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

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Pvt.Scott: Feb 16, 2007; What God wants, God gets, God help us all

I really like that Harry's snappy comeback to Hermione's victory is essentially, "well books are dumb, so I didn't care if I won anyway!" I can imagine him stamping his petulant little feet in humiliated rage.

# ? Dec 31, 2016 05:41

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# ? May 17, 2024 17:50

HIJK: Nov 25, 2012; in the room where you sleep

value-brand cereal posted:

Oh my bad. I miscalled it as it was about three or four years ago. Well I assure you, podfics are a thing and people make recordings of poo poo they like. At least I was wrong about it being incest!

http://emilianadarling.tumblr.com/post/85009828751/consultingmoosecaptain-sofarfromshameless

Ohhhhhh gently caress I remember this it was the loving funniest thing ever

# ? Dec 31, 2016 06:12

value-brand cereal: May 2, 2008

Pvt.Scott posted:

I really like that Harry's snappy comeback to Hermione's victory is essentially, "well books are dumb, so I didn't care if I won anyway!" I can imagine him stamping his petulant little feet in humiliated rage.

Yeah! What the hell was that tvtropes garbage of 'Flames Eyes of Fire' poo poo?! I can almost see the anime scenery happening. If this had a decent editor and been reworked this might have been interesting. Muggle raised kid bringing a scientific approach to magic and there could be some tense plot poo poo about whoa, will the wizarding world mistake him for a Dark Wizard? Will Harry and crew grow up good or turn full villain? I'm sure this has probably been written before, and better, already.

# ? Dec 31, 2016 06:37

Dabir: Nov 10, 2012

That Doctor Who crossover is also in dire need of an editor but at least it's been consistently interesting.

# ? Dec 31, 2016 22:09

Added Space: Jul 13, 2012; Free Markets
Free People

Curse you Hayard-Gunnes!

Chapter 22: The Scientific Method

This chapter has a 'Start of Book 2' vibe to it. It opens with a Dramatis Personae, foreword and title section; none of which are interesting. The story then finally delivers on one of its basic premises; a scientific look at magic. This section is generally considered to be the best by reviewers, and so I will quote it in its entirety.

HPMOR posted:

A small study room, near but not in the Ravenclaw dorm, one of the many many unused rooms of Hogwarts. Gray stone the floors, red brick the walls, dark stained wood the ceiling, four glowing glass globes set into the four walls of the room. A circular table that looked like a wide slab of black marble set on thick black marble legs for columns, but which had proved to be very light (weight and mass both) and wasn't difficult to pick up and move around if necessary. Two comfortably cushioned chairs which had seemed at first to be locked to the floor in inconvenient places, but which would, the two of them had finally discovered, scoot around to where you stood as soon as you leaned over in a posture that looked like you were about to sit down.

There also seemed to be a number of bats flying around the room.

That was where, future historians would one day record - if the whole project ever actually amounted to anything - the scientific study of magic had begun, with two young first-year Hogwarts students.

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, theorist.

And Hermione Jean Granger, experimenter and test subject.

Harry was doing better in classes now, at least the classes he considered interesting. He'd read more books, and not books for eleven-year-olds either. He'd practiced Transfiguration over and over during one of his extra hours every day, taking the other hour for beginning Occlumency. He was taking the worthwhile classes seriously, not just turning in his homework every day, but using his free time to learn more than was required, to read other books beyond the given textbooks, looking to master the subject and not just memorize a few test answers, to excel. You didn't see that much outside Ravenclaw. And now even within Ravenclaw, his only remaining competitors were Padma Patil (whose parents came from a non-English-speaking culture and thus had raised her with an actual work ethic), Anthony Goldstein (out of a certain tiny ethnic group that won 25% of the Nobel Prizes), and of course, striding far above everyone like a Titan strolling through a pack of puppies, Hermione Granger.

To run this particular experiment you needed the test subject to learn sixteen new spells, on their own, without help or correction. That meant the test subject was Hermione. Period.

It should be mentioned at this point that the bats flying around the room were not glowing.

Harry was having trouble accepting the implications of this.

"Oogely boogely! " Hermione said again.

Again, at the tip of Hermione's wand, there was the abrupt, transitionless appearance of a bat. One moment, empty air. The next moment, bat. Its wings seemed to be already moving in the instant when it appeared.

And it still wasn't glowing.

"Can I stop now?" said Hermione.

"Are you sure," Harry said through what seemed to be a block in his throat, "that maybe with a bit more practice you couldn't get it to glow?" He was violating the experimental procedure he'd written down beforehand, which was a sin, and he was violating it because he didn't like the results he was getting, which was a mortal sin, you could go to Science Hell for that, but it didn't seem to be mattering anyway.

"What did you change this time?" Hermione said, sounding a little weary.

"The durations of the oo, eh, and ee sounds. It's supposed to be 3 to 2 to 2, not 3 to 1 to 1."

"Oogely boogely! " said Hermione.

The bat materialized with only one wing and spun pathetically to the floor, flopping around in a circle on the gray stone.

"Now what is it really?" said Hermione.

"3 to 2 to 1."

"Oogely boogely! "

This time the bat didn't have any wings at all and fell with a plop like a dead mouse.

"3 to 1 to 2."

And lo the bat did materialize and it did fly up at once toward the ceiling, healthy and glowing a bright green.

Hermione nodded in satisfaction. "Okay, what next?"

There was a long pause.

"Seriously? You seriously have to say Oogely boogely with the duration of the oo, eh, and ee sounds having a ratio of 3 to 1 to 2, or the bat won't glow? Why? Why? For the love of all that is sacred, why? "

"Why not?"

"AAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHHHH! "

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Harry had thought about the nature of magic for a while, and then designed a series of experiments based on the premise that virtually everything wizards believed about magic was wrong.

You couldn't really need to say 'Wingardium Leviosa' in exactly the right way in order to levitate something, because, come on, 'Wingardium Leviosa'? The universe was going to check that you said 'Wingardium Leviosa' in exactly the right way and otherwise it wouldn't make the quill float?

No. Obviously no, once you thought about it seriously. Someone, quite possibly an actual preschool child, but at any rate some English-speaking magic user, who thought that 'Wingardium Leviosa' sounded all flyish and floaty, had originally spoken those words while casting the spell for the first time. And then told everyone else it was necessary.

But (Harry had reasoned) it didn't have to be that way, it wasn't built into the universe, it was built into you.

There was an old story passed down among scientists, a cautionary tale, the story of Blondlot and the N-Rays.

Shortly after the discovery of X-Rays, an eminent French physicist named Prosper-Rene Blondlot - who had been first to measure the speed of radio waves and show that they propagated at the speed of light - had announced the discovery of an amazing new phenomenon, N-Rays, which would induce a faint brightening of a screen. You had to look hard to see it, but it was there. N-Rays had all sorts of interesting properties. They were bent by aluminium and could be focused by an aluminium prism into striking a treated thread of cadmium sulfide, which would then glow faintly in the dark...

Soon dozens of other scientists had confirmed Blondlot's results, especially in France.

But there were still other scientists, in England and Germany, who said they weren't quite sure they could see that faint glow.

Blondlot had said they were probably setting up the machinery wrong.

One day Blondlot had given a demonstration of N-Rays. The lights had turned out, and his assistant had called off the brightening and darkening as Blondlot performed his manipulations.

It had been a normal demonstration, all the results going as expected.

Even though an American scientist named Robert Wood had quietly stolen the aluminium prism from the center of Blondlot's mechanism.

And that had been the end of N-Rays.

Reality, Philip K. Dick had once said, is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Blondlot's sin had been obvious in retrospect. He shouldn't have told his assistant what he was doing. Blondlot should have made sure the assistant didn't know what was being tried or when it was being tried, before asking him to describe the screen's brightness. It could have been that simple.

Nowadays it was called "blinding" and it was one of the things modern scientists took for granted. If you were doing a psychology experiment to see whether people got angrier when they were hit over the head with red truncheons than with green truncheons, you didn't get to look at the subjects yourself and decide how "angry" they were. You would snap photos of them after they'd been hit with the truncheon, and send the photos off to a panel of raters, who would rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how angry each person looked, obviously without knowing what color of truncheon they'd been hit with. Indeed there was no good reason to tell the raters what the experiment was about, at all. You certainly wouldn't tell the experimental subjects that you thought they ought to be angrier when hit by red truncheons. You'd just offer them 20 pounds, lure them into a test room, hit them with a truncheon, color randomly assigned of course, and snap the photo. In fact the truncheon-hitting and photo-snapping would be done by an assistant who hadn't been told about the hypothesis, so he couldn't look expectant, hit harder, or snap the photo at just the right time.

Blondlot had destroyed his reputation with the sort of mistake that would get a failing grade and probably derisive laughter from the T.A. in a first-year undergraduate course on experimental design... in 1991.

But this had been a bit longer ago, in 1904, and so it had taken months before Robert Wood had formulated the obvious alternative hypothesis and figured out how to test it, and dozens of other scientists had been sucked in.

More than two centuries after science had gotten started. That late in scientific history, it still hadn't been obvious.

Which made it entirely plausible that in the tiny wizarding world, where science didn't seem much known at all, no one had ever tried the first, the simplest, the most obvious thing that any modern scientist would think to check.

The books were full of complicated instructions for all the things you had to do exactly right in order to cast a spell. And, Harry had hypothesized, the process of obeying those instructions, of checking that you were following them correctly, probably did do something. It forced you to concentrate on the spell. Being told to just wave your wand and wish probably wouldn't work as well. And once you believed the spell was supposed to work a certain way, once you had practiced it that way, you might not be able to convince yourself that it could work any other way...

...if you did the simple but wrong thing, and tried to test alternative forms yourself.

But what if you didn't know what the original spell had been like?

What if you gave Hermione a list of spells she hadn't studied yet, taken from a book of silly prank spells in the Hogwarts library, and some of those spells had the correct and original instructions, while others had one changed gesture, one changed word? What if you kept the instructions constant, but told her that a spell supposed to create a red worm was supposed to create a blue worm instead?

Well, in that case, it had turned out...

...Harry was having trouble believing his results here...

...if you told Hermione to say "Oogely boogely" with the vowel durations in the ratio of 3 to 1 to 1, instead of the correct ratio of 3 to 1 to 2, you still got the bat but it wouldn't glow any more.

Not that belief was irrelevant here. Not that only the words and wand movements mattered.

If you gave Hermione completely incorrect information about what a spell was supposed to do, it would stop working.

If you didn't tell her at all what the spell was supposed to do, it would stop working.

If she knew in very vague terms what the spell was supposed to do, or she was only partially wrong, then the spell would work as originally described in the book, not the way she'd been told it should.

Harry was, at this moment, literally banging his head against the brick wall. Not hard. He didn't want to damage his precious brains. But if he didn't have some outlet for his frustration, he would spontaneously catch on fire.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

It seemed the universe actually did want you to say 'Wingardium Leviosa' and it wanted you to say it in a certain exact way and it didn't care what you thought the pronunciation should be any more than it cared how you felt about gravity.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

The worst part of it was the smug, amused look on Hermione's face.

Hermione had not been okay with sitting around obediently following Harry's instructions without being told why.

So Harry had explained to her what they were testing.

Harry had explained why they were testing it.

Harry had explained why probably no wizard had tried it before them.

Harry had explained that he was actually fairly confident of his prediction.

Because, Harry had said, there was no way that the universe actually wanted you to say 'Wingardium Leviosa'.

Hermione had pointed out that this was not what her books said. Hermione had asked if Harry really thought he was smarter, at eleven years old and just over a month into his Hogwarts education, than all the other wizards in the world who disagreed with him.

Harry had said the following exact words:

"Of course."

Now Harry was staring at the red brick directly in front of him and contemplating how hard he would have to hit his head in order to give himself a concussion that would interfere with long-term memory formation and prevent him from remembering this later. Hermione wasn't laughing, but he could feel her intent to laugh radiating out from behind him like a dreadful pressure on his skin, sort of like knowing you were being stalked by a serial killer only worse.

"Say it," Harry said.

"I wasn't going to," said the kindly voice of Hermione Granger. "It didn't seem nice."

"Just get it over with," said Harry.

"Okay! So you gave me this whole long lecture about how hard it was to do basic science and how we might need to stay on the problem for thirty-five years, and then you went and expected us to make the greatest discovery in the history of magic in the first hour we were working together. You didn't just hope, you really expected it. You're silly."

"Thank you. Now -"

"I've read all the books you gave me and I still don't know what to call that. Overconfidence? Planning fallacy? Super duper Lake Wobegon effect? They'll have to name it after you. Harry Bias."

"All right! "

"But it is cute. It's such a boy thing to do."

"Drop dead."

"Aw, you say the most romantic things."

Thud. Thud. Thud.

"So what's next?" said Hermione.

Harry rested his head against the bricks. His forehead was starting to hurt where he'd been banging it. "Nothing. I have to go back and design different experiments."

Over the last month, Harry had carefully worked out, in advance, a course of experimentation for them that would have lasted until December.

It would have been a great set of experiments if the very first test had not falsified the basic premise.

Harry could not believe he had been this dumb.

"Let me correct myself," said Harry. "I need to design one new experiment. I'll let you know when we've got it, and we'll do it, and then I'll design the next one. How does that sound?"

"It sounds like someone wasted a whole lot of effort."

Thud. Ow. He'd done that a bit harder than he'd planned.

"So," said Hermione. She was leaning back in her chair and the smug look was back on her face. "What did we discover today?"

"I discovered," said Harry through gritted teeth, "that when it comes to doing truly basic research on a genuinely confusing problem where you have no clue what's going on, my books on scientific methodology aren't worth crap -"

"Language, Mr. Potter! Some of us are innocent young girls!"

"Fine. But if my books were worth a carp, that's a kind of fish not anything bad, they would have given me the following important piece of advice: When there's a confusing problem and you're just starting out and you have a falsifiable hypothesis, go test it. Find some simple, easy way of doing a basic check and do it right away. Don't worry about designing an elaborate course of experiments that would make a grant proposal look impressive to a funding agency. Just check as fast as possible whether your ideas are false before you start investing huge amounts of effort in them. How does that sound for a moral?"

"Mmm... okay," said Hermione. "But I was also hoping for something like 'Hermione's books aren't worthless. They're written by wise old wizards who know way more about magic than I do. I should pay attention to what Hermione's books say.' Can we have that moral too?"

Harry's jaw seemed to be clenched too tightly to let any words out, so he just nodded.

"Great!" Hermione said. "I liked this experiment. We learned a lot from it and it only took me an hour or so."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Starting by citing foreigners and Jews as superior students is not exactly promising, but at this point we just have to accept our main character has some socially inappropriate beliefs. We get a decent scientific protocol, a surprising result, and a lesson in humility. The chemistry between these two characters is great.

However, we can also see the problem. Harry's intuition was wrong and people he doesn't like were right. This causes him to completely lose his poo poo, scream, and bang his head like a child with conduct disorder. Later in this same chapter Harry himself recites something he calls the Litany of Tarski. Paraphasing: "If X is true, I want to believe X. If X is not true, I want not to believe X. Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want." He says that to Draco without a moment of hesitation, but when it's Harry's beliefs that are on the line he can't handle himself.

From now on, the author will spare Harriezer from this torment by making every intuition instantly correct. All science from this point on is abandoned in favor of the Aristotelian "A smart guy said so, therefore it's true."

The second half of this chapter is a long meeting between Harry and Draco's secret club. Draco still suggests the brilliant solution of "Beat up Hermione" to play to the Slytherin cheap seats, but Harry wants to take the higher road.

quote:

"What do you care what other people think? Are you really going to live your life needing to explain everything you do to the dumbest idiots in Slytherin, letting them judge you? I'm sorry, Draco, but I'm not lowering my cunning plots to the level of what the dumbest Slytherins can understand, just because it might make you look bad otherwise. Not even your friendship is worth that. It would take all the fun out of life. Tell me you haven't ever thought the same thing when someone in Slytherin is being too stupid to breathe, that it's beneath the dignity of a Malfoy to have to pander to them."

Draco genuinely hadn't. Ever. Pandering to idiots was like breathing, you did it without thinking about it.

They yell at each other for a bit, but Harry eventually acknowledges that Draco has a point and they can't be seen as too closely aligned for now. Rita Skeeter gets name checked, but nothing will ever come of that.

Next, Harry comes up with an absurd plan to teach Draco about falsifiablity and competing hypotheses using blood purity as the subject.

quote:

Harry Potter had then gone into further and considerable detail: Draco was to pretend to be a Death Eater who was posing as the editor of a scientific journal, Dr. Malfoy, who wanted to reject his enemy Dr. Potter's paper "On the Heritability of Magical Ability", and if the Death Eater didn't act like a real scientist would, he would be revealed as a Death Eater and executed, while Dr. Malfoy was also being watched by his own rivals and needed to appear to reject Dr. Potter's paper for neutral scientific reasons or he would lose his position as journal editor.

There's a lot of padding before we actually get to the point.

quote:

On the Heritability of Magical Ability

Dr. H. J. Potter-Evans-Verres, Institute for Sufficiently Advanced Science

My observation:

Today's wizards can't do things as impressive as
what wizards used to do 800 years ago.

My conclusion:

Wizardkind has become weaker by mixing
their blood with Muggleborns and Squibs.

...

"You, ah, need to consider other possible explanations for your, um, observation, besides just this one -"

"Really?" interrupted Dr. Potter. "Like what, exactly? House elves are stealing our magic? My data admit of only one possible conclusion, Dr. Malfoy. There are no other plausible hypotheses."

Draco was trying furiously to order his brain to think, what would he say if he was posing as a member of Dumbledore's faction, what did they claim was the explanation for wizardkind's decline, Draco had never bothered to actually ask that...

"If you can't think of any other way to explain my data, you'll have to publish my paper, Dr. Malfoy."

It was the sneer on Dr. Potter's face that did it.

"Oh yeah?" snapped Dr. Malfoy. "How do you know that magic itself isn't fading away?"

Time stopped.

Draco and Harry Potter exchanged looks of appalled horror.

This WOULD be a good moment, if it weren't immediately undercut. What Harry is actually doing is trying to distract Draco and slip in his own hypothesis in a way that Draco won't nitpick. He adds three more ideas on top of blood purism and fading magic, then wordily rules out two of them. It's not mentioned in this chapter, but the idea he slips in can be summarized as a Mendelian wizard gene. Between Harry and Draco's conjectures, take your own guess which one is right.

Harry will check out the "Magic is fading" hypothesis by asking teachers and ghosts if spells are getting harder to cast. Draco is tasked with collecting family records of Squibs to check the genetic hypothesis. With Harry shoving Draco out the door, the chapter ends.

Added Space fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jan 2, 2017

# ? Jan 2, 2017 09:56

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

It's interesting that Harry doesn't seem to consider what seems to me the most obvious solution to all his problems with accepting the existence of magic. He can't believe it works in the way it apparently does because he's assuming it's a product of the natural world. What if it's alien nanobots or something? If it's designed then it can work however the designer wanted it to. "The universe" doesn't care how you say "wingardium leviosa", but for some reason this ancient meddling alien really did/does.

# ? Jan 2, 2017 11:22

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

Tiggum posted:

It's interesting that Harry doesn't seem to consider what seems to me the most obvious solution to all his problems with accepting the existence of magic. He can't believe it works in the way it apparently does because he's assuming it's a product of the natural world. What if it's alien nanobots or something? If it's designed then it can work however the designer wanted it to. "The universe" doesn't care how you say "wingardium leviosa", but for some reason this ancient meddling alien really did/does.

He comes to exactly that conclusion after a while.

When he did, readers feared the fic would turn out to be a parable for Eliezer's Skynet obsession ("Atlantis fell because they made an Unfriendly AI!"), but thankfully that wasn't the case.

Added Space, could you please paste a link to the chapter being reviewed at the start of the post? This way those who want to check out the abridged parts can do it quickly.

# ? Jan 2, 2017 12:33

Added Space: Jul 13, 2012; Free Markets
Free People

Curse you Hayard-Gunnes!

Tiggum posted:

It's interesting that Harry doesn't seem to consider what seems to me the most obvious solution to all his problems with accepting the existence of magic. He can't believe it works in the way it apparently does because he's assuming it's a product of the natural world. What if it's alien nanobots or something? If it's designed then it can work however the designer wanted it to. "The universe" doesn't care how you say "wingardium leviosa", but for some reason this ancient meddling alien really did/does.

Unless you can demonstrate these aliens or nanobots, that's not really a solution to the mystery. It's an appeal to an unsolvable mystery, not really any better than attributing magic to a god. I think the best anyone can do is say that Atlantis somehow produced magic. Atlantis was comprehensively destroyed so no-one can say what the exact process was.

NihilCredo posted:

Added Space, could you please paste a link to the chapter being reviewed at the start of the post? This way those who want to check out the abridged parts can do it quickly.

Done, chapter titles are now links that chapter on the author's website. I'm using that since ff.net has a script to make copy/paste difficult.

# ? Jan 2, 2017 18:55

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

Added Space posted:

Done, chapter titles are now links that chapter on the author's website. I'm using that since ff.net has a script to make copy/paste difficult.

Piss-easy ways around that CSS stupidity: 1. Use m.fanfiction.net 2. Reader view in Firefox. 3. Use hpmor.com.

# ? Jan 2, 2017 18:58

The Iron Rose: May 12, 2012; Cat Army

There's also a chrome extension to make ff.net highlightable again

# ? Jan 2, 2017 19:25

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

Added Space posted:

Unless you can demonstrate these aliens or nanobots, that's not really a solution to the mystery. It's an appeal to an unsolvable mystery, not really any better than attributing magic to a god. I think the best anyone can do is say that Atlantis somehow produced magic. Atlantis was comprehensively destroyed so no-one can say what the exact process was.

It's a better solution than Atlantis, since Atlantis is known to be fictional. Anyway, my point was more about the fact that Harry seems to be working under the assumption that magic must be a natural phenomenon, and that's why he's so confused by it not working the way he expects. If you don't assume it's natural then there's no problem with how it works.

Basically, the difference between:

Magic is natural, but magic does not work the way a natural phenomenon would. Therefore there is something fundamentally wrong with my understanding of basically everything.

and

Magic does not seem to work the way I believe a natural phenomenon would, therefore: it is not a natural phenomenon; it doesn't work the way it appears to; or there is something fundamentally wrong with my understanding of basically everything.

Harry's assumptions limit his possible conclusions to what appears to be the least likely one.

# ? Jan 3, 2017 05:00

SolTerrasa: Sep 2, 2011

Tiggum posted:

Basically, the difference between:

Magic is natural, but magic does not work the way a natural phenomenon would. Therefore there is something fundamentally wrong with my understanding of basically everything.

and

Magic does not seem to work the way I believe a natural phenomenon would, therefore: it is not a natural phenomenon; it doesn't work the way it appears to; or there is something fundamentally wrong with my understanding of basically everything.

Harry's assumptions limit his possible conclusions to what appears to be the least likely one.

My assumption is that this is intentional on the author's part. Part of the premise of the AI alarmism that Yudkowsky promotes is that all the smart, well-studied, and experienced scholars in the field are deeply and fundamentally wrong about basically everything; the parallels are too obvious to be coincidental.

# ? Jan 3, 2017 06:35

Xander77: Apr 6, 2009; Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.

I get that Yud has really weird ideas about what science is, but how and why would Harriezer - the son of an actual scientist - would grow up thinking that science "started" during the Enlightenment?

# ? Jan 3, 2017 19:59

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

Xander77 posted:

I get that Yud has really weird ideas about what science is, but how and why would Harriezer - the son of an actual scientist - would grow up thinking that science "started" during the Enlightenment?

Isn't Yud ALSO the son of an actual scientist, while still having his insane ideas?

# ? Jan 3, 2017 20:00

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

Xander77 posted:

I get that Yud has really weird ideas about what science is, but how and why would Harriezer - the son of an actual scientist - would grow up thinking that science "started" during the Enlightenment?

Harriezer said that 1904 was "more than two centuries after science had gotten started". The Scientific Revolution is generally considered to encompass the developments between Galileo (early-mid 17th century) and Newton (late 17th century). Looks fine to me.

# ? Jan 4, 2017 01:52

Pvt.Scott: Feb 16, 2007; What God wants, God gets, God help us all

SolTerrasa posted:

My assumption is that this is intentional on the author's part. Part of the premise of the AI alarmism that Yudkowsky promotes is that all the smart, well-studied, and experienced scholars in the field are deeply and fundamentally wrong about basically everything; the parallels are too obvious to be coincidental.

Yud may be slightly correct here. Mankind is still figuring out what the gently caress is even happening right here, right now, let alone planning and predicting future outcomes of lines of inquiry. The scientific method is managed at the final level by humans, who are notoriously unreliable witnesses, easy prey for inherent flaws (or "working as designed" shortcuts) in the brain, and basically working in a giant uncoordinated clusterfuck that poorly shares information and rewards competition between teams working in the same field There's government, corporate, religious and cultural factors that hamper or skew plenty of research fields, etc. All of those errors, assumptions, biases, et al. will build up over time despite the best efforts to eliminate them.

If there's one thing we can be assured of, it's that Man has an infinite capacity for stupidity and hubris. It's dangerously easy to become myopic and miss a disaster growing right in front of you. I don't think Yud has any legitimate answers, nor do I really think there's much you can do about the situation currently other than hoping somebody spots an error here, reruns an old, well-established test there, whatever, and spots something and fixes it. It's like editing text, but you have millions of people doing it all at once and the copy is infinity pages long.

This is my completely uneducated and sleep deprived opinion. Or something.

# ? Jan 4, 2017 07:36

Added Space: Jul 13, 2012; Free Markets
Free People

Curse you Hayard-Gunnes!

Chapter 23: Belief in Belief

I personally like some of the ideas brought up in this chapter. "Belief in belief" could be rephrased as having inauthentic beliefs. I remember when I was working in a high school in 2012, when so many students told me that they absolutely believed the 'end of the world' nonsense. I asked them why were still in school and not engaging in reckless indulgence, and all I got was blank looks. At the same time I saw on a reality TV show a family that had taken out long-term loans and gone on several vacations. That family had an authentic belief; those dumb teenagers did not. Even if I thought that family was wrong, I could at least somewhat respect their authenticity.

Harry and Draco reconvene with the results of their research. Mostly people are using the same spells as they did centuries ago, but there's a snag.

HPMOR posted:

Harry Potter's fist struck a desk, hard. "drat it. All right. My own experiment was a failure, Draco. There's something called the Interdict of Merlin -"

Draco hit himself on the forehead, realizing.

"- which stops anyone from getting knowledge of powerful spells out of books, even if you find and read a powerful wizard's notes they won't make sense to you, it has to go from one living mind to another. I couldn't find any powerful spells that we had the instructions for but couldn't cast. But if you can't get them out of old books, why would anyone bother passing them on by word of mouth after they stopped working? Did you get the data on the Squib couples?"

I remember reading, possibly in this very thread, that someone thought the Interdict of Merlin was canon to Harry Potter and was upset when they found out it was Yud's invention. I didn't understand their anger. To me this is why I love fanfiction, when some other writer can seamlessly inject their own concepts into an existing work and thereby expand the story. Something like the Interdict explains neatly why there is a positive correlation between the age of an artifact and its power in the Harry Potter books. If Yudkowsky had chosen to do this more often instead of deriding the original concepts this would have been a much better work.

Harry interjects with an explanation of Mendelian genetics and predicts that one-fourth the children of two squibs will be full wizards. Sure enough, six of twenty-eight were. Wizard Gene Confirmed.

quote:

"What now?" Draco whispered.

He'd never been so terrified.

"It's not definite yet," said Harry Potter. "My experiment failed, remember? I need you to design another test, Draco."

"I, I..." Draco said. His voice was breaking. "I can't do this Harry, it's too much for me."

Harry's look was fierce. "Yes you can, because you have to. I thought about it myself, too, after I found out about the Interdict of Merlin. Draco, is there any way of observing the strength of magic directly? Some way that doesn't have anything to do with wizards' blood or the spells we learn?"

Draco's mind was just blank.

"Anything that affects magic affects wizards," said Harry. "But then we can't tell if it's the wizards or the magic. What does magic affect that isn't a wizard?"

"Magical creatures, obviously," said Draco without even thinking about it.

Harry Potter slowly smiled. "Draco, that's brilliant."

It's the sort of dumb question you'd only ask in the first place if you'd been raised by Muggles.

Then the sickness in Draco's stomach got even worse as he realized what it would mean if magical creatures were getting weaker. They would know for certain then that magic was fading, and there was a part of Draco that was already sure that was exactly what they would find. He didn't want to see this, he didn't want to know...

Harry Potter was already halfway to the door. "Come on, Draco! There's a portrait not far from here, we'll just ask them to go get someone old and find out right away! We're cloaked, if someone sees us we can just run away! Let's go!"

Mind Flayers were wiped out by Harold Shea (a reference to a classic sci-fi series), but otherwise the same creatures are around.

quote:

... So when you add it all up, it looks like knowledge is being lost."

And the trap snapped shut.

As soon as the panic went away, as soon as Draco understood that magic wasn't fading out, it took all of five seconds to realize.

Draco shoved himself away from the desk and stood up so hard that his chair skittered with a scraping noise across the floor and fell over.

"So it was all just a stupid trick, then."

Harry Potter stared at him for a moment, still sitting. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. "It was a fair test, Draco. If it had come out a different way, I would have accepted it. That's not something I would ever cheat on. Ever. I didn't look at your data before I made my predictions. I told you up front when the Interdict of Merlin invalidated the first experiment -"

"Oh," Draco said, the anger starting to come out into his voice, "you didn't know how the whole thing was going to come out?"

"I didn't know anything you didn't know," Harry said, still quietly. "I admit that I suspected. Hermione Granger was too powerful, she should have been barely magical and she wasn't, how can a Muggleborn be the best spellcaster in Hogwarts? And she's getting the best grades on her essays too, it's too much coincidence for one girl to be the strongest magically and academically unless there's a single cause. Hermione Granger's existence pointed to there being only one thing that makes you a wizard, something you either have or you don't, and the power differences coming from how much we know and how much we practice. And there weren't different classes for purebloods and Muggleborns, and so on. There were too many ways the world didn't look the way it would look if you were right. But Draco, I didn't see anything you couldn't see too. I didn't perform any tests I didn't tell you about. I didn't cheat, Draco. I wanted us to work out the answer together. And I never thought that magic might be fading out of the world until you said it. It was a scary idea for me, too."

"Whatever," Draco said. He was working very hard to control his voice and not just start screaming at Harry. "You claim you're not going to run off and tell anyone else about this."

"Not without consulting you first," Harry said. He opened his hands in a pleading gesture. "Draco, I'm being as nice as I can but the world turned out to just not be that way."

"Fine. Then you and I are through. I'm going to just walk away and forget any of this ever happened."

Draco spun around, feeling the burning sensation in his throat, the sense of betrayal, and that was when he realized he really had liked Harry Potter, and that thought didn't slow him down for a moment as he strode toward the classroom door.

And Harry Potter's voice came, now louder, and worried:

"Draco... you can't forget. Don't you understand? That was your sacrifice."

Draco stopped in midstride and turned around. "What are you talking about?"

But there was already a freezing coldness in Draco's spine.

He knew even before Harry Potter said it.

We're expected to believe that Draco is experiencing something akin to an unwanted religious conversion to the glorious cause of Science. I've heard of people being convinced by science, I've heard of people undergoing conversion, but I have never heard of a situation like this. This is more like something out of Lovecraft than anything to do with social psychology.

Harriezer offers to test Hermione's parents to confirm she's the true child of muggles and Draco weasels. The chapter title comes in as Harry calls him on being inauthentic, and how he is now inescapably a True Scientist. Draco freaks out about how he'll have to go back and live among extremists now that he no longer believes in the root of their cause. Harriezer should have warned him more. Draco sensibly blames the prick, and a little less sensibly resorts to violence.

quote:

"Expelliarmus! "

Harry's wand flew across the room.

"Gom jabbar! "

A pulse of inky blackness struck Harry's left hand.

"That's a torture spell," said Draco. "It's for getting information out of people. I'm just going to leave it on you and lock the door behind me when I go. Maybe I'll set the locking spell to wear off after a few hours. Maybe it won't wear off until you die in here. Have fun."

Draco moved smoothly backward, wand still on Harry. Draco's hand dipped down, picked up his bookbag, without his aim wavering.

The pain was already showing in Harry Potter's face as he spoke. "Malfoys are above the underage magic laws, I take it? It's not because your blood is stronger. It's because you already practiced. In the beginning you were as weak as any of us. Is my prediction wrong?"

Draco's hand whitened on his wand, but his aim stayed steady.

"Just so you know," Harry said through gritted teeth, "if you'd told me I was wrong I would have listened. I won't ever torture you when you show me that I'm wrong. And you will. Someday. You're awakened as a scientist now, and even if you never learn to use your power, you'll always," Harry gasped, "be looking, for ways, to test, your beliefs -"

Draco's backing away was less smooth, now, a little faster, and he had to work to keep his wand on Harry as he reached back to open the door and stepped back out of the classroom.

Then Draco shut the door again.

He cast the most powerful locking Charm he knew.

Draco waited until he heard Harry's first scream before casting the Quietus.

And then he walked away.

Harry manages to get out the magical first aid kit he bought and hits himself with painkillers, although he only has a half-hour's worth. Points for cleverness there.

quote:

Harry pulled himself to his feet.

Took a deep breath.

Exhaled.

Smiled.

It wasn't much of a smile, but it was a smile nonetheless.

Thank you, Professor Quirrell, I couldn't have lost without you.

He hadn't redeemed Draco yet, not even close. Contrary to what Draco himself might now believe, Draco was still the child of a Death Eater, through and through. Still a boy who'd grown up thinking "rape" was something the cool older kids did. But it was one heck of a start.

Harry couldn't claim it had all gone just as planned. It had all gone just as completely made up on the spot. The plan hadn't called for this to happen until December or thereabouts, after Harry had taught Draco the techniques not to deny the evidence when he saw it.

But he'd seen the look of fear on Draco's face, realized that Draco was already taking an alternative hypothesis seriously, and seized the moment. One case of true curiosity had the same sort of redeeming power in rationality that one case of true love had in movies.

In retrospect, Harry had given himself hours to make the most important discovery in the history of magic, and months to break through the undeveloped mental barriers of an eleven-year-old boy. This could indicate that Harry had some sort of major cognitive deficit with respect to estimating task completion times.

Umm... Harriezer, the only 'losing' you did was allowing your friend to hit you with a possibly fatal spell. That doesn't help with redemption. Quirrell also reminded you that a scientific mindset was no protection from performing dangerous and immoral acts. Merlin's beard, even when you like an adult you still can't learn poo poo from them.

quote:

Draco wished it were Pansy screaming. That would have felt better.

See? See? Then again, this is Harriezer we're talking about, he might approve.

Draco has run off to have a cry while Harry tries in vain to get through the door. Facing hours of torture and possible death, Harriezer is finally faced with the last, terrible resort of listening to McGonagal's advice. He checks the time and resolves to discreetly use his Time Turner to tell a teacher. Minutes later Professor Flitwick opens the door.

Added Space fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Jan 4, 2017

# ? Jan 4, 2017 08:41

Taffy Torpedo: Feb 2, 2008; ...Can we have the radio?

Added Space posted:

Harry interjects with an explanation of Mendelian genetics and predicts that one-fourth the children of two squibs will be full wizards. Sure enough, six of twenty-eight were. Wizard Gene Confirmed.

I don't suppose the fact that Harry's theory in section is demonstrably false ever causes him any problems down the line?

# ? Jan 4, 2017 10:11

i81icu812: Dec 5, 2006

Stanfield posted:

I don't suppose the fact that Harry's theory in section is demonstrably false ever causes him any problems down the line?

yeah you should really look at the Mendelian genetics section in detail

happy to see this alive again. ill update the science fact check post at some point

i81icu812 fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Jan 4, 2017

# ? Jan 4, 2017 10:56

i81icu812: Dec 5, 2006

Red Mike posted:

e: also your skipping of random bits of text make it really hard to follow the text, as someone who's sadly read it before but luckily long enough ago that he's forgotten the majority of it.

Yeah, I'm also having a hard time following this with the amount of text skipped, as much as I appreciate this coming back from the dead.

# ? Jan 4, 2017 11:39

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

Added Space posted:

I remember reading, possibly in this very thread, that someone thought the Interdict of Merlin was canon to Harry Potter and was upset when they found out it was Yud's invention. I didn't understand their anger. To me this is why I love fanfiction, when some other writer can seamlessly inject their own concepts into an existing work and thereby expand the story. Something like the Interdict explains neatly why there is a positive correlation between the age of an artifact and its power in the Harry Potter books. If Yudkowsky had chosen to do this more often instead of deriding the original concepts this would have been a much better work.

Not quite - Yvain aka Scott Alexander/slatestarcodex decided to use it to go full white nationalist, 'cos �I want ~~white nationalist~~ ~~race realist~~ human biodiversity Harry Potter. Of course I haven�t actually read any Harry Potter, but let me tell you all about Jensen.� SSC is an intellectual blog. It was quoted in the Atlantic, you know. And real-world intellectuals and public thinkers in 2016 went on about scientific racism all the time and how they could inject it into their transformative works of children�s stories.

divabot fucked around with this message at 13:23 on Jan 4, 2017

# ? Jan 4, 2017 12:51

Cavelcade: Dec 9, 2015; I'm actually a boy!

"You'll always be looking for ways to test your beliefs" is probably the dumbest thing Yud has ever written. I'd give him the credit that Harry is supposed to look dumb saying that, but that's an idea he keeps on trying to put out there. Nobody thinks like that all the time. That's why it's important to have different people working on a problem.

Awakened as a True Scientist is also a pretty hilarious bit of word salad.

Pvt.Scott posted:

Yud may be slightly correct here. Mankind is still figuring out what the gently caress is even happening right here, right now, let alone planning and predicting future outcomes of lines of inquiry. The scientific method is managed at the final level by humans, who are notoriously unreliable witnesses, easy prey for inherent flaws (or "working as designed" shortcuts) in the brain, and basically working in a giant uncoordinated clusterfuck that poorly shares information and rewards competition between teams working in the same field There's government, corporate, religious and cultural factors that hamper or skew plenty of research fields, etc. All of those errors, assumptions, biases, et al. will build up over time despite the best efforts to eliminate them.

If there's one thing we can be assured of, it's that Man has an infinite capacity for stupidity and hubris. It's dangerously easy to become myopic and miss a disaster growing right in front of you. I don't think Yud has any legitimate answers, nor do I really think there's much you can do about the situation currently other than hoping somebody spots an error here, reruns an old, well-established test there, whatever, and spots something and fixes it. It's like editing text, but you have millions of people doing it all at once and the copy is infinity pages long.

This is my completely uneducated and sleep deprived opinion. Or something.

My main problem with this is that Yud's conclusion is that there should be even fewer people working on the "hard" problems! Which is the opposite of helpful - instead of having more eyes to look over the infinite script and check to see what errors you don't even think to check for, you reduce the number of eyes and increase the homogeneity of them, so that the chance of seeing those kinds of errors is reduced twofold.

# ? Jan 4, 2017 13:11

Added Space: Jul 13, 2012; Free Markets
Free People

Curse you Hayard-Gunnes!

i81icu812 posted:

Yeah, I'm also having a hard time following this with the amount of text skipped, as much as I appreciate this coming back from the dead.

It's not like the stuff I'm skipping is clear. Most of it is long winded, nonsensical, or keeps repeating things that have already been said. I could honestly summarize the entire next chapter as "Harry and Draco try to out- :smuggo:

each other" and you won't have lost much.

However, if the thread thinks I should include everything I will.

# ? Jan 4, 2017 13:28

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

Added Space posted:

However, if the thread thinks I should include everything I will.

I'm fine with what you're doing currently, but you should do it however you want, because otherwise it's going to turn into a chore that you won't want to do any more. :shrug:

# ? Jan 4, 2017 14:13

inflatablefish: Oct 24, 2010

Tiggum posted:

I'm fine with what you're doing currently, but you should do it however you want, because otherwise it's going to turn into a chore that you won't want to do any more.

Very much this. This literary abomination has already killed JosephWongKS, we don't want it to kill you as well.

# ? Jan 4, 2017 15:12

Added Space: Jul 13, 2012; Free Markets
Free People

Curse you Hayard-Gunnes!

Thanks, guys.

Harry Potter and Gregor Mendel

Yudkowsky often incorporates real experiments and science into his work. Some is accurate, some is unproven, and some is wrong. Today we're going back to middle school and investigating genetics. Harry explains the concept of Mendelian inheritance and Punnett squares.

HPMOR posted:

"The secret of blood," said Harry Potter, an intense look on his face, "is something called deoxyribonucleic acid. You don't say that name in front of anyone who's not a scientist. Deoxyribonucleic acid is the recipe that tells your body how to grow, two legs, two arms, short or tall, whether you have brown eyes or green. It's a material thing, you can see it if you have microscopes, which are like telescopes only they look at things that are very small instead of very far away. And that recipe has two copies of everything, always, in case one copy is broken. Imagine two long rows of pieces of paper. At each place in the row, there are two pieces of paper, and when you have children, your body selects one piece of paper at random from each place in the row, and the mother's body will do the same, and so the child also gets two pieces of paper at each place in the row. Two copies of everything, one from your mother, one from your father, and when you have children they get one piece of paper from you at random in each place."

As Harry spoke, his fingers ranged over the paired scraps of paper, pointing to one part of the pair when he said "from your mother", the other when he said "from your father". And as Harry talked about picking a piece of paper at random, his hand pulled a Knut out of his robes and flipped it; Harry looked at the coin, and then pointed to the top piece of paper. All without a pause in the speech.

"Now when it comes to something like being short or tall, there's a lot of places in the recipe that make little differences. So if a tall father marries a short mother, the child gets some pieces of paper saying 'tall' and some pieces of paper saying 'short', and usually the child ends up middle-sized. But not always. By luck, the child might get a lot of pieces saying 'tall', and not many papers saying 'short', and grow up pretty tall. You could have a tall father with five papers saying 'tall' and a tall mother with five papers saying 'tall' and by amazing luck the child gets all ten papers saying 'tall' and ends up taller than both of them. You see? Blood isn't a perfect fluid, it doesn't mix perfectly. Deoxyribonucleic acid is made up of lots of little pieces, like a glass of pebbles instead of a glass of water. That's why a child isn't always exactly in the middle of the parents."

Draco listened with his mouth open. How in Merlin's name had the Muggles figured all this out? They could see the recipe?

"Now," Harry Potter said, "suppose that, just like with tallness, there's lots of little places in the recipe where you can have a piece of paper that says 'magic' or 'not magic'. If you have enough pieces of paper saying 'magic' you're a wizard, if you have a lot of pieces of paper you're a powerful wizard, if you have too few you're a Muggle, and in between you're a Squib. Then, when two Squibs marry, most of the time the children should also be Squibs, but once in a while a child will get lucky and get most of the father's magic papers and most of the mother's magic papers, and be strong enough to be a wizard. But probably not a very powerful one. If you started out with a lot of powerful wizards and they married only each other, they would stay powerful. But if they started marrying Muggleborns who were just barely magical, or Squibs... you see? The blood wouldn't mix perfectly, it would be a glass of pebbles, not a glass of water, because that's just the way blood works. There would still be powerful wizards now and then, when they got a lot of magic papers by luck. But they wouldn't be as powerful as the most powerful wizards from earlier."

Draco nodded slowly. He'd never heard it explained that way before. There was a surprising beauty to how exactly it fit.

"But," Harry said. "That's only one hypothesis. Suppose that instead there's only a single place in the recipe that makes you a wizard. Only one place where a piece of paper can say 'magic' or 'not magic'. And there are two copies of everything, always. So then there are only three possibilities. Both copies can say 'magic'. One copy can say 'magic' and one copy can say 'not magic'. Or both copies can say 'not magic'. Wizards, Squibs, and Muggles. Two copies and you can cast spells, one copy and you can still use potions or magic devices, and zero copies means you might even have trouble looking straight at magic. Muggleborns wouldn't really be born to Muggles, they would be born to two Squibs, two parents each with one magic copy who'd grown up in the Muggle world. Now imagine a witch marries a Squib. Each child will get one paper saying 'magic' from the mother, always, it doesn't matter which piece gets picked at random, both say 'magic'. But like flipping a coin, half the time the child will get a paper saying 'magic' from the father, and half the time the child will get the father's paper saying 'not magic'. When a witch marries a Squib, the result won't be a lot of weak wizarding children. Half the children will be wizards and witches just as powerful as their mother, and half the children will be Squibs. Because if there's just one place in the recipe that makes you a wizard, then magic isn't like a glass of pebbles that can mix. It's like a single magical pebble, a sorcerer's stone."

Harry arranged three pairs of papers side by side. On one pair he wrote 'magic' and 'magic'. On another pair he wrote 'magic' on the top paper only. And the third pair he left blank.

"In which case," Harry said, "either you have two stones or you don't. Either you're a wizard or not. Powerful wizards would get that way by studying harder and practicing more. And if wizards get inherently less powerful, not because of spells being lost but because people can't cast them... then maybe they're eating the wrong foods or something. But if it's gotten steadily worse over eight hundred years, then that could mean magic itself is fading out of the world."

Harry arranged another two pairs of papers side by side, and took out a quill. Soon each pair had one piece of paper saying 'magic' and the other paper blank.

"And that brings me to the prediction," said Harry. "What happens when two Squibs marry. Flip a coin twice. It can come up heads and heads, heads and tails, tails and heads, or tails and tails. So one quarter of the time you'll get two heads, one quarter of the time you'll get two tails, and half the time you'll get one heads and one tail. Same thing if two Squibs marry. One quarter of the children would come up magic and magic, and be wizards. One quarter would come up not-magic and not-magic, and be Muggles. The other half would be Squibs. It's a very old and very classic pattern. It was discovered by Gregor Mendel who is not forgotten, and it was the first hint ever uncovered for how the recipe worked. Anyone who knows anything about blood science would recognize that pattern in an instant. It wouldn't be exact, any more than if you flip a coin twice forty times you'll always get exactly ten pairs of two heads. But if it's seven or thirteen wizards out of forty children that'll be a strong indicator. That's the test I had you do. Now let's see your data."

What Harry is proposing is something like this:

Where w is the wizard gene. People with ww are wizards, rw are squibs, and rr are muggles. This would imply that Hermione's parents are also squibs but this is never followed up on.

Draco would propose something more like -

code:

Draco      wwwwwwwwww
Harry      wwwwwrrwrw
Hermione   rrwwrwrwwr
Filch      rrrrwrwrrr

Since Harry has had his one allotted scientific failure, he is of course correct.

I can spot one error in his explanation. Height is not just genetic, it's also epigeentic. Things like disease and diet can change the expression of genes in gametes, leading to an offspring that's notably different then either parent. This explains why two five-foot immigrants from a long line of five-foot people can have a six-foot son. The change in genetic expression would be due to changes in their environment from their move. To be fair, this epigenetic discovery may have happened after this fic was written.

The author himself noted that there are other genetic factors beyond a simple presence of a gene that could cause a similar outcome.

I'm not sure why Draco is freaking out so much since the Wizard Gene hypothesis can be adapted to blood purism with a bit of tweaking. It would suggest things like wizards should only reproduce with wizards and squibs only with squibs. Pureblood families could still hold themselves as superior for having no squibs in their line. There could even be a dramatic proposal to screen the muggle population for squibs and pair them off to squeeze out more wizards. Apply the smallest amount of spin and this could be a real boost for blood purism.

Added Space fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Jan 5, 2017

# ? Jan 5, 2017 00:52

i81icu812: Dec 5, 2006

The biggest problem is that if the magic gene is recessive then squibs are impossible for two magical parents. This implication should be important and and obvious but is never addressed.

The other issue this raises, as you note, is that all muggleborns have two squib parents, which raises population genetics issues or is the product of some seriously weird artificial behavior.

i81icu812 fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Jan 5, 2017

# ? Jan 5, 2017 01:41

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

i81icu812 posted:

The biggest problem is that if the magic gene is recessive then squibs are impossible for two magical parents. This implication should be important and and obvious but is never addressed.

I could be wrong, but I think Eliezer has actually changed the definition of "squib" anyway. If I recall correctly, in the original books a squib was the child of a wizard who had no magical ability, rather than limited ability. Magic was just a binary thing, you've got it or you don't, there's no difference between a squib and a muggle except that a squib was raised by wizards.

Also, I think wizards marrying muggles usually had wizard children (squibs seem to be very rare), which wouldn't make sense if magical ability was determined by a single recessive gene.

# ? Jan 5, 2017 02:04

Added Space: Jul 13, 2012; Free Markets
Free People

Curse you Hayard-Gunnes!

i81icu812 posted:

The biggest problem is that if the magic gene is recessive then squibs are impossible for two magical parents. This implication should be important and and obvious but is never addressed.

The other issue this raises, as you note, is that all muggleborns have two squib parents, which raises population genetics issues or is the product of some seriously weird artificial behavior.

Not impossible. There could still be things like duplication errors that could 'break' one copy of the wizard gene. The rate would be fairly low but still detectable over a wizarding population in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

It's not out of question that squibs married into the muggle population and passed down their wizard gene. There are a bit less then 700,000 births in the UK every year, and only single digits of muggleborns. I'm not a statistician but I'd guess that's actually low.

# ? Jan 5, 2017 02:09

i81icu812: Dec 5, 2006

Added Space posted:

Not impossible. There could still be things like duplication errors that could 'break' one copy of the wizard gene. The rate would be fairly low but still detectable over a wizarding population in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

It's not out of question that squibs married into the muggle population and passed down their wizard gene. There are a bit less then 700,000 births in the UK every year, and only single digits of muggleborns. I'm not a statistician but I'd guess that's actually low.

Eh. If you're saying the random mutation rate of an individual gene is fairly low you mean insignificantly tiny I would agree with you. Something on the order of 1/10,000 or so. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2836558/

The likelier explanation is that squibs are nearly all illegitimate bastards.

Rowling wrote a children's book, so 40 students/year for all of the UK causes all sorts of problems. But to your observation... ~10 muggleborns out of a population of 700,000 births a year is impossibly low. That recessive gene should be extinct within generations without something wonky going on, or a whole bunch of wizards are not getting hogwarts letters like they should.

# ? Jan 5, 2017 02:35

MikeJF: Dec 20, 2003

Tiggum posted:

I could be wrong, but I think Eliezer has actually changed the definition of "squib" anyway. If I recall correctly, in the original books a squib was the child of a wizard who had no magical ability, rather than limited ability. Magic was just a binary thing, you've got it or you don't, there's no difference between a squib and a muggle except that a squib was raised by wizards.

Squibs have some magical sensitivity, usually. They can see things muggles can't, aren't affected by muggle repelling charms, etc.

The most extensive proposal I know of is this one here, but unlike Yud, that was written by someone who actually knows what they're talking about beyond high school and a bit of wiki.

Personally I just like to think magic inheritance is magical. JK should've just said 'oh sometimes adopted kids inherit magic from their adoptive parents' just to shut everyone up.

MikeJF fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Jan 5, 2017

# ? Jan 5, 2017 03:44

Dienes: Nov 4, 2009; dee
doot doot dee
doot doot doot
doot doot dee
dee doot doot
doot doot dee
dee doot doot; College Slice

MikeJF posted:

Squibs have some magical sensitivity, usually. They can see things muggles can't, aren't affected by muggle repelling charms, etc.

The most extensive proposal I know of is this one here, but unlike Yud, that was written by someone who actually knows what they're talking about beyond high school and a bit of wiki.

Personally I just like to think magic inheritance is magical. JK should've just said 'oh sometimes adopted kids inherit magic from their adoptive parents' just to shut everyone up.

Hell, wasn't a squib being able to see dementors that muggles couldn't critical to Harry's defense at the start of book 5?

# ? Jan 5, 2017 03:57

i81icu812: Dec 5, 2006

Dienes posted:

Hell, wasn't a squib being able to see dementors that muggles couldn't critical to Harry's defense at the start of book 5?

http://web.archive.org/web/20110713111531/http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/extrastuff_view.cfm?id=19

SQUIBS

I have been asked all sorts of questions about Squibs since I first introduced the concept in �Chamber of Secrets�. A Squib is almost the opposite of a Muggle-born wizard: he or she is a non-magical person born to at least one magical parent. Squibs are rare; magic is a dominant and resilient gene.

Squibs would not be able to attend Hogwarts as students. They are often doomed to a rather sad kind of half-life (yes, you should be feeling sorry for Filch), as their parentage often means that they will be exposed to, if not immersed in, the wizarding community, but can never truly join it. Sometimes they find a way to fit in; Filch has carved himself a niche at Hogwarts and Arabella Figg operates as Dumbledore�s liaison between the magical and Muggle worlds. Neither of these characters can perform magic (Filch�s Kwikspell course never worked), but they still function within the wizarding world because they have access to certain magical objects and creatures that can help them (Arabella Figg does a roaring trade in cross-bred cats and Kneazles, and if you don�t know what a Kneazle is yet, shame on you). Incidentally, Arabella Figg never saw the Dementors that attacked Harry and Dudley, but she had enough magical knowledge to identify correctly the sensations they created in the alleyway.

# ? Jan 5, 2017 04:21

i81icu812: Dec 5, 2006

i81icu812 posted:

Tunicate posted:
Rowling's statements about this, from a fan site that collected them

Wizarding Genetics: More Complicated Than Mendel!

�A Squib is almost the opposite of a Muggle-born wizard: he or she is a non-magical person born to at least one magical parent. Squibs are rare; magic is a dominant and resilient gene.� � jkrowling.com

�How does a Muggle-born like Hermione develop magical abilities?�

�Nobody knows where magic comes from. It is like any other talent. Sometimes it seems to be inherited, but others are the only ones in their family who have the ability.� � Barnes and Noble interview, March 19, 1999

�How can two Muggles have a kid with magical powers?�

�It's the same as two black-haired people producing a redheaded child. Sometimes these things just happen, and no one really knows why!� � Online chat transcript, Scholastic.com, 3 February 2000

Magical inheritance as described in the books is clearly not Mendelian and requires either some sort of Trinucleotide repeat mutation mechanism or a more complicated multiple gene interaction as described on sugarquil. Either way requires more than a few hoops to jump through, and Rowling would have been better off saying 'its magic!' and leaving it at that.

Also red hair does not work that way!

Don't worry, you can rest assured that Yud deals with magical genetics in the ~~best, most logically consistent~~ stupidest way possible when we finally revisit that plot point in 50 chapters.

A longer discussion about how HP genetics could plausibly work from nearly a year ago!

# ? Jan 5, 2017 04:57

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004

quote:

And now even within Ravenclaw, his only remaining competitors were Padma Patil (whose parents came from a non-English-speaking culture and thus had raised her with an actual work ethic), Anthony Goldstein (out of a certain tiny ethnic group that won 25% of the Nobel Prizes)

I can't believe you let this blatantly racist poo poo fly under the radar.

# ? Jan 5, 2017 05:41

Dienes: Nov 4, 2009; dee
doot doot dee
doot doot doot
doot doot dee
dee doot doot
doot doot dee
dee doot doot; College Slice

i81icu812 posted:

http://web.archive.org/web/20110713111531/http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/extrastuff_view.cfm?id=19

SQUIBS

I have been asked all sorts of questions about Squibs since I first introduced the concept in ‘Chamber of Secrets’. A Squib is almost the opposite of a Muggle-born wizard: he or she is a non-magical person born to at least one magical parent. Squibs are rare; magic is a dominant and resilient gene.

Squibs would not be able to attend Hogwarts as students. They are often doomed to a rather sad kind of half-life (yes, you should be feeling sorry for Filch), as their parentage often means that they will be exposed to, if not immersed in, the wizarding community, but can never truly join it. Sometimes they find a way to fit in; Filch has carved himself a niche at Hogwarts and Arabella Figg operates as Dumbledore’s liaison between the magical and Muggle worlds. Neither of these characters can perform magic (Filch’s Kwikspell course never worked), but they still function within the wizarding world because they have access to certain magical objects and creatures that can help them (Arabella Figg does a roaring trade in cross-bred cats and Kneazles, and if you don‘t know what a Kneazle is yet, shame on you). Incidentally, Arabella Figg never saw the Dementors that attacked Harry and Dudley, but she had enough magical knowledge to identify correctly the sensations they created in the alleyway.

Well, I'll be damned.

# ? Jan 5, 2017 05:50

Added Space: Jul 13, 2012; Free Markets
Free People

Curse you Hayard-Gunnes!

Chapter 24: Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis

aka MAXIMUM :smuggo:

The next morning, Draco is nervously sitting in the Great Hall.

quote:

Harry Potter came into sight. His face was carefully neutral, but his blue-trimmed robes looked oddly askew, as if they hadn't been put on quite right -

"Your hand," Draco said without thinking about it at all.

Harry raised his left arm, as though to look at it himself.

The hand dangled limply from it, like something dead.

"Madam Pomfrey said it's not permanent," Harry said quietly. "She said it should mostly recover by the time classes start tomorrow."

For a single instant the news came as a relief.

And then Draco realized.

"You went to Madam Pomfrey," whispered Draco.

"Of course I did," said Harry Potter, as though stating the obvious. "My hand wasn't working."

It was slowly dawning on Draco what an absolute fool he'd been, far worse than the older Slytherins he'd chewed out.

He'd just taken for granted that no one would go to the authorities when a Malfoy did something to them. That no one would want Lucius Malfoy's eye on them, ever.

But Harry Potter wasn't a frightened little Hufflepuff trying to stay out of the game. He was already playing it, and Father's eye was already on him.

"What else did Madam Pomfrey say?" said Draco, his heart in his throat.

"Professor Flitwick said that the spell cast on my hand had been a Dark torture hex and extremely serious business, and that refusing to say who did it was absolutely unacceptable."

Harry covers for Draco and Dumbledore covers for Harry, but Harry makes it clear that this is the only time he can wave off torture.

quote:

Father had warned Draco against people like this, people who could ruin you and still be so likable that it was hard to hate them properly.

"After which," Harry said, "the Headmaster told Professor Flitwick that this was, indeed, a secret and delicate matter of which he had already been informed, and that he did not think pressing it at this time would help me or anyone. Professor Flitwick started to say something about the Headmaster's usual plotting going much too far, and I had to interrupt at that point and explain that it had been my own idea and not anything the Headmaster forced me into, so Professor Flitwick spun around and started lecturing me, and the Headmaster interrupted him and said that as the Boy-Who-Lived I was doomed to have weird and dangerous adventures so I was safer if I got into them on purpose instead of waiting for them to happen by accident, and that was when Professor Flitwick threw up his little hands and started shrieking in a high-pitched voice at both of us about how he didn't care what we were cooking up together, but this wasn't ever to happen again for as long as I was in Ravenclaw House or he would have me thrown out and I could go to Gryffindor which was where all this Dumbledoring belonged -"

Harry was making it very hard for Draco to hate him.

Umm... is Harriezer's babbling supposed to be likable? Is there any evidence that anyone besides the Weasley twins actually likes him?

quote:

"Why... didn't you?"

Harry walked over to the window, into the small beam of sunlight shining into the alcove, and turned his head outward, toward the green grounds of Hogwarts. The brightness shone on him, on his robes, on his face.

"Why didn't I?" Harry said. His voice caught. "I guess because I just couldn't get angry at you. I knew I'd hurt you first. I won't even call it fair, because what I did to you was worse than what you did to me."

...

"Even so," Harry said, and now his voice was lower, almost a whisper, "please don't do that again, Draco. It hurt, and I'm not sure I could forgive you a second time. I'm not sure I'd be able to want to."

Draco just didn't get it.

Was Harry trying to be friends with him?

There was no way Harry Potter could be dumb enough to believe that was still possible after what he'd done.

I don't know, I can believe Harriezer is that dumb. I know that pointing the finger wouldn't push either Malfroy out from the table considering what Lucius could talk his way out of. However, it would give them a serious black eye. They're already your committed enemies. It's not like Lucius would be baited into drastic, obvious action based on this provocation. Not taking this opportunity and insisting on a ridiculous gamble of secular conversion only makes Harry's situation worse. This would be fine for a tragic work, but not one where your main character eventually becomes an immortal wizard prince.

quote:

But then Draco didn't understand what else Harry could be trying.

And a strange thought came to Draco then, something Harry had kept talking about yesterday.

And the thought was: Test it.

You're awakened as a scientist now, Harry had said, and even if you never learn to use your power, you'll always, be looking, for ways, to test, your beliefs... Those ominous words, spoken in gasps of agony, had kept running through Draco's mind.

If Harry was pretending to be the repentant friend who had accidentally hurt someone...

"You planned what you did to me!" Draco said, managing to put a note of accusation in his voice. "You didn't do it because you got angry, you did it because you wanted to!"

I thought I abused commas. When did Harry ever sound angry?

Harry makes his pitch that knowing the truth is in Draco's best interest, but Draco still has doubts.

quote:

"What was your plan?"

"Well," Harry said, "you're Lucius's heir, and believe it or not, Dumbledore thinks I belong to him. So we could grow up and fight their battles with each other. Or we could do something else."

Slowly, Draco's mind wrapped around this. "You want to provoke a fight to the finish between them, then seize power after they're both exhausted." Draco felt cold dread in his chest. He would have to try and stop that no matter the cost to himself -

But Harry shook his head. "Stars above, no! "

"No...?"

"You wouldn't go along with that and neither would I," said Harry. "This is our world, we don't want to break it. But imagine, say, Lucius thought the Conspiracy was your tool and you were on his side, Dumbledore thought the Conspiracy was my tool and I was on his side, Lucius thought that you'd turned me and Dumbledore believed the Conspiracy was mine, Dumbledore thought that I'd turned you and Lucius believed the Conspiracy was yours, and so they both helped us out but only in ways that the other one wouldn't notice."

Draco did not have to fake being speechless.

Father had once taken him to see a play called The Tragedy of Light, about {Death Note}.

Afterward, Father had asked Draco if he understood why they had gone to see this play.

Draco had said it was to teach him to be as cunning as Light and Lawliet when he grew up.

Father had said that Draco couldn't possibly be more wrong, and pointed out that while Lawliet had cleverly concealed his face there had been no good reason for him to tell Light his name. Father had then gone on to demolish almost every part of the play, while Draco listened with his eyes growing wider and wider. And Father had finished by saying that plays like this were always unrealistic, because if the playwright had known what someone actually as smart as Light would actually do, the playwright would have tried to take over the world himself instead of just writing plays about it.

That was when Father had told Draco about the Rule of Three, which was that any plot which required more than three different things to happen would never work in real life.

Father had further explained that since only a fool would attempt a plot that was as complicated as possible, the real limit was two.

Draco couldn't even find words to describe the sheer gargantuan unworkability of Harry's master plan.

But it was just the sort of mistake you would make if you didn't have any mentors and thought you were clever and had learned about plotting by watching plays.

The "Rule of Three" here has gotten traction in the fanfiction community. I see it pop up from time to time. Yudkowsky does have some clever ideas when he's not going on about subjects he barely understands.

When confronted with Harry's latest round of insanity, Draco resolves to smile, nod, and keep a hidden knife ready.

quote:

"I know that I've abused our friendship terribly," Harry said finally. "But please realize, Draco, that in the end, I just wanted the two of us to find the truth together. Is that something you can forgive?"

A fork with two paths, but with only one path easy to go back on later if Draco changed his mind...

"I guess I understand what you were trying to do," Draco lied, "so yes."

Harry's eyes lit up. "I'm glad to hear that, Draco," he said softly.

The two students stood in that alcove, Harry still dipped in the lone sunbeam, Draco in shadow.

And Draco realized with a note of horror and despair, that although it was a terrifying fate indeed to be Harry's friend, Harry now had so many different avenues for threatening Draco that being his enemy would be even worse.

Not really? By not turning you in right away Harry has pretty much whiffed on his best opportunity. Get your father to buy you a new wand and you're in the clear.

Harry asks for some money and Draco agrees to loan him some. They decide they can't take in new members to their secret club.

quote:

"Because I don't know enough science," Draco said, carefully keeping his voice neutral.

Harry shook his head at that. "The problem isn't that you're ignorant of specific science things like deoxyribonucleic acid. That wouldn't stop you from being my equal. The problem is that you aren't trained in the methods of rationality, the deeper secret knowledge behind how all those discoveries got made in the first place. I'll try to teach you those, but they're a lot harder to learn. Think of what we did yesterday, Draco. Yes, you did some of the work. But I was the only one in control. You answered some of the questions. I asked all of them. You helped push. I did the steering by myself. And without the methods of rationality, Draco, you can't possibly steer the Conspiracy where it needs to go."

"I see," said Draco, his voice sounding disappointed.

Harry's voice tried to gentle itself even more. "I'll try to respect your expertise, Draco, about things like people stuff. But you need to respect my expertise too, and there's just no way you could be my equal when it comes to steering the Conspiracy. You've only been a scientist for one day, you know one secret about deoxyribonucleic acid, and you aren't trained in any of the methods of rationality."

"I understand," said Draco.

And he did.

People stuff, Harry had said. Seizing control of the Conspiracy probably wouldn't even be difficult. And afterward, he would kill Harry Potter just to be sure -

The memory rose up in Draco of how sick inside it had felt last night, knowing Harry was screaming.

Draco thought some more bad words.

Fine. He wouldn't kill Harry. Harry had been raised by Muggles, it wasn't his fault he was insane.

Instead, Harry would live on, just so that Draco could tell him that it had all been for Harry's own good, really, he ought to be grateful -

And with a sudden twitch of surprised pleasure, Draco realized that it actually was for Harry's own good. If Harry tried to carry out his plan of playing Dumbledore and Father for fools, he would die.

Harry will worry about the nonsense psychobabble, and Draco is in charge of the people. How is it that Harriezer has read deep psychological studies but never heard of Mao or Stalin?

Draco plans for the inevitable backstab.

quote:

...unless all that was exactly what Harry wanted Draco to do as part of some even larger plot which Draco would play right into by trying to foil this one, Harry might even know that his plan was unworkable, it might have no purpose except luring Draco to thwart it -

No. That way lay madness. There had to be a limit. The Dark Lord himself hadn't been that twisty. That sort of thing didn't happen in real life, only in Father's silly bedtime stories about foolish gargoyles who always ended up furthering the hero's plans every time they tried to stop him.

And now we have to imagine Lucius as a secret animation nerd.

Harriezer, in the mean time, is smirking to himself about how insufferably clever all this is.

quote:

{B}eside Draco, Harry walked along with a smile on his face, thinking about the evolutionary origins of human intelligence.

...

It really made you appreciate what millions of years of hominids trying to outwit each other - an evolutionary arms race without limit - had led to in the way of increased mental capacity.

This bit of "science" doesn't warrant a separate examination, since evolutionary psychology is unverifiable conjecture at best.

# ? Jan 5, 2017 06:21

Cavelcade: Dec 9, 2015; I'm actually a boy!

I think this was the part that, while first reading it, made me realise it was fundamentally drivel and propaganda. Before this one, I had no real idea who Yudkowski was, then I looked him up and it all made sense. Whatever about all of the stupid anime references, the evolutionary psychology bullshit had me gagging - but it highlights how hypocritical Harry is being about the MoR; a "true scientist" would immediately dismiss it as unfalsifiable and therefore not worth thinking about. It infuriated me - but I kept reading out of momentum until the Battle Commander stuff started and I got too bored to continue.

# ? Jan 5, 2017 12:59

Milkfred E. Moore: Aug 27, 2006; 'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

I really dislike how HPMOR has sort of, I don't know, seemingly set this standard for what fan appreciation should be in the eyes of a lot of people. For example, fanfiction. It's like it turns self-inserts from something that was once a laughable thing where you would be mocked for into this thing where it's fine providing you go, oh, no, this is an AU Harry. It feels like a lot of fanfiction has set about trying to 'fix' the work the author puts out, all the while jamming in pop culture references flavored with 'I've only ever watched anime' dialogue and actions.

This is, of course, excepting the utterly bizarre fact that he wrote this without reading, understanding or particularly caring about Harry Potter.

You see it with Wildbow's Worm stuff, too. It's a superhero universe that feels really unique and modern with a cast of interesting characters - but the fans only care about how uber the protagonist is and writing AU fanfic (or crossover fanfic or fetishbait fanfic).

Admittedly, I was only really active in fandom circles over a decade ago (on Spacebattles, funnily enough), but it's like seeing the next generation and wondering what's going on. It astounds me that people actually like Yudkowski or think he's particularly interesting. Seriously, Roko's Basilisk?

# ? Jan 5, 2017 14:57

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# ? May 17, 2024 17:50

Cavelcade: Dec 9, 2015; I'm actually a boy!

Milky Moor posted:

It astounds me that people actually like Yudkowski or think he's particularly interesting. Seriously, Roko's Basilisk?

He appeals to some smart people by giving them an internal justification for feeling superior to those around them. He's also pretty good at arguing a point if you don't know much about the subject matter. And from there it's a cult - sorry, phyg - of personality where people talk about the intellectual biases of others while ignoring the way they commit them themselves. It's not particularly interesting, but it is pretty funny.

Edit: To be fair, calling it a cult might be slightly unfair. It has cultlike attributes but I don't think that straightup makes it a cult.

Cavelcade fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Jan 5, 2017

# ? Jan 5, 2017 15:17

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

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