Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread

For me the most natural explanation of the dojo incident is that Quirrell/Voldemort pulled a Verbal Kint. The setup is just too similar to be accidental. If you haven't seen The Usual Suspects (you should), that means ur vzcebivfrq gur fgbel ba gur fcbg gb znxr rirelbar srne uvz naq gb uhzvyvngr Uneel. I'll be quite disappointed if Eliezer's eventual explanation isn't as good as this one.

Agreed, except there's no particular reason for a Dark Lord to actually leave a survivor when he can just have his minions disseminate it. (Or do so himself as Quirrell; we have no knowledge of how long this story has been around.)

ETA: Actually I should say my first thought was that Voldemort destroyed the dojo not out of anger, but simply to make sure that no rival wizard ever got the awesome martial arts training that he did. This seems strongly implied when he says: "You are wondering where this marvelous dojo is, and whether you can study there. You cannot."

Well, you kept it out for a long time.

As someone who's often creeped out by LW, I approve.

That's fine. I'm actually not that into AI, so I wasn't thinking about that problem, but you're probably right. I also made a slight edit to your slight edit so that it still sounds like me.

Congrats Eliezer! Now you've really made it.

The writing style seems to go for similar overkill as in XKCDSucks-blog, that is, every tiny detail is taken out of context and twisted until it is made look bad. Plain honest deconstruction and critique would be fun, as there are many things I think are quite awful with MoR, mostly I dislike the unnatural feeling every single human relationship has and how many speeches about science seem to be a bit unrelated and be there just for lecturing the reader without justification from story, and how Harry seems to be Mary Sue so very much it's actually annoying. MoRSucks however seems to go drowning real bad points into a sea of motivated cognition. It seems bad. Weird and untruthful, strawman-like, as far as I can tell, portrayal of MoR fans doesn't help.

So maybe it's just me but my reaction to the fanfic was something like "Eliezer is writing rationalist Harry Potter fanfiction. That's pretty awesome. And educational!" I check it every so often to see if there is a new chapter and I've shared it with a couple people. That's pretty far from:

Basically, Mr. Yudkowsky's ubiquitous yes-men like to claim (quietly encouraged by the man himself) that this fic somehow transcends its medium to become some sort of higher work

It seemed like most people had similar reactions to mine, but maybe Less Wrongers have been making a bigger deal out of it elsewhere? We didn't even have this thread until a couple of chapters ago.

Similarly:

apparently Mr. Yudkowsy had a sizable online following prior to writing this tour de force, and I guess some of it must have overlapped with the Potter fandom, because this fic quickly skyrocketed in popularity and number of reviews

My sense was that we had almost nothing to do with the popularity. It didn't get linked to from LW until like chapter 12 or so, if I remember correctly. I know a couple people here made image macros but Eliezer's following isn't nearly large enough to generate this kind of popularity by itself, right?

As for the rest of it: it reads like my mother critiquing MTV, the author doesn't understand where the author is coming from or who he is writing for and as a result totally misses his target. For example, the fact that Harry has three last names clearly isn't Eliezer making sloppy feminist statement. If anything, he's laughing at himself and the subculture he's a part of. I laughed out loud when I read it because obviously rationalist-Harry would have a compounded name. It's exactly the right amount of PC-vanity for the family of an Oxford professor with a kid too smart for his own good.

Well, so far I'm not impressed by the criticism of chapter 1. I've been meaning at some point to write something about where I think Eliezer's gone wrong, but now I think it might be more interesting to wait and see if this individual produces anything interesting. Given that the individual is a fan of the xkcdsucks blog, I'm a bit skeptical that I'm going to see much of interest. Judging from the chapter 1 review it looks like the writer is having some of the same problems as those people (One major one is assuming that setups or characters are necessarily ideals just because they are sympathetic or protagonists)

It seems like the spells in the HP universe are complicated and abstract enough that they must have been designed (programmed?) by wizards long ago, who added them to the laws of the universe and left them there.

You'd think that, but in the series there are references to people inventing spells of their own. The series implies that the "science" behind spells does exist, but Rowling never explains any of it.

I haven't thought about this idea completely, but a karma system can actually be maintained in a magical society. I mean actual karma, the way Hindus and Buddhists think about. What goes around, comes around. Violate it badly enough and the universe will make an exception just to get you out of the way. As another commentor put it, somebody would have tried to protect another while they were being avara-kedavra'ed, earlier than lily protecting Harry. But voldemort's karma credit really ran out. So, whoopsie, there goes the body. But of course, he had his horcruxes.

But if making people realize that we have to wake up in this hostile universe is one of the goals of this fic, the above wouldn't be true in HP&MOR.

Another speculation, maybe true prophecies only come when there are serious thresholds crossed.

Or maybe it just doesn't work on children? No one knows because no one's ever tried it.

If you could program a slaying weapon, what is the one group of people that no-one in their right mind could possibly ever want to kill? I'd say that group would be children too young to speak. Anyone going after them is certainly an absolute psycho.

Lois McMaster Bujold has described sf as fantasy of political agency [1], and I think she's on to something.

Thanks for that link. To rephrase: unlike romance or detective stories, many SF/fantasy stories are carefully rigged to give the "underdog" protagonists huge power over the world. It's scary how much this pattern fits.

Why would Snape ask Harry for his take on Snape's past?

I think he was testing the differences between Harry and his dad, and was surprised enough at the contrast to keep asking questions.

This is basically my review posted to fanfiction.net-- let me know if there's a problem with reposting such here.

Quite the opposite. I was tempted to respond to the review but had been left without an appropriate forum.

I had to go back and figure out where you thought the Omelas reference was. Harry's observation just seemed obvious to me.

As for why Harry has such an exaggerated sense of responsibility

Personally, I don't even see anything to explain. Billions of people are suffering, and at least billions are going to die, and most people are observably doing nothing about it. Harry seems to have good reason to think he's the only one that can do anything, if only because he's the only one (or one of just a few) who noticed and/or cares.

Harry is right to take responsibility for the universe's troubles, as we all should.

I assume that shutting down Azkaban has a political solution rather than a magical or violent solution.

I think Harry was just using Azkaban as an example, and there will turn out to be more of a general solution to the world's problems unless Harry finds himself dealing directly with Azkaban.

Why would Snape ask Harry for his take on Snape's past? One of the underlying premises of the story is that the smarter characters (possibly with the exception of Hermione) always have a deeper plan. Did Snape actually expect to get good advice? To be told that all his choices were correct? To have a reason to be angry at Harry?

I also wonder why Snape got offended. Harry's answers were extremely supportive of Snape's situation back then: which makes me think Snape wasn't really offended, just pretending to be. Maybe the whole point was just for Snape to tell Harry the unpleasant truth about his parents in an emotionally powerful way, as a way of getting back at Harry because of his parents.

Is one of the reasons Quirrell set up those Occlumency lessons that Harry would discover for himself "how reproducible human thoughts were when you reset people back to the same initial conditions and exposed them to the same stimuli" - and thereby come to treat humans as simple machines that one can use like puppets? As a strategy to bring someone over to the Dark Side, that's brilliant.

Indeterminate at this point. (By which I mean, even if Eliezer didn't intend Quirrel to have those reasons, he could easily make Quirrel have had those reasons.)

The reasons given earlier are quite enough to justify the lessons: Quirrel doesn't want Harry to be easily scanned by either Snape or Dumbledore for obvious reasons, and once he threw his hat in the ring, a neutral third party was the only viable option - and such a neutral third party can only remain neutral by being Obliviated since anyone in the know about Voldemort is, eo ipso, a member of one faction or another.

Just read Chapter 27. Haven't read the original books, but Wikipedia says Snape was a secret agent of good because of his past love for Lily. Nice job turning Snape dark, Harry. Considering your friendships with Draco and Quirrell, I don't see what you're doing out of Slytherin.

Also, the chapter reads a lot like Sword of Good. It's not a bad thing per se because a good story needs to be retold several times before it comes out right, but in this iteration the hero's epiphany that "woah, the world contains a lot of pain, gotta do something about it" came out quite a bit weaker. The protagonist in Sword of Good had a device that relayed the world's pain to him, but Harry has to settle with imagining other people in unfamiliar situations. Eliezer could make this plot point hit harder next time by making his protagonists actually see pain and suffering up close.

that's very much complicated by Draco having been raised to be a sociopath

I need to object pretty strongly to this particular phrase. Draco is not being raised to be a sociopath; he's being raised to be a high-status member of a hierarchical society. Draco and his father very much love each other, and are perfectly capable of making real emotional bonds with people that they have identified unequivocally as 'pack'. EY has actually done very well at showing Draco as what a perfectly normal child becomes in that environment.

This is an important distinction, because we need to remember that 'sociopathy' is a comparatively rare (and usually inborn) condition, while high-status machiavellian narcissism is a natural consequence of human evolutionary psychology.

Her delight at being in a Romance completely eclipsing the question of whether she likes Harry is depressing, but within the human range, I think.

I think it's more a matter of approaching romance with the maturity and self-reflection abilities of an eleven-year-old.

In MOR, his best emotional connection is to McGonagle, but it's complicated by his intellectual dominance. None of his close friends from HP are worth being close to (or did I miss someone?).

In fact Harry himself doesn't seem particularly worth being particularly close to. He'd be a pain in the ass to be around and he's probably going to become a demi-god and care about what you want no matter what you do.

None of his close friends from HP are worth being close to (or did I miss someone?).

Hermione?

The reverse halo effect you describe is called the horns effect.

That thread is an interesting read. Fun to see people taking this so seriously.

Personally I just like that it is educational material presented in a fun to read fashion that pokes fun at a rather silly story / fictional universe that has been forced upon us all by the engines of cultural osmosis. I have no problem with HP used as a cheap mnemonic device to memorize and illustrate a set of concepts that everyone should know but most people don't. I also don't have a problem with using it as a cheap advertising gimmick to get people to pay attention to matters that they should be paying attention to but don't. The annoyance of DLP folks at this is understandable, but somewhat hilarious from a perspective that thinks of there as being more important nerdy things to obsess over in life.

First, Harry discovered a gag beverage that he thought could be a key to power, although he quickly realized the Comed-Tea wasn't as powerful as it seemed. A few days later he fell in love with a device that is sometimes given to students who want to take extra classes, although he has since discovered some limits to its powers. If he goes rogue over his Time-Turner's crippleware, then who knows how much other cool and useful magical stuff he will miss out on, and how much trouble he'll be in.

Plus, McGonagall had him cornered when she confronted him about returning the Time-Turner - whatever he tried to do, she'd see it. Also, McGonagall had earned some degree of trust & respect from Harry, she's correct about Harry repeatedly misusing the Time-Turner, and she'd already warned him that they'd take it away. So it's not unreasonable to go along with the punishment, and try to earn her trust back so that his Time-Turner can be restored later on.

"Harry, give me your time t..."

shit. shit. shit. Activate time turner. Escape.

...don't take this the wrong way, but even Harry knows better than that.

If you genuinely think this is a smart thing to do in real life, it makes me seriously worry about your safety and the safety of people around you.

McGonagall went a fair way towards earning Harry's respect, with her behavior about the med kit among other things; he is inclined to tolerate (with however much whining) her authority, particularly on school grounds.

I'm not sure what one is supposed to do upon concluding that one is quite that cuckoo. Upon getting that far gone, what can you do? Can you even assume that your actions and words will leave your brain and impact reality in roughly the way you intend? If you are that crazy, and you try to walk across the room, will you get there? Are you in a room? Do you have legs? It might be that being as insane as all that is so game over that, whatever one's epistemic position is, one has to operate as though the observations were correct.

I think David Hume said something more or less like this when discussing the likelihood of miracles; that if you witnessed a miracle, you ought to conclude you were insane.

I am not sure I buy into this. For one thing, I see a problem with falsifiability. If there is nothing that I could see to convince me that magic might work, I am not objecting to the reality of magic on rational grounds, but as a sort of knee-jerk. It's like the doubleplus loony creationist types who think the devil planted archaeopteryx.

There are reasons I think magic in the Harry Potter sense is not true, reasons that could be argued against (e.g., show me a plausible medium for magic to be carried in). I don't think it would be very rational to make it sort of... axiomatic that magic is false. That seems to in fact be the attitude Eliezer is criticizing in the character of Harry's father.

So yeah, some probability mass goes to the "hallucination/insane" hypothesis, but not very much. Most goes to the "I don't know what's going on here at all, but she did just apparently turn into a cat" hypothesis.

If he was having completely full-blown auditory, visual, and tactile hallucinations (note that this is fairly unusual, for example schizophrenia apparently usually only manifests hallucinations in one modality), then what exactly could he do about it or even how would he test it?

Addenda:

1. From the reader's perspective, it doesn't appear that that's what we are supposed to believe (though I'm still wondering...), so I'm tentatively guessing that the mechanism of magic is some kind of technology, and that the in-story universe has the same laws as this one. It does seem implausible that an ancient civilization could have invented technology advanced enough to be indistinguishable from this kind of magic, but that could be different in an alternate history, and it still seems less implausible than any set of physical laws that would actually make this kind of magic a normal, natural thing that a non-industrial civilization could invent/discover.

2. We are supposed to be wondering why magic works at all, right? It doesn't seem like Eliezer to expect us to be satisfied with an Inherently Mysterious phenomenon at the center of the story, even if it's a story based on someone else's fictional world that already had that feature... but I don't know, maybe it's a demonstration that, no matter how ridiculous the rules are, rationality will still allow you to win.

   But I'm still hoping that magic will be explained at some point, and I'm still looking for clues about it.

I agree. This is why I think the Hogwarts letter is charmed to make itself sound more plausible than it should be (which would be a sensible way to ease the transition for muggleborns). Harry explicitly wonders where his own certainty that magic is real comes from and doesn't get an answer via introspection. That sounds like the effect of a weak charm to me.

Oh, and you're forgetting the bit where Mrs. Figg just randomly knows magic exists. That would be pretty jarring.

Given that one of the catchphrases around here is "rationalists should win", i'm curious why the main character of this story loses in the end. Why would her plans "neatly backfire" in the end, or is it enough for us to admire her rationality that she almost achieved her goals, despite her lack of obvious assets?

I wonder where I can procure an ebook version. I still read russian.

Would you be willing to translate it?

1. Yes, I had registered an account, and had managed ten whole karma points as of this post, of which I am rather proud.
2. I have been reading through the sequences.
3. I've found a lot of the biases fascinating, particularly when it comes to testing a hypothesis, and I just finished a sequence on words and definitions, which I quite enjoyed.
4. I've attempted to refer a couple people, but found that my brother had already found Less Wrong independently (and hadn't told me about it!).

I knew of LW's existence before HPMoR, through the same source that referred me to HPMoR (ESR).

1. I registered mostly to comment on this post.
2. I've been reading the Sequences.
3. More stuff about Bayes' Theorem (my extent of knowledge before I read the Intuitive Explanation was the idea that there will be many false positives on searching for rare events).
4. No.

1. Yes, I made an account shortly after I read HPatMoR.
2. I've been taking peeks here and there. I mean I was aware of Less Wrong existing before. I've read stuff by Eliezer before, specifically the first contact story, and I found it fun if extremely formulaic and didactic. It was a pleasant surprise for me, that I could find something so stilted so fun.
3. I haven't noticed anything I haven't heard of before.
4. I've referred people to HPatMoR but not LW.

I don't exactly fit your set since I had seen LW before, but there's some good reason that I should be included in your sample. Explanation follows: I had read most of the sequences before (and frankly didn't learn that much from them. A handful of cogsci and psych classes along with a fair bit of phil sci gives one a lot of the same material) and had previously read some of Eliezer's fiction. I hadn't really taken that detailed a look at LW as a whole, until HPMR. That was partially due to a conversation with a friend that went something like

Friend: So who is the author of this stuff? JZ: He's Eliezer Yudkowsky who is an all around very bright guy. He has some a bit off ideas about the Singularity. Friend: What evidence do you have of that he's bright and not just a good fiction writer? The one thing you've mentioned is something you disagree with. JZ: Um, let me get back to you.

Then when reading I felt a need to register an account to make a comment, and then it has been downhill from there (I just linked an LW post to a friend who said that she refused to read it because "I'm not sure I'm willing to let myself -oh god oh god- be sucked into Less Wrong. I have heard it wastes time like tvtropes on crack." I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing).

I've linked HPMR to a fair number of people, and it seems to be having some impact on some of them. Indeed, it seems that it is quite effective at getting through defense mechanisms that some people have against being more rational, because the arguments aren't being coached in an obvious way of trying to just present what is wrong with their thinking processes. I'm running into concerns about whether linking HPMR to people without telling them about that is ethical or not.

1: No. Most of my time I was lurking. Lot of stuff on LW.

2: Following links, like I was on TVtropes

3: Nothing yet. Eliezer has a distinct way of expressing himself, which is why I enjoy HPMoR, but most of the ideas he is expressing I have heard before.

4: Yes to HPMoR, no to LW.

You're not very rational for a bunch of extreme rationalists, are you? It's only possible to answer this survey if you register for the site, so excluding nearly all possible commenters (there is science on this) and presumably an even greater proportion of those who are uninterested in the ideas in LW. So that's a Big Old Fail.

So, here goes:

1. No, I have registered purely for the purpose of replying to this comment.
2. I started to read through the Sequences, but they rapidly set off my nutcase detectors. So you might want to do something about that. But I was interested in who had written the fan fiction; and quickly found this thread.
3. I have learnt that there is a community of extreme rationalists who believe that humanity will soon use science to cheat death. Actually, I already knew that. But I have found one of their websites. I was already familiar with most of the philosophical tropes explored in HPMoR; I don't think it would be anything like such a good story otherwise, and I think most of the readership will be people who are already relatively rational. So in terms of 'raising the sanity waterline', an endeavour which seems to be entirely worthwhile, I am not sure it will do that.
4. I have and will referred people to HPMoR. I have not referred anyone to LW.

1. Yes. I went from LW to the OB archives, I created an account to comment on an old post there.

2. I've been ignoring the Sequences as such, but have been working my way through the OB archives chronologically, which I gather covers the same material.

3. Hard to answer that question. The cognitive bias stuff is fairly old hat. The timeless-physics stuff is new to me, but isn't really a skill. I'm currently working my way through the metaethics stuff, which I'm not finding particularly convincing but haven't finished thinking about.

4. One friend, to both HPMoR and the OB archives. Not so much LW per se, which (sorry) seems to have a higher noise:signal ratio than the old stuff.

I've been paying a little bit of attention to recent posts, but not a lot; mostly I've been "time-travelling" through the archives.

I've been responding to posts here and there when I have something to say I don't see in the comments. I do this even though I don't expect anyone is reading old comments (though sometimes they get upvoted or responded to, so it's not a complete vacuum), mostly because I often don't really know what I think about something until I've tried to formulate a response to it.

1. Yes
2. Reading through the Sequences. Well, I say reading through...you read through and then there's a link, and then there's another link, and another and another...So yes, reading through, but not in exact order.
3. I suppose...not necessarily have yet found useful, but am anticipating finding most useful in the future: the planning fallacy, the bit about believing the way Spinoza thought you did and not Descartes, and the conjunction falllacy.
4. Yes. And yes.

1. Yes.
2. More towards looking around and lurking, but I've been reading LW long enough that I've read a fair number of important articles.
3. I'm not sure-- to some extent, I've been working on this sort of thing anyway. I'll post later if anything comes to mind.
4. Yes to both, mostly in conversation and on my livejournal.

perhaps the curse successfully detached baby-Harry's-soul [...], but the body was immediately made into a Horcrux... so Voldemort-soul-shard effectively inhabited that body. [...]

Further speculation: When Quirrellmort was lecturing in class about how he used to want to be a Dark Lord, but now finds that he really just wants to teach how to fight and such... perhaps that's a literal statement of fact?

This is awesome. Probably not where the story's actually headed, but it would create a cool Vader-Skywalker kind of relationship and explain what Voldemort is trying to accomplish with Harry. If he wants his Harry-shard to finish the job of becoming Dark Lord, then it makes sense to come to Hogwarts to be Harry's mentor (and to be disgusted by Harry's ambition to be a scientist).

How do "we"/they actually know Voldemort even used the Killing Curse that night, as opposed to doing some other thing? ie, how is it known that he is the Boy Who Survived the Killing Curse in the first place?

That's a good point... though if I recall, he is just known as The-Boy-Who-Lived. In canon, it's not revealed until book 4 that he is the only one to have ever survived the killing curse, in particular, and it's Znq-Rlr Zbbql who says this (though, in truth, it was Onegl Pebhpu We.). Onegl Pebhpu is a highly loyal Death Eater who had been in contact with Lord Voldemort, so maybe the dark lord just told him? Though it's probably more likely that everyone just assumed Voldemort had used his favorite curse.

What bugs me is how they know that Harry is the first and only person to have ever survived that curse. I mean surely, sometime in the entire history of wizards and witches, somebody has sacrificed themself for a loved one who was then Abracadabra'd (i.e. did just what Lily did). /shrug

edit: Redacted a name.

Predictions?

Regarding the note of confusion Harry feels in Chapter 3: the Killing Curse "strikes directly at the soul", but in Voldemort's case it burned his body. More likely he never cast it at Harry Potter, and the burnt hulk they found wasn't him. He learned about the prophecy and, being smart, changed his plans rather than risk fulfilling it.

And the Source of Magic is a UFAI that optimizes the world into stories.

I hope all my predictions turn out wrong. What I want most from this story is to go on being surprised.

And I think that would make Blaise the quadruple agent, with Dumbledore as the fourth faction, and Quirrell aware of the entire thing, masterminding his own little stanford prison experiment in order to achieve whatever ends he's ultimately aiming for.

It was interesting to see how deeply Harry got into his "General Chaos" role in this light. (Also, I think Ch. 32 was the first time I've laughed out loud over the story in a while. It was getting pretty serious and this was way more fun. The "vader/emperor voices"... I was busting up! I think this kind of hilarity at the beginning is part of why the story took off the way it did.)

Plotwise, I've been wondering lately if Eliezer might be laying the groundwork for Voldemort to turn out to actually be the good guy and maybe Harry's true challenge as a protagonist will be to recognize that rationalist!Voldemort will actually turn out to be good for the world, and deserves to be supported. I could image the army lessons turning out to have a positive global outcome if they ended in the right way, which would add a bit of support to this theory.

Well, Hermione wasn't just appearing to be incompetent in the sense of "too stupid to calculate the correct solution;" she was appearing to be irrational in the sense of "too self-righteous to want to calculate the correct solution."

Also, note that Hermione actually did stay true to her goals: her possum tactic allowed her to avoid "unfairly" choosing who to attack first. By waiting until most other players had been sleepified, she was able to attack only the strongest or luckiest survivors, rather than the soldiers controlled by someone that she personally disliked. She was able to both win the game and stay true to her values because she (somehow) was much better at working in groups than Draco or Harry. One wonders how a girl who had no social skills in Chapter 3 suddenly became so socially adept -- has she been reading books on how to get along with people?

Was there a more sophisticated basic idea than appearing to be incompetent, then playing possum?

As I argue in the reviews for chapter 31, Hermione herself was surely not playing possum, and likely neither were her 6 soldiers. That was not their idea. (Whether Nevile is smart enough to tell Harry, or whether one of the other armies will think of it in time for battle 2, is a question for the future.)

Harry has been learning an Evil Overlord List (warning: tv tropes), but apparently he had to figure out #13 the hard way.

Coincidentally enough, today's Overcoming Bias post is about the same thing.

"You got played, Sam. And you forgot that all warfare is based on deception"

Yeah, not double-killing everyone seems just grossly incompetent (and therefore out of character) on Harry's part.

By the way, everyone, an anon on Wikipedia is disputing mention of MoR in the Eliezer Yudkowsky article, so if you see any further reviews/discussions/mentions/links of MoR by prominent people* besides ESR & Brin, please be sure to mention them here (and maybe message me about it). You may not like Wikipedia, but people go to it for information - EY's article gets a solid 1000 hits per month.

* where I define prominent as 'has a Wikipedia article'

I think the "it's bigger on the inside" phenomenon is a better foundation to build such a spell on.

In fact, come to think of it, wasn't there an experiment recently with remote-controlled rats, using plain Muggle science and electrodes in their brains? Extrapolate that forward fifty years and add those direct-to-brain conputer interfaces, and we could do something rather similar, given lots of training to get the feedback right. "When I think like this the rat goes that way..." An Animagus might learn this almost as a child learns to control its body.

Switching the material still violates conservation of energy. You could make a perpetual motion machine by creating a heat engine and switching hot water with cold water located elsewhere on the planet, for instance.

Still FTL, but that's a violation that's turned up explicitly many times already.

I think any big contributions are likely to come from HPMoR readers who are attracted to LW, become a part of this community, and then go on to do good stuff. HPMoR is just the gateway drug.

Then there's the more diffuse sanity waterline effect of lots of HPMoR readers becoming somewhat more rational, and more receptive to big important ideas wherever they encounter them. Sci-fi has had that kind of effect on the development of a lot of people here, and this story can extend that kind of influence to a new audience via Harry Potter. Plus, in this case Eliezer got to fill the story with the ideas and themes that he considers most important.

wave Hello! Brand new, just discovered the site through the fanfic, and still in the looking-around stage... but yes, it does work.

It definitely helps that it is totally frelling awesome fanfic. Admittedly, I'm biased; I'm writing a Potter live-action role-playing game one of whose goals is to figure out how the heck that tacked-together universe could possibly make sense, and what would explain the observed evidence... ;)

It's already happened - I don't have a link, but I've seen at least one comment to that effect.

Do Quirrell points from battles tend heavily towards the generals?

Yes, that was stated in a previous chapter.

"McGonagall?" Harry said, once they were in the courtyard. He had meant to ask what was going on, but oddly found himself asking an entirely different question instead. "Who was the pale man? The man in the bar with the twitching eye?"

"Hm?" McGonagall said, sounding a bit surprised; perhaps she hadn't expected that question either. "That was Professor Quirrell. He'll be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts this year at Hogwarts."

"I had the strangest feeling that I knew him..." Harry rubbed his forehead. "And that I shouldn't ought to shake his hand." Like someone he'd known a long time ago, and then been separated from... an unhappy feeling, a sense of loss.

Maybe I was just really unobservant reading the first time around, but rereading is really fun.

Ch 29

"Did you know there's a fourth-year girl in Hufflepuff who's a Metamorphmagus?" said Hermione as they headed toward the Great Hall. "She makes her hair really red, like stopsign red not Weasley red, and when she spilled hot tea on herself she turned into a black-haired boy until she got it under control again."

Pffhahahaha!

I wonder what happens if Harry realizes he's living in fiction, and everything he's dealing with is made of concepts rather than atoms.

It will be weak move on Eliezer's part. As it will effectively make him the god of Harry's universe, which mean that Harry's universe cannot exist without him, that it is not self-sufficient and self-contained.

Which leads me to think about the people who say that if they found they were living in a simulation, they'd try to get out. Unless the simulation is very similar to the substrate, would it be possible to get out while remaining yourself in any sense?

Sure. Escape into another simulation.

More seriously, obviously it's not guaranteed that an organism in a simulation can just create a copy in the outside world. How would a Game of Life organism, made out of glider guns and flashers and whatnot, made an atom-based form of itself?

What it could do is create something isomorphic. Whether this is possible is pretty much the same question as whether humans can make uploads. (Which is the inverse, actually - going from 'reality' to 'simulation'.)

Back to the story: This might be an argument for checklists: Harry and Hermione should review precautions before they try anything new, should they be doing it without adult supervision. It's possible that the adults should be doing it, too.

And this seems to be exactly what Dumbledore himself does. That is a lesson I hope we see Harry take on board for future experiments.

Chapter 28: I wonder what happens if Harry realizes he's living in fiction, and everything he's dealing with is made of concepts rather than atoms.

An interesting thought... I think Harry should actually be pleased with that discovery. Given everything he knows about fictional realities and his observations thus far about the HP universe he should be more confident in his ability to achieve godhood. DND is a system that has gone through versions, with a strong motivation for making it ungamable, but there are still loopholes.

I don't know about the canon, but the narrator calls it a 'small tune' or 'little tune', so I'd guess it's the Little Fugue in G Minor which Eliezer's mentioned several times here.

I think my first step would be to learn how people go about inventing spells.

I would take Rick Cook's approach - look for meta-spells and figure out how to combine them into something Turing-complete. From canon, we already know that spells can operate on spells ('priori incantatem' or something like that), and I'm almost sure that some spells do logical operations.

If that doesn't work out, start making the Philosopher's Stone. I will know that it's possible, and that's half the battle. Once I have the Stone, then the question of 'fastest method to omnipotence' loses its urgency.

(If this is simply not possible for a 1st Year, then I will set my sights lower on the felix/luck potion; Harry has enough money to finance all the ingredients he could possibly waste, and once you have a vat of luck potion, you can spend it on research in the library, random generation of possible recipes, or direct attempts at creating the Stone.)

I would look into magic detection spells and see what I could find out about magic from them-- not just studying the spells themselves, but also see if there are subtle things about magic (does it come from somewhere, how fast does it happen) which offer clues about its nature.

Also, can magic be used to increase magic? Follow that with careful thought about the implications of a magical singularity.

Pretty much what he's trying to do: Figure out what magic is and how it fits with the rest of reality. That understanding is bound to bring up a few shortcuts to ultimate power.

The difference is that I'd be more focused and more secretive. V jbhyqa'g jnfgr gvzr nggrzcgvat gb 'ghea' Qenpb, sbe vafgnapr, naq V jbhyqa'g unir gbyq Dhveeryy nobhg zl nzovgvba.

There's been some speculation on what a +4 spoon would do

It gives a +4 bonus to the dexterity check to avoid dropping ice cream on your clothes, or others' clothes. However, due to a quantization issue in the laws of physics, exactly one-twentieth of all scoops still result in critical failures, and many of those failures lead to food fights, which is where the +4 to hit and damage comes in.

Would the +4 also go to the attack roll not just the damage roll?

There's a fairly obvious answer to that stuff in my opinion. Ventus by Schroeder (scifi) covers it nicely. It would be a structure set up by the atlantians for control of nature, before they ascended probably and left Earth for the stars.

Edit: It occurs to me that the other possibility would be a simulation, originally invented by the atlantians for them to upload themselves into, or perhaps muggles were supposed to be NPCs.

I would be staggered if he pulled such a feat of SFnal genius off. The only comparable feat I can recall actually seeing is the reveal in Robert Charles Wilson's Spin.

I think the issue was that Harry was constantly, perpetually, invariably reacting to everything with shock and outrage. It got... tiresome.

I suspect that a main inspiration for writing the story was Eliezer's constant shock and outrage over the fact that Rowling's characters show absolutely no interest in the inner workings of their weird Universe. I vividly remember how outrageous this was for me when I read the originals. Actually, I have only read the first two books, so when I read Eliezer's time-turner scene, I first believed that he invented the artifact and the situation as an over-the-top satire of this phenomenon. Giving young children time-machines so they could attend more classes, yeah right. When I figured out that the whole scene is almost literally copied from the original books, I screamed in shock and outrage just like rationalist Harry did.

I think some of Harry's annoyingness is due to the fact that he's modeled after young Eliezer. He's a mix of wish-fulfillment for young Eliezer and an opportunity for older Eliezer to criticize his younger self. This is really apparent with the chapters involving the Sorting Hat.

I think the issue was that Harry was constantly, perpetually, invariably reacting to everything with shock and outrage. It got... tiresome.

Culture shock can be tiresome for the people not suffering it. I've been reading blogs and forum postings by expats in South Korea lately, and that constant perpetual shock & outrage? Par for the course for some people.

A lot of kids are obnoxious and hyperactive. Shock and outrage are IC too. (Not that I think Harry is obnoxious or hyperactive or too shocked and outraged.)

I think the issue was that Harry was constantly, perpetually, invariably reacting to everything with shock and outrage. It got... tiresome.

But I went back much later and read it again, and there wasn't nearly as much outrage as I remembered.

Good story!

orthonormal predicts:

July 16 (after Chapter 31): 28f9e3b2165344763c35514b473cb347

There, that's less editable for you.

July 25 (after Chapter 32, prediction for Chapter 33):

SHA-1: f5721b3c6010973ee195dc160d0679477401a3df

 [03:35 AM] 215Mb$ echo "End of 32 only listed 3 options for Zabini. The fourth creates a 3-way tie. Zabini shoots himself as traitor." | sha1sum 
 09a3ee331d8900b7b7475b0a89911207672cbbda  -

One difficulty is that I have the power to edit this comment; is there a way to make it obvious if I've done so

If you edit the comment, an asterisk will appear after the time. Compare jimrandomh's reply to the others.

You can have a third party create a cryptographically signed timestamp for you. For example, secure-timestamp.org will do this. This can only be falsified by getting the timestamping server's private key or breaking its crypto algorithm. For things more important than Harry Potter predictions, you can have multiple third parties timestamp them for you, in which case falsification requires stealing all of their private keys.

If you edit the comment a little asterisk will appear by the time stamp. Just make sure you don't do that.

MD5 is utterly utterly broken and recommended against for any purpose. Use SHA-1.

EDIT: I should mention that SHA-1 is also theoretically broken and may see a demonstrated break soon, but nothing like as problematic as MD5. Until SHA-3 is agreed, the SHA-2 functions are a good stopgap where you need better security.

Did you include your own name in the text? If not, someone else can present the same hash and there's no way to tell who came up with it.

Can you say anything (without giving away the prediction) about when you would know if it is correct or not?

You could use Prediction Book.

See, I'm even refusing to edit my badly written intro.

So, we're returning to the days of math challenges? (i.e. the debate over the calculus?)

One difficulty is that I have the power to edit this comment; is there a way to make it obvious if I've done so, or store it in a less editable space?

Pastebin maybe?

Is this just making fun of Harry/Draco slash in general, or is there a specific reference?

The newspaper headlines are, I assure you, making fun in general (at the very least).

As soon as I'm old enough to get an erection I'm going to rape that bitch.

Yes, I found that sentence really jarring too. Even assuming that Draco was for some reason unable to get an erection, he'd hardly admit it.