All of Spurlock's Comments + Replies

I wanted it to be an anagram of my name, but that would only have worked if I'd conveniently been given the middle name of 'Marvolo', and then it would have been a stretch. Our actual middle name is Morfin, if you're curious.

Morfin is a Riddle family name, so we can probably rule out Eliezer choosing it for its anagrams. Nevertheless, might as well have some fun:

Tom Morfin Riddle

• Mini from toddler
• Firm doom tendril
• Mind meld for riot
• Mind for time lord
• Dirt mod of Merlin
• MOR died from lint
• Mr. Flirted in Doom

What else?

Ah, I missed this, I think you're correct (upvoting you and maltrhin). I suppose that my interpretation is the one EY is trying to trick unobservant readers such as myself into making.

I do still think there's still some wiggle room for that interpretation though: Harry's whole outburst about Trelawney's "He's coming!" prophecy, where he said it couldn't possibly be about him because he's already arrived, would seem to indicate that EY is willing to use prophecies whose proper interpretation is not-quite-literal.

Agreed, but this prediction could be older than the Hallows and their creators.

I interpreted this to mean that long ago, there were 3 Peverell brothers, each of which created one of the Hallows. Harry is descended from this family. Note that it doesn't say that "Pevererll's sons" will necessarily be the ones to use their devices to defeat Death, only that the devices are theirs.

There had been only one thing Remus Lupin had thought of that might help, after he'd received the owls from Professor McGonagall and that strange man Quirinus Quirrell.

Harry was morally certain that Dumbledore, or both Dumbledore and Mad-Eye Moody, were following them invisibly to see if anyone tried for the bait.

It's seems that McGonagall and Quirrell are responsible for Harry spending the day with Lupin, and that Dumbledore knows exactly what they're doing. It's not entirely clear whether McGonagall and Quirrell knew that Lupin would decide to take H... (read more)

I believe Snape's "Sunk Costs" hangup is also alluded to in Ch 91:

"Do you intend to declare that your life is now a ruin and that there is nothing left for you but vengeance?"

"No. I still have -" The boy cut himself off.

"Then there is very little advice that I can give you," said Severus Snape.

I like this theory. But it's worth noting that Moody claimed that Voldemort could legilimens without making eye contact. EY seems pretty big on Conservation of Detail, so there's a good chance that this will turn out to be important. Of course, Conservation of Detail also weighs in favor of this eye-locking episode being important, so I suppose it could go either way.

Or both: perhaps sightless legilimency is handicap-inducing like wandless magic, so eye contact might be required to read a witch as powerful as Minerva.

Yeah you're right. I think part of what I was wondering was whether it does make sense to group those 2 things under one heading, or just how strongly they're correlated.

Now that you mention it, I seem to recall reading on Yvain's blog that he's also hyper-sensitive to negative criticism, so there's another data point for it not being tied all that strongly to gender.

Edit: Aforementioned Yvain blogpost

Well, if nothing else comes out of this exchange, at least I can now relate to the OP that much better.

The important question is whether this interpretation is true.

Fair point. I think I was using this as a proxy for truth, the same way you might ask "do economists believe X?" instead of "is X true about the economy?". But also I was up late.

Why? All you've shown is that this correlation doesn't fully screen off gender.

True. It is possible that empathic ability is affected by both gender and analytical disposition directly, rather than gender by-way-of analytical disposition. Or more realistically, that empathic ability is affecte... (read more)

Can we discuss how LW's lack-of-niceness relates to the topic of men-and-women? I feel a little confused, and this insanely long comment is my attempt to ferret out that confusion.

I expect that most people who come to LW for the first time probably find the community somewhat threatening. The karma system does make you feel like you're being judged, everyone seems extremely smart and meticulous about being right, and there's a whole lot of background knowledge to absorb before you even feel qualified to open your mouth. This is exactly what I experienced w... (read more)

Hat & Cloak turning out to be McGonagall would be the most mind-bending and awesome plot twist ever. Unfortunately Hat & Cloak isn't a canon character (right? I didn't read the books), so this wouldn't fit EY's hint.

The irrational meme is the one that says it's worth voting in Erewhon but not in the real world.

This isn't totally clear to me.

Suppose we throw away the business of supporting third parties so that they'll do better next time (which we might as well since it doesn't appear to be part of the Erewhon scenario). I would argue that voting for one of the major parties has roughly the same expected utility both in America and Erewhon, but voting for third parties has a much lower EU in America than in Erewhon.

Suppose polls predict with their typical (pretty g... (read more)

This post should really be (also) a part of the Craft and the Community sequence. The insight in conveys seems very relevant and very valuable, and I don't recall it being stated anywhere near as explicitly.

but it's also impossible to convince him he's Alexander the Great (at least I think so; I don't know if it's ever been tried).

At the very least (pretending that there are no ethical concerns), it seems that you ought to be able to exaggerate a patient's delusions. "We ran some tests, and it turns out that you're Jesus, John Lennon, and George Washington!".

To this same question, I can't help but notice that the brain damage being discussed is right-side brain aka "revolutionary" brain damage. So if it turns out that it isn't possible ... (read more)

AFAICT, this is an unfortunately strong argument... Thanks.

I see two solutions to the paradox:

1) Note that auctions are usually played by more than 2 bidders. Even if the first bidder would let you have the pot for $2, the odds that you'll be allowed to have it by everyone decrease sharply as the number of participants increases. So in a real auction (say at least 5 participants), 9% probably is overconfident.

2) If we have a small number of bidders, one would have to find statistics about the distribution of winners on these auctions (10% won by first bid,... (read more)

Is it rational (even straw-man rational) to enter the dollar auction after one person has already entered it? It should be obvious that you'll both happily keep bidding at least up to $20, that you have at best a 50% chance of getting the $20, and that even if you do get it you will almost certainly make a negligible amount of money even if the bidding stays under $20. So after one person has already bid, it seems like the action "enter this auction" has a clearly negative expected utility.

Just for the sake of feedback, that photo immediately made me laugh. It just seemed so obviously staged. I agree that it's better than "hunched over laptops" though.

I'm reminded of how people tried to call the 9/11 victims "heroes," apparently because they had the great courage to work in buildings that were targeted in a terrorist attack.

Let's be fair: Almost no one actually said this. It's a large nation and you can generally find at least one example of just about any dumb statement, but this seems like 99% strawman.

I remember a lot of talk about how the rescue workers were heroes, and some discussion about the heroics of specific attack victims (people who e.g. tried to help others escape the building... (read more)

It is.

The tune was what a Muggle would have identified as John Williams's Imperial March, also known as "Darth Vader's Theme"

Chapter 30

Well, I guess it's just an empirical question where we differ in predictions. Personally I don't think the analogy with public speaking is very strong, because public speaking classes are actually public speaking. People stand up and speak in front of lots of people, that's just what it is.

Upon reflection though, it does seem like there's one way that it might help, which is that it might help you figure out how to go about non-conformity, what exactly you can do or say in such a situation. So even if your mind doesn't buy into the charade, roleplaying wi... (read more)

I don't know if rehearsals would do any good

Really, this is how I feel. I'd be really surprised if a setup like that actually worked. I'm not sure Harry is supposed to actually believe (with any confidence) that it works for Chaos. Ultimately you know and everyone else knows that it's just a charade, and that really your "nonconforming" is just conforming one level below surface: You stand there and take abuse that you know to be insincere, and then get a pat on the back about it later, just like everyone else did on their turn.

Hopefully CMR ... (read more)

I don't think Dumbledore would risk leaving her as a loose end, what I suspect is that he really did kill her, but only appeared to burn her alive.

I'd like to predict that whatever actually happened with Dumbledore and Narcissa, it will turn out to have been foreshadowed by whatever happened in Chapter 17 between Dumbledore and the chicken.

That is, I can't actually figure out whether he seriously burned a chicken alive, made it look like he burned a chicken alive, or that actually is what a Phoenix looks like right before regenerating. But he appeared to set fire to a chicken, and I predict that he used essentially the same move on Narcissa, as suggested by the law of conservation of detail.

I don't... (read more)

I don't think this a good restriction. Consider the fact that Hanlon's Razor is even a thing:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

This suggests that people often mistake stupidity for malice. So given that in these examples, your opponent probably does secretly understand what you're communicating (most of us know deep down how to sharpen a pencil), it might be necessary to have malice/creativity play the part of inferential distance. Otherwise you may learn to anticipate an unrealistically rational audience, one wh... (read more)

I agree that the data doesn't really distinguish this explanation from the effect John Maxwell described, mainly I just linked it because the circumstances seemed reminiscent and I thought he might find it interesting. Its worth noting though that these aren't competing explanations: your interpretation focuses on explaining the success of the "effort" group, and the other focuses on the failure of the "intelligence" group.

To help decide which hypothesis accounts for most of the difference, there should really have been a control group... (read more)

Interesting article about a study on this effect:

Dweck’s researchers then gave all the fifth-graders a final round of tests that were engineered to be as easy as the first round. Those who had been praised for their effort significantly improved on their first score—by about 30 percent. Those who’d been told they were smart did worse than they had at the very beginning—by about 20 percent.

Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can c

"Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad‘Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson"

Frank Herbert, Dune

“The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance. ”

-St Augustine of Hippo

Mostly good points, but one issue:

Directly eliminated a Light-side witch showing skill at military command and Battle Magic

If Quirrel were worried about this, he could have just not put all the effort into teaching her military command and battle magic (at a level so far beyond what is expected of his position). If light-side heroes like Hermione are something he's worried about, best to just not go around creating them.

In addition to this, the article "a" should appear either in each brain region, or in the "LW is a..." bit. Currently it appears both in the intro bit and some of the brain regions, which confuses the both the grammar nazi and consistency police in me.

+100. Prudence is really more of a Slytherin virtue.

If you're Lucius at this point, how the hell do you now update your "Harry is Voldie" hypothesis?

On the one one hand, he just paid 100K galleons to save a mud blood girl. On the other hand, he spooked a dementor. On the other other hand, while that feat may be impressive, it's certainly not anything the Dark Lord had been known to do previously. And is he consprasizing with Dumbledore, or against him?

Probably a very confusing time to be the Lord of Malfoy.

I don't think Harry's dark side is supposed to be limited to dark solutions, it just happens to be an ultra proficient problem solver. It may have dark tendencies by virtue of being an embedded copy of the mind of Voldemort, but there's no obvious reason it can't be used for good.

Something about the last paragraph

his eyes looked at the rows of chairs, at every person and every thing within range of his vision, searching for any opportunity it could grasp

Makes me afraid he'll end up stabbing Lucius with the bones of a Hufflepuff.

Meta: everyone seems to have started using the term "Groundhog's Day Attack" to describe what H&C did to Hermione. While I understand what happened in the story, I've never heard this term before, can't find any relevant looking results by googling, and don't see what the connection could be between brute forcing someone's mind and using a small furry animal to predict the changing of the seasons. Can someone please point me in the right direction here?

Liked it, but thought there was a bit too much of it (e.g. the blue-minimizing robot reference). Might be better to leave out details that don't help you illustrate your point, lest the reader get a sense that your example isn't going anywhere.

Eliezer Yudkowsky two-boxes on the Monty Hall problem.

The Conjunction Fallacy: ”What's the probability that Linda is a feminist” becomes ”how representative is Linda of my conception of feminists”.

I think this is more precisely an example of the Represenativeness Heuristic, though the point about substitution still stands.

I can't deny feeling a wave of "Uh oh" when you mention the similarity to Freud... but let's keep in mind "The world's greatest fool may say the Sun is shining..." etc. The idea that there is a difference between our conscious and unconscious selves is hardly a novel observation on this site (Type 1 vs. Type 2 reasoning, the whole nature of cognitive biases, etc.), and the same is true of the difference between our actual current selves and our aspirations/goals ("I want to become stronger"). It does seem like a realistic and ... (read more)

• Anticipations, what we actually expect to see happen;
• Professed beliefs, the set of things we tell ourselves we “believe”, based partly on deliberate/verbal thought.

This distinction helps explain how an atheistic rationalist can still get spooked in a haunted house;

I apologize if this seems nitpicky, but the implication seems to be that in Yvain's post he is merely "professing" to not believe in ghosts, but "anticipating" that they exist. I believe the actual point of the post was that Yvain both professes and anticipates the none... (read more)

The most notable problem with Pascal's Goldpan is that when you calculate the utility of believing a particular hypothesis, you'll find that there is a term in that equation for "is this hypothesis actually true?"

That is, suppose you are considering whether or not to believe that you can fly by leaping off a cliff and flapping your arms. What is the expected utility of holding this belief?

Well, if the belief is correct, there's a large utility to be gained: you can fly, and you're a scientific marvel. But if it's false, you may experience a treme... (read more)

I applaud the sites that have blacked out and/or put up anti-SOPA messages. SOPA and PIPA are bad news, and the word needs to be spread.

That said, there are 2 very important differences between those actions and the hypothetical LW blackout:

1) The sites that are blacking out are by and large sites that could be directly and severely hurt by the legislation. This is why I consider it okay for Wikipedia to black out about SOPA, but would be furious if the site were to black out because the editors didn't like some piece of immigration reform. They're not si... (read more)

I'm not sure what you mean here... the church example doesn't seem to be 'related to my personal history' except for the fact that I'm there when it's happening. I never been religious or attended church regularly (though there were a couple of hilariously baffling Sunday school sessions a babysitter once took me too...), so I don't mean to imply that I feel this way because I used to actually be in their shoes, the way e.g. Luke did.

I've had similar feelings in some liberal arts classes: someone would speak, I would perceive their opinion to be either eg... (read more)

I have a similar experience whenever I find myself in a church nowadays (happens sometimes for social reasons), and I can say confidently that it's steadily intensified as I've delved into rationality. As best as I can tell, what really makes me furious isn't the speaking end, but the receiving.

It's some combination of the social setting, the groupthink, and (what I imagine to be) the mentality of the individuals nodding along. When I sort of "put myself in their shoes", it's as though I can feel the biases and motivated cognition and self-decept... (read more)

Less Wrong already has an array of powerful, interesting ideas to support songs and stories

Funny you should mention that.

Thanks!

The band name is a result of imagining Doctor Phil turning into a Squid, but deciding to keep his show.

Thanks for that link. The one I submitted is definitely not perfect, in particular it strongly implies a violation of the No Comminication Theorem.

I think of Zeno's paradoxes as trying to appeal to the essence of dissolved questions. Sort of like, having decomposed "does the tree make a sound?" into "does it produce vibrations" versus "does it cause auditory experiences", somebody comes along and says "but does it make a SOUND???", emphasizing the word "sound" to appeal to your intuitions and make you feel (incorrectly) that something in reality has yet to be resolved. Here, "motion" plays the part of "sound", after a faulty reduct... (read more)