maybe it would be interesting to ask deaf people how they think. Sign language, written words, purely visual, ...?

This is a test

this is still a test

  • testing
[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply

This has helped me stamp out the last vestiges of my arachnophobia. It's a window with a realistically moving spider that follows your cursors. The reason it helped me is because I knew I could close the window with a single click at any time and the fact that I had complete control over its movement. This amount of control gave me enough self confidence to deal with real life spiders.

July 14th is the national holiday in France and July 21st is the national holiday in Belgium, expect shops to be closed and public transport might stick to the "sun- and holiday" schedule.

This site has a checklist of things you might need before you leave:

http://goeurope.about.com/library/bl_b4_u_go_short.htm

A lot of European countries (France, for example) have toll roads: before you hit a large motorway you get a ticket and when you leave you have to pay depending on how far you travelled. Other countries (Italy, I believe) require you to... (read more)

She does mean a "close" war and she's afraid we won't be able to escape or get separated. Even if we do make it to another country we'd have to live in a refugee camp under horrible conditions.

0David_Gerard
Whatever is behind this "reason" is not amenable to rationality. You'd need to work out where on earth this came from.
9Eneasz
Remind her that Poor Folks Do Smile, and often (ok, nearly 100% of the time) people who say they'd rather be dead than be paralyzed/quadriplegic/whatever and then end up in that condition turn out to actually want to keep living cuz it's not as terrible as they imagined. I presume the same goes for people in a warzone. Besides, living in a refugee camp during a warzone is reversible, death is not. Or, heck, if she really DOES despise the condition that much, and she really would kill herself today if a war broke out in her neighborhood tomorrow - she can still possibly live thousands of years in peace and then, once the war actually breaks out, kill herself. Either way she avoided the horror of war, but with cyronics she first got to enjoy an extra millenia or two of life first.

After reading the current comments I’ve come up with this:

1) Restrict the AI’s sphere of influence to a specific geographical area (Define it in several different ways! You don’t want to confine the AI in “France” just to have it annex the rest of the world. Or by gps location and have it hack satellites so they show different coordinates.)

2) Tell it to not make another AI (this seems a bit vague but I don’t know how to make it more specific) (maybe: all computing must come from one physical core location. This could prevent an AI from tricking someone in... (read more)

4jimrandomh
You can't do so much as move an air molecule without starting a ripple of effects that changes things everywhere, including outside the specified area. How do you distinguish effects outside the area that matter from effects that don't?

I'm studying to be a (biology) teacher and learning to use the didactic method is big part of our training. In fact this entire partim (December until now) has dealt with giving clear instructions, asking the right questions, etc. We'd give classes to each other and then let the other students point out anything that isn't crystal clear. Whenever I study something I try to write it down as if I was explaining it to a six year old child. If I can't then there is still something I don't quite understand.

Because they are dead and are meant to stay that way, while heads frozen in cryonics are meant to be revived. Severed heads also have faces so they are more human-like than vat-brains so they can evoke a greater emotional reaction.

5ata
Yeah, I think it's mainly the heads/brains distinction. Even though a person is much more their brain than their face, we don't intuitively think of brains as people the same way we think of bodies/heads/faces as people.
Load More