MarkusRamikin

• MarkusRamikinMar 18, 2015, 7:02 AM

  8 points

  in reply to: Nornagest’s comment on: [FINAL CHAPTER] Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 122

  Interestingly, this is kinda one of the reasons this Voldemort impresses me. EY writes that “more than your own life has to be at stake”, but Voldemort was sane enough that caring about his own life was enough to get him thinking and to get him moving.

  So much so, he ended up genuinely working to save the world, and indeed ended up doing so, or at least significantly helping (Harry’s Vow). Sociopath or not, the fact that normal people aren’t sufficiently motivated by risk to their own lives is not a strength.

  Also, Riddle’s care about his own life didn’t look like a mere animal flinch away from death; he seemed to find meaning in his works towards that goal:

  He paused in his Potions work and turned to face Harry fully; there was a look of exultation in the man’s eyes that Harry had never seen there before. “In all the Darkest Arts I could find, in all the interdicted secrets to which Slytherin’s Monster gave me keys, in all the lore remembered among wizardkind, I found only hints and smatterings of what I needed. So I rewove it and remade it, and devised a new ritual based on new principles. I kept that ritual burning in my mind for years, perfecting it in imagination, pondering its meaning and making fine adjustments, waiting for the intention to stabilise. At last I dared to invoke my ritual, an invented sacrificial ritual, based on a principle untested by all known magic. And I lived, and yet live.” The Defense Professor spoke with quiet triumph, as though the act itself was so great that no words could ever do it justice.

• MarkusRamikinMar 17, 2015, 12:32 PM

  8 points

  in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: [FINAL CHAPTER] Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 122

  Agreed, I didn’t buy it either. Felt a bit like a forced end-of-episode moral in a kid’s show.

  I see the point of the Something to Protect article as being about growing past your current conception of how you should think and act. That you need something more important to you than whatever is anchoring you to your current rules of thought, in order to do that.

  Say, when Harry realized he could have used Lesath to save Hermione from the troll, instead of thinking that would have been “sort of Dark-lordish”, that seemed like an example to me.

  Or when Quirrel accepted Harry’s lesson about strategies involving kindness, and decided to train himself in those “until my mind goes there easily”. Because it was more important to him to achieve his goals than to indulge in his distaste for everything that reminded him of Christmas.

  But in chapter 114 I don’t see anything holding Harry back that he needs to see past. The nanotubes solution was a purely technical thing that Harry would either think of or not, and we’ve known since chapter 16 that Harry can think of creative ways to kill his enemies. It’s as if a known chess master made a really good chess move—it may be technically impressive, but in some sense it’s nothing new. If some kind of something-to-protect-like growth happened to make that possible, it’s not obvious. If Voldemort woudn’t have been able to think of it in Harry’s shoes and with Harry’s knowledge of science and partial Transfiguration, it’s not obvious either.

• MarkusRamikinMar 17, 2015, 12:10 PM

  5 points

  in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: [FINAL CHAPTER] Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 122

  I’m not sure why having won one kind of lottery is more admirable than another. (Getting a good brain from genes vs inheriting useful brain patterns from Tom Riddle).

• MarkusRamikinMar 16, 2015, 7:46 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 119

  Haven’t read it, putting it on my list now.

  Upon some reflection, the reason I liked Luminosity less on second reading seems to be at least partly that the protagonist started as a relative underdog (sympathetic) and ended up as dominant authority, one effective in their dominance to an oppressive degree, enforcing her ideas on everything and everyone. This moved me out of “yay, rationalist fiction, let’s get into it from the pov of the protagonist” into a third person view… from which I started noticing how freakin’ obnoxious rationalist!Bella is. Poor Edward.

• MarkusRamikinMar 15, 2015, 5:29 PM

  3 points

  on: [FINAL CHAPTER] Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 122

  Hermione says that she has an answer to Quirrel’s question: if he was horrible for walking away from his fight, are the people who never even lift a finger still worse. That got my interest, because I think that’s a good question.

  But insofar as I can understand, her answer is not on topic. What she says may be a useful thought in its own right, but not an answer to Quirrel’s question. Or am I missing something? Does she have a worthwhile point that I am failing to see, and what is it?

• MarkusRamikinMar 14, 2015, 9:38 PM

  3 points

  on: [FINAL CHAPTER] Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 122

  Please subscribe to the notification email list at hpmor dot com, if you want to see the separate epilogue when it appears (not for months, at least)

  Separate epilogue? Does EY mean the “shorter, sadder ending”? or an expansion of the one we got?

• MarkusRamikinMar 14, 2015, 7:28 PM

  2 points

  on: [FINAL CHAPTER] Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 122

  why, Professor Quirrell, why, the thought still stabbing sickness at Harry’s heart

  Minor point, but wouldn’t it be better with “stabbed” rather than “stabbing”? It’s a sentence fragment, and lacks a verb. Compare:

  why, Professor Quirrell, why, something inside him asked for the hundedth time, the thought still stabbing sickness at Harry’s heart

• MarkusRamikinMar 14, 2015, 7:29 AM

  7 points

  in reply to: raecai’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 121

  “Have you gone through puberty since we last spoke?”

• MarkusRamikinMar 14, 2015, 7:24 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 121

  Or either of them speaking to Hermione’s parents.

  I also wonder if Lesath was allowed to remember his involvement in V-day.

• MarkusRamikinMar 13, 2015, 7:13 PM

  6 points

  on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 121

  “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  Except for that leaving and changing identity thing. That might get in the way.

• MarkusRamikinMar 13, 2015, 5:57 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Subbak’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 120

  It was disguised. And Harry he admits in chapter 120 only figuring it out after the fact.

• MarkusRamikinMar 13, 2015, 4:29 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: TobyBartels’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 120

  And less secure.

• MarkusRamikinMar 13, 2015, 4:23 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 120

  Harry may be shown as flawed in this chapter, but choosing to keep extremely important secrets secure is not one of the reasons.

• MarkusRamikinMar 13, 2015, 9:33 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Subbak’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 120

  Thanks, good points.

  But it doesn’t explain how Harry would know.

• MarkusRamikinMar 13, 2015, 7:27 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Subbak’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 120

  Could you elaborate on the evidence pointing to White that you see? In what way is it more in line with canon?

• MarkusRamikinMar 12, 2015, 8:58 PM

  11 points

  in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 120

  Or is she. She doesn’t seem to have found her Muggle existence very meaningful. Now that she’s presumably going back to the real “first world”, her rightful place, to reunite with what’s left of her family, I see it as at the very least a possibility that she’ll look back at it with contempt, and resentment for whoever removed her from her real life.

  Of course that’s just speculation, depending on what kind of a person she is—I imagine diferent people in her position would have wildly different reactions to something like this.

• MarkusRamikinMar 12, 2015, 7:40 PM

  17 points

  in reply to: ourimaler’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 120

  I hoped for Draco saying “I need more time. Lock me up somewhere safe if you have to, but I need time to process this.”

• MarkusRamikinMar 12, 2015, 7:23 PM

  6 points

  on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 120

  So Mr. White was the one who was Lucius? Not Mr. Counsel, the one Voldemort chided for not conquering the country in his name and limiting himself to the Wizengamot?

  What made Harry certain of that?

• MarkusRamikinMar 11, 2015, 10:33 AM

  10 points

  in reply to: falenas108’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 119

  Dumbledore knew about Quirrelmort

  Ugh, I hope not. The closer a story gets to “actually, everyone knew everything all the time, it was all just acting all along and the audience was being lied to and otherwise misled constantly” the more pointless such a story becomes in retrospect. The tricks and maneuvers that impressed you at the time, the emotional reactions that used to engage you (like Dumbledore’s surprise at seeing Quirrel before the Mirror) all turn out meaningless.

  (Can you tell I didn’t like Ender’s Shadow all that much?)

• MarkusRamikinMar 11, 2015, 10:10 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: skeptical_lurker’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, March 2015, chap­ter 119

  I remember I enjoyed reading Luminosity/​Radiance a lot less on second reading, once I knew how it ended. The same thing was true for Friendship is Optimal.

  I am starting to wonder if the same thing will happen with HPMoR, once I read the last chapters. It’s like there’s something about story endings written by transhumanists....