That’s an anti-example. He had a theory for how time turners could be used in a clever way to perform computation. His first experiment actually confirmed the consistent-timeline theory of time turners, but revealed the problem domain to be much larger than he had considered. Rather than construct a more rigorous and tightly controlled experiment to get at the underlying nature of timeline selection, he got spooked and walked away. It became a lesson in anti-empiricism: some things you just don’t investigate.
Harry get’s things right through being smart.
That’s exactly the problem. Rationalists get things right by relying on reality being consistent, not any particular smartness. You could be a total numbnut but still be good at checking other people’s theories against reality and do better than the smartest guy in the world who thinks his ideas are too clever to be wrong.
So Harry got things right by relying on reality being consistent, until the very end, when reality turned out to be even more consistent than he could have thought. I think it is the most valuable lesson from HPMoR.
Except that it is a piece of fiction. Harry got things right because the author wrote it that way. In reality Harry acting the way Harry did would have been more likely to settle on a clever-sounding theory which he never tested until it was too late and which turned out to be hopelessly wrong and got him killed. But that’s not how Yudkowsky chose to write the story.
Without rereading I can recall experiment with time tuners where Harry finds out “Don’t mess with time”.
But what might be missing is a detailed exploration of “learning from mistakes”. Harry get’s things right through being smart.
That’s an anti-example. He had a theory for how time turners could be used in a clever way to perform computation. His first experiment actually confirmed the consistent-timeline theory of time turners, but revealed the problem domain to be much larger than he had considered. Rather than construct a more rigorous and tightly controlled experiment to get at the underlying nature of timeline selection, he got spooked and walked away. It became a lesson in anti-empiricism: some things you just don’t investigate.
That’s exactly the problem. Rationalists get things right by relying on reality being consistent, not any particular smartness. You could be a total numbnut but still be good at checking other people’s theories against reality and do better than the smartest guy in the world who thinks his ideas are too clever to be wrong.
So Harry got things right by relying on reality being consistent, until the very end, when reality turned out to be even more consistent than he could have thought. I think it is the most valuable lesson from HPMoR.
Except that it is a piece of fiction. Harry got things right because the author wrote it that way. In reality Harry acting the way Harry did would have been more likely to settle on a clever-sounding theory which he never tested until it was too late and which turned out to be hopelessly wrong and got him killed. But that’s not how Yudkowsky chose to write the story.
I agree. Still, even if Harry died, my point would still stand.