Eponymuse

Karma: 138

Eponymuse Mar 29, 2012, 12:23 AM
14 points
in reply to: Desrtopa’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 13, chapter 81
I completely agree. Recall also Draco’s speech about muggles scratching in the dirt, and his reaction to Harry’s estimate of the lunar program budget. It’s not just wizards not paying attention to relative values of gold and silver in the muggle world—for the most part, the possibility that there could be a substantial amount of either in the muggle world doesn’t occur to them. Now you might expect muggleborns to know better, even after making allowances for the fact that they enter the wizarding world at age 11. On the other hand, if a muggleborn is clever enough to see the potential for profit, they might also be clever enough to see what Harry apparently does not—that calling attention to the fact that the muggles are ripe for exploitation is a Bad Idea.

Eponymuse Mar 28, 2012, 7:21 PM
0 points
in reply to: Logos01’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11
I see. So I guess there is some benefit gained from this, but it is very minor. It seems to me that the simplest rule that explains why Harry’s integer factorization is not okay, but, for example, the “silver on the tree” password from the end of TSPE is okay, is the following: if you would gain information at time T, and send information from time T to any time S < T, then it must be the case that you would have gained that same information even if you hadn’t learned it at time S.

Now consider your “keying” scenario. We have clones 0-5, and at time 1 clone x goes back to time 0 and becomes clone x+1. When clones give a “time key,” it will be a number between 0 and 6, identifying a clone/wall-clock pair. Now suppose at wall-clock time T clone 1 says: “the thought I had at time P doesn’t work.” Assume for simplicity that time P refers to clone 0 at a wall-clock time S > T (though it would work out the same anyway). Now at time S, when clone 0 has the thought, he has two choices. On the one hand, he can continue working out why it doesn’t work, but in this case he gains only the minor benefit of knowing in advance that it will not work out. On the other hand, he can move on and not consider the thought, but at time T as clone 1 just repeat (without knowing why), the fact that it doesn’t work. In that case, he gained information that he would not have learned had he not told himself. Or, in your terminology, recursion was required in order to reach a stable state.

Eponymuse Mar 28, 2012, 2:05 PM
0 points
in reply to: Logos01’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “keying.” Could you elaborate, and explain how you end up with a scenario that is more stable from “Time’s perspective” than, say, clone #5 just summarizing all the ideas at the beginning of the hour? The scenarios I can come up with seem to involve information magically appearing (which the universe doesn’t seem to like, as in Harry’s integer factorization algorithm), or fail to provide a benefit over just thinking on one’s own for six hours.

Eponymuse Mar 28, 2012, 4:08 AM
0 points
in reply to: Logos01’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11
Good point, though I don’t think this would ever be useful. In the unlikely scenario that Time-Traveling Tom has a problem amenable to a straightforward, parallelized algorithm which requires six Tom-hours while Tom needs the solution within two hours, he may as well just go back six hours, “thread” his thoughts, not bother with any communication.

Eponymuse Mar 25, 2012, 3:28 AM
0 points
in reply to: DanArmak’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11
Dumbledore doesn’t give a straight answer when Harry asks if more than one time turner can be used to get more than 30 hours.

There was another slight pause, during which Harry went on smiling. He was a little apprehensive, actually a lot apprehensive, but once it had become clear that Dumbledore was deliberately messing with him, something within him absolutely refused to sit and take it like a defenseless lump.

“I’m afraid Time doesn’t like being stretched out too much,” said Dumbledore after the slight pause, “and yet we ourselves seem to be a little too large for it, and so it’s a constant struggle to fit our lives into Time.”

On the other hand, we may infer that thirty hours is the limit from e.g. Amelia Bones’ behavior in the Azkaban arc:

“I’ll check if we have anything from six hours forward,” said the voice of Madam Bones, “if so they wouldn’t have told me, but I’ll have them tell you. Do you have anything you want to tell me, Albus? Which of those two possibilities is it looking like?”

Eponymuse Mar 25, 2012, 3:05 AM
2 points
in reply to: daenerys’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11
Consistency is important. We see this in full force in the Azkaban arc.

To get 6 of yourself, starting at noon, you wouldn’t go back to 11, then “together” go back to 10. You have already created a paradox because the original 11 o’clock you was supposed to wait until noon and then go back in time. Instead, at 11, you would walk into a room with 5 other copies of you waiting, and then at noon, you and 4 of those copies would go back in time to 11.

Eponymuse Mar 25, 2012, 2:43 AM
2 points
in reply to: DanArmak’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11

Some of them will magically disappear every hour until only one remains, but imagine the firepower!

They wouldn’t disappear. They would, after a period, go back in time in order to become one of the other people in the battle.

Using a time turner to make clones in battle is a very, very dangerous idea. Harry has been warned, strenuously, by Professor McGonnagal that he should not directly interact with himself, and we have an anecdote about an auror/criminal pair that went insane because they abused time turners. I imagine that one of the more stable time loops would involve the original Dumbledore/Harry getting disabled before going back in time for the first time.

But yeah, the cloning objects thing is a reasonable use of a Time Turner.

Edit to add: If by collaborating on tricky problems, you are referring to e.g. academic problems, rather than problems of strength, this amounts to a rather absurd charade. If you use a Time Turner to put 6 copies of yourself in a room, and in an hour they succeed in answering the problem, that means that at the beginning of the hour, 5 of them already knew the answer.

Eponymuse Mar 23, 2012, 11:10 PM
1 point
in reply to: Eponymuse’s comment on: Counterfactual Mugging
Ah. But under mild assumptions about how Omega’s simulation works, I can expect that with some probability p bounded away from zero, I am in a simulation. So with probability at least p, there is another universe I care about, and I can increase utility there.

So, I guess I do pay $100, but only because my utility function values the utility of others. I remain unconvinced that paying is winning for someone with a different utility function.

Eponymuse Mar 23, 2012, 10:34 PM
0 points
on: Counterfactual Mugging
The only mechanisms I know of by which Omega can accurately predict me without introducing paradoxes is by running something like a simulation, as others have suggested. But I really, truly, only care about the universe I happen to know about, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why I should care about any other. So even if the universe I perceive really is just simulated so that Omega can figure out what I would do in this situation, I don’t understand why I should care about “my” utility in some other universe. So, two box, keep my $100.

Edit: I should add that my not caring about other universes is conditional on my having no reason to believe they exist.

Eponymuse Mar 23, 2012, 8:47 PM
5 points
in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11
I find it very unlikely that Bella is in contact with anyone except the healer. Why would Quirrell want her running around and discussing the escape with people? It’s also unlikely that she remembers any part of the escape from Azkaban at all, including Harry’s role. Remember that she was Obliviated.

Eponymuse Mar 18, 2012, 3:36 PM
6 points
in reply to: Joshua Hobbes’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11
These are good observations. However, I think you are inferring plot points from what is merely literary technique. H&C using the same disguise is well explained by EY intending us to identify Hermione’s manipulator with Zabini’s. Similarly, the many attempts/Hermione’s exhaustion are well explained if EY wants to make it clear what the nature of the attack is without spelling it out explicitly.

Eponymuse Mar 18, 2012, 1:52 PM
5 points
in reply to: Joshua Hobbes’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11
The inefficiency of H&C’s attack against Hermione’s mind is not evidence of a “simple mistake” on his/her part, but rather exceptional cleverness. Note that this attack has replaced something that would be detected (Legilimency) with something that cannot be (Obliviation). I myself take this as further evidence that H&C is Quirrell.

Were there other mistakes you had in mind?

Eponymuse Mar 18, 2012, 1:47 PM
2 points
in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11

It seems unlikely that the good Defense Professor would have orchestrated a plan which is entirely dependent for it’s success on Lucius failing to take advantage of the situation—unless putting Harry in Lucius’s debt was his goal.

Assuming Quirrell is Voldemort, he presumably had years of access to Lucius’ mind (if he regularly required Lucius to drop Occlumency barriers). At the very least, we can assume he has an excellent mental model of how Lucius behaves. The plot therefore doesn’t seem like too great of risk for Quirrell, particularly when we consider that Lucius is about to discover Harry’s progress in turning Draco. Quirrell can safely assume that Lucius will react in a way that will pull Draco and Harry apart when he discovers this, and will therefore be less inclined to trade Hermione for something of Harry’s.