Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

[Cain]

I actually think Hat and Cloak may be Snape.  Snape has more to fear from QQ than anyone else, if he does indeed suspect he is Voldemort (in the canon, he did not, although he did not trust QQ and thwarted at least one of his attempts to kill Harry).  By embroiling Voldemort and Dumbledore in a conflict, he may get Dumbledore to stop being Mr Crazy Plotting Guy and just kill the bastard, which he is very much capable of (recall, Dumbledore is currently in possession of the Elder Wand, making him virtually invincible in magical combat, and Snape is either aware of this, or smart enough to figure it out himself).

[Kai]

And then Harry Potter was a transhumanist.


Well, I mean it makes sense. Harry is Yudowski's Mary Sue in this story.

[Requia ☣]

I wish I knew to what extent Yudowski is intentionally putting flaws in Harry's reasoning and to what extent he's just using flawed arguments.

[Kai]

I wish I knew to what extent Yudowski is intentionally putting flaws in Harry's reasoning and to what extent he's just using flawed arguments.

Read the less wrong sequences.

[Cain]

He has pointed out in various chapter notes that Harry is only 11 years old, and has a vastly inflated opinion of himself, and that equally villainous characters will also give dangerously misleading or double-edged advice at times.

More thoughts on Hat and Cloak:  Could in fact be QQ...if we don't take him at his word.  For all we know, Harry was the target of HaC's disinformation, and he lied to Blase so, if his Obliviation on him was somehow undone (I'm not sure it can be, but it is theoretically possible, I assume) then people would assume it was not QQ in the first place, and the actual point of that whole charade was to plant seeds of doubt in Harry's mind about Dumbledore's methods and intentions.

The only problems with this are it seems far too stupid and crude for a plot by QQ, and it also didnt work on Harry anyway.

[Juana]

He has pointed out in various chapter notes that Harry is only 11 years old, and has a vastly inflated opinion of himself, and that equally villainous characters will also give dangerously misleading or double-edged advice at times.

More thoughts on Hat and Cloak:  Could in fact be QQ...if we don't take him at his word.  For all we know, Harry was the target of HaC's disinformation, and he lied to Blase so, if his Obliviation on him was somehow undone (I'm not sure it can be, but it is theoretically possible, I assume) then people would assume it was not QQ in the first place, and the actual point of that whole charade was to plant seeds of doubt in Harry's mind about Dumbledore's methods and intentions.

The only problems with this are it seems far too stupid and crude for a plot by QQ, and it also didnt work on Harry anyway.

It can be and was a plot point in Goblet of Fire. Bertha Jorkins was Oblivated to the fact that Barty Crouch Jr. wasn't in Azkaban and Voldemort broke the memory charm when he found her in Albania. Quirellmort certainly knows that.

[Requia ☣]

He has pointed out in various chapter notes that Harry is only 11 years old, and has a vastly inflated opinion of himself, and that equally villainous characters will also give dangerously misleading or double-edged advice at times.

Yes, I know, the frustrating part is not being sure which is which.  I kinda want to tear into him for a couple things Harry said to Dumbledore in the latest updates, but for all I know the author knows that those arguments were flawed.

[Cain]

It can be and was a plot point in Goblet of Fire. Bertha Jorkins was Oblivated to the fact that Barty Crouch Jr. wasn't in Azkaban and Voldemort broke the memory charm when he found her in Albania. Quirellmort certainly knows that.

So it was.  It's been such a long time since I read the books....it seemed plausible that it could be broken, but I couldn't remember if it had been mentioned or not.  Thanks.

He has pointed out in various chapter notes that Harry is only 11 years old, and has a vastly inflated opinion of himself, and that equally villainous characters will also give dangerously misleading or double-edged advice at times.

Yes, I know, the frustrating part is not being sure which is which.  I kinda want to tear into him for a couple things Harry said to Dumbledore in the latest updates, but for all I know the author knows that those arguments were flawed.

Ah, OK.  Well I know Yudowsky personally bears something of a torch for extended life/immortality research, so he could be letting his own beliefs carry some of the argument here.

[Jasper]

Still, the whole thing about either believing in immortality or immediate death is a bit of an absurdity.  It is possible to have slightly more nuanced beliefs without being logically inadequate.

[Kai]

Still, the whole thing about either believing in immortality or immediate death is a bit of an absurdity.  It is possible to have slightly more nuanced beliefs without being logically inadequate.

As Cain said, this is his soapbox.

[Jasper]

Doesn't detract from the enjoyability, I hope.  If I was writing a hugely popular fanfic, I might do the same thing.

[Kai]

Doesn't detract from the enjoyability, I hope.  If I was writing a hugely popular fanfic, I might do the same thing.

Yeah, I really really don't want this to turn into an immortality propaganda piece. Not that immortality isn't interesting, rather that, in literature, it's already been done.

[Jasper]

...To death?

[Cain]

His notes suggest he knows Harry is overstating his case:

It's an interesting question as to whether Harry is behaving as a Flat Earth Atheist with respect to his skepticism about an afterlife. To be rational, you want to have the sort of mind that, if it finds itself in a world with no afterlife, doesn't believe in an afterlife, and if it finds itself in a world with an afterlife, does believe in an afterlife. J. K. Rowling clearly believed that the original Potterverse had an afterlife, and wrote it accordingly, so if you ended up there and you still didn't believe in an afterlife, one would think this was a bad sign for your rationality.

On the other hand, J. K. Rowling probably wrote the Potterverse using standard patterns she'd picked up about afterlife beliefs - what a LessWrong.com reader would call "cached thoughts". And of course these cached thoughts about 'what it means for there to be an afterlife' are all drawn from people in this universe claiming that this universe has an afterlife. Rowling is used to the idea that people who believe in an afterlife still cry at funerals, i.e., that people who profess to believe in an afterlife don't anticipate-as-if their dead friends just took a one-way trip to Australia. And Rowling didn't change that when she put her characters into a world with a Resurrection Stone. So instead of behaving like the people in Robert Sheckley's "Immortality Inc.", to whom immortality is simply a fact, the people in Rowling's Potterverse still cry at funerals, and make desperate sacrifices to protect the lives of their friends, and are devastated at their deaths; and Voldemort is still frantic for immortality at any cost, even the cost of fracturing his immortal soul so that it gets stuck in Limbo forever, which doesn't seem like a wisely calculated cost-benefit tradeoff.

But thankfully, despite her own belief that the Potterverse had an afterlife, Rowling nonetheless managed not to depict anything in her stories that would provide strong evidence of an afterlife - something you would only see in a world with an afterlife, that you wouldn't see in any other probable world. At least it looks that way as far as I can tell.

So people can doubt it without being stupid.

And that's all the story needs.

[BabylonHoruv]

His notes suggest he knows Harry is overstating his case:

It's an interesting question as to whether Harry is behaving as a Flat Earth Atheist with respect to his skepticism about an afterlife. To be rational, you want to have the sort of mind that, if it finds itself in a world with no afterlife, doesn't believe in an afterlife, and if it finds itself in a world with an afterlife, does believe in an afterlife. J. K. Rowling clearly believed that the original Potterverse had an afterlife, and wrote it accordingly, so if you ended up there and you still didn't believe in an afterlife, one would think this was a bad sign for your rationality.

On the other hand, J. K. Rowling probably wrote the Potterverse using standard patterns she'd picked up about afterlife beliefs - what a LessWrong.com reader would call "cached thoughts". And of course these cached thoughts about 'what it means for there to be an afterlife' are all drawn from people in this universe claiming that this universe has an afterlife. Rowling is used to the idea that people who believe in an afterlife still cry at funerals, i.e., that people who profess to believe in an afterlife don't anticipate-as-if their dead friends just took a one-way trip to Australia. And Rowling didn't change that when she put her characters into a world with a Resurrection Stone. So instead of behaving like the people in Robert Sheckley's "Immortality Inc.", to whom immortality is simply a fact, the people in Rowling's Potterverse still cry at funerals, and make desperate sacrifices to protect the lives of their friends, and are devastated at their deaths; and Voldemort is still frantic for immortality at any cost, even the cost of fracturing his immortal soul so that it gets stuck in Limbo forever, which doesn't seem like a wisely calculated cost-benefit tradeoff.

But thankfully, despite her own belief that the Potterverse had an afterlife, Rowling nonetheless managed not to depict anything in her stories that would provide strong evidence of an afterlife - something you would only see in a world with an afterlife, that you wouldn't see in any other probable world. At least it looks that way as far as I can tell.

So people can doubt it without being stupid.

And that's all the story needs.

I think the "one way trip to Australia" metaphor is a good one for afterlives, and one that people that don't believe in them don't really get.  And that's without factoring in the possibility of different afterlives for different people.  If someone I loved took a one way trip to somewhere far away and I knew I would not see them again for another 50 years (giving myself a slightly generous lifespan here, but whatever)  I'd definitely cry about it.  I'd make personal sacrifices to keep from them being forced to make that trip. 

Voldemort's motivation doesn't really make sense with an assumed afterlife, but I think that mourning the dead does.  We aren't sad for them, we are sad for us.