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Comment by Origin on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 10 · 2012-03-21T21:19:43.581Z · LW · GW

Wait, you mean you wrote so condescendingly about JKRs use of fake Latin while you don't know any Latin yourself? That's disappointing.

That aside, shouldn't you contact someone who actually does speak Latin to think up some spells for you from the ground up instead of sort of reverse-engineering them from English? Because that's exactly what Rowling did and look how that worked out...

Plus, if you do ever need to translate Latin, screw Google, Whitaker is your best friend. http://archives.nd.edu/words.html

Comment by Origin on Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions · 2012-03-21T21:12:34.674Z · LW · GW

Funny to see how perfectly dark matter is used as a mysterious answer, in the sense of "How could the universe be expanding? Dark matter!" And I always thought that everything NGC told me as a kid was true and logical and rational. Another childhood memory crushed...

Comment by Origin on Feel the Meaning · 2012-03-21T21:00:09.647Z · LW · GW

I am new to this wiki (first post even) so I might be missing something, but is it really that hard a lesson to process? If I called a monkey a garp it'd still be exactly the same creature, therefore words are labels and have no meaning of themselves. Quite a simple train of thought. And I can't think of a single emotional reason why anyone wouldn't want to adopt this belief, since most people don't care about words. Right?