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MikeJF posted:Who actually has a book with the first ten thousand primes listed. Who would print a book with ten thousand primes. There's zero use to that. Any real use for that information would be computerised. You might fairly ask why does an eleven year old child, even a precocious and math-loving one, have such a book, and I'll tell you why: He's an rear end in a top hat.
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Oct 27, 2015 10:01
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My relatively compact mathematics reference book from back in college lists 400 primes... it takes only about 60% of the space of a page to do so. You wouldn't need a lot of pages to get to ten thousand. Before the invention of electronic calculators they used to publish books that were nothing but tables of hundreds of thousands of logarithms. What I'm saying is, books like this with just a shitload of "useful" numbers have not been at all uncommon historically, or even today. Hogwarts is an old place, where computers aren't a thing, so it doesn't surprise me at all to see that.
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Oct 27, 2015 17:31
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Hmm, I think breaking down these chapters into such small pieces is causing us to jump on any little thing to nitpick. Quite frankly, nothing unusual at all happened in this sub-chapter, so instead of rolling our eyes at the experiment itself we're splitting hairs about prime number tables.
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Oct 27, 2015 17:55
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:My relatively compact mathematics reference book from back in college lists 400 primes... it takes only about 60% of the space of a page to do so. You wouldn't need a lot of pages to get to ten thousand. Before the invention of electronic calculators they used to publish books that were nothing but tables of hundreds of thousands of logarithms. What I'm saying is, books like this with just a shitload of "useful" numbers have not been at all uncommon historically, or even today. Hogwarts is an old place, where computers aren't a thing, so it doesn't surprise me at all to see that. More like "where computers CAN'T BE a thing". Electronic devices don't work at Hogwarts; I don't remember if either the novels or HPMOR ever gave an in-universe justification. (The narrative rationale is pretty clear, though.) blastron posted:Hmm, I think breaking down these chapters into such small pieces is causing us to jump on any little thing to nitpick. Quite frankly, nothing unusual at all happened in this sub-chapter, so instead of rolling our eyes at the experiment itself we're splitting hairs about prime number tables. 
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Oct 27, 2015 20:59
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The novels mention that with so much magic flying around hogwarts electronics don't work.
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Oct 27, 2015 21:37
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yeah, i don't like the way yudkowsky seems to be avoiding describing the book but it's really a pretty minor thing
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Oct 27, 2015 21:44
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MikeJF posted:Who actually has a book with the first ten thousand primes listed. Who would print a book with ten thousand primes. There's zero use to that. Any real use for that information would be computerised. Mathematicians considered computing lists and tables of primes a thing, before the advent of computers. D. N. Lehmer published the descriptively titled List of Prime Numbers from 1 to 10,006,721 in 1914 and it got a couple of reprintings so these books do exist. You can even buy a copy from amazon: http://www.amazon.com/List-Prime-Numbers-006-721/dp/B001JY8PGC! However, neither of the most common engineering reference books, Pocket Ref or Machinery's Handbook, have tables of the first 10,000 primes alongside the trig and log tables. It's possible some of the old engineering or mathematics reference books might, but I don't have a full library to look at and check at the moment. Also it is possible that Yud misremembered the D. N. Lehmer book as ten thousand rather than ten million or something.
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Oct 28, 2015 01:57
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Chapter 17 – Locating the Hypothesis Part Two quote:
I’m too hopped up on flu medication to work through this whole thing. Could someone explain whether and how Harry’s scheme works?
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Oct 28, 2015 06:16
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He's determining prime factors with a recursive time loop that'll only have an exit condition - aka him not loving around with time travel any more - when he has the correct prime factors written down. Because time travel in Harry Potter hypothetically always exists in a stable timeline, the only scenario that could happen is that he receives the right factors and goes and writes the right factors to his past self. Otherwise, the loop will be inconsistent. Before we can answer if this is viable, we really need to know what happens if you deliberately try to change the past in Harry Potter in a way that's unambiguous (unlike HP3). A more probable scenario here is that he gets lovely numbers, is about to change the past, and an anvil falls on his head before he can. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Oct 28, 2015 |
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Oct 28, 2015 06:23
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MikeJF posted:
That got answered on pottermore. The answer is that poo poo gets really hosed up.
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Oct 28, 2015 09:00
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Chapter 17 – Locating the Hypothesis Part Three quote:
Ominous. quote:
Why fifteen years old? What changes when Eliezarry turns fifteen? quote:
Is this because of the girls wearing skirts? Why doesn’t Hogwarts have sufficient wealth and resources to issue pants to the girls? I do like this minor reminder that despite Eliezarry’s precociousness, he’s still a young boy and is not yet aware of girls in the “birds and bees” sense.
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Oct 28, 2015 09:11
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JosephWongKS posted:Chapter 17 – Locating the Hypothesis Not massively. Assuming it HAS to end up self-consistent, a stable time loop where Elizarry convinces himself not to go through with it is far more probable a world than a stable time loop where he gets the right factors. Not really scary as such, but hey, he's 11. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 10:14 on Oct 28, 2015 |
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Oct 28, 2015 10:09
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JosephWongKS posted:Why fifteen years old? What changes when Eliezarry turns fifteen? I guess it's just supposed to be the idea that to an eleven-year-old that seems like a long time away.
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Oct 28, 2015 10:37
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JosephWongKS posted:Is this because of the girls wearing skirts? Why doesn’t Hogwarts have sufficient wealth and resources to issue pants to the girls? One of the things that irritated me a great deal about the films is how they completely chickened out of one of my favourite details about Hogwarts and the wizarding world in general; witches and wizards wear robes, not Muggle clothes. (This is why Levicorpus is such an evil little spell.)
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Oct 28, 2015 14:15
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Also: pointy hats
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Oct 28, 2015 15:31
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Yeah, and by the latter movies they even barely ever wore the university-robe style uniforms, they often just had standard commonwealth private school look from underneath that. (when they were in uniforms at all) I liked the university robe style. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Oct 28, 2015 |
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Oct 28, 2015 15:34
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That was a pretty cute resolution to the time travel trick, which also means he doesn't have to plot around it in future. I liked that.
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Oct 28, 2015 16:54
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Peel posted:That was a pretty cute resolution to the time travel trick, which also means he doesn't have to plot around it in future. I liked that. I agree. It's also really satisfying to see someone who believes they've got all possible outcomes worked out get blindsided by something they hadn't thought of. Like an Outside Context Problem out of a Banks novel. The fact that Yudkowsky knows this and can exploit it for a joke is one of a small number of things in this sprawling novel which made me revise my opinion of him in a positive way.
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Oct 28, 2015 20:49
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SolTerrasa posted:I agree. It's also really satisfying to see someone who believes they've got all possible outcomes worked out get blindsided by something they hadn't thought of. Like an Outside Context Problem out of a Banks novel. The fact that Yudkowsky knows this and can exploit it for a joke is one of a small number of things in this sprawling novel which made me revise my opinion of him in a positive way. Even I'll note this is actually a good bit, yes. HPMOR couldn't suck like it does without good bits. Pretty sure you could get an almost-usable first draft out of HPMOR if you just skipped from chapter 30 to chapter 100. Possibly chapters 25-100. Just skip straight from chapter 25 to chapter 100 and don't worry if it doesn't make sense, reading the other 74 chapters wouldn't have helped.
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Oct 29, 2015 01:45
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Chapter 17 – Locating the Hypothesis Part Four quote:
It’s magic. Literal magic. You think that after having seen McGonagall literally turn into a literal cat and after a full week in Hogwarts, Eliezarry would have learned to deal with it. quote:
Kinda sad that Eliezer, in his late-twenties or early thirties (whenever it was that he wrote this chapter), is still stuck in a “jock vs nerds” mindset.
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Oct 29, 2015 04:37
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Wasn't there some mention of other flying devices like cauldrons and carpets in the books?
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Oct 29, 2015 04:51
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JosephWongKS posted:Kinda sad that Eliezer, in his late-twenties or early thirties (whenever it was that he wrote this chapter), is still stuck in a “jock vs nerds” mindset.
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Oct 29, 2015 04:54
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JosephWongKS posted:It’s magic. Literal magic. You think that after having seen McGonagall literally turn into a literal cat and after a full week in Hogwarts, Eliezarry would have learned to deal with it. I guess it's meant to be a funny "look how dumb this is if you think about it too much" bit, but it comes across as too serious, like Yudkowsky's not making a joke, he actually can't understand why they fly around on brooms in these books. (he is making a joke, I just think the execution is poor)
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Oct 29, 2015 05:35
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Tiggum posted:I guess it's meant to be a funny "look how dumb this is if you think about it too much" bit, but it comes across as too serious, like Yudkowsky's not making a joke, he actually can't understand why they fly around on brooms in these books. (he is making a joke, I just think the execution is poor) It's like the thing with the gold in the beginning of the book. Yes the books are not paired with reality but goddamn who gives a gently caress? It's a book about magic and wizards written for YA and under. No they are not consistent with how real world ideas work, but...I don't know I guess I just don't care about that and I cannot understand why someone would. My issue with this being a joke is that Yud dedicates far too many sentences for these sort of criticisms to be funny. It's not like he just points this out and moves on, it feels way more mean-spirited with that. He's not a bad writer, I will give him that, but he lacks the mirth and whimsy that the source material had, and these spergy digressions are just so drat joyless.
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Oct 29, 2015 08:43
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Dabir posted:Wasn't there some mention of other flying devices like cauldrons and carpets in the books? Leave it to Yud to ignore the whole folk tradition angle. Or, you know, the flying device masquerading as something inconspicous for when witch hunters come a-knocking. It's a recurring issue here, I think: Yud doesn't seem to get how willing suspension of disbelief works so he tries to hit the absurd bits without realizing why the absurd bits were there and everyone rolled with them in the first place. anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Oct 29, 2015 |
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Oct 29, 2015 08:55
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Yeah, they use broomsticks because they're traditional, they're incognito, a stick is easily stored on-the-fly (no pun intended), it's intuitive to point, and with modern cushioning charms the problems and discomfort of actually sitting on them are irrelevant. Mostly tradition, though. The wizarding world is obviously extremely traditional. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Oct 29, 2015 |
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Oct 29, 2015 09:48
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The delivery is bad, but with brooms being hard enough to ride that they teach you to do it in school there's definitely some space to wonder why no one's cruising through the skies on an enchanted la-z-boy
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Oct 29, 2015 14:14
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Death Bot posted:The delivery is bad, but with brooms being hard enough to ride that they teach you to do it in school there's definitely some space to wonder why no one's cruising through the skies on an enchanted la-z-boy It is pretty much explicitly illegal to do so in Wizarding Britain. Other nations are implied to be looser about such things, though.
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Oct 29, 2015 18:04
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Jazerus posted:It is pretty much explicitly illegal to do so in Wizarding Britain. Other nations are implied to be looser about such things, though. It was mentioned in the books was that foreign wizards were being blocked from selling flying carpets in Britain by the Ministry, so the laws are definitely different across the world. It's implied in Quidditch Through the Ages that Brooms are only legal due to tradition, Quidditch's popularity, and the practical need for at least one alternative to apparating/floo powder/portkeys.
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Oct 29, 2015 18:39
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If this was a good story there would have been a joke about this being the result of careful lobbying by the broom industry.
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Oct 29, 2015 20:43
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Ideally with dissenting voices being swept under the table.
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Oct 29, 2015 20:54
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Flying carpets would be too obviously weird, perhaps? Or it's some form of protectionism.
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Oct 29, 2015 21:00
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Dabir posted:Flying carpets would be too obviously weird, perhaps? Or it's some form of protectionism. Probably part protectionism, part cultural differences. The Ministry considers carpets muggle artifacts (making it illegal to bewitch them in Britain) but brooms could just as justifiably be on the list of disallowed items. Barty Crouch Sr. mentions his grandfather having a carpet back before they were prohibited, so the law banning them probably got passed within the last 30-40 years.
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Oct 29, 2015 21:24
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Zonekeeper posted:Barty Crouch Sr. mentions his grandfather having a carpet back before they were prohibited, so the law banning them probably got passed within the last 30-40 years. Ever since Wizarding Iraq invaded Wizarding Kuwait, those trade embargoes have been a bitch to get around.
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Oct 29, 2015 23:12
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Pavlov posted:If this was a good story there would have been a joke about this being the result of careful lobbying by the broom industry. Yeah this was more of what I meant, Rowling did the right thing in not diving into this level of pedantry in a book for tweens but it's the kind of thing a smarter, funnier writer could have joked about effectively
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Oct 29, 2015 23:49
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Chapter 17 – Locating the Hypothesis Part Five quote:
I do like that Eliezer didn’t make Eliezarry an instant prodigy at magic. quote:
For a moment after “THUD” and “distant cracking sound”, I really did think that the boy who fell down was dead or grievously maimed. I mean, this story has already had a ten-year boy casually talk about raping a ten-year old girl and its ten-year old protagonist fantasise about breaking the world economy by arbitraging wizard-gold vs Muggle-gold exchange rates and talk about selling his classmates’ organs for money to hire assassins.
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Oct 30, 2015 04:42
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I do like that in this bit, Harry's belief that he knows better than all the adults around him is shown to be completely false and he's treated like the ignorant child that he is. Pity it so often goes the other way.
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Oct 30, 2015 04:45
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Another example of a senior teacher - in this case, Madam Hooch - being infinitely more experienced than Harry and not freaking out about everything, presumably because this happens every year and she instantly knows the difference between a fall that will seriously injure someone and one that will just leave them with a broken wrist, a sense of humiliation, and perhaps a touch more respect for the tools in the future. All in all, an inoffensive segment.
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Oct 30, 2015 09:37
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That said, Madam Hooch should really get on top of those bone-healing charms, but that one's on JK.
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Oct 30, 2015 10:24
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I don't think that Harry's actually been good at anything, outside of being kind of a bully (who feels bad! Sometimes!) and saying a whole bunch of words at people until they give in to him. It actually is kind of a nice change from Harry in the books, to a point.
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Oct 30, 2015 18:48
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