Don’t be uncharitable. He’s providing clues (initials and such) that are designed to show he has a specific theory figured out, so we can see afterwards if he was right or wrong, but without spoiling the mystery for the rest of us. (And despite some people who occasionally claim that spoiling a mystery doesn’t “spoil” anyone’s pleasure, some of us strongly prefer not to be spoiled nonetheless)
His post therefore had positive utility for me, as he intrigued me in a fun way, so I upvoted his comment.
On my next reread (a few days hence I guess) I’ll try to also figure out what he figured out. If I figure it out, I’ll probably provide a few password-cyphered sentences to show I’ve also figured it out, and provide the key only after it’s confirmed or not.
His post therefore had positive utility for me, as he intrigued me in a fun way, so I upvoted his comment
This has been oscillating between −1 and −3 for a while now. That is, while some people seem to find it intriguing, some others (and these are in a majority by some small margin) find it nothing but annoying. (At least, that was my reason for downvoting… I’m generalising from one example here.)
And I find it annoying because it’s a long-winded chronology of his epiphanies. It’s like a chronology of a war where you don’t know who’s fighting who over what or even which century the war is taking place: totally pointless.
All the positive utility in this post could be generated by saying “Hey, I thought of this awesome theory (codename: NBT) that explains everything in MoR. Could just be positive bias, but I doubt it. Explained an observation in SA that I considered really unlikely. But it’s not just SA, it explains everything in every other arc too!!” That’s it, the end.
But if that’s what he wanted to say, he could have said it in the Discussion Thread. No, that was just something he was trying to get out of his system. The point he was trying to make was “HPMoR is an awesome fic and you guys have no business criticising its surface deficiencies.”
Which he could have made without the long digression into NBT.
And then there’s the whole implicit “How dare you enjoy this fic in a way other than my way of enjoying it?!” business.
(major likes solving puzzles? Good for him. Some of us like thinking about the worldbuilding/ witnessing the awesome/ thinking about the character dynamics. It’s not sacrilege to say “meh” to the various hints implanted in the story if you’re more interested in looking for the tentacle rape.)
(And despite some people who occasionally claim that spoiling a mystery doesn’t “spoil” anyone’s pleasure, some of us strongly prefer not to be spoiled nonetheless)
Fair enough, but there’s this awesome tech called rot13 which allows you to have your cake and eat it too. I hope you realise that there do exist some people who’d rather know the broad strokes of the plot in advance.
But if you’d rather not share, that’s OK too. Just don’t post a 400-word essay on finding out about it. Not when a 50-word paragraph does the trick.
No, that was just something he was trying to get out of his system.
You got that right. After this thing becomes relevant in the story, there may be complains, and while I’m sure Eliezer will explain it competently, people are prone to throwing accusations of asspull around. So if there is enough detail in a time-logged, non-edited comment, it can be pointed out later. ‘It’s not an asspull, look, this idiot even guessed it. You can read about the stuff he used to do it in the Sequences.’
Now that I no longer feel like I’m doing LW a disservice by sitting on such validation, I can go back to speculating quietly.
As for the rest, I guess you’re right, though I note that’s not why youstarted this thread. Also of note is the fact that this is LessWrong, not some random ff site. Getting things right might be higher priority here, than elsewhere.
tl;dr = I figured out why Dumbledore set fire to a chicken, but I’m not going to tell you.
Don’t be uncharitable. He’s providing clues (initials and such) that are designed to show he has a specific theory figured out, so we can see afterwards if he was right or wrong, but without spoiling the mystery for the rest of us. (And despite some people who occasionally claim that spoiling a mystery doesn’t “spoil” anyone’s pleasure, some of us strongly prefer not to be spoiled nonetheless)
His post therefore had positive utility for me, as he intrigued me in a fun way, so I upvoted his comment.
On my next reread (a few days hence I guess) I’ll try to also figure out what he figured out. If I figure it out, I’ll probably provide a few password-cyphered sentences to show I’ve also figured it out, and provide the key only after it’s confirmed or not.
This has been oscillating between −1 and −3 for a while now. That is, while some people seem to find it intriguing, some others (and these are in a majority by some small margin) find it nothing but annoying. (At least, that was my reason for downvoting… I’m generalising from one example here.)
And I find it annoying because it’s a long-winded chronology of his epiphanies. It’s like a chronology of a war where you don’t know who’s fighting who over what or even which century the war is taking place: totally pointless.
All the positive utility in this post could be generated by saying “Hey, I thought of this awesome theory (codename: NBT) that explains everything in MoR. Could just be positive bias, but I doubt it. Explained an observation in SA that I considered really unlikely. But it’s not just SA, it explains everything in every other arc too!!” That’s it, the end.
But if that’s what he wanted to say, he could have said it in the Discussion Thread. No, that was just something he was trying to get out of his system. The point he was trying to make was “HPMoR is an awesome fic and you guys have no business criticising its surface deficiencies.”
Which he could have made without the long digression into NBT.
And then there’s the whole implicit “How dare you enjoy this fic in a way other than my way of enjoying it?!” business.
(major likes solving puzzles? Good for him. Some of us like thinking about the worldbuilding/ witnessing the awesome/ thinking about the character dynamics. It’s not sacrilege to say “meh” to the various hints implanted in the story if you’re more interested in looking for the tentacle rape.)
Fair enough, but there’s this awesome tech called rot13 which allows you to have your cake and eat it too. I hope you realise that there do exist some people who’d rather know the broad strokes of the plot in advance.
But if you’d rather not share, that’s OK too. Just don’t post a 400-word essay on finding out about it. Not when a 50-word paragraph does the trick.
You got that right. After this thing becomes relevant in the story, there may be complains, and while I’m sure Eliezer will explain it competently, people are prone to throwing accusations of asspull around. So if there is enough detail in a time-logged, non-edited comment, it can be pointed out later. ‘It’s not an asspull, look, this idiot even guessed it. You can read about the stuff he used to do it in the Sequences.’
Now that I no longer feel like I’m doing LW a disservice by sitting on such validation, I can go back to speculating quietly.
As for the rest, I guess you’re right, though I note that’s not why you started this thread. Also of note is the fact that this is LessWrong, not some random ff site. Getting things right might be higher priority here, than elsewhere.
Um.. The initials are not clues, NBT is just how I refered to the theory (Next Big Thing). Sorry about any confusion this might have caused.