I really can’t believe “use magic” was the right answer. In addition to being unsolvable from the perspective of the audience—we don’t know anything about magic! -- it’s also totally out of step of the rest of the work. I’d love to see a rewrite fork from the “AI Box” line of solutions.
In the meantime I really hope they’re still in the mirror.
In addition to being unsolvable from the perspective of the audience—we don’t know anything about magic!
Um, what do you mean by “unsolvable”? I would assume you mean “no one thought of it or suggested it,” but in fact many, if not most, of the suggestions involved using magic in basically the way Harry did.
I assume he means: we are not in a position to have any confidence that a particular proposed magical solution is actually a credible one, at least from what we know that’s internal to the story. (External things like what’s been most clearly foreshadowed might give good reason for confidence.)
That’s exactly what I mean. We don’t know enough about magic to say what Harry or Voldemort’s capabilities are—the whole thing is a black box. It’s not a satisfying answer to the puzzle (for me) and not much of a testimony to “rationality” as a way of thinking at all—as presented this is about knowing genre conventions, not about superior or inferior thinking. All of the AI Box solutions I saw were much more pro-”rationality” by my lights.
Eliezer may in fact be thinking of this as an AI box situation, and trying to point out that giving the AI any extra capabilities in the external world whatsoever me be a horrible mistake.
I really can’t believe “use magic” was the right answer. In addition to being unsolvable from the perspective of the audience—we don’t know anything about magic! -- it’s also totally out of step of the rest of the work. I’d love to see a rewrite fork from the “AI Box” line of solutions.
In the meantime I really hope they’re still in the mirror.
Um, what do you mean by “unsolvable”? I would assume you mean “no one thought of it or suggested it,” but in fact many, if not most, of the suggestions involved using magic in basically the way Harry did.
I assume he means: we are not in a position to have any confidence that a particular proposed magical solution is actually a credible one, at least from what we know that’s internal to the story. (External things like what’s been most clearly foreshadowed might give good reason for confidence.)
That’s exactly what I mean. We don’t know enough about magic to say what Harry or Voldemort’s capabilities are—the whole thing is a black box. It’s not a satisfying answer to the puzzle (for me) and not much of a testimony to “rationality” as a way of thinking at all—as presented this is about knowing genre conventions, not about superior or inferior thinking. All of the AI Box solutions I saw were much more pro-”rationality” by my lights.
Eliezer may in fact be thinking of this as an AI box situation, and trying to point out that giving the AI any extra capabilities in the external world whatsoever me be a horrible mistake.
That said, I agree with you.