All of victordrake's Comments + Replies

Perhaps I should say ...in which I can't reasonably expect to GET evidence entangled with an underlying reality.

Indeed, you can't ever present a mortal like me with evidence that has a likelihood ratio of a googolplex to one - evidence I'm a googolplex times more likely to encounter if the hypothesis is true, than if it's false - because the chance of all my neurons spontaneously rearranging themselves to fake the same evidence would always be higher than one over googolplex. You know the old saying about how once you assign something probability one, or probability zero, you can never change your mind regardless of what evidence you see? Well, odds of a googolple... (read more)

2TheOtherDave
If all of my experiences are dreaming/drugged/crazy/etc. experiences then what decision I make only matters if I value having one set of dreaming/drugged/crazy experiences over a different set of such experiences. The thing is, I sure do seem to value having one set of experiences over another. So if all of my experiences are dreaming/drugged/crazy/etc. experiences then it seems I do value having one set of such experiences over a different set of such experiences. So, given that, do I choose the dreaming/drugged/crazy/etc. experience of giving you $5 (and whatever consequences that has?). Or of refusing to give you $5 (and whatever consequences that has)? Or something else?
2DSimon
But that would destroy your ability to deal with optical illusions and misdirection.
4DanielLC
Are you sure? I would expect that it's possible to recover from that, and some actions would make you more likely to recover than others.

Student: What is truth? And what is God?

Teacher: You don't really want an answer to that question.

Student: Yes, I do. Please.

Teacher (after thinking for a moment): If I take a lamp and shine it toward a wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding. Too often, we assume that the light on the wall is God. But the light is not the goal of the search. It is the result of the search. The more intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall. The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the sense of re... (read more)

Excellent quote, but you should really attribute it.

It's from Babylon 5, season 5, episode 14, "Meditations on the Abyss".

The Teacher is G'kar, the student is some random Narn.

King: Very clever. (to the guards) set him free from the top of the tallest tower.

No, If the king REALLY wanted to be a dick, he would have put the key and the dagger in the same box, and then said "one box contains a key, and one box contains a dagger."

2JShenLZ
It says if you find the key you're free and the dagger is if you fail, implying that if both were in the same box his finding the key would have averted the failure.

Actually, it has occurred to me that maybe he doesn't need his body back, because he never lost it. He's not wearing a turban to cover two-facedness, and Harry's "recovered" memory from his infancy may have been the result of a false memory charm. In this continuity, can we really be sure that Quirrel is a separate person that Voldie is using, or maybe he is just Voldie in disguise?

The Command to Look, by William Mortenson, might be enlightening to Slytherins. Even though it's about photography, you can learn things about how your personal appearance can be crafted to inspire the emotions in people that you want to.

But, if his plan is that his soul be sent to another world, he does not need his body back, does he?

0Nornagest
Maybe. He'd have to be content to spend an indefinite but probably very long span of time as whatever goes into a Horcrux in this continuity, without any well-defined hope of resurrection. It's a cool idea, but Quirrell's not the type to send his soul (for lack of a better word) to another planet just because it's a cool idea. Unfortunately we don't know much about how well a Horcrux can perceive or influence its surroundings, which is somewhat important in this context. He might be trying to cast a light into the future, cryonics-style, but that seems like a long shot by my measure of Quirrell; he knows something of Muggle science but he's probably not hip to obscure, relatively recent ideas. He's using the Pioneer probe as the ultimate safe deposit box. I don't think we have enough evidence to say he's looking for anything more dramatic than that.

Hi. Just found HPMoR and read it all, and please forgive me if anyone had raised this before in the thousands upon thousands of comments that I haven't taken the time to read...

I think I've figured out some Important Things that are going on here.

1) How harry survived the Killing Curse.

Right after the Incident With the Fake Summoning Ritual, we learned about a reference class of magic in which the practitioner first specifies a thing they are willing to sacrifice, and then a thing they expect to receive in exchange. Reviewing Harry's memory of his mother... (read more)

2drethelin
Re: Bellatrix. In canon Quirrel is a temporary stopping place for Voldemort's spirit until he can incarnate in a new body. One of the ways to do this is a ritual that requires the parts mentioned in HPMOR, eg a servant, an enemy, an ancestor etc. Bellatrix is his best servant.