I think he’s never going to do that here. He did that in TWC because if we were able to come up with the winning strategy when pressed, that would indicate that one of the crew members in the story definitely would have, too, proving it would have been unreasonable to write an ending where they did not. In this case our ability to solve the puzzle doesn’t really say anything about the plausibility of the work’s characters’ solving it. Our success would not necessitate theirs, as we’re more populous, experienced, and have access to a huge written record. Nor would our failure necessitate theirs, as Harry has magical insights. The groups’ capacities say little about each other.
re: magical insights, yeah—we could have theorized about how potions worked, but we could not test those theories the way Harry did. Since Harry has experiments we don’t have access to, he has magical insights we don’t have access to
I was referring more to that shadowy part of his mind that knows just what to look for. A source of insight that doesn’t obey natural human cognitive constraints.
This would be explicitly against Yudkowsky’s stated goals for the story,
The Rule of Rationalist Fiction states that rationality is not magic; being rational does not require magical potential or royal bloodlines or even amazing gadgets, and the principles of rationality work for understandable reasons. A rationalist!hero should excel by thinking—moreover, thinking in understandable patterns that readers can, in principle, adopt for themselves. As opposed to the hero just being a born “genius” who comes up with amazing gadgets through an opaque discovery process, or who flawlessly pulls off incredibly complicated gambits that would fail miserably if the reader tried something similar in real life.
All he has that we don’t is more facts. (Which is often a hindrance; it was easier for us to figure out Lucius’s blood debt, because we had less “memory” to search through.) If he could also exceed natural human cognitive constraints, this wouldn’t be rationalist fiction.
Assuming that Harry’s Dark Side is integral to a significant proportion of plays(assuming rather than noting because my memory is patchy and I don’t remember if it was like this or if the dark side was more a background character than an oft-employed tool), perhaps we could infer from this that EY considers it to be an natural state of mind that also happens to flourish rarely enough that no character Harry will ever meet is likely to be able to correct his misperception of it. I’d then assume EY must have visited it himself to write it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a magical dark side. But I’d be shocked if it was a magical dark side that could think better than a well trained adult.
Now that I think about it, he definitely has a source of insight that doesn’t obey natural ten-year-old cognitive constraints.
But then, it is pretty much the premise of this fic that Harry doesn’t obey “natural” ten-year old cognitive constraints because he is a prodigy by birth (with top-rate education that has allowed him to draw on his full mental potential). That premise accepted, there is nothing implausible about his dark side simply focusing his mental capabilities and allowing him to reach new levels of performance (at the cost of limiting processing in other areas such as empathy).
I think he’s never going to do that here. He did that in TWC because if we were able to come up with the winning strategy when pressed, that would indicate that one of the crew members in the story definitely would have, too, proving it would have been unreasonable to write an ending where they did not. In this case our ability to solve the puzzle doesn’t really say anything about the plausibility of the work’s characters’ solving it. Our success would not necessitate theirs, as we’re more populous, experienced, and have access to a huge written record. Nor would our failure necessitate theirs, as Harry has magical insights. The groups’ capacities say little about each other.
re: magical insights, yeah—we could have theorized about how potions worked, but we could not test those theories the way Harry did. Since Harry has experiments we don’t have access to, he has magical insights we don’t have access to
I was referring more to that shadowy part of his mind that knows just what to look for. A source of insight that doesn’t obey natural human cognitive constraints.
This would be explicitly against Yudkowsky’s stated goals for the story,
All he has that we don’t is more facts. (Which is often a hindrance; it was easier for us to figure out Lucius’s blood debt, because we had less “memory” to search through.) If he could also exceed natural human cognitive constraints, this wouldn’t be rationalist fiction.
(source: http://hpmor.com/info/)
Assuming that Harry’s Dark Side is integral to a significant proportion of plays(assuming rather than noting because my memory is patchy and I don’t remember if it was like this or if the dark side was more a background character than an oft-employed tool), perhaps we could infer from this that EY considers it to be an natural state of mind that also happens to flourish rarely enough that no character Harry will ever meet is likely to be able to correct his misperception of it. I’d then assume EY must have visited it himself to write it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a magical dark side. But I’d be shocked if it was a magical dark side that could think better than a well trained adult.
Now that I think about it, he definitely has a source of insight that doesn’t obey natural ten-year-old cognitive constraints.
But then, it is pretty much the premise of this fic that Harry doesn’t obey “natural” ten-year old cognitive constraints because he is a prodigy by birth (with top-rate education that has allowed him to draw on his full mental potential). That premise accepted, there is nothing implausible about his dark side simply focusing his mental capabilities and allowing him to reach new levels of performance (at the cost of limiting processing in other areas such as empathy).