DaveX

Karma: 92

DaveX Nov 10, 2010, 2:13 AM
2 points
in reply to: AdShea’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 5
Two materials is true for a solid rocket motor, casing/nozzle + propellant. However, instead of a bare motor lit with a simple Incendio, this muggle tech seems to be a fully tricked out Berserker PFRC rocket complete with an electronic ignition.

DaveX Nov 8, 2010, 8:04 PM
0 points
in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: An Xtranormal Intelligence Explosion
Conflicts between subgoals indicate premature fixation on alternative solutions. The alternatives shouldn’t be prioritized as goals in and of themselves. The other aspects of their evaluation would fit better as goals or subgoals to be optimized. A goal should give you guidance for choosing between alternatives.

In your example, one might ask what goal can one optimize to help make good decisions between policies like “replace old buildings with better ones” and “don’t lose architectural masterpieces”?

DaveX Nov 8, 2010, 7:24 PM
2 points
in reply to: mwaser’s comment on: Waser’s 3 Goals of Morality
In your example, money versus happiness is a choice between alternatives. Whatever goal you are trying to optimize towards should provide the guidance in making the choices between alternatives.

Language about “Over-optimizing” one alternative at the expense of another distracts from identifying your real goals and how you make the tradeoffs to achieve them

DaveX Nov 5, 2010, 9:31 PM
0 points
in reply to: TobyBartels’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4
My posts was fuzzily asking a couple things: one about what Voldemort in MOR would/should/did do, where I read your answer as that we should look to the natural world, and a more general one about beings in general, where it is obvious that they do indeed copy themselves.

In the biological world, resources are limited, and we’re in competition with fairly evenly matched competitors. AI-wise, I don’t see how we could effectively limit the resources or interfere with the fidelity for a sufficiently advanced AI.

Back to the particular example of horcruxes in MOR, It seems like the costs and perhaps fidelity are significantly different than canon (Bacon’s diary?), and I wonder if that will have interesting implications.

DaveX Nov 5, 2010, 7:40 PM
0 points
in reply to: Unnamed’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4
If it is a “very recently” created horcrux, one thing it means is that the maker is healthy enough to make horcruxes. Taken with Ch54, killing-curse ricochets might not be as damaging as one expects.

DaveX Nov 3, 2010, 4:02 PM
15 points
in reply to: bogdanb’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 5
A copy with knowledge of a Azkaban at a certain time seems forbidden from approaching/entering Azkaban at a prior time. See “Azkaban’s future couldn’t interact with its past, so she hadn’t been able to arrive before the DMLE had gotten the message,” in Ch55. The restraint isn’t so much when the DMLE gets the message, it’s when Azkaban sends the message. It can’t send a message that affects its past.

Azkaban might be a good place to try a can of Comed-tea.

DaveX Nov 2, 2010, 5:42 PM
0 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4
How do we know that one needs to eliminate another soul in order to do horcrux-like magic?

If copies require wiping out of existing virtual machines, population growth should be impossible. Since, at least in the muggle world, population growth happens, would this be evidence against a theory of a simulated world?

Also, if the Bacon Diary is a “very recent” Horcrux, wouldn’t that imply the cost to the original is not a strict division?

DaveX Nov 2, 2010, 4:51 PM
2 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4
Perhaps I’m dense, but the obvious bits seem interesting. If resources are limited, each copy would end up sharing a smaller fraction of the same pool. If there is some fidelity loss in the copying, copies may have conflicting objectives. The risk of a duplicate becoming a rival seems non-trivial. If there a significant cost/damage to the original in the copying process, perhaps most would not.

MOR’s horcruxing process seems different than canon, and the differences between what is required by the author’s narrative, by what actually happens in biology, or by what would hypothetically happen in really-real reality given some future copying process seem non-obvious.

ETA: It seems like Toby’s comment uses “is” to prove “ought”, and extending that to cover future mind copying does the same.

DaveX Nov 2, 2010, 3:33 PM
1 point
in reply to: TobyBartels’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4
Copying mind state differs from sexual or asexual reproduction. I was wondering how the MOR soul-splitting, copying, backup, imprinting, and possession mechanism works and how it might be exploited.

Could, for instance, Harry split his soul into its separate agents without the act of murder? Or is the important part of the Horcrux magic stealing someone’s soul to use as media to make a copy your own soul? How close are Harry’s suppositions in Ch20 to the MOR-reality?

DaveX Nov 1, 2010, 9:28 PM
3 points
on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4
Chap 65:

Harry’s treatment of the different (agents?) in his head make me wonder about the MOR Horcrux mechanics and the possibility of making copies of a being. If the horcrux copying process is repetatively damaging, like analog copies of a wax cyinder recording, there would be a degradation in each stage, and the last horcrux, Harry would be the poorest copy. Or if each horcux was same-quality, there might have been only something like limitations on the first analog-digital conversion, and successive generations of copies might be exact, like digital-to-digital. The ability to copy consciousness is interesting. One can, a la Star Trek transporters, destroy the original to keep from having duplicates, you could let either the scanning process not destroy things, or you could make the construction process repeatable. High-fidelity digital reproduction make software and IP copies have constant marginal cost, and I wonder what that might mean for copies of consciousness.

If Voldemort can have a number of horcruxes, each of which can regenerate a new Voldy, why can’t he generate multiple selves from them? Would a being with the ability to copy itself do so, or not? A team of Voldemorts, or post-horcrux-Voldemorts would be more powerful and resilient than a single one. Or is Voldemort too selfish to work with himself?

DaveX Oct 27, 2010, 4:44 PM
0 points
on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4
Ch 54 (emphasis in original)

Are things like the “insanely powerful opponent”, the spell caught on the end of the wand, and wizardry run wild and then controlled when “[t]he man threw his wand away from himself (he threw away his wand!)” like stuff in canon, Or is this something we should take particular note of?

Perhaps Voldemort/Quirrell are manifestations of something insanely powerful that really does not want to be examined by human science?

DaveX Oct 27, 2010, 1:58 PM
3 points
in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4
I read it as too late for Harry to save himself. And before that, Voldy was already gone, prior to Bahry’s reflexive stunner spell.

DaveX Oct 27, 2010, 1:45 PM
2 points
in reply to: knb’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4
Auror Bahry threatened some “area effect curses” and “anti-disillusionment” charms, so they seem to have some effective methods if they suspect invisible adversaries.

DaveX Oct 26, 2010, 6:43 PM
4 points
in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4
I think the title was redacted in order to not give the game away too early, as in Chapter 9.

Maybe the magical incompatibility is real, and perhaps the dark social engineering behind the Stanford Prison Experiment relates to Chapter 16, Lateral Thinking. In Ch16, there’s almost the same words in all-caps dizzying his brain. It might be explained by the sense of doom and magical incompatibility. Also Ch16 has “Mr. Potter, I never said you were to kill. There is a time and a place for taking your enemy alive,...” If Quirrell senses similar doom on his side, framing Harry as the Dark Lord and almost capable of breaking his most trusted lieutenant out of Azkaban might be a cunning lateral-thinking plot to dispose of all but a fragment of his nemesis without using anything direct.

DaveX Sep 13, 2010, 9:27 PM
1 point
in reply to: Apprentice’s comment on: The Science of Cutting Peppers
My favorite method is to cut it in half vertically/meridianally without cutting the core nor the stem portion, crack the two sides away from the core and discard it, then flatten and slice up the sides. With care, the core is undisturbed and intact, and you can slice up the rest quickly—maybe 15-20 sec per pepper to julienned, another 15 to diced.

However, if you are looking for pretty rings, which I think are often far too large to be bite size, my* method doesn’t produce them.

(* ‘my method’ meaning as a friend/chef taught me, and is partially illustrated in Rombauer’s “Joy of Cooking”)

Following the theme of the post, perhaps the lesson is for one to look for sources outside oneself for criticism and alternatives so you can identify opportunities and metrics for improvement

DaveX Sep 7, 2010, 6:55 PM
4 points
on: Rationality quotes: September 2010
“Hence our truth is the intersection of independent lies.”

-- Richard Levins, “The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology” American Scientist, V. 54, No 4, Dec 1966, pp421-430.

It is part of this paragraph on p. 423:

“Therefore, we attempt to treat the same problem with several alternative models each with different simplifications but with a common biological assumption. Then, if these models, despite their different assumptions, lead to similar results we have what we can call a robust theorem which is relatively free of the details of the model. Hence our truth is the intersection of independent lies.”