All of Joshua Hobbes's Comments + Replies

Interesting! I've never seen someone try to make a such a comprehensive set of baseline rules, it seems like a good project!

I think the most controversial item here is 13:
 

Markets will resolve early, even if the outcome is unknown, if the degree of uncertainty remaining is insufficient to render the market interesting, and the market is trading >95% or <5% (or for markets multiple years in advance, >90% or <10%), and I agree with the market but feel it mostly reflects Manifold interest rates. Markets will not be allowed to turn into bets o

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1Vitor
I agree that points 12 and 13 are at least mildly controversial. From the PoV of someone adopting these rules, it'd be enough if you changed the "will"s to "may"s. By and large, the fewer points that are binding for the market creator, the easier it is to adopt the rules. I'm fine with a few big points being strongly binding (e.g. #15), and also fine with the more aspirational points where "Zvi's best judgement" automatically gets replaced with "Vitor's best judgement". But I'd rather not commit to some minutiae I don't really care about. (It's more about "attack surface" or maybe in this case we should say "decision surface" than actual strong disagreement with the points, if that makes sense?)
5Zvi
For my own markets, it is not retroactive if I didn't say it at the time (which I did for many markets). In that case, I would resist doing so exactly because I think this is a low-probability but possible event, and I continue to find it interesting. If it was 3% (trading at Superconductor) I would be tempted to early resolve, but 5% isn't there yet. To be clear, I WOULD likely resolve the Superconductor market now under this rule, I think it is trading at interest rate. For the bet, at 93% with active arguing on both sides and real trading, definitely not. Even if this were 95%, I wouldn't resolve, because it is based on a 150-to-1 baseline bet and there is a clear contingent arguing the other way. So if I made a UFO market like this I would say 'This cannot resolve early to YES, period.'  For the election case, if I saw the desks collectively resolving I would resolve, but if something is going to be 99.99% a day later and it's 99% now, might as well wait. If it's going to be two months, do it now.
4jackc
Note that it says "the degree of uncertainty remaining is insufficient to render the market interesting" AND <5% or >95%. This seems reasonable to me. Note that degree varies by market - an absolute probability by itself wouldn't be a good rule. If it was already very unlikely (e.g. "Will a nuclear bomb be detonated in NYC this year"), then for the degree of uncertainty to become uninteresting it has to become much more unlikely in a way that rules out most of the previous probability space.   I've thought about this type of case a decent amount, and I think a perfectly reasonable approach is to resove early when the uncertainty is almost entirely gone, but with the commitment to re-open and re-resolve as needed in the event that the "almost entirely" turns out to be relevant. Classic example: "Who wins election X?" Resolve as soon as projected by mainstream decision desks. But on a large number of election markets, there will surely be some small number of wrong projections, so you undo the resolution, reopen the market, and eventually re-resolve as needed. Pro: avoids locking up mana unnecessarily. Con: undoing resolutions can cause people to have negative mana.  Philosophically, you can look at this as giving everyone a loan based on the presumptive resolution.

Since it looks like we won't be getting a canonical answer, any thoughts on what exactly the Peverell Prophecy means?

"Three shall be Peverell’s sons and three their devices by which Death shall be defeated."

1Evan_Gaensbauer
A moderator fixed it, but thanks for pointing it out regardless.

Having the Death Eaters look around makes sense, but the paralysis seems contrived to me. It's a very specific level of intelligence between what he have now and just having Mr. Grim cast Expelliarmus. I think it is more realistic for Voldemort to have dismissed the threat than for him to have considered it and decided that paralyzing Harry was the best solution.

Has anyone actually tried to answer the Ultimate Trolley Problem? I'm thinking right.

Would this censor posts about robbing banks and then donating the proceeds to charity?

Depends on exactly how it was written, I think. "The paradigmatic criticism of utilitarianism has always been that we shouldn't rob banks and donate the proceeds to charity" - sure, that's not actually going to conceptually promote the crime and thereby make it more probable, or make LW look bad. "There's this bank in Missouri that looks really easy to rob" - no.

Are you referring to the sexual stuff? I don't think that shows a difference in his personality so much as a lack of censorship. I could easily conceive of canon Draco making such comments, but them never being in the books due to censorship.

I'm referring to the competence. Canon Draco was a small-minded bully. Remember the Most Dangerous Student in the Classroom bit? Canon Draco made enemies every time he opened his mouth.

All the adults certainly were, but what about the students? Draco was the same before Harry started corrupting him, Ron's still an idiot, Neville is still a Hufflepuff, etc. Maybe Fred and George are a bit more awesome, and Zabini is an entirely different person, but aside from that Harry's peers seem to have been kept to the same level. If Hermione were a sensible person, she'd probably outclass Harry just as much as she does in canon, and then the story would be Hermione Granger and How She Learned the Methods of Rationality and Became Omnipotent.

and then the story would be Hermione Granger and How She Learned the Methods of Rationality and Became Omnipotent

Yeah, exactly. Also Equally-Upgraded!Hermione plausibly ought to be smarter than the author.

If you think Draco is the same, you need to reread canon.

I think a lot of this should be blamed on Rowling, not Eliezer. Hermione is pretty much the same as she is in canon, and I don't think we can fault him for not upgrading her.

1Alicorn
I disagree on all counts. Hermione does have a silliness flaw in canon, but it's much weaker. And Eliezer upgraded everyone else important.

Wow, that is... that is the gaudiest checkered top hat I've ever seen.

Does anyone else think this might be a hint? It's not the same as H&C's "broad-brimmed black hat", but I find it interesting that it's mentioned at all. If we rule out all the suspects who have already been considered in 87, who are probably all red herrings, Flamel stands out as one of the few wizards clever enough to play such a game, along with Sirius Black.

5MixedNuts
?
6taelor
This is a reference to the webcomic/multimedia series Homestuck by Andrew Hussie, which features a species of timetravelling aliens known as the Trolls due to fact that the first ones that the protagonists meet were actual internet trolls. The Trolls have their own wierd system of romance built around four quadrants: the flushed quadrant (denoted with a ♥) which loosly aproximates what humans think of as romantic love; the pale quadrant (♦) which is sort of an intense platonic friendship wherein one partner serves as a stablizing force on the other, more unstable partner; the ashen quadrent (♣) whereby one partner attempts to mediate between to otherwise violently opposed partners; and the caliginous quadrant (♠), which can be described as "romantic hate", and involve such things as "hatesnogging" and "murderfondling". A more detailed description can be found here. It should also be noted that this thread already contains at least on reference to a Hussie creation (cousin_it's "HP: Punch AM in snout to establish superiority"), so it's likely that fubarobfusco was primed to interpret things in that light.

This is in fact a major literary reason for the above. :)

0drethelin
In canon, Voldemort has extra "legilimency" style power to know harry's thoughts and influence him due to the scar, even though their connection makes it dangerous for the two to touch (at least while he was in Quirrel). Obviously this isn't great evidence, but I think it's relevant.

Why is it just Luke doing the AMA? Eliezer already has an account for HPMOR, after all.

I think it's pretty clear he got that information, along with many of his other dark secrets, from the Basalisk.

1chaosmosis
I forgot about that part. That makes sense. Pengvado's comment means that the plot hole still existed. But the Basalisk is a better fix than Grindelwald.
2pengvado
I see the evidence for that, but I also see Dumbledore implying otherwise in chapter 39:

How about Animagus-ing into an immortal jellyfish? Certainly not an ideal life, but if it lets you keep old age at bay long enough the muggles will discover human immortality.

075th
Hangonasec. Is this, like, real? Are there jellyfish that don't die of age? Because your comment seems too random if it's not a real thing. But I'm not going to look it up, because if I do I might see pictures of undying deep sea creatures, which I don't think I can handle. EDIT: Looked it up, and sure enough. Turritopsis nutricula. No pictures. And maybe lobsters, too. Crazy.
0MatthewBaker
I like it

Yeah, I'd really like to know Eliezer's reasoning here. What are the possible advantages of this change?

I suppose it is technically more accurate, since not all adult wizards are more dangerous than Dementors or Trolls. Dark Wizards, on the other hand, specifically train to be so.

I'm very much in favor of removing the Ghostbusters song from canon, and putting it in the Omakes.

8Merdinus
No, man. It's era-appropriate and one of the few examples of Weasley awesomeness. It made me grin like a maniac when I read it. I think maybe having Rationalist!Harry chant the chorus was a bit off, but then, people do occasionally show odd bursts of confidence in front of strangers in humorous situations. It's a bit of a character-shift, but appropriate for the circumstance. Edit: Months later, I just looked at the change, and it saddens me a fair bit. The replacement text feels like filler in comparison, and I'm afraid that when I convince people to try MOR they won't see him in the same awesome light I did so quickly. I feel like some of rationalist!Harry's mischievousness has been removed. I mean, I was almost pattern-matching him to a rationalist Bobobobo, but I enjoyed it.
3Paulovsk
I didn't understand the song (I haven't watched Ghostbusters), but I think the existence of a song itself to Harry, when he's walking down to the selector hat is a nice, funny point in the history. That's why I think it must to be kept. It's one of those things that actually makes sense in the HPMOR world.
0Eugine_Nier
Oops, I misread what you wrote.

I think it was fairly obvious that he was manipulating Lily into not choosing to sacrifice herself for Harry. She was initially going to sacrifice herself "for him" and with a few choice words Quirrell got her to attack him.

There are many ways Eliezer could have had Harry not be eligible for magic protection, E.g. just have Lily try to kill Voldemort straight away. Instead he made it look exactly as it would if Quirell wasn't an idiot who didn't know anything about love magic and was trying to prevent a love-shield.

It's possible he was just screwing with her, but It seems too coincidental that for him to screw with her in exactly that way.

875th
Ah, I see. You and I agree, then, that in canon, Rowling intended us to believe that it was the defenselessness of Lily's sacrifice that protected Harry. That if the scene had gone in canon as it does in MoR, with Lily trying to curse Voldemort, that the protection would not have activated. But we disagree as to the reason for the differences Eliezer introduced. You think that the universe is the same, and that Voldemort explicitly tried to counteract the Love Shield. But I find, and given what we know of Eliezer's values I think that he would really find, that Rowling's implication — that Lily's defending herself would somehow cheapen her defense of Harry — is morally repugnant. Therefore, I believe that the rules in MoR's universe are likely different from canon's. I think the more likely reason for the difference is not to show that Voldemort was clever enough to dodge canon!shield, but rather to indicate the nature of MoR!shield. Assuming that Voldemort actually did cast the Killing Curse at Harry, and that it actually did rebound and blow Voldemort out of his body, I think what happened — or at least what we're supposed to believe right now — is that Voldemort unwittingly entered into a magically binding agreement when he taunted Lily. He was amusing himself with his cruelty, but his words were his downfall.

I think Harry's Memories of Godric's Hollow are supposed to tell us that Quirrell knew better then to allow the sacrifice to take place, not that it just doesn't exist. I think we'd probably know if Eliezer had completely removed it, just as he explained his nerfing of Unbreakable vows.

3MugaSofer
I thought this was showing Voldemort mocking Lilly - he agreed sarcasticaly, since it was obvious he would simply kill Harry next if she surrendered - but accidentally fulfiling the requirements for a ritual: I assumed this was meant to allow events near-identical to canon without Quirrelmort seeming incompetent enough to simply forget about the vast magical power sacrificing yourself for love provides. Indeed, I suspect such a resource does not exist in the MORverse, both because it privileges love - a fairly unremarkable neurochemical state - and because its just too easy to exploit. It seems out of place, somehow.
275th
What makes you say that? I have a hard time seeing how that conclusion follows from the scene we saw. He explained his outside-the-universe rationale for nerfing of Unbreakable Vows after the nerfing appeared explicitly in the story. But to my recollection, we have not seen much (if any) talk about the mechanism of Harry's surviving the Killing Curse. No one, not even Dumbledore, has said a single word about a Sacrificial Love Shield. If Eliezer ever explains the mechanism of Harry's survival, it will be when the explanation is no longer a significant spoiler for future chapters.

Even though Harry doesn't have magical-love-protection, I think we should take note of the fact that it's probably still in play and fairly broken.

If Quirrell could get Bellatrix to take a deadly spell from for him, he'd have Love's permanent protection against Dumbledore(if that were the caster). And, with the right amount of cleverness, he could probably arrange for her death to protect all death-eaters in the same way Harry provided protection to all of Hogwarts.

Frankly I wouldn't put it past Dumbledore to arrange for something similiar, for the greater good.

3Eugine_Nier
The way cannon magic seems to work, love-potion based love probably doesn't count as Real Love for purposes of protection. Edit: In fact the quote at the top of the Potter wiki article on love potions says:
275th
What makes you so sure that magical-love-protection exists in MoR at all? Eliezer already changed the Godric's Hollow script to allow other likely possibilities.

What reason do you have to believe we're more inclined to weirdness?

2atucker
The fact that Americans are almost entirely descended from people who decided to uproot themselves and move to a foreign country where they don't have the same institutions, culture, or friends. This is pretty not normal.

It was a commonality between rationality as a project and religiosity. I was intending a very weak form of "could explain".

What I actually believe is that Americans have a default of "doing something". Thinking about whether the something makes sense is permitted but optional.

I realize that even a small percentage of English-speakers is still a huge number of people, but I don't think it's more than half of all the potential rationalists in the world.

8Vaniver
So, about 30% of the population of the OECD is in countries where the majority of the population is a native-born English speaker, and I would be unsurprised if at least two sevenths of the population of the remaining countries speaks English well enough to interact on the internet. I'm pretty sure English connects you to at least half of the developed world.

Isn't Less Wrong supposed to be partially about counteracting those? The topic must have come up at some point in the sequences.

3A1987dM
http://lesswrong.com/lw/a60/quantified_health_prize_results_announced/

What about vitamins/medication? Isn't Ray Kurzweil on like fifty different pills? Why isn't everyone?

7Mark_Eichenlaub
And Aubrey de Grey doesn't take any. (http://www.quora.com/What-supplements-does-Aubrey-de-Grey-take-to-stay-young-if-any/answer/Aubrey-de-Grey)
0satt
It's unclear whether taking vitamin supplements would actually help. (See also the Quantified Health Prize post army1987 linked.) Regarding medication, I'll add that for people over 40, aspirin seems to be a decent all-purpose death reducer. The effect's on the order of a 10% reduction in death rate after taking 75mg of aspirin daily for 5-10 years. (Don't try to take more to enhance the effect, as it doesn't seem to work. And you have to take it daily; only taking it on alternating days appears to kill the effect too.)
0drethelin
Laziness and lack of information

What practical things should everyone be doing to extend their lifetimes?

0curiousepic
I follow the "Bulletproof" diet.
0curiousepic
Donate to SENS.
2Turgurth
Michaelcurzi's How to avoid dying in a car crash is relevant. Bentarm's comment on that thread makes an excellent point regarding coronary heart disease. There is also Eliezer Yudkowsky's You Only Live Twice and Robin Hanson's We Agree: Get Froze on cryonics.
-5A1987dM
0Vaniver
Basically, any effective plan boils down to diligence and clean living. But here are changes I've made for longevity reasons: You can retain nervous control of your muscles with regular exercise; this is a good place to start on specifically anti-aging exercise. Abdominal breathing can significantly reduce your risk of heart attacks. (The previously linked book contains one way to switch styles.) Intermittent fasting (only eating in a 4-8 hour window, or on alternating days, or a few other plans) is surprisingly easy to adopt and maintain, and may have some (or all) of the health benefits of calorie restriction, which is strongly suspected to lengthen human lifespans (and known to lengthen many different mammal lifespans). In general, I am skeptical of vitamin supplements as compared to eating diets high in various good things- for example, calcium pills are more likely to give you kidney stones than significantly improve bone health, but eating lots of vegetables / milk / clay is unlikely to give you kidney stones and likely to help your bones. There are exceptions: taking regular low doses of lithium can reduce your chance of suicide and may have noticeable mood benefits, and finding food with high lithium content is difficult (plants absorb it from dirt with varying rates, but knowing that the plant you're buying came from high-lithium dirt is generally hard).
1FiftyTwo
Good question. Its probably easier to list things they shouldn't be doing that are known to significantly reduce life expectancy (e.g. smoking). I would guess it would mainly be obvious things like exercise and diet, but it would be interesting to see the effects quantified.

I don't think anyone failed to see the signs that Quirrel is Voldemort in HPMOR. There are just those of us who believed it to be a Red Herring, because "that's how stories are supposed to work." If a potential solution to a mystery seems very obviously true in the first quarter of the story, then in most stories it's probably not the true solution. . Of course, at this point there's just no denying it.

I think it has to be cold-blooded murder, not a utilitarian sacrifice.

2nohatmaker
One possible explanation is that the horcrux doesn't require a murder to create, but it does require a human brain to restore the backup to. This doesn't seem terribly likely, but I think it would be a elegant solution to why horcruxes need murder.
0wedrifid
Doesn't the latter tend to involve the former when the 'sacrifice' is the life of another?
2Benquo
It seems like that's a questionable assumption that Harry would be eager to test, once he found out about Horcruxes. For example, can you cast a Horcrux on the power of, say, Avada Kedavra-ing a nonmagical nonhuman creature? If not, how about a magical creature? What if you could create a low-quality backup that way? Wouldn't it still be better than nothing?

I wonder if burning Narcissa Malfoy to death would count, or if it had too many positive externalities. (I'm less and less sure how to model Dumbledore as MoR proceeds, particularly since even if he's "supposed to be good", Eliezer is writing him and Eliezer is some sort of consequentialist; I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility that Dumbledore deemed himself indispensable and his soul's contiguousness dispensable to the war effort.)

7SkyDK
(upvoted chaosmosis) How is utilitarian not cold-blooded? As far as I understand, utilitarians work by assigning utility values between different outcomes and choosing the one with the most utility. That seems pretty cold-blooded. 100k years worth of life > 2 minutes of intense pain and loss of 2 years of life.
5ArisKatsaris
In ch.79 Dumbledore mentions the human sacrifice has to be "committed in coldest blood, the victim dying in horror"
2SkyDK
I doubt he is a perfect utilitarian.

I wasn't referring to the actual vote, but rather to the reaction to Harry's speech.

Some of the members of the Wizengamot were looking abashed at the Boy-Who-Lived's admonition, and a few others were nodding violently to the old wizard's words. But they were too few. Harry could see it. They were too few.

And that's just those who agree that Children shouldn't be exposed to dementors, and it seems to be like it's <20%. It's probably only around .1% of the population who don't want anyone of any age given to the Dead Things.

Try not to take this as me being a big snobby snob, but did you actually read them?

1Shmi
Weirdly enough, I have read both the canon and the Alicorn's fanfic.
6loup-vaillant
Secondary source: I have seen the first 3 films, and Alice explicitly (and repeatedly, I think) states that "a decision has been made" when she has a vision. That decision needn't be made by Bella specifically though.

I don't think that would actually make sand, it must be the game-discs.

7David_Gerard
This brings to mind the scratched game CD in Homestuck.

Never mind, the "far too few" comment Harry makes during the trial means you're likely correct.

075th
Well, no, if we're using the trial votes as the gauge, it's probably like 70/30? Maybe? But I was thinking of not only those who would sentence Hermione to Azkaban, but all those who support Azkaban in general, which is surely a significantly higher percentage.

More like 60%, I think.

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply
3Joshua Hobbes
Never mind, the "far too few" comment Harry makes during the trial means you're likely correct.

This chapter reminded me very much of Dusk Specks vs Torture, and if I wasn't before I'm now very confident that Harry is soon going to get very utilitarian on us.

0Alsadius
Got a link?

Eliezer seems to be taking a page from Alicorn's book. In Luminosity Alice is plagued by differing visions as Bella constantly changes her mind about her future, and then the actual future snaps into place when a final choice is made.

That's how it is in the canon Twilight (Eclipse).

2FAWS
And I already remarked in the Luminosity thread that that makes no sense. It makes even less sense in a universe with time turners.

Nice catch.

I'm now wondering exactly how the prophecy system works. Did Harry's resolution alter time and directly cause these seers to see what they saw?

Despite the many good reasons to believe Quirrell is H&C, My Red Herring Alarm (©) wouldn't stop going off while Harry was going over the list of suspects. My gut is usually fairly good at seeing plot-twists coming, and it's very certain there's someone Harry is forgetting about. Anyone else getting a similiar vibe?

1anotherblackhat
The evidence against QQ is pretty strong; * H&C cast a memory charm on Hermione without triggering the wards. Only a Hogwarts professor, Dumbledore, and maybe Lupin could do that. * H&C either wanted Hermione to be blamed for attempted murder, or wanted her to succeed. That rules out everyone is isn't willing to kill innocent children to advance their plots. Realistically, only QQ fits. Whether Harry has enough information to figure it out is a different question.
3Jonathan_Elmer
I think H&C is Snape. I am really confused about what was going on with H&C1 and Quirrell but everything since then is consistent with Snape plotting against Harry.

The thing is, with Cryonics you aren't just fighting normal ignorance that can be destroyed with good publicity, you're fighting Religion. If you start telling people that (Zues Forbid) death is bad and worth a significant financial risk to avoid, the Christian Right are going to get upset. There would be boycotts organized against companies supporting Cryonics, who would be portrayed as avaricious atheists trying to fight the natural order.

The world's sanity level isn't high enough for this sort of thing, not yet.

-2fojaax
if ur saying the world, how about u? hey? y are u talking about the world? u must also c that scentist are gods favaurite,they never blaime gods for their ur own mistake it is people like u who blame god!
5A1987dM
Contraception, abortion and divorce have become not-so-shocking in most of the developed world despite the Church being upset by them, though.
3Alicorn
If you spin it as medical care, most Christian groups don't have much reason to oppose it.

Tried to stick with it, got bored shortly after they met a Fairy Queen or something.

This is in fact the reason I know Draco will still have some role in the story. But we really should get some main character deaths if the story is ending.

I don't believe the soul is split every single time one kills. Dumbledore's telling Harry that Voldie's soul accidentally split during that night suggests that it was an unusual event, not something that happened several times per week. I believe Rowling also specifies that it was just one extra piece of Voldemort's soul that had to find something to latch onto, not hundreds.

So if the accidental split was due to the murder of one of the Potters, I think it was probably the innocent child, the killing of which woudl probably have more powerful soul-ripping powers.

I was under the impression Hogwarts was founded over a millennium ago. With a wizard's lifespan being around 200 at most, the founders would need to have raised Hogwarts as infants for the hat to only have existed for 800 years.

7pedanterrific
and and ETA: Oh, haha, maybe I should have just gone with
1pedanterrific
The actual quote is 800 years, which is how long the Hat's existed.

But Harry is a Slytherin. At his very core is his ambition to become immortal and reorganize the universe to his satisfaction. He wants knowledge, and he wants it for its own sake, but it's not his deepest wish. If he looked into the Mirror of Erised he'd see himself as the benevolent and omnipotent lord of the universe, not himself surrounded by books.

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