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Less worried about downvotes I've received, more interested in the things that lead to me getting them.
Thanks, though.
Thanks.
That pulls a bit of the rug out from under that unsteady pile of pattern-matching.
This got downvoted to -2. If anyone would like to see fewer postings like the above, they can improve the odds that they'll see the change they'd like by explaining what it is about the above post that was disliked.
Thank you, in advance for your help with this.
11 year olds if I have that right
By this point in the year most if not all of them are probably 12.
The difference between 11 and 12 might only matter to an 11- or 12-year-old, but you probably didn't have that right, for whatever that's worth.
Thanks.
That pulls a bit of the rug out from under that unsteady pile of pattern-matching.
Is Theodore Nott wearing his scary face because he learned it was a good idea to do so in Chaos, or because there is also a conspiracy of Green Slytherin: those who can cast Avada Kedavra, the green spell?
Harry courted the company of both Draco and Hermione. He adjusted his presentation to meet their expectations, as he understood them. Draco could be doing the same because why have one secret power base when you could have two?
I don't consider this terribly likely. It came up in that pattern-matching way, but feels like it's needlessly complicated.
Hopefully someone else can undermine it more decisively or support it better.
ye shall also know that any events occurring there were also of my own impulse and not a halfhearted sop to feminists
Why would we think that? We would think that if he unfridged Hermione.
That is pretty strong evidence that Hermione will be resurrected sooner, rather than later. So I guess the ending where Harry resurrects everyone ever maybe won't seem more likely when this arc is complete.
Unless this is the end.
So we know, for egotistical example, that he did not add "Dumbledore had looked down over the side of the terrace and made a gesture before returning" in response to my post that included risking transfiguration sickness on the list of things for which Harry could get in trouble.
Or, at least, we know that is what the author wishes us to believe. dun dun daaaaaaaah
As someone suggested earlier, it's possible that Sirius Black is hiding out as the Weasley owl (the "measured and courteous hoot"). That would fit with Peter Pettigrew being the unfortunate in Azkaban chanting, "I'm not serious."
It's also possible that Pettigrew is hiding out somewhere, I suppose, but that doesn't seem smart.
This also raises the possibility that someone or multiple someones who weren't ever Marauders using small animagus forms to get around the castle, which could show up funny on the map.
I'm pretty sure that what he said was that nothing was intended as an allegory -- or maybe a metaphor or something of the sort -- to an artificial super-intelligence.
Somebody has the link, I expect.
That post was about deleting people who refuse to engage in rational argument, not deleting posts that use rational argument in ways that are "unmarketable" as you put it.
Let's put it this way, would you also suggest we delete all the posts critical of religion because it also puts of a lot of people?
the utility of censorship is not exclusive to the situations described in that post.
But in the end, no. This conversation didn't start when I issued a call to action, but when I expressed a difficult decision I had made for myself. I didn't know that people were reading it as a directive until someone pointed that out.
Anyway, it's far too late to change: that rape article is over two years old. "Better late than never" doesn't mean that late is always good enough. In this case, it's definitely not.
In a world with wishes -- but where I didn't immediately wish for a world without wishes -- maybe I'd wish that Less Wrong would be image conscious enough to distance itself from people who unapologetically marginalize the suffering of rape victims, maybe not. But the call I get to make is whether or not to facilitate the process by which my friends and the people with whom I would like to be friends forget that I have any contact with Less Wrong. It is not whether or not to facilitate the process by which Less Wrong rehabilitates its status as a haven for creeps, creep enablers, or creep apologists.
Maybe it really was his father's rock.
Maybe James Potter carried around that specific huge rock, transfigured into something portable, for all the right reasons.
Maybe James even told Dumbledore that if anything every happened to him, Dumbledore should give Harry his cloak, his snitch, and his rock. Dumbles knows that Harry hates Quiddich and the Snitch most of all, so he's holding that one back until he thinks he can present it without it being rejected. The cloak was easy. And he's managed to make Harry carry the rock, so that's got to me making Dead James happy.
I'd suggest that Potters have carried that rock for generations -- for all the right reasons of course -- except that Dumbledore wouldn't ignore heritage like that. He'd call it The Potter Rock or something.
Harry doesn't trust Quirrell anymore, hasn't trusted him since the Azkaban arc. That was made pretty clear inthe conversation in the dark warehouse immediately after the raid.
I don't want to get them to self-flagellate, but to look for what leverage they have and not worry as much about what it totally outside of their control.
Someone please tell Shinji Ikari about this radical notion.
Vg jnf arprffnel sbe gur Puvyqera gb or qlfshapgvbany. Gur yrff gurl jrer noyr gb pbaarpg jvgu bgure crbcyr gur zber gurl jrer qevira gb pbaarpg jvgu gurve Rinf. Hagvy gur raq, nyzbfg rirelguvat sbyybjrq gur Fpranevb.
When feasible, do the things that relieve your stress.
Thanks!
So 1, 2, and 5 are the only chapters where the phrase doesn't appear in the chapter itself. Do those numbers mean anything recognizable?
EDIT: Yeah. 4. 1, 2, 4, and 5. Upvoting for correcting me.
Good point. I'm sticking to B, Quirrell was telling Harry he'd pass it to him on the downlow. Note that he didn't say that the book would be labeled "Memory Charms," just that it would be filed under M.
Frigideiro was mentioned, though - when he tests his "dark side," his dark side isn't any more powerful with magic.
Yeah, but not precision. That's why it's just feel like a bit of an ass pull -- a "butt snag"? -- and why is the way it's so specific is kind of what sets the alarm off for me.
Harry can ask anyone else what the status of memory charms is in the Hogwarts curriculum.
I would guess that either
- A) They will be evasive in answering any precocious questions because Quirrell asked them to be evasive about some precocious questions or
- B) Quirrell wasn't telling Harry that wizards are stupid and keep dangerous things in plain sight. He was telling Harry that he'd "pass it to [him] beneath a disguised cover." in the guise of telling him how to learn more about memory charms.
That... sort of makes sense except that the loop seems overly complex and Harry would try to prevent more misery or something?
I don't know what "just complex enough" would look like, so I'm not sure what you mean by overly complex. But I promise I will listen.
It has been established that the past cannot be changed because the universe steps through time once, with all time travel included. Harry cannot change the misery that occurred.
On the other hand, the author has said something to the effect that even if there is an afterlife in HP&tMoR, there is no evidence of one so someone like Harry would not believe in one. Without evidence of an afterlife, Harry can create one that has always existed and contains the minds of many or all people.
"Of course," the witch snarked amiably. "I have a dozen of them in my trunk."
(This revision is meant more as a suggested direction than a suggested destination.)
It'd been one of the spells he and Hermione had experimented on, a lifetime ago, so he was able to control it precisely, though it had taken a lot of power to affect that much mass. Hermione's body should now be at almost exactly five degrees Celsius.
I feel like this comes off as a bit of an ass pull. It's the suspicious specificity that does it, I think.
It would be easy to prevent that feeling, if you care to and if it's not just me, with a throwaway line in an earlier chapter.
... But second, what the heck are Memory Charms doing outside the--
Right. Hogwarts. Crazies. Nevermind.
Or Quirrell, who has declared his intention to visit the restricted section, is planning to plant the book for Harry's 'benefit.'
When you checked, did you record the chapter with the epigraph and the chapter where the line appeared in the text?
And if you did, would you share it?
I used to have this problem a lot more than I do now.
It's possible the change is just the result of the aging chemistry of my body, but I like to think that the thing that turned it around was literally telling myself, "I want to be the kind of person who is cool with having done that." I had to accept the thing that had happened and had to become the kind of person that would accept it.
Or maybe I just had to age. It's possible that's why I don't do a lot of the things I used to find myself unable to stop doing.
No, what "stirred up so much hostility" was you're suggestion that we censor people for being "unmarketable".
Thanks. It's rather obvious once you point it out. Not the first time my self-centeredness has blinded me to the real reason people were cross with me, won't be the last.
Censorship is necessary. The poison that kills your garden and undermines your movement won't always be the new blood or the outsider. Sometimes it will be someone you respect who steps out of bounds.
If there was a time turner involved, why do the issues with Harry's sleep schedule persist even after he gets to Hogwarts and gains a time-turner of his own?
For the same reason his response persist even when the abuse no longer does: he's been conditioned.
If someone spent a two-hour period of time abusing Harry and then time-turnering it away every day, wouldn't he get tired two hours early nstead of two hours late? That is to say, wouldn't his sleep cycle appear to be 22 hours instead of 26?
It goes the other way. See, while he was being abused for two hours a day that no one else experienced, he was experiencing 26 hour days when everyone else was experiencing 24 hour days. So his body adjusted to that.
I can't imagine that Harry, after having been through this event, gives even one iota of a shit about any of those things. When you declare war on the underlying fabric of reality, petty things like dark wizards, magical castles, and star systems really just aren't relevant in the grand scheme of things.
If you can read things like, "He may have damaged His Father's Rock." and not realize that it's not to be taken seriously--
Actually, that's an unfair assumption. You might be ignoring the humor intentionally. I don't know to what end you would do so, but that doesn't mean you don't. I'd like to hear how that tool works out for you, if it does much, if you don't mind.
If you are blind to the humorous intent then I don't really have anything to tell you about it that you don't already know. I'm sure that if that were the case that you'd already be aware that people pity you.
He only stepped in it because its a hot-button political topic, much like abortion.
When someone is controversial for the sake of being controversial, it would be foolish for them to not anticipate consequences like no longer being accepted in mainstream company. Or ever company one or two standard deviations of 'daring' away from the mainstream in some cases.
I get that it take bravery to do this kind of thing. (Or it could take foolishness. I'm not saying that's what happened here, but I wouldn't tell someone who believed to to be so that I had strong reason to believe they were wrong: I don't know the guy.) But being brave isn't a free pass to not deal with the consequences.
And sometimes those consequences mean you aren't able to do as much good (or as much whatever you want) as you otherwise might.
He took that risk in writing it. This site is taking a risk in continuing to associate with him. I am making the choice not to take the risk of reminding anyone not involve in Less Wrong that I read stuff here and sometimes post a trifle bit.
As an experiment, ask yourself how many dollars a rape is worth, how many dollars should be paid to prevent one. I suspect many of the posters in that thread will simply refuse to give a numerical answer. This is a clear indicator of mindkill.
Actually, thinking you can simplify and generalize human behavior down to rules like that is a clear indicator of mindkill.
Let me break it down differently, not like anyone else is going to see this since they're all in the new thread.
- Person A is hurt because their authority to control sexual access to person B is violated.
- Person C is hurt because their authority to control sexual access to themselves is violated.
Claiming equivalency between the injury to person A and the injury to person C is very insensitive. Hinting that person A's suffering is greater takes a few steps further. It's kind of dumb, too.
The people I'm talking about don't shy away from rape. They might have, at one point, but one of them was a student to Craig Palmer, who has been rather vilified for writing a frank book on the topic. Yeah, it's an anecdote, but it's in answer to your anecdote for whatever that's worth.
His inability to influence Harry through the link does not reflect an inability to influence him at all. His influencing the everloving fuck out of Harry in Defense Class.
The part where he can't use magic on Harry is more of a poked hole in this theory, though. I can answer it, of course, but not without raising more questions. I'll think about that one.
On the contrary, I'm already here. The decision I shared, that stirred up so much hostility, wasn't that I was leaving. It's that I wasn't going to tell other people about Less Wrong.
Only one of the dozen or so people I call friends in meatspace identifies as 'evil.' None of the scores of friendly acquaintances I have do. It's pretty uncommon.
No, but enough people do that it's an important consideration.
I don't mean that a "little guilt by association with anyone saying politically incorrect things" is enough to immediately roll back whatever one was doing. But it's enough to reevaluate. And, on reevaluation, it added more weight to a damning line of thought that already existed.
So I've weighed both sides and found yours wanting. Your hostile reaction isn't doing you any favors. In fact, it convinces me all the more that the path I'm turning away from, the one where I introduce friends to Less Wrong, was not a worthwhile path.
Thank you for the sympathetic perspective. But I do what to clarify that am not the crusader. I am one who sees the crusade coming and gets out of the way.
I have been defending a decision I made, here. It hasn't been my convictions about good and evil or right and wrong, but rather about prudence and discretion.
I will admit that I let it get personal, but all I've been defending is myself.
I predict that Harry will save many or all people who ever died from oblivion with magic that reaches backward through time to capture the mind of each person at the point of their death.
I further predict that this magic will create the mechanism of magic, possibly incidentally, and be responsible for the sort of Atlantis that magical Britons believe in.
I speculate that magic and ghosts are unintended byproducts of Harry's Afterlife Immortality Project.
Harry is an anti-death hero. Whatever villains he may encounter, his enemy is death and his heroic victory will be over his true enemy.
The afterlife figures centrally in the original work in ways that are incompatible with the author's worldview. In this way, the author incorporates important elements of the original work without betraying his convictions.
I made this prediction last April, and wish there had already been an admonishment to share predictions like the one involving 75th, yesterday.
What she gets from book sales will be a pittance compared to what her little business empire brought in over the past few years.
Yes, she has a fall back position. And that's fine. But it doesn't mean she didn't lose greater things than those book sales will ever make up for.
I suppose there might be success to be had, here. There might be network opportunities. There might be opportunities for friendship and other things I value.
But the bar to entry is too high. I don't have a strong academic background. I was once close to math. I'd hold up two cross fingers and say, "Like this." But years, decades have come between us. My only education in philosophy is by proxy.
I don't mean to paint a picture without hope, I'm a bright guy. I could maybe catch up if I applied myself, if I worked at it, if I let some other things slide for a while.
I just mean to turn it around. I ask myself why I keep company with people who don't recognize how socially toxic it is to marginalize the suffering of rape victims. I ask myself if it is enough that they are one of many groups who espouse a form of self-improvement. Could it ever be enough?
I suppose it's because the author of HP&tMoR is here, and might respond to someone's post on the topic. And I suppose it helps, too that no one has to know I'm here, participating.
You guys really fail on the outreach. I hope that one day each and every one of you that hurts this community in that way understands the role you play in undoing something nice that could have been something beautiful. I admit to being evil, and am unashamed to look forward to your suffering.
Everyone fails at rationality due to signaling games.
Why dither when you can have both? The indiscreet have no monopoly on either intelligence or rationality.
This is an intriguing hypothesis, but are you aware that Eliezer also has this condition? I was under the impression that he was working off of his own experiences here and nothing more.
I probably heard that at some point; it's been years since this started, now. But I expect better of him than "I get ingrown toenails and ingrown toenails don't get enough attention from the public so I'm going to give my protagonist that problem, too."
Also, cannon Harry didn't have the sleep cycle problem. For the most part, there are in-universe reasons for departures from cannon other than, "That was dumb and I'm not writing a story with dumb in it."
She was saying, "No, but it doesn't matter. Please go on."
I don't object to the investigation. I object to the indiscretion.
Paula Dean's sponsors and distributors did not cut her off because she used racial slurs. They cut her off because she was allowed to answer a question that she never should have been asked: something like, "Have you ever used the N-word and what were the circumstances?" Once she answered that honestly (which is kind of had to because it was a legal deposition), she lost marketability.
The difference between an actor and a star isn't talent, it's marketability.
That path will lead you and any you influence to isolation and obscurity.
If you seek only to better yourself then that monastic sort of approach might actually help you out. But if you want to change the world you need to first change your attitude toward social status signaling.
I predict that it will be revealed that Quirrell or a closely related entity has been abusing Harry on and off throughout his life, to try and make him into a Dark Lord.
He can go to Harry's house like the time he played Father Christmas.
Obliviated memories leave residue, which is how in Chapter 88 the twins remembered that they could find people, in the castle, but couldn't remember how.
In the first chapter, Harry noticed that he believed in magic.
some part of Harry was utterly convinced that magic was real
In chapter 16, Harry is almost reminded of something when he looks at Quirell, but can't remember what. And when Quirrell is first introduced, Harry ominously recognizes him
"Professor?" 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 that pale man, by the corner? The man with the twitching eye?"
"Hm?" said Professor McGonagall, sounding a bit surprised; perhaps she hadn't expected that question either. "That was Professor Quirinus Quirrell. He'll be teaching Defence 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 meeting someone who had been a friend, once, before something went drastically wrong... that wasn't really it at all, but Harry couldn't find words.
In the sixth chapter, McGonagall points out that Harry can act like an abused child.
sometimes, you say or do something that seems very much like... someone who spent his first eleven years locked in a cellar.
Quirrell uses Obliviation and memory charms and as Mr. Cloak-and-Hat, he manipulated Blaise. And he uses Obliviation and memory charms more subtly, to change someone's mood and personality over time, as shown when he brute-force-save-scumed his way to making Hermione suspicious of Draco.
Quirrell expected Harry to become a Dark Lord when he spoke with him after the first class and was surprised that Harry aspired to science.
Quirrell expects the worst out of people, and so he expected that an abused Harry would be destined to darkness.
Edit: I just realized that Harry was probably abused almost every night (or day) for some significant period. There was a time turner involved, and that's why his sleep cycle is off.
-Downvoted for poor formatting.-
-Please use carriage returns to separate your thoughts.-
Edit: Thanks! (Upvoted for responding.)
I'd heard of him, of course. I'd never followed up. Naïvely, I didn't think I needed to.
I'm basing my opinion of the penalty for being thought to associate with him based on a number of posts he made that were linked in that thread. The one about rape is the one that is likely to stick with me,
The creepy face he makes in the picture doesn't help.
To the sort of people with whom I aspire to keep company, insensitivity on certain topics signals lack of status, a lack of class.
In coarser terms, he stepped in it. Then he went back to step in it again. When his steps were criticized he defended the quality of his shoes.
I don't want to walk on the carpets he wiped it on.
Thanks.
My infatuation with Quirrell might have faded a bit due to inactivity, but that thread has mortally wounded it. This Hanson guy is so deeply unmarketable that he made me stop liking a fictional character that might have been based on him.
The part where he marginalizes the suffering of rape victims and that fact that this site still associates with him solidifies the "Less Wrong is not a place I can bring people" feeling I've kind of struggled with for a couple years now.
That's two cringe-inducing passages of text in one day. Honestly, I liked the one where Hermione died better.
What happened to Hermione was shocking and has nearly monopolized the posts in this thread so far.
There's aftermath coming, though, and I'd like to talk about that. Harry is probably in a lot of trouble. Here's a short list of rules violations:
- He left the Great Hall when specifically warned that doing so would result in expulsion and when he's not allowed to be expelled.
- He inspired other students to take up arms against their teachers, or their groundskeeper, or against their teachers by way of their teachers' groundskeeper, or something. It probably got even worse after he left.
- He endangered other students, the twins, even before confronting the troll by way of unsafe broom usage. Point three see, and all that.
- He revealed his super-secret patronus that Dumbledore told him to keep secret, a super secret.
- He may have damaged His Father's Rock.
- He transfigured something that burns, specifically so that it would do so.
- He has committed himself to a course of action fundamentally at odds with participating in society in any reasonable fashion.
The transfiguration is probably the worst on the list, really. If Harry is lucid at the end of this chapter I expect there will be some throw away line, possibly post-timeskip, about Dumbledore taking measures to avoid Transfiguration Sickness from the gases escaping the troll's skull.
And, really, why did Dumbledore tell him to carry that damn rock? Did he know? Or has Dumbledore found it so useful to carry a large rock around that "get a big rock, keep it with you at all times" is in the top five things he'd tell his younger self if he ever got the chance? Seriously -- the fuck?
I wonder if this arc will be like the psychological sort of horror movie where there's lots of action in the first twenty minute and the rest of the movie is the people who aren't dead yet being mean to each other. I can see that kind of aftermath, here. It won't be pretty.
On the other hand, if the twins go sufficiently public about Harry's homid patronus then Lucius will find out about it anyway and there won't be any reason for Harry not to use it to communicate with Draco. At least, not until the restraining order shows up.
Seriously, having your stalker's glow-in-the-dark spirit animal bounce in through a wall at the most inopportune moments to remind you that they're still thinking about you and really just want to talk could lead a person to think maybe Azkaban isn't so bad an idea after all. Ugh.
Is there more to be said about Quirrell being a Robin Hanson stand-in? Was this covered in another thread? Does anyone have handy links to the relevant posts?
It sounds like you might be mistaking Eliezer's role in this, and mistaking your desires for desires we can reasonably assign to Eliezer.
This isn't something that happened to the HP&tMoR version of Hermione Granger, this is something that Eliezer, the author did to the HP&tMoR version of Hermione Granger.
He did it for a reason. He's almost certainly been planning it all along. If it made him sad then it first made him sad quite some time ago. He's not feeling the surprised dismay you have today.
He wanted this.
I haven't visited these threads for nearly a year; please forgive me if someone else has shared a similar prediction in the meantime.
I predict that Quirrell's goal is to start a war between magical people and non-magical people.
The student armies have been taught combat skills, organization, and discipline but they have not been indoctrinated. The text does not show that the student armies have been guided toward one faction or another within Magical Britain. Quite the opposite, they have been taught to work together across the 'house' lines that may have divided them in the past.
It would be counter-productive to prepare tools that could be as easily used by your enemies as yourself. So we may reason that all members of the student armies are already on the side Quirrell wants them on. One thing all members of the student armies have in common is that they are members of Magical Britain.
I have found nothing to suggest international tensions, so a war against another magical nation would be out of place in the text, as I understand it.
On the other hand, Quirrell had a downright emotional reaction when Harry declared his aspiration to be a scientist in chapter 20. After the end, when we read through the story from the beginning, we will see that as the point where the villain's motivations are revealed: Quirrell wants to save the world from scientists and their careless exploration of powers they cannot contain.
Quirrell has been pushing Harry down a path of isolation. He created situations that built up Harry's distrust of authority. He cut Harry off from his friends. I believe he means for Harry to trigger the Great Muggle War by doing something grand and ill-advised that makes sense in the desperate state Quirrell intends to put him in.
My prediction of Quirrell's overall goal does not depend on my prediction of his intentions regarding Harry, and I am less certain of those. I feel there are pieces I am missing there.
the less money the idiots have, the more just the world is
I believe that I would enjoy living in a world where more assholes were as honest about their priorities as you, sir or ma'am. I think the rest of us would get a lot more done.
(Of course the real problem here is your ill-gotten hope that justice exists outside either literature or state-subsidized vengeance. But it's easier to convince someone they've been honest in a socially inappropriate fashion than it is to convince them their worldview is flawed and naîve.)