Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

[Jasper]

Good stuff.  A plan has to have certain assumptions about a situation.  When things change, check whether it'd be appropriate to make entirely new plans based on new situations.

[Cain]

I also see it as a way to warn against the Sunken Costs bias.  The belief that you can hit a reset button and go back and erase your mistakes is a very seductive one when you're up to your neck in shit, and may cause you to persist in your current course instead of cutting your losses once the inevitability of your desired outcome is apparent.

[Jasper]

Yes.  Very yes.

I listened to a recorded lecture recently (few weeks ago) about the tragedy on Mt. Everest in 1996 as an aesop about the sunk cost effect.  I have a big sign that I leave by my door.  It says "IS IT TWO O'CLOCK YET?" in reference to the two o'clock turnaround rule Everest climbers (ideally) follow.

[Cain]

Hmm, I am not aware of this rule.

Also, been thinking about Quirrell's plan.  There seems to be a couple of problems with it.

Firstly, the Avada Kedava survival part.  Doesn't that just strike you as the perfect way to kill Harry off?  Fake!Voldemort kills Harry, Real!Voldemort kills the fake, and then goes on to implement the plan with him in Harry's place, becoming the ruler of magical Britain.

Secondly, isn't the best candidate for someone being the Dark Lord returned at the moment actually Harry?  Think about it.  He's a Parselmouth, most of the school think he's gone Dark, "Slytherin!  Only joking!" and he told Bellatrix he was Voldemort.  I can see Quirrell conspiring to somehow put Harry in a position where that is exactly what will occur to most spectators and then someone, whether an Auror, a patsy or Quirrell himself, then kills him.

[LMNO]

Harry's also making a bad assumption, one that only the readers of the canon know: That Voldemort actually "returned" years ago, in QQ's body (although, with QQ in hospital without comment, Vold probably isn't physically manifested as he was in the book).


That is to say, Harry is taking as a given that Vold hasn't returned yet, even though he has.  Granted, from his stance it would be like proving a negative, but his Slytherin side might have to remind him to check all his fundamental points of knowledge.

[Cain]

He isn't physically manifested.  Elizier made a point of mentioning that Quirrell wasn't wearing a turban, when fanart of him wearing one was presented (it was also mentioned in the text, but possibly as a later edit).

I also think Harry is aware that there is something going on with Quirrell and it is Voldemort related (his refusal to touch him when he was knocked out, for example), but because he saw him as a kind of mentor he was trying to avoid thinking about it too much.  If his hypothesis is that everything is alright with Quirrell then he is avoiding the true weak points of his own argument by not even considering possible alternative theories for why Quirrell's presence may have that affect on him.

[LMNO]

That's been bugging me.  Harry's genre savvy -- the entire story is genre savvy (hence the riff that Dumbledore lives in a Hero narrative), but when he encounters that feeling of dread and doom (that should, let's face it, come with it's own spooky incidental music) his only response is "Huh.  Weird."

[Jasper]

But then, for all he knows it's some kind of magical ailment.  He has seen other kids ignore it (before class), and the normative influence (normality is largely learned by example) can be very influential.  He's not familiar with everything about magic, but he understands that when a wizard declines to explain something they probably have your best interest in mind. 

[Cain]

True.  But his very refusal to investigate it, when compared to, for example, his and Draco's experiments into magical power and blood purity (bringing Draco to the side of light aside) does seem rather telling.

Also, another thought:  Quirrell lets the plan go off without a hitch, and uses the threat of exposing Harry's involvement in the Azkaban breakout as blackmail,allowing him to rule magical Britain by proxy.  Rather shabby and lacking in ambition for a Dark Lord, but even Hitler was a pathetic snitch at one point in his career.

[Remington]

[Jasper]

I think it would be cleverer of QQ to let Harry betray the truth to Bellatrix and get killed by her once he regains his body, and proves his identity to her.

That would maybe work, but it just isn't devious enough to be a likely outcome. 

[Cain]

I actually think the outcome isn't going to be as devious as most people suspect.  However, I do think the outcome will have to do with Voldemort somehow violating Malfoy's Rule of Clever Plots (relying on more than three things to go in your favour means your plan is doomed).  How that happens, of course, will likely be the unintended result of a Thirty Xanatos Pileup between the Order of the Phoenix, Harry, the Ministry and Malfoy and the former Death Eaters (Lucuis Malfoy in particular, IMO, has a lot to fear from Voldemort, as he is now powerful and has the Daily Prophet and Minister Fudge in his pocket.  Voldemort will upset that power structure and assert control over Malfoy, not a desirable outcome for a man who has lived the last decade being answerable to no-one).

I suspect something will come out of that arrangement which will mean Voldemort is in a position where he has no choice but to rely on a Cunning Plot.

And we should remember he still has to deliver on his Cunning Plot for Ravenclaw and Slytherin for the House Cup. 

We know he definitely doesn't expect to last to the end of year at Hogwarts, one way or another, which suggests, if he intends to keep that promise, he may quite easily end up violating the rule.

[Jasper]

Maybe you're right.  The guidelines EY set out pretty much say that Harry wins by having ideas that make better sense, so it would probably be along those lines. 

Oh. Idea.  Both houses could win the cup if the school itself split up.  Uh oh.

[Cain]

Uh oh indeed.

Also, what is up with the story of how Harry got his scar?  Twice now we've had it suggested something is not right with that, but nothing has yet come of it.  Equally, nothing has yet come of Harry attempting to investigate the death of Narcissa Malfoy, allegedly at the hands of Dumbledore.

And those are only two of the hanging plot points I can think of off the top of my head.  I have a whole textfile of them somewhere...

[LMNO]

Incidentally (read as: I couldn't find the thread where we were discussing it), Dad just got back to me re: The accuracy of the LessWrong Quantum sequence, and the Macroscopic Decoherence (Many Worlds) veiwpoint.

In short, the ideas are right, and explained well.  But as expected, he just can't get on board the Many Worlds train.  As he puts it, "He's 'right' about Many Worlds in that strictly speaking it's a logical solution of a problem built into quantum theory.  But I just don't believe it.  I'd rather live with a reality that exists in an infinite dimensional space (state vector in Hilbert space) than a reality that includes an uncountable infinity of parallel universes, none of which I will ever be able to get any information about."

So, there you have it.  Anyway, back to HP&MR.