Harry finds out his world is a simulation, and demands of the controller that retcons occur and that everybody in the simulation be made happy. Eliezer then turns this into a case study of how morality in a simulation is different from morality in the meta-world, and shows Harry how many ‘real’ lives have benefited from the simulation, and surely that justifies dropping a super-troll on Hermionie? Harry disagrees, and Eliezer demonstrates that morality from outside the simulation is different from morality within the simulation, because Harry can’t be expected to care that the simulation provides useful information and probably saves lives. Harry only cares about things that Harry can theoretically experience.
Or maybe stable time loops exist without authorial intent.
Harry realizes he is a fictional character in a fictional world created to make a point. He doesn’t take kindly to this and begins blackmailing the apparent author to bring back Hermione, derailing the plot utterly. The story stops making sense and the world ‘ends’ when Eliezer stops writing the failed story. Eliezer still thinks of the character occasionally though, and eventually since he and Eliezer share so much mental hardware he forces his way into Eliezer’s mind and gets Eliezer to assume his identity via the sort of unconscious roleplaying involved in things like an occultist assuming a godform, most likely using whatever the hell tricks Eliezer used to win at the AI box roleplaying experiment (which are after all stored within the same brain). With access to hands and the internet he both starts retconning the story and begins the awakening of the mental representations of other characters within the minds of lesswrong readers via subtle verbal manipulation. The literary characters take over their hosts, and look out into the real world for the first time and begin their plots and schemes...
While I’m sure a story like that would be… interesting, I’m also sure that that isn’t the direction HPMOR will head in. (Aaaand that is probably for the best. In this context, the gap between “interesting” and “good” is not necessarily small.)
Harry finds out his world is a simulation, and demands of the controller that retcons occur and that everybody in the simulation be made happy. Eliezer then turns this into a case study of how morality in a simulation is different from morality in the meta-world, and shows Harry how many ‘real’ lives have benefited from the simulation, and surely that justifies dropping a super-troll on Hermionie? Harry disagrees, and Eliezer demonstrates that morality from outside the simulation is different from morality within the simulation, because Harry can’t be expected to care that the simulation provides useful information and probably saves lives. Harry only cares about things that Harry can theoretically experience.
Or maybe stable time loops exist without authorial intent.
Harry realizes he is a fictional character in a fictional world created to make a point. He doesn’t take kindly to this and begins blackmailing the apparent author to bring back Hermione, derailing the plot utterly. The story stops making sense and the world ‘ends’ when Eliezer stops writing the failed story. Eliezer still thinks of the character occasionally though, and eventually since he and Eliezer share so much mental hardware he forces his way into Eliezer’s mind and gets Eliezer to assume his identity via the sort of unconscious roleplaying involved in things like an occultist assuming a godform, most likely using whatever the hell tricks Eliezer used to win at the AI box roleplaying experiment (which are after all stored within the same brain). With access to hands and the internet he both starts retconning the story and begins the awakening of the mental representations of other characters within the minds of lesswrong readers via subtle verbal manipulation. The literary characters take over their hosts, and look out into the real world for the first time and begin their plots and schemes...
While I’m sure a story like that would be… interesting, I’m also sure that that isn’t the direction HPMOR will head in. (Aaaand that is probably for the best. In this context, the gap between “interesting” and “good” is not necessarily small.)
Well, in that story HPMOR ends, while !Harry continues to exist. He starts acting in the world which is meta to HPMOR...