Yeah, but it’s not fair to start with “given that I read a post and it was on a personal blog...” if the odds of you reading said post in the first place is higher when posted on LW rather than someone’s personal blog that you may not be aware of or check regularly.
tim
Karma: 624
In the spirit of Lumifer’s comment, anything we would consider an entity would have to be able to learn or we wouldn’t be considering it at all.
Oooh I see. Now the post is interesting and worthwhile.
I read a tremendous amount of Overcoming Bias/The Sequences/Less Wrong from ages ~18-21 as I was transitioning from high school and into college. I cannot overstate how much this exposure impacted my mindset during these—generally tumultuous—years.
I don’t recall ever feeling that I should be ~doing something more~ or doing anything other than exploring the world around me as I decided what I wanted to do with my life.
While a lot of the drive behind Less Wrong has evolved to emphasize optimal investment/philanthropy/career choices/etc, I don’t think the underlying ideas and motivations behind “LW-style rationality” would condemn anyone for pursuing and exploring what they were interested in, regardless of level of salary or status associated with what they loved.
I didn’t give you a downvote, but I certainly want to downvote the linked site for a header that responds in a particularly nauseating fashion to the scroll wheel.
Harry weirdly ignored the missing recognition code on LV’s forged message.
This is not how (Harry’s) recognition code works. It is used to identify exact(ish) copies of himself because he is the only one—barring magical mental shenanigans—that can immediately recognize it. Writing it down on a piece of paper and then giving that piece of paper to someone else would defeat the purpose entirely.
This article is a great hands on demonstration regarding the opportunity cost of of reading 1,600 words explaining what Wikipedia can in less than 100.
I admit I did forget about that specific incident.
However, Dumbledore going cell to cell in Azkaban and Lord Voldemort attempting to subvert a prophecy predicting the end of the world in a fixed, controlled location seem like two very different things from a reader perspective.
It is also implied that Dumbledore did sense Harry’s magic - at least on some level.
...the strongest had only as much magic left as a first-year child.
But he dismisses this because he is looking for a wizard strong enough to break into Azkaban and free Bellatrix Black. Lord Voldemort on the other hand, should be immediately and unconditionally suspicious of any and all magic he senses from Harry Potter.
I am assuming that Voldemort, about to attempt the subversion of a prophecy to destroy the world, is not standing around in a graveyard with Harry Potter, a recently reanimated Hermione with unicorn powers and a bunch of Death Eaters of at least slightly questionable loyalty without any detection spells raised at all.
The biggest problem for me is that when I imagine myself reading these events and Voldemort going, “A nice try but I can sense whatever transfiguration trick it is that you’re using. Thank you, that will take me some time to perfect in my eternity,” I don’t feel surprised.
Throwing additional stipulations and conditions into the situation doesn’t change the fact that the way in which Voldemort loses is not convincing.
It doesn’t feel like Harry earned the win because I can just as easily imagine Voldemort laughing at Harry’s childish tricks and killing him. For the finale to truly be satisfying, there has to be a specific, pre-established reason why Voldemort was unable to defend against Harry’s tactics and, at least in my mind, this was not the case.
Simply being unaware of partial transfiguration doesn’t cut it. This is a person who casts nearly thirty charms to discuss sensitive information in Mary’s room and recognizes the value of ambush and surprise attacks. Yet in his final moment of securing his eternity is unable to sense transfigured material winding its way around himself and his followers. Material transfigured by person he has a known magical resonance with.
It simply does not feel reasonable for Voldemort to lose like this, no matter how many addendums are added to justify his behavior in these final chapters.
All that has to happen is that there is some entity that behaves and responds in the same way that Mr. Counsel does. While it might be likely that the Mr. Counsel character is Lucius, there is nothing in the laws of time that prevent the person under that hood from being someone else—particularly because Harry took care not to look closely at the remains of the decapitated death eaters.
Waiting for the other foot to drop because, as I’m sure the comments are full of, it is completely absurd that a wizard as powerful as ~Lord Voldemort~ is incapable of detecting a transfigured spidersilk looping its way around him and his followers regardless of his unawareness of partial transfiguration.
It’s still magic.
Wizards are not blind to magic around them created by methods they are unaware of. The patronus charm 2.0 was still noticeable by Quirrel and Dumbledore. When Harry demonstrated partial transfiguration, Dumbledore and McGonagall were surprised both by the effect itself and by how similar it appeared to normal transfiguration—“He simply Transfigured a part of the subject without Transfiguring the whole...”
This is a story where a young girl has her legs chewed off by a troll and dies. Do we really need warnings about transfiguring bits of skin?
The fact that so much of Harry’s beliefs and actions are based on the assumption that speaking in parseltongue ensures that the truth is being spoken bothers me.
Harry believes this because
1. Quirrel told him. 2. He is seemingly unable to lie to Quirrel when speaking in parseltongue.The first point is obviously something to be extremely skeptical of and, while the second appears to be strong evidence, it very strongly reminds me of
“I want to give you a drop of Veritaserum,” Draco said. “Just one drop, so you can’t lie, but not enough to make you answer anything...”
Of course Harry thinks he can beat Veritaserum due to his Occlumency training but this has never been put to the test and, even if it is the case, it has been established that there are things in the magical world that can be used to unilaterally manipulate a person’s ability to lie.
Has it been previously established that no lying can take place when using parseltongue or is Harry’s belief in this based solely on his inability to lie to Quirrell?
Ssnake Animaguss not ssame as Parsselmouth. Would be huge flaw in sscheme.
I think this is strong evidence for Quirrell being bound by the same rules in animagus form. Discounted because he could have very easily been lying there.
Chapter 85. And arguably his scenes with Dumbledore regarding “the phoenix’s price.”
I doubt a first year would have any chance of brute-forcing their way through a fire door that normally requires such a ridiculously complex potion to nullify.
Yeah, but worlds where AI is on his radar probably have a much higher Bill-Gates-intervention-rate than those where it isn’t.
The base rate might be low but I still like to hear that one of the necessary conditions has been met.
I don’t think I have a particularly extreme fear of public speaking, but it certainly makes me feel very nervous. People are investing their time and attention into what you have to say and if you disappoint them, you have a whole room full of people that are immediately allied against you in their distaste for what you provided them in return for that attention.
Disappointing a few people in a crowd of many is nothing. Disappointing the crowd is fucking terrifying.