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This is one of the only lesswrong posts I've ever read where I basically agree with nothing you wrote. You really should read the "rationality bible" though. Definitely before you keep posting here.
This sounds a lot like the objections CDT people were giving to Newcombs problem.
What leads people to even suspect that unicorns are sentient?
There aren't any clues that unicorns are sentient, so there's no reason why Harry should find QM killing a unicorn more thought provoking than eating pork.
Painfully murdering nonsentients to preserve one's own life is considered fine in almost all human cultures. In fact, painfully killing animals for fun is considered acceptable by most people, so long as the killing is done in a non-sadistic manner.
iirc, that spell wasn't homing, it just turned to the side at the end.
In GoF they had to set up an apparition-is-allowed-zone at the end of the maze in order for the portkey to work, which is why Crouch had to wait until Harry had won the cup instead of just turning a piece of silverware into a portkey or something.
I used to think like this, but recently I've updated into seeing everything as potential foreshadowing.
I have no idea how I managed to miss that.
Prediction: Harry will have to make an unbreakable vow not to use the elixir of life himself in order to get the Philosopher's stone from the Mirror or Erisid
I concede, my original post was poorly thought out and sort of meaningless.
If you make your opinion more prominent by expressing it in a post instead of an upvote, you encourage others to do the same, thus lesswrong has more non-content posts and nothing much is accomplished by anyone. Since so far this thread has two posts of the type I describe, I guess the score is 1-1.
Be aware you're playing a zero-sum game at best here.
What sort of professional do you see if you want to do some minor self-help thing like improve social skills?
I mildly disapprove of posts with no purpose other than to state the posters unqualified opinion. Public yea/nea voting is imo not needed or desirable, especially on a forum with a karma system.
Richard Kennaway's post below yours is just as bad for exactly the same reason, of course.
I find it interesting that you think there is no reason to believe that a financial incentive would change your behavior.
He didn't actually mention the Flynn effect in the above post.
Last I checked it was something like 10.
The username contains more than 13 bits of information (being 14 characters long) so this might not be too unreasonable.
I think It's a bad thing to the extent that it could lead to opinions propagating without debate.
In the wider world, even things like atheism are "extremely controversial," but I don't think we need to make dramatic shows of uncertainty and humility every time someone brings it up; most all of us here are atheists and we need to move on and discuss the more difficult questions. What I worry about is that a community norm of being vocal about our opinions but not discussing them rationally or even at all most of the time then we may wind up deciding what to think via memetic exposure and perhaps evaporative cooling instead of rationality. This sort of effect would also be a danger if we had a norm of being verbally abusive to anyone with an unpopular opinion, of course.
Note that I can't offer evidence that this is a real risk or a phenomenon that actually happens in online communities, but it worries me.
One thing that bothers me about this community is that we all clearly have political views and regularly express them, but for some reason explicit discussion and debate is discouraged. The end result here is that lots of people casually assert extremely controversial opinions as fact and people are expected to approve via silence.
Seems like something Voldemort would've noticed.
I really want to see the context for this.
This is assuming you're trying to do politics yourself instead of just deciding who to support.
Personally I'm just going with the policy of upvoting every negative Karma question.
When does he say this?
Hmm.. looks like the evidence I cited wasn't as strong as I thought.
What I mostly mean to suggest is that having a soul does not necessarily make a thing morally significant.
For this to work a wizard would need to be able to choose what Animagus form to take.
They would have had a different reaction in chapter 48 when Harry became a vegetarian after learning about parselmouth.
I believe that animals have brains, different from human brains mostly only in intelligence. and am not a vegetarian. Wizards probably think of muggles as having souls, and have been known in cannon to hunt them for sport. Slave masters definitely though of their slaves as having souls.
It would have been hinted in a way or another in the Prentending to be Wise arc, or otherwise in all the debate between Harry and other wizards about if soul exists.
Why do you think this?
In chapter 47 Draco wouldn't have be saying so seriously that muggles don't have souls.
Touche. Draco is still an 11 year old put on the spot, so this is weak evidence.
What gave you the impression that AK didn't affect animals?
Doesn't QM go on for a while about how it allows a wizard to kill any threat other than a dementor?
Evidence would be the existence of Dementors, which are personifications of death and may or may not be semi-sentient.
I was actually under the impression that the Perverells lived before Merlin.
If by "nice" you mean "a good book" then I agree.
I'm going to agree with this post. Maybe an option to make everything appear in a preferred font would be useful, if the programmers aren't busy with anything else.
To the extent that anthropic reasoning works at all, it doesn't seem like sentience should be needed.
To use an analogy, it seems to me that this non-sentient site is sort of using anthropic reasoning.
I don't understand the question.
Does anyone here think a Phoenix Wright style game could be useful as a medium for Rationalist fiction?
You could make an argument that it would still be right to take the offer, since me and frank will both die after a while anyway.
I expect I still probably wouldn't kill frank though, since: A: I'm not sure how to evaluate the utility of an infinite amount of time spent alone B: I would feel like shit afterwards C: Frank would prefer to live than die, and I would rather Frank live than die, therefore preference utilitarianism seems to be against the offer.
I would accept the offer even if I knew for sure that I would be the one to die, mostly because the alternative seems to be living in a nightmare world.
Maybe create a GLUP that always does exactly what Frank would've done, but isn't sentient?
That would be my answer if we were talking about, say, a billion cushions. With 3^^^3, most of them aren't even in your future light cone, so they might as well not even exist.
My comment was a reply to the comment above yours, sorry.
I was assuming the -elipson part just went without saying. Of course you're right.
Honestly so would I.
I would much rather have an indefinitely long Fun life than sit with frank in a white room for a few days until we both starve to death. I would be absolutely horrified if frank chose to reject the offer in my place, so I don't really consider this preference selfish.
The problem with your "white room" scenario is that one human can't actually have Large amounts of utility. The value of the 3^^^3th seat cushion is actually, truly zero.
The probability of Harry living in a story is already 1.
What I mean by "immortal soul" in this case is just the Source of Magic backing up the brain state of wizards when they die. If the soul were capable of cognitive function independently of the brain then of course you' and Xachariah would be right.
That's how the conversation goes if the Soul Evangelist is trying to convert non believer into a believer. All she has to do is point out the existence of ghosts, the veil in the departments of mysteries, or maybe the legends of the resurrection stone. Most people would take this as sufficient evidence.
In the proposed scenario, she is faced with the much more difficult task of converting a believer-in-belief.
Politics doesn't really have to be "better" than the other popular solutions, it just needs to provide better marginal utility to some people, under some circumstances.
If you do finish the series, and manage to insightfuly and productively discuss the topics you outlined, Ill change my downvote to an upvote.