Let's Read: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality"

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anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

divabot posted:

The Beisutsukai, you insufficiently rational person who is probably from a low-IQ country. (Ordinary humans were not so impressed.)

...It's turtles all the way down, isn't it.

# ? Jul 28, 2015 09:22

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# ? May 18, 2024 19:48

Tiggum: Oct 24, 2007; Your life and your quest end here.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

At least here you can see bits where he's poking fun at the original books. Harry and co do win a lot of points for the House Cup because of their Voldemort-related activities, and Hogwarts does give out a time travel device to kids on a very flimsy justification.

I'm not sure though that they get points because they're helping defeat Voldemort, or if it's just because Dumbledore was in Gryffindor and wants them to win, just like how Snape blatantly favours Slytherin (and penalises Harry and his friends because he hated Harry's dad). Dumbledore might use the Voldemort-related stuff as justification, but he'd probably find some other excuse to give Gryffindor those points otherwise.

# ? Jul 28, 2015 12:11

Dabir: Nov 10, 2012

He hadn't for the past... how many years?

# ? Jul 28, 2015 12:27

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Doctor Spaceman posted:

At least here you can see bits where he's poking fun at the original books. Harry and co do win a lot of points for the House Cup because of their Voldemort-related activities, and Hogwarts does give out a time travel device to kids on a very flimsy justification.

Are you insinuating HPMOR is part of sneer culture??

anilEhilated posted:

...It's turtles all the way down, isn't it.

It took me way too long to realise that all the references to references to references don't actually resolve to any sort of solid facts or achievements. (I look at my early LW comments and marvel at how hopeful I was that the stupid bits would turn out not to be stupid.)

# ? Jul 28, 2015 12:36

Doctor Spaceman: Jul 6, 2010; "Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."

divabot posted:

Are you insinuating HPMOR is part of sneer culture??

Hahaha, that's in response to a response to su3su2u1's readthrough I think?

When I've heard people talk (in real life) about HPMoR it's usually been something about liking the bits that poke fun at the silly bits in the original series. And if it stuck to that it'd be pretty unremarkable, it's just that it doesn't.

# ? Jul 28, 2015 12:52

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Hahaha, that's in response to a response to su3su2u1's readthrough I think?

"Sneer culture" is one of those phrases (c.f. "pseudoskeptic") which only ever means "you stepped on my personal toe!"

These are the same people (literally) who advocate unvarnished communication. What they mean is they want to send unvarnished communication; they reliably hit the roof when they receive it.

# ? Jul 28, 2015 13:04

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 14: The Unknown and the Unknowable
Part Four

quote:

Say, Professor McGonagall, did you know that time-reversed ordinary matter looks just like antimatter? Why yes it does! Did you know that one kilogram of antimatter encountering one kilogram of matter will annihilate in an explosion equivalent to 43 million tons of TNT? Do you realise that I myself weigh 41 kilograms and that the resulting blast would leave A GIANT SMOKING CRATER WHERE THERE USED TO BE SCOTLAND?

"Excuse me," Harry managed to say, "but this sounds really really really REALLY DANGEROUS! " Harry's voice didn't quite rise to a shriek, he couldn't possibly scream loud enough to do this situation justice so there was no point in trying.

Professor McGonagall looked upon him with tolerant affection. "I'm glad you're taking this seriously, Mr. Potter, but Time-Turners aren't that dangerous. We wouldn't give them to children if they were."

"Really," Harry said. "Ahahahaha. Of course you wouldn't give time machines to children if they were dangerous, what was I thinking? So just to be clear, sneezing on this device will not send me into the Middle Ages where I will run over Gutenberg with a horse cart and prevent the Enlightenment? Because, you know, I hate it when that happens to me."

Seems like Eliezarry is a believer in the �Great Person� theory of history. Has Eliezer expressed his belief in this theory in his other writings? Has he addressed Spencer�s or Tolstoy�s criticisms that �Great People� are merely products of their social environment?

quote:

McGonagall's lips were twitching in that way she had when she was trying not to smile. She offered Harry the pamphlet she was holding, but Harry was carefully holding out the necklace with both hands and staring at the hourglass to make sure it wasn't about to turn. "Don't worry," McGonagall said after a momentary pause, when it became clear that Harry wasn't going to move, "that can't possibly happen, Mr. Potter. The Time-Turner cannot be used to move more than six hours backwards. It can't be used more than six times in any day."

"Oh, good, very good, that. And if someone bumps into me the Time-Turner will not break and will not trap the whole castle of Hogwarts in an endlessly repeating loop of Thursdays."

"Well, they can be fragile..." said McGonagall. "And I do think I've heard about strange things happening if they're broken. But nothing like that! "

"Perhaps," Harry said when he could speak again, "you ought to provide your time machines with some sort of protective shell, rather than leaving the glass exposed, so as to prevent that from happening."

McGonagall looked quite struck. "That's an excellent idea, Mr. Potter. I shall inform the Ministry of it."

That's it, it's official now, they've ratified it in Parliament, everyone in the wizarding world is completely stupid.

Oh for Pete�s sake. Making the supporting characters or antagonists artificially stupid doesn�t make the protagonist / author avatar look smart, it just makes the author look lazy.

# ? Jul 29, 2015 07:17

Doctor Spaceman: Jul 6, 2010; "Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."

JosephWongKS posted:

Seems like Eliezarry is a believer in the �Great Person� theory of history. Has Eliezer expressed his belief in this theory in his other writings?

I think the entirety of his writing is based on the belief that he is a Great Person.

Doctor Spaceman fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Jul 29, 2015

# ? Jul 29, 2015 07:39

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Yeah, basically everything Eliezer writes is based on the idea that not only do Great People exist, he (and other rationalists) are those Great People.

# ? Jul 29, 2015 07:47

Dabir: Nov 10, 2012

I shall choose to believe McGonagall is being really sarcastic, there's a drat good reason why Time Turners are so fragile and she doesn't feel like explaining it to the most annoying 11 year old in history.

# ? Jul 29, 2015 08:51

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Dabir posted:

I shall choose to believe McGonagall is being really sarcastic, there's a drat good reason why Time Turners are so fragile and she doesn't feel like explaining it to the most annoying 11 year old in history.

Well that would suggest she or other wizards came to a sensible conclusion based on experience and that is impossible because she is not The Product of an Enlightenment Culture, despite having the privilege of not being, you know, a Dum-Blood.

# ? Jul 29, 2015 08:54

Dabir: Nov 10, 2012

Just cause that's what he was going.for, doesn't mean that's what he wrote :colbert:

# ? Jul 29, 2015 08:58

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Night10194 posted:

Yeah, basically everything Eliezer writes is based on the idea that not only do Great People exist, he (and other rationalists) are those Great People.

Everyone should read this, it's a sheer delight.

quote:

It was getting late. I asked him about the rationalist community. Were they really going to save the world? From what?

�Imagine there is a set of skills,� he said. �There is a myth that they are possessed by the whole population, and there is a cynical myth that they�re possessed by 10 percent of the population. They�ve actually been wiped out in all but about one person in three thousand.� It is important, Vassar said, that his people, �the fragments of the world,� lead the way during �the fairly predictable, fairly total cultural transition that will predictably take place between 2020 and 2035 or so.�

(This is the guy who founded MetaMed, whose entire schtick was literally: you pay us lots of money, we get medically-untrained LessWrong alumni to research your problems using their trained rationality. You'll be amazed to hear it went bust, and stiffed a lot of people in the process.)

The purpose of HPMOR is literally to propagandise for the rationality skills described in this quote.

# ? Jul 29, 2015 12:59

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

And this is what happens when critical thinking takes a nice, long vacation.

# ? Jul 29, 2015 15:12

pentyne: Nov 7, 2012

divabot posted:

Everyone should read this, it's a sheer delight.

(This is the guy who founded MetaMed, whose entire schtick was literally: you pay us lots of money, we get medically-untrained LessWrong alumni to research your problems using their trained rationality. You'll be amazed to hear it went bust, and stiffed a lot of people in the process.)

The purpose of HPMOR is literally to propagandise for the rationality skills described in this quote.

On that wiki article there isn't a single link to medical blog or any reputable medical journal. That should be a good indication of it as a sham.

# ? Jul 29, 2015 22:19

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

pentyne posted:

On that wiki article there isn't a single link to medical blog or any reputable medical journal. That should be a good indication of it as a sham.

Sounds like you've been brainwashed by the legacy medical system. Perhaps we could interest you in some nootropics?

# ? Jul 29, 2015 22:45

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

Chapter 14: The Unknown and the Unknowable
Part Four

quote:

"And while I hate to get all PHILOSOPHICAL," Harry desperately tried to lower his voice to something under a shriek, "has anyone thought about the IMPLICATIONS of going back six hours and doing something that changes time which would pretty much DELETE ALL THE PEOPLE AFFECTED and REPLACE THEM WITH DIFFERENT VERSIONS -"

"Oh, you can't change time!" Professor McGonagall interrupted. "Good heavens, Mr. Potter, do you think these would be allowed students if that was possible? What if someone tried to change their test scores?"

Harry took a moment to process this. His hands relaxed, just a little, from their white grip on the hourglass chain. Like he wasn't holding a time machine, just a live nuclear warhead.

"So..." Harry said slowly. "People just find that the universe... happens to be self-consistent, somehow, even though it has time-travel in it. If I and my future self interact then I'll see the same thing as both of me, even though, on my own first run through, my future self is already acting in full knowledge of things that, from my own perspective, haven't happened yet..." Harry's voice trailed off into the inadequacy of English.

"Correct, I think," said Professor McGonagall. "Although wizards are advised to avoid being seen by their past selves. If you're attending two classes at the same time and you need to cross paths with yourself, for example, the first version of you should step aside and close his eyes at a known time - you have a watch already, good - so that the future you can pass. It's all there in the pamphlet."

Confirmation that Eliezarry�s world operates on the Doraemon model of time travel. Which opens up / confirms the possibility that the person who left the �clues� for Eliezarry was a Eliezarry from the future who had time-travelled into the past.

quote:

"Ahahahaa. And what happens when someone ignores that advice?"

Professor McGonagall pursed her lips. "I understand that it can be quite disconcerting."

"And it doesn't, say, create a paradox that destroys the universe."

She smiled tolerantly. "Mr. Potter, I think I'd remember hearing if that had ever happened."

"THAT IS NOT REASSURING! HAVEN'T YOU PEOPLE EVER HEARD OF THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE? AND WHAT IDIOT EVER BUILT ONE OF THESE THINGS FOR THE FIRST TIME? "

Doesn�t the anthropic principle merely state that a universe which has sapient lifeform must be such as to permit the creation of such lifeform (weak anthropic principle) or that a universe is compelled to eventually have sapient lifeform within it (strong anthropic principle)? Time travel (at least the variety of time travel applicable to this world as confirmed by McGonagall) would not be incompatible with the anthropic principle.

# ? Jul 30, 2015 08:03

reignonyourparade: Nov 15, 2012

It's not that time travel would be incompatible with the anthropic principle, it's that if time travel had caused a paradox that destroyed the universe no one would be around to observe, so the fact that it hasn't happened yet is not necessarily proof that time travel can never destroy the universe. We have a deflated sense of the odds of our own self destruction in the same way that we have an inflated sense of the odds of our own existence.

# ? Jul 30, 2015 08:18

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Still makes no sense, though. You can't have things happening in a destroyed universe. I don't see how the last sentence is relevant in any way, either.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 09:27 on Jul 30, 2015

# ? Jul 30, 2015 09:25

Davros1: Jul 19, 2007; You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible

Doctor Spaceman posted:

At least here you can see bits where he's poking fun at the original books. Harry and co do win a lot of points for the House Cup because of their Voldemort-related activities, and Hogwarts does give out a time travel device to kids on a very flimsy justification.

Actually, having just listened to the PoA audiobook (Stephen Fry, baby!) Hermione reveals that Prof McGonagall had to write all sorts of letters to the ministry to convince them to allow Hermione to have one for her school work. She wasn't just given one.

Sperg over

# ? Jul 30, 2015 09:54

Hyper Crab Tank: Feb 10, 2014; The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation

The anthropic thing is basically just a refutation of the admittedly inane answer that "I would have remembered hearing about that." The chance of time turners destroying the world could be enormous - it might be that there are a million universes lying in ruin because of irresponsible time turner usage for every universe that is still in one piece - and you still wouldn't know for sure because according to the anthropic principle, your universe has to be one of the ones that haven't been destroyed no matter how likely or unlikely the event is, because you're here having this conversation about it. Not having heard about the universe blowing up is not, on its own, not reassuring.

But it's still pretty dumb, because you have to assume people have been using time-turners before in this universe more than a few times. In fact, if you're giving them out to children, it's reasonable to assume they've been in active use by non-children for much longer, so there is (presumably) a pile of supporting evidence that time-turnerss don't, in fact, destroy the world, and Harry just doesn't possess the evidence required to reject McGonagall's assertions about them. Besides which, why are we jumping straight to universe-destroying cataclysms anyway? Surely there's a spectrum of potential ill effects. We don't have to assume the worst straight away.

I would call Harry's tendency to freak out over poorly-understood magical phenomena a deliberate character flaw, except I don't think it ever gets addressed in any way.

# ? Jul 30, 2015 13:29

sarehu: Apr 20, 2007; (call/cc call/cc)

It's like transporters in Star Trek. They're plausibly murder machines, but everybody's used to them.

# ? Jul 30, 2015 13:53

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

pentyne posted:

On that wiki article there isn't a single link to medical blog or any reputable medical journal. That should be a good indication of it as a sham.

They hired a doctor who lost his license in NY. Evidently this was the rational choice.

# ? Jul 30, 2015 17:06

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

The anthropic thing is basically just a refutation of the admittedly inane answer that "I would have remembered hearing about that." The chance of time turners destroying the world could be enormous - it might be that there are a million universes lying in ruin because of irresponsible time turner usage for every universe that is still in one piece - and you still wouldn't know for sure because according to the anthropic principle, your universe has to be one of the ones that haven't been destroyed no matter how likely or unlikely the event is, because you're here having this conversation about it. Not having heard about the universe blowing up is not, on its own, not reassuring.

But it's still pretty dumb, because you have to assume people have been using time-turners before in this universe more than a few times. In fact, if you're giving them out to children, it's reasonable to assume they've been in active use by non-children for much longer, so there is (presumably) a pile of supporting evidence that time-turnerss don't, in fact, destroy the world, and Harry just doesn't possess the evidence required to reject McGonagall's assertions about them. Besides which, why are we jumping straight to universe-destroying cataclysms anyway? Surely there's a spectrum of potential ill effects. We don't have to assume the worst straight away.

I would call Harry's tendency to freak out over poorly-understood magical phenomena a deliberate character flaw, except I don't think it ever gets addressed in any way.

I think it makes perfect sense but not in the way Big Yud intends. Harry is essentially, in this story, a young but very clever child who has been taught scientific knowledge as a sort of received wisdom, which is no less the received wisdom for having been derived from experimental observation, gently digested into scientific literature. As such, when he sees McGonagall turn into a cat, his reaction isn't "That's impossible! How the hell did you do that?" - nor was it skepticism that she'd actually done it, if I remember (which couldn't be sustained forever, but would be justified in the face of one or two magic tricks.)

No, he acts like he's just found out Jesus didn't die on the cross, and instead went to France and knocked up Mary Magdalene, because to him it is a similar faith-shattering revelation.

# ? Jul 31, 2015 02:31

Hyper Crab Tank: Feb 10, 2014; The 16-bit retro-future of crustacean-based transportation

I think the only problem with that is, as you say, that it clearly isn't what Yudkowsky had in mind. In the hands of a more competent writer with the explicit goal of portraying a young boy enamored with the idea of science, but not really understanding it other than as received wisdom, and who gradually goes from freaking out to actually approaching things with more healthy skepticism and curiosity, that could actually be a good story. But this isn't that story. Or if it is, it doesn't feel like it, and the other three or so simultaneous plots elbow it out of the way.

Like I said, if Harry's tendency to freak out was actually addressed at any point, that would be better - not great, because parts like this still come off as obnoxious and cringeworthy even though they don't have to be - but better. But I think what Yudkowsky thinks he is doing here is rightly and smartly pointing out some inherent absurdity in an element of the Potterverse. The way HPMOR constantly tilts between author tract and characters just being themselves makes it hard to know for sure sometimes, though...

# ? Jul 31, 2015 10:33

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Hacker News on the wisdom of Rational Fiction. Seek out the comment from angersock, which is greyed-out because it's not drooling fanboyish.

# ? Jul 31, 2015 11:01

Samog: Dec 13, 2006; At least I'm not an 07.

Hyper Crab Tank posted:

I think the only problem with that is, as you say, that it clearly isn't what Yudkowsky had in mind. In the hands of a more competent writer with the explicit goal of portraying a young boy enamored with the idea of science, but not really understanding it other than as received wisdom, and who gradually goes from freaking out to actually approaching things with more healthy skepticism and curiosity, that could actually be a good story. But this isn't that story. Or if it is, it doesn't feel like it, and the other three or so simultaneous plots elbow it out of the way.

Like I said, if Harry's tendency to freak out was actually addressed at any point, that would be better - not great, because parts like this still come off as obnoxious and cringeworthy even though they don't have to be - but better. But I think what Yudkowsky thinks he is doing here is rightly and smartly pointing out some inherent absurdity in an element of the Potterverse. The way HPMOR constantly tilts between author tract and characters just being themselves makes it hard to know for sure sometimes, though...

for what it's worth, yudkowsky claims that this is exactly what he had in mind (this is worth nothing, because he is incompetent and also a liar)

# ? Aug 1, 2015 17:44

sarehu: Apr 20, 2007; (call/cc call/cc)

Um, Harry is very obviously a super-flawed rationalist, somebody who merely read a bunch about science, and the author intends it that way, and to the point of parodying his past self in many places.

# ? Aug 3, 2015 08:45

SolTerrasa: Sep 2, 2011

sarehu posted:

Um, Harry is very obviously a super-flawed rationalist, somebody who merely read a bunch about science, and the author intends it that way, and to the point of parodying his past self in many places.

That would be really interesting, especially if it was parody of anything after the age of, like, twelve. Yudkowsky tends to send information about his past self (past a certain point) down the memory hole, presumably since it's hard to get people to take you seriously if they can find out you once predicted that writing a new programming language would unlock the Golden Age of AI and will be done any time now (then failed to write so much as a language spec), or that you once invented a psychological theory from whole cloth to explain why your utter lack of follow-through is actually an evolutionary breakthrough and you are the harbinger of the new age of (really unbelievably lazy) humanity.

So it'd actually be kind of cool if there was self-parody. I could respect Yud a little bit more if I knew he didn't take himself so seriously. Which parts do you mean?

# ? Aug 3, 2015 14:12

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

I'm assuming that if it was a parody, the other characters wouldn't put with Harry's bullshit as opposed to being as awed as they are. Not to mention it's, y'know, not funny or indicative of criticism of the attitude it's supposed to be parodying in any way.

# ? Aug 3, 2015 14:37

JosephWongKS: Apr 4, 2009; by Nyc_Tattoo

SolTerrasa posted:

or that you once invented a psychological theory from whole cloth to explain why your utter lack of follow-through is actually an evolutionary breakthrough and you are the harbinger of the new age of (really unbelievably lazy) humanity.

What?

This sounds utterly amazing. Could you give me a link to this?

# ? Aug 3, 2015 15:17

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

sarehu posted:

Um, Harry is very obviously a super-flawed rationalist, somebody who merely read a bunch about science,

Indeed.

sarehu posted:

and the author intends it that way, and to the point of parodying his past self in many places.

You keep telling yourself that, while you're rocking in the corner sobbing.

# ? Aug 3, 2015 15:38

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

JosephWongKS posted:

What? This sounds utterly amazing. Could you give me a link to this?

That sounds like his claim that he could do almost anything by making a near-superhuman effort, but only once, so he has to be really careful what he spends his effort on and keep his super form in reserve.

# ? Aug 3, 2015 16:09

SolTerrasa: Sep 2, 2011

JosephWongKS posted:

What? This sounds utterly amazing. Could you give me a link to this?

Like I said, memory hole. The oldest version of it that archive.org has now just says "I no longer believe neurohacking will be required to reach the singularity. Artificial intelligence will be quite enough. Therefore this page has been removed".

Here's something which makes references to his goofy Algernon theory:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010409002122/http://www.sysopmind.com/algernon_ethics.html

E: ha! Found it. His site had backups that archive.org crawled and if you follow those it has older versions. Yeah, read this if you want to hear about the whole Algernon thing.
https://web.archive.org/web/20001204212900/http://sysopmind.com/algernon.html

E2: that's more insufferable than I remember. Just this, then:

quote:

According to my parents, I was an unusually irritable baby; as a child I wouldn't play with the other children or strangers; I didn't start speaking until the age of three (*); and so on - it's a good bet that the Algernic perturbation was present at birth. I was also an unusually bright child; at the age of five I was devouring Childcraft books, especially the ones on math, science, how things work. In second grade, at the age of seven, I discovered that my math teacher didn't know what a logarithm was, and permanently lost all respect for school. Eventually, I convinced my parents to let me skip from fifth grade directly to seventh grade. My birthday being September 11th, I turned eleven shortly after entering seventh grade.

The first sign of massive improbabilities came shortly thereafter, in (I believe) December, when I took the SAT as part of Northwestern University's Midwest Talent Search. I achieved a score of 1410: 740 Math, 670 Verbal. For the 8,000 7th graders (allegedly the "top 5%" of the Midwest 7th grade) who took the test, I came in 2nd Combined, 2nd Verbal, and 3rd Math. According to the report I got back, this placed me in the 99.9998th percentile.

It wasn't until years later - after writing v1.0 of this document, in fact - that I realized that I had skipped a grade, rendering the statistics totally worthless. Later investigation indicated that only about 600 6th graders took the test at all, and interpolating from the few "medalists" I could find indicate that the top score would have been around 1200, 600/600. Between this and the smaller sample size and unknown selection procedures and the puberty barrier and the unknown tendency of other kids to skip a grade, the information I have is basically useless. Playing around with standard deviations yields somewhere between four and six sigmas from the mean, depending on the reasoning methods. I don't know.

Figure that the probability, according to a Gaussian curve, was at least one in five million. This is improbable enough that the non-Gaussian explanation, the Algernic hypothesis, is an acceptable alternative. Perturbations to any given piece of neuroanatomy probably happen at least that often.

... (omitted because even crazier)

The Other Shoe Dropped when my mental energy level, never high to begin with, fell to zero. For a while, my parents forced me to continue with school, but I never got through the morning. So exited the class intellectual.

This was later misdiagnosed as depression. A very idiosyncratic type of depression, if so. No feelings of worthlessness. No hatred, self- or other-. No despair. Then, as now, I saw major problems with civilization, but I also saw solutions. I was a pessimist, but I had plenty of hope. The "depression" manifested as a lack of mental energy and that was all. (These views date back to before the Algernic hypothesis, and may be considered as supporting evidence rather than confirming details.) The etiology of what we call "depression" is unknown, and is probably at least a dozen, maybe hundreds of separate problems in various permutations, but my case wasn't one of them.

...

Even as a child, I was "subdued" - very outspoken, but subdued in the sense of having a low (almost adult-low) energy level. As a neurological adult, I could act, and make choices, but I couldn'tdo anything, exert any sort of willpower more than once. This continued until around the age of 16, when I discovered the Algernic explanation and began to learn the skills needed to live in a Countersphexist's mind.

Let's return to the issue of Occam's Razor. If a certain level of ability has a Gaussian probability of five million to one, sooner or later someone - over a thousand people, with the current world population - will be born with that level of ability for causes having nothing to do with Specialization. On the other hand, knowing that I'm already exhibiting characteristics at five million to one, anything else odd about me has to be explained by reference to the same cause. An event that peculiar uses up all your improbability; everything else about you has to be perfectly normal except as perturbed by your Big Improbability. You only get to use the Anthropic Principleonce.

A "depression" of the intensity that hit me is sufficiently improbable for me to assume that it must have the same root cause as my SAT scores. The most economic cause that explains both is the simple perturbation of a single piece of neuroanatomy. I don't know that "depression" alone, no matter how idiosyncratic, is quite enough to raise the total improbability to more than six billion to one and force a neurological interpretation. All the details below are certainly enough to do so, but they were verbalized post-theory. However, as said earlier, the SAT scores (*) provide enough raw improbability to fuel a neurological hypothesis; the depression, if attributed to the same cause, makes neurology the moreeconomical explanation; the details confirmit.

What was the first cause, the actual neurological perturbation that created a Countersphexist? Right now, I would guess either the right mammillary body or theamygdala, or more likely a neural pathway leading therefrom.

Ugh, that's completely unreadable. Summary: he totally is brilliant but tragically due to the mechanics of optimization processes it's impossible to be as brilliant as he is without paying a Terrible Cost (yes, he does love animes, why do you ask?), which manifests as a complete lack of ability to accomplish anything.

VvvvV

anilEhilated posted:

what the gently caress is a keer

You can read the whole pile of loving nonsense bullshit if you want, it is not worth it, there is no pay-off. A keer is an emotion. Yudkowsky likes to make up words for things we already have words for. Specifically it's the emotion of being frustrated. Yudkowsky has a superbrain which gets super feels, so he gets mega frustrated instead of regular frustrated, and you guys just don't know what it's like to be him. This is more plausible than the theory that he is a spoiled baby because his SAT scores were higher than average in middle school. He got the second highest SAT score in Indiana among sixth graders, see.

SolTerrasa fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Aug 3, 2015

# ? Aug 3, 2015 17:07

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

what the gently caress is a keer

edit: Someone should really get this clown to a psychology 101 course. Somehow the whole thing gets stupider as it goes on.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Aug 3, 2015

# ? Aug 3, 2015 17:18

Seraphic Neoman: Jul 19, 2011

anilEhilated posted:

Somehow the whole thing gets stupider as it goes on.

A succinct summary of Yudkowsky and every contribution he ever made.

# ? Aug 3, 2015 18:27

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

anilEhilated posted:

what the gently caress is a keer

edit: Someone should really get this clown to a psychology 101 course. Somehow the whole thing gets stupider as it goes on.

That would require getting near a college, which might show him he's not a hyper genius.

# ? Aug 3, 2015 18:49

Nessus: Dec 22, 2003; After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!

So what happened to the kid who got the top sixth-grader SAT score?

# ? Aug 3, 2015 19:55

SolTerrasa: Sep 2, 2011

Nessus posted:

So what happened to the kid who got the top sixth-grader SAT score?

Full-ride to Northwestern, which they usually decline in favor of an Ivy. Usually a nice one-column article in a local paper. Very little fanfic published, overall.

# ? Aug 3, 2015 20:30

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# ? May 18, 2024 19:48

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

nostalgebraist: Yudkowsky clearly really wants HPMOR to win a Hugo, and given the success of the Puppies this is seeming more plausible.

slatestarscratchpad: Wait, are rationalists really that big a bloc that they can make sure people they like win Hugo Awards? Asking for, um, a friend.

Other commenters:

* Go on, guess the immediate comparison from another tumbler.

* HPMOR is a fascinating disaster of a work of fiction. And it would be hilarious if it won a Hugo. Also kind of terrible. But mainly funny.

* At least it's better than most fanfiction.

# ? Aug 3, 2015 20:42

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Let's Read: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality"

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