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Nessus posted:Wait, Voldemort's making the little poo poo swear not to destroy the world? Is this because Voldemort (probably accurately) perceives that Harry's crackpot schemes backed by magic could actually destroy the planet? Yes. The whole reason Voldemort is trying to kill Harry is to stop him from loving up and destroying the world.
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Mar 1, 2015 11:08
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Nessus posted:Is this on general principles or is Harry planning to pull some kind of scheme that Voldemort is specifically addressing? There was a prophecy that said he would.
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Mar 1, 2015 11:11
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JosephWongKS posted:Again, seems like the author is speaking of himself in this case. Has he claimed to be a child prodigy and/or a genius in his other writings? Yes. I can't find it now, but he claims the only reason he hasn't achieved great things is that he's too lazy, and getting himself off his rear end is a superpower he can only use once before it destroys him.
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Mar 2, 2015 20:49
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A couple of years ago, Givewell wasn't impressed at the capability of MIRI (then SI):quote:I believe that the approach SI advocates and aims to prepare for is far more dangerous than the standard approach, so if SI's work on Friendliness theory affects the risk of human extinction one way or the other, it will increase the risk of human extinction. Fortunately I believe SI's work is far more likely to have no effect one way or the other
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Aug 10, 2015 22:23
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It comes up now and again in his other writing. Eliezer really loves the idea that science should be a super-secret mystery cult. Apparently it would make everyone respect it much more. (And it wouldn't slow down progress, because apparently a Rationalist Bayes-fu Master could invent relativity in a couple of weeks)
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Sep 1, 2015 22:13
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Zonekeeper posted:Well it's a good thing that there aren't digital records of every single little detail of my life. Even if the computer knows about the major events in my life there are still things it has no records of and therefore it can't make a perfect simulation. A sufficiently intelligent AI could discover new laws of physics that let it make a time-viewer to see the details of your life. It might sound dumb to you, but it was naysayers like you who told the Wright brothers they could never fly.
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Sep 7, 2015 21:04
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Zonekeeper posted:Wouldn't that be subject to the observer effect? Observing something alters the phenomenon being observed in some way, so the best way to ensure the AI gets developed as quickly as possible changes from "Extort people in the past into creating me by threatening copies of them with eternal torture" to "selectively use the time-viewer to influence the timeline so I get created as soon as possible". Cyber-wizards in the future can use their superior intellect to invent bullshit torture scenarios that get around any objection.
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Sep 7, 2015 23:07
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NihilCredo posted:The house system is based on the real-life house system in British public schools, right? Does anybody know how large those tend to be, and if kids from different houses attend class together? I went to a British private school (not a public school or a state school, thanks confusing and archaic education system  ) and we had four houses (200ish people in each), but they didn't really matter for much. Classes were all mixed and it was really just about scoring points on sports day (we didn't get points taken off for bad behaviour or added for defeating dark wizards).
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Sep 29, 2015 21:33
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Palisader posted:I know this is from several pages back, but during that whole transmogrification lesson, did Harry never think to question how his motheraunt was permanently transformed into a hot woman? Does that ever come up again? I don't think specifically his aunt, but it's been said already that there are basically two different types of transfiguration: the useful kind, and the insanely dangerous rules-lawyer kind that Eliezer added to contrive the plot with.
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Oct 15, 2015 19:35
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quote:"You will explain to me why you allowed this man to hurt the children placed in your care, and if your explanation is not sufficient then I will begin my newspaper campaign with you as the target." Somehow, I can't imagine that "11 year old has tantrum after a teacher asks him some questions he can't answer" is going to be the explosive headline that takes down the establishment.
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Jun 15, 2016 18:27
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Of course, Harry's super transfiguration power works fine with his pop-sci understanding of physics. No need to actually put in the effort learning how to solve the equations (or even to know what the equations are). It's not an isolated incident - later on in the fic he gets another superpower because magic rewards ~rationality~ without requiring him to actually know how to do anything. I think maybe the author has too high an opinion of what rationality can let people do....
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Jan 12, 2017 00:47
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So how come Harry fantasising about immortality is enough to explode the dementor, but Voldemort actually taking some practical steps in that direction isn't? I guess it's a fundamental law of the hpmor setting that reading the right science fiction books gives you superpowers. The same kind of thing happened earlier, when he could do partial transfiguration because the universe decided to reward him for having a popular-science level understanding of quantum mechanics.
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Jun 2, 2017 06:47
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kvx687 posted:MoR. Snape being able to cast a Patronus is a major plot point in Deathly Hallows, though it isn't revealed until after the fact. IIRC it wasn't notable that he could, the plot point was the specific form it took.
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Jun 9, 2017 08:03
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If I'd been designing the logic puzzle trial, everything would be the same except all the potions would be poison and you'd have to brew the real potion in advance and bring it in
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Jul 5, 2017 16:54
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Xander77 posted:Good thing Yud never read the books, or (one of the) basic premise behind the fic would be gone by the time he got to 4. HPMOR's treatment of the afterlife seems weird and inconsistent. Harry's so completely sure the afterlife doesn't exist even though three months ago he was completely sure magic didn't exist, and even though there are ghosts and apparently a portal to the afterlife in a government basement. Then Herminone dies and it's suddenly totally reasonable to try to bring the dead back to life because he really wants to.
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Aug 5, 2018 22:57
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The rationality community have gradually decided that the most effective use of charity money is to give it to themselves.
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Apr 8, 2019 18:49
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Looks like it's not as bad as I thought though - GiveWell, despite being run by that sort of person, still as far as I can tell has all their recommendations be basically "medical stuff for developing countries", so they've not been completely infected.
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Apr 8, 2019 19:07
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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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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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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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Tiggum posted:That seems like a ludicrously difficult and inconvenient way to acquire resources if you've already solved the problem of travelling to (or bringing things back from) other star systems. There's planets and asteroids and poo poo that are all made of "valuable raw materials". It's a rationalist thing. The idea is that any energy not used to run computer simulations of happy people in the most efficient way is s tragic waste.
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Aug 18, 2019 06:51
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Tunicate posted:is that the one where the protagonist defeats the villain by carving 'tits' into their head with knives, or was that different wildbow story? The villain's head or the protagonist's head?
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Aug 20, 2019 07:46
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Cardiovorax posted:This kind of criticism always makes me think of people who complain that Pokedex entries don't make sense. It seems like a lot of adult fans of the books kind of seem to forget that this is a series of books written for children ages ten and up, not grown men who want "depth" and "complexity" in their fairy tale story. Harry Potter magic runs on whatever seemed cool or wondrous at the time because that's what works for children. You can't rewrite the story to make sense under a "hard" Sanderson-style magic system and have it still work, because it wasn't supposed to be that kind of story. It kind of turns into that kind of story as the books go on, mostly to its detriment. Voldemort fails to kill Harry as a baby in the first book because Harry is protected by his mother's love. Voldemort fails to kill Harry in the last book because Voldemort thinks he became master of the Elder Wand by defeating Dumbledore, but he doesn't realise that technically it was Malfoy who defeated Dumbledore and Harry defeated Malfoy.
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Jul 6, 2020 12:23
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