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Tiggum posted:I don't know if he was admitting that he didn't know how to finish the story or if he'd claim that he had a solution in mind and was just testing his audience, but the threat of the "shorter and sadder ending" suggests that he was genuinely looking for someone to pull him out of the hole he'd dug himself into. Either way it's a weird threat. The very start of chapter 1 alludes to the solution. It was nice of Voldemort to let Harry keep his wand. Classic villain idiot ball.
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# ? Apr 16, 2019 06:36 |
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# ? Jun 7, 2024 08:29 |
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He almost definitely had the ending already planned and just wanted to give the readers a game to play. It was fairly well telegraphed where he was going with the weird nonsequiter opening lines of the story, and he seeded in a couple bits of mechanics that were almost certainly more than just serendipitously germane to the solution. It's kind of strange that he sets up this situation with an existentially dangerous "super intelligence" trying to escape containment and the Mirror creating simulated universes, the quintessential Less Wrong ouevre, and doesn't use that at all. I kind of wonder if his secret intention behind the exam was thinking somebody might interject something novel about those kinds of situations.
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# ? Apr 16, 2019 06:48 |
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Qwertycoatl posted:The very start of chapter 1 alludes to the solution. I feel very good about the fact that I don't remember that.
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# ? Apr 16, 2019 07:19 |
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There was some discussion about this part about, I don't know, half the thread ago and I vaguely remember something intensely stupid, like someone guessing exactly what was going to happen and Yudkowsky changing the ending at the last minute so the comment would be wrong, or something like that.
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# ? Apr 16, 2019 12:20 |
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My memory of back then is that when he issued the challenge the internet thought of his solution right away and then spent the rest of the time looking for less lame solutions
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# ? Apr 16, 2019 13:27 |
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Qwertycoatl posted:My memory of back then is that when he issued the challenge the internet thought of his solution right away and then spent the rest of the time looking for less lame solutions
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# ? Apr 16, 2019 13:52 |
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Someone should link it to spare the rest of us having to dig for it, though
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# ? Apr 18, 2019 03:17 |
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didn't he also do some dumb challenge with the sorting hat
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# ? Apr 18, 2019 03:29 |
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prompt: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.GPT-2 posted:The original story is only five hundred pages long, but it was written by James and William Shakespeare in 1811, as well as various other authors and thinkers including Jules Ferry, T.S. Eliot, G.K. Chesterton, and Voltaire. The book is about the evolution from childhood to adult rationality and the philosophical implications of this process (that is, why and how we became rational beings). I so wish we could have been reading this through instead.
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# ? May 31, 2019 23:25 |
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I, too, desire to be friends with the magical boy.
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# ? Jun 1, 2019 01:51 |
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Oh poo poo, I kind of completely forgot about this thread. And we've somehow still got nine chapters to go. Chapter 114: Shut Up and Do The Impossible Harry basically stalls for time by telling Voldemort that he thinks he knows something that Voldemort wants to know, but he won't tell him. Then he threatens to cause a massive explosion - by transfiguring part of his wand into antimatter, although he doesn't tell Voldemort the method. He is speaking in parseltongue though so Voldemort knows he's not bluffing. Obviously this would kill Harry and all the death-eaters standing around (and possibly destroy the Philosopher's Stone?), but it would only temporarily delay Voldemort by forcing him to possess a new body. But even though it can't be a bluff because of the "no lies in parseltongue" thing, it actually is. He's really making a carbon nanotube filament that he wraps around all the death eaters' necks and Voldemort's arms to kill/disarm them. So I guess transfiguring the end of the wand you're using to cast the transfiguration spell works. Eliezer Yudkowsky posted:The last two threads stretched out from the dark pattern, black theads already in the form of nanotubes. They moved lightly through the air toward the Dark Lord himself, toward the sleeve just above Voldemort's left hand that held the gun, toward the sleeve above the right hand that held the yew wand, threads placed high at first to give them time to drift slowly downward through the air. The threads looped around, went over themselves, tied slippable knots. Began to tighten, coming closer to the sleeve, as Harry Transfigured them shorter -
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# ? Jun 2, 2019 09:46 |
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Chapter 115: Shut Up and Do The Impossible, Pt 2 Harry is trying to decide what he can do to permanently stop Voldemort since he effectively can't be killed. He considers torturing him to drive him permanently insane, and throwing his wand into the dementor pit at Azkaban (since Voldemort is permanently linked to his wand), but isn't happy with either solution. Eliezer Yudkowsky posted:In the end, there was only one option he would take, and since Harry already knew that, there was no point agonizing about it. Whether it was the best option, only time would tell. It's really convenient how Harry is able to do the exact things he needs to at this point to have everyone believe exactly what he wants them to and leave all the decisions in his hands.
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# ? Jun 6, 2019 04:50 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2019 06:10 |
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I have to give credit where it's due: "just mindwipe him" is a perfectly valid solution to the problem of an evil immortal ultra-wizard that would've saved everyone a lot of bother if they had thought to do it in the books. Magic Hitler isn't much of a problem anymore if he can't even remember how to tie his shoes, never mind why exactly he is supposed to hate Jews that much.
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# ? Jun 6, 2019 08:55 |
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I mean, if you're going to do such a radical personality reconstruction that he's not even magic Hitler anymore, than you're basically executing him anyway, just in a more horrifying way. I'm pretty sure you can't even do that in HP, but what do I know. I haven't read nearly as much fanfic as Yud.
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 14:15 |
Xander77 posted:I mean, if you're going to do such a radical personality reconstruction that he's not even magic Hitler anymore, than you're basically executing him anyway, just in a more horrifying way. lockhart did it to himself, but he was literally a master of memory modification even if he sucked real bad at everything else
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 14:22 |
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Xander77 posted:I mean, if you're going to do such a radical personality reconstruction that he's not even magic Hitler anymore, than you're basically executing him anyway, just in a more horrifying way. Isn't part of Yud's beliefs that absolutely anything is better than non-existence?
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 14:23 |
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Jazerus posted:lockhart did it to himself, but he was literally a master of memory modification even if he sucked real bad at everything else
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 14:32 |
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Xander77 posted:I mean, if you're going to do such a radical personality reconstruction that he's not even magic Hitler anymore, than you're basically executing him anyway, just in a more horrifying way. Jazerus posted:lockhart did it to himself, but he was literally a master of memory modification even if he sucked real bad at everything else There are worse things than getting to start your eternal life over without the baggage of remembering being a murderous psychopath. They could've chained him to a rock and made an eagle eat his liver instead. YaketySass posted:Isn't part of Yud's beliefs that absolutely anything is better than non-existence?
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 14:33 |
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Also memory spells in harry potter just suppress memories instead of erasing them, so torturing a guy can restore them (which voldy does to some guys)
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 14:34 |
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I think Lockhart establishes that they can also cause enough brain damage for memories to be destroyed permanently when misused, it's just not the intended design. They never manage to fix him, so there's at least no easy way out of that.
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 14:36 |
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Lockhart became a helpless amnesiac they had to lock up in the wizard hospital and he was still there a couple of books later, presumably not loving someone up that badly takes skill and deliberation.
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 14:38 |
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Didn't Neville's parents also get badly hosed up by Obliviate (among other things)?
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 14:43 |
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Tunicate posted:Also memory spells in harry potter just suppress memories instead of erasing them, so torturing a guy can restore them (which voldy does to some guys) Doctor Spaceman fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Jun 7, 2019 |
# ? Jun 7, 2019 14:45 |
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No, it was the torture spell alone in their case.quote:The memory charm used on that woman was so strong that it screwed up her ability to recall other things and I think changing her personality a bit?
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 14:45 |
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I suppose crucio-ing him until he's a vegetable would technically be a valid option if you can't find all the horcruxes, but I doubt any of the protagonists would ever consider it.
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 15:45 |
yud subscribes fully to the worst fan theories about how magic works "literally anything works if you just visualize it enough and also are harry potter" is one of the most common fanfiction crutches
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 16:11 |
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Jazerus posted:yud subscribes fully to the worst fan theories about how magic works The weird thing is that his big "partial transfiguration" gimmick isn't anything special in canon, or at least seems very similar to things that aren't special.
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 16:13 |
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It's not that strange - the guy's entire familiarity with Harry Potter self-admittedly comes from fanfiction. He didn't even read the final four books until he was like three quarters through with writing this tripe. I'm also pretty sure it isn't special, it's just, well, how often do you need to turn half of a brick into a rat?
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 16:18 |
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Cardiovorax posted:I'm also pretty sure it isn't special, it's just, well, how often do you need to turn half of a brick into a rat? Hell, it happened in the fourth goddamned book! Krum partially transfigured himself into a shark during the Triwizard lake task.
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 16:57 |
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Most of the actual plot devices in that story like the Interdict of Merlin, the inability to lie in Parseltongue or transfiguration being so absurdly dangerous are Yudkowsky's invention. Which makes you question why he didn't just write the story in an original setting in the first place, before you remember he's a shameless grifter who was deliberately courting the audience of that particular fandom.
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 17:18 |
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In all fairness, he does make a difference between "part of an object" and "an object partways," so that particular example isn't his fault, even if he had known about it. It's different concepts.
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 17:20 |
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One thing that annoys me about HPMoR is that Harriezer's superpowers are basically granted for having read the right popsci/scifi rather than any particular knowledge. He can do partial transfiguration because he read about quantum physics, and he can get it to work even though he couldn't actually solve any quantum physics equations, he just has to know that matter is quantum, man. And he can defeat the dementors not because he can defeat death, or because he has any idea of how he might defeat death, but because he'd like to and he read some scifi where it happened.
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# ? Jun 7, 2019 20:13 |
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It's not even that. He can do it because he just has a magical, author-granted knowledge of a particular pseudo-scientific crank theory invented by Eliezer Yudkowsky himself. Everytime he mentions "timeless physics?" Those do not actually exist. Like, at all. The arrow of time is intrinsic to modern conceptions of physics. There are individual physical laws that are time-symmetric, but otherwise, this makes about as much sense as saying "directionless gravity." He invented those pretty much for the sole purpose of justifying super-duper-mega-ultra-AIs who can predict each other so awesome super-duper-well that they effectively communicate backwards in time, which he then calls "timeless decision theory," presumably because it sounds cooler. Pointing out, again, that Yudkowsky did not even finish high-school, never mind have any kind of degree in physics or any kind of STEM field... or, in fact, even any kind of higher education at all. Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jun 7, 2019 |
# ? Jun 7, 2019 20:34 |
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Wouldn’t the entire universe exist in some funky clusterfuck of superpositions if time did not exist?
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# ? Jun 8, 2019 00:54 |
Pvt.Scott posted:Wouldn’t the entire universe exist in some funky clusterfuck of superpositions if time did not exist? yes, either that or it requires a single rigid timeline, the "all time travel already happened" type of model. but that's just the many worlds vs single world argument, nothing new. "timeless physics" isn't actually total gibberish but it's also not groundbreaking in any way. it's an extraordinarily complicated way to explain a method to visualize space-time as opposed to space alone - that is, that every combination of spatial location and position in time is a unique position in space-time such that you're not really in the same "place" from moment to moment, if you were to view 4d space-time from the outside. this idea predates yud's birth significantly
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# ? Jun 8, 2019 03:29 |
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It also makes cats look a bit like white, fuzzy carrots. "An extraordinarily complicated and impractical way to do something very simple" seems to describe most of his ideas, really. Also, I think at large enough scale that way of modelling breaks down entirely because of relativistic frames of reference, but that's a bit outside my field.
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# ? Jun 8, 2019 07:22 |
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Cardiovorax posted:"An extraordinarily complicated and impractical way to do something very simple" seems to describe most of his ideas, really.
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# ? Jun 9, 2019 12:02 |
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Chapter 116: Aftermath, Something to Protect, Pt 0 Harry, having travelled back in time, returns to the Quidditch game. Eliezer Yudkowsky posted:Harry Potter stood up, hands still on his forehead, and dropped his hands to reveal that his famous lightning-bolt scar was now blazing red and inflamed. It was bleeding, with the blood dripping down Potter's nose. Harry also tells them that Dumbeldore is dead (or whatever it was that happened to him) so McGonagall is about to go to the graveyard but Flitwick stops her because of some reason he won't say but she clearly understands. So he goes instead. And then they finish the Quidditch game.
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# ? Jun 17, 2019 13:24 |
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# ? Jun 7, 2024 08:29 |
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Cardiovorax posted:There are worse things than getting to start your eternal life over without the baggage of remembering being a murderous psychopath. They could've chained him to a rock and made an eagle eat his liver instead. Or given Harriezzer's obsessed with PopSci, just huck him off-planet and forget he ever existed. It's a big universe, after all. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 11:43 on Jun 19, 2019 |
# ? Jun 19, 2019 11:40 |