bramflakes
you might be interested in reading this
because that trivially leads to intelligence explosion
The science material is presented to the reader in good faith, by the protagonist, who is only ever shown to be wrong in his attempts to link the science to magic, not the science itself. If it’s attempting to be faithful to the Harry’s youthful hubris, then shouldn’t there be parts when Hermione says “actually Harry, you’ve misunderstood Kahneman and Tversky on X, Y and Z …”, like what happens for magical topics?
There is a section on the site called “science” which reads
All science mentioned in Methods is standard science except where otherwise specified (IIRC, the only two uses of nonstandard theories are Barbour’s timeless physics in Ch. 28 and my own timeless decision theory in Ch. 33). Wherever possible, I have mentioned standard terminology inside the book to make Googling easier. At some future point I may compile a complete list for all the scientific references in Methods, but this has not yet been done.
and if that weren’t enough, Yudkowsky explicitly states that the science material is meant to be didactic.
Furthermore, “but it’s better in the Sequences” is a terrible excuse. How many people are going to read a fun work of fiction, vs a sprawling 888 series of contrarian philosophy essays? A significant fraction of people on this very site have not read them, and then imagine what the odds are for the average fanfic reader (of whom there are an order of magnitude or two more than LessWrong users). Thousands of people are reading this story and taking what Yudkowsky says on faith (did you independently Google every science reference in the story? I sure didn’t), so if the science is wrong then that’s thousands of people coming away worse-off than when they started, and Yudkowsky is aware of this possibility..
That being said, is HPMoR really meant as a didactic work?
We are talking about the fanfic where characters routinely block-quote from cogsci textbooks, aren’t we?
Oh, I didn’t mean to imply I didn’t like it! It was a welcome companion for hundreds of long school bus journeys.
I’m getting problems too. The contents pages look like this, for example.
One of the most common complaints about the old Sequences was that there was no canonical default order, especially for people who didn’t want to read the entire blog archive chronologically.
I was tricked into doing this. Years ago someone posted an ebook claiming to be the Sequences, but was actually just every single Yudkowsky blog post from 2006 to 2010 -_-
It took until noticing that only Yudkowsky’s side of the FOOM debate was in there that I realized what had happened
If Harry needed his wand to demonstrate something (which he very plausibly might have), it would have made no sense to take it away.
So have him drop it and a Death Eater confiscate it, and if he says he needs it to demonstrate something, Voldemort can ask “do you plan to usse it to attack me, sservantss, or to esscape?” before returning it to him. Then as soon as he’s done, confiscate it again. That’s an extra 10 seconds; which is a small price to pay to hedge against a Black Swan.
Voldemort doesn’t know about Partial Transfiguration, but he does know Harry has powers he knows not, which is what this entire charade was about in the first place! I would’ve done it it just in case.
He wouldn’t have had enough information to conclude that Harry had invented a new type of Transfiguration—he would probably think it was a particularly powerful cutting hex for a first year, or something. Still stupid of him not to have made inquiries after two times witnessing its effects (cutting through the wall of Azkaban, felling the trees).
Where was it stated that the Potter family’s noble status is a result of baby-Harry killing Voldemort?
Extreme case: the Amish
Does this have the FOOM debate in it?
needs a “none” option
I remembered I have a PredictionBook account that I registered some years ago and forgot about, so I might as well get started with this whole “calibration” business.
The true solution involves time travel: 50%
The true solution relies on Partial Transfiguration: 80% (this isn’t in contradiction with #1 - it can involve Partial Transfiguration (e.g. as a threat, or a demonstration, or distraction), it just won’t be the lynchpin of the entire plan)
EY has previously stated that HJPEV is only knows some of the content of the Sequences, because if he knew all of it he’d be too powerful to write an interesting story around. EY has also stated that Harry is now allowed to come into his full power as a rationalist, presumably meaning he can deduce anything remaining in the Sequences.
So, what things are in the Sequences that Harry hasn’t yet invoked? The answer may lie there.
The Foreshadowed Weasley Loot was invoked—the gun.
Re-reading the story, this made me smirk in light of recent revelations:
Harry scowled at her. “Fine, I won’t bite anyone who doesn’t bite me first.”
(Plausible) Harry can stall for time by explaining his discovery of Mendelian magical inheritance, and the implication that magic is not a property of Wizards but rather bestowed upon them, possibly by the Atlantean Matrix lords. This is a power, or at least knowledge, the Dark Lord knows not, and it gives him time to do his Partial Transfiguration attack, while also not giving Voldemort any kind of immediate strategic advantage.
(Implausible) This would then segue into a discussion of whether Voldemort is just seeing his CEV, and simulated-Harry trying to break it. Somehow, they end up breaking the Mirror’s illusion, thus destroying this “world”.
GK Chesterton, Heretics
(for “god” read “moral principles”)