There’s nothing about Harry Potter-style time travel that causes sickness or bouts of weakness, even short ones. This is evidence against Quirrel’s central mystery being long-distance time-travel.
Travel often involves danger in Harry Potter; Floo ports can be unpleasant, likewise Port keys, and when apparating, one can ‘splinch’ oneself. Time travel with the heavily restricted Time turners is quite complex and hence possibly dangerous, as MoR has already shown. In the HP time-travel fic Eliezer recommended, each instance of multi-decade time travel damages the protagonist ever more, until during its settings, one more travel back will probably kill him upon arrival.
(And logic? In a fiction universe where we can trust nothing?)
There’s nothing in Harry Potter-style time travel (either canon or MOR!verse) about not touching or interacting with past versions of yourself.
I must have missed this. Where is it written that you can touch your past self, mingle magics with your past self, cast spells in your past self, etc.?
Eliezer has said that Tom Riddle (aka Voldemort aka Professor Quirrel) taught himself occlumency in his third year by getting a time turner and leglimizing himself.
Thankyou! My googling didn’t turn anything up and I’ve reread all of MoR itself in the last couple of days (except the bits I didn’t like) so I was failry sure it wasn’t in the story itself.
I notice that I myself replied to Eliezer in that thread. Over the last five years or so I seem to have lost the ability I once had to remember nearly perfectly every conversation I participated in. Shame. :)
(And logic? In a fiction universe where we can trust nothing?)
This is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. If we’re not supposed to use our logic here, then the whole thing is pointless.
There’s nothing in Harry Potter-style time travel (either canon or MOR!verse) about not touching or interacting with past versions of yourself
I must have missed this. Where is it written that you can touch your past self, mingle magics with your past self, cast spells in your past self, etc.?
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. You have a number of time-travel interactions in both canon and MOR!verse where you could attempt to find any such hint of a prohibition, sense of “Doom”, bouts of sickness is relation to time-travel, etc, etc.
If you can’t find such evidence of a prohibition, or the other phenomena you describe, then that is evidence against there being such a prohibition or such phenomena.
I won’t downvote you, but I was tempted to, for seemingly intentional lack of clarity in your objection. Making us guess at what you mean seems a waste of our collective time.
By the phrase “if we not supposed to use our logic” I meant “if we can’t apply our logic to make testable predictions about plot-points and revelations in subsequent chapters”.
If we’re not supposed to use our logic here, then the whole thing is pointless.
You don’t use logic because you’re “supposed to”.
If we’re going to divert to this tangent then I’ll say that yes, in fact, often people do use logic because they are “supposed to”. You could make the normative claim that you’re not “supposed to” use logic because you’re “supposed to”. But the descriptive one is as false as the normative one is arbitrary.
I don’t think it was. If there is any notion of consequences at all, there are methods to be developed for steering consequences where you want them to go, it’s not a matter of social or genre convention to break this principle.
Yes. I dislike connotations of “supposed to”, since it equivocates between laws of thought and social expectations, but this distinction doesn’t map to the context, because two worlds are involved instead of just one. In context, the intended distinction is between the author following or breaking in-world laws of nature, filtering the evidence essentially.
There’s nothing in Harry Potter-style time travel (either canon or MOR!verse) about not touching or interacting with past versions of yourself.
I must have missed this. Where is it written that you can touch your past self, mingle magics with your past self, cast spells in your past self, etc.?
Privileging the hypothesis—that mingling with your past self is harmless. It’s the rare timetravel fiction (fanfiction or otherwise) where such interactions are harmless; usually, it’s disastrous in some respect. In the absence of an actual example that it is not disastrous, like the Tom Riddle citation, our priors are not 50⁄50 or outright assuming it’s harmless.
Privileging the hypothesis—that mingling with your past self is harmless.
No. Please read the grandparent again. I cannot explain more clearly without explaining basic logic itself. The reply simply does not follow.
The remainder of what you say here could be made as a reply to the great grandparent where it would at least fit (even if I would still disagree based on priors).
ArisKatsaris apparently reads only time travel stories where interfering with the past and especially yourself is all fun and games, and hence, the absence of any statement as to the harm or profit of interfering with yourself confirms his prior of safety. I read mostly stories where interfering with yourself is ridiculously universe-level endangering, and where the silent evidence leaves me at interfering with yourself is dangerous. My question points out this difference—why would I ask for evidence of safety if my default assumption is safety?
And this is why I say good point about Tom Riddle—because there’s an example of interfering with a past self (magically and mentally, no less), with no apparent ill consequences.
ArisKatsaris apparently reads only time travel stories where interfering with the past and especially yourself is all fun and games
I don’t appreciate this attitude.
I’ve read and seen time-travel stories with all sorts of different rules. And I can recognize and distinguish in my mind the rules used in each. In “Time Traveller’s Wife” there’s nothing wrong with touching yourself. In “Gargoyles” there was nothing wrong with touching yourself. In “All you Zombies” there’s nothing wrong with time-travelling to meet your sex-reversed self, having sex and impregnating yourself, and then birthing yourself.
Prisoner of Azkaban future Harry casts a Patronus to save himself. A whole chapter of Methods of Rationality was devoted to Harry pranking himself.
If you can’t tell apart the ruleset used in Harry Potter & Methods of Rationality (or for that matter Harry Potter canon), then that’s your failure of reason, not mine.
I read mostly stories where interfering with yourself is ridiculously universe-level endangering,
And in Methods of Rationality you read a chapter where Harry initially fears that time-travel is ridiculously universe-level endangering, and was assured by McGonnagal that it wasn’t. Why are you even bringing this up then? You know it’s not universe-level endangering in Methods of Rationality.
And yet you seemingly choose to ignore that chapter, in favour of the rulesets in other stories, by other authors, in other fictional universes.
Tell me, which evidence do you think possess higher entaglement with Method of Rationality future plot-points—the time travel stories you’ve read in other fictional universes, or the chapters written by the same author in the same fanfic, ones deliberately designed to establish the ruleset of timetravel?
A whole chapter of Methods of Rationality was devoted to Harry pranking himself.
Where he doesn’t touch himself or use magic on himself (not going to re-read it just to check).
And in Methods of Rationality you read a chapter where Harry initially fears that time-travel is ridiculously universe-level endangering, and was assured by McGonnagal that it wasn’t. Why are you even bringing this up then? You know it’s not universe-level endangering in Methods of Rationality.
I also ‘know’ that you can’t time travel back more than a few hours, and certainly not decades/centuries. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
Where he doesn’t touch himself or use magic on himself (not going to re-read it just to check).
I wonder how many stories have you read where it’s “using magic on yourself” specifically that somehow is a problem, but extensive pranking and other interference isn’t?
I also ‘know’ that you can’t time travel back more than a few hours, and certainly not decades/centuries.
Yes, that’s even more evidence against your theory.
I\d like to hear the reasoning about how the fact you need to disregard the WHOLE stated ruleset of Harry Potter time-travel, not just isolated pieces of it, somehow supports your theory.
I\d like to hear the reasoning about how the fact you need to disregard the WHOLE stated ruleset of Harry Potter time-travel, not just isolated pieces of it, somehow supports your theory.
I had not remembered the examples inside MoR, but the priors were still correct—interference is usually bad in time travel stories. I’m not ignoring the examples subsequently presented. I’ve specifically—twice now—singled out one piece of evidence as very good counter-example for the HarryxQuirrel part of the time-travel thesis. (In the absence of good time-travel counter-counter-examples, I’d prefer to look at the other parts of the argument, like Quirrel’s priors, his sickness, his apparent connections to Hat-and-Cloak, etc.)
Yes, that’s even more evidence against your theory.
Whatever the explanation for Quirrel turns out to be, it will be strange and against conventional Wizarding knowledge, with the exception of the horcrux category of explanations (inasmuch as it’s known to a very few other wizards like Dumbledore). It is weak evidence at best and much reliance should not be placed on the thin reed of conventional Wizarding wisdom.
Travel often involves danger in Harry Potter; Floo ports can be unpleasant, likewise Port keys, and when apparating, one can ‘splinch’ oneself. Time travel with the heavily restricted Time turners is quite complex and hence possibly dangerous, as MoR has already shown. In the HP time-travel fic Eliezer recommended, each instance of multi-decade time travel damages the protagonist ever more, until during its settings, one more travel back will probably kill him upon arrival.
(And logic? In a fiction universe where we can trust nothing?)
I must have missed this. Where is it written that you can touch your past self, mingle magics with your past self, cast spells in your past self, etc.?
Eliezer has said that Tom Riddle (aka Voldemort aka Professor Quirrel) taught himself occlumency in his third year by getting a time turner and leglimizing himself.
Oh. Hm. That’s a good point then.
Cool! (Where did he say that?)
http://lesswrong.com/lw/30g/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/30d1
(Took me a long time to dig that up.)
Thankyou! My googling didn’t turn anything up and I’ve reread all of MoR itself in the last couple of days (except the bits I didn’t like) so I was failry sure it wasn’t in the story itself.
I notice that I myself replied to Eliezer in that thread. Over the last five years or so I seem to have lost the ability I once had to remember nearly perfectly every conversation I participated in. Shame. :)
This is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. If we’re not supposed to use our logic here, then the whole thing is pointless.
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. You have a number of time-travel interactions in both canon and MOR!verse where you could attempt to find any such hint of a prohibition, sense of “Doom”, bouts of sickness is relation to time-travel, etc, etc.
If you can’t find such evidence of a prohibition, or the other phenomena you describe, then that is evidence against there being such a prohibition or such phenomena.
You don’t use logic because you’re “supposed to”.
I won’t downvote you, but I was tempted to, for seemingly intentional lack of clarity in your objection. Making us guess at what you mean seems a waste of our collective time.
By the phrase “if we not supposed to use our logic” I meant “if we can’t apply our logic to make testable predictions about plot-points and revelations in subsequent chapters”.
Is that more agreeable with you?
If we’re going to divert to this tangent then I’ll say that yes, in fact, often people do use logic because they are “supposed to”. You could make the normative claim that you’re not “supposed to” use logic because you’re “supposed to”. But the descriptive one is as false as the normative one is arbitrary.
And wasn’t intended meaning.
And intended meaning of ArisKatsaris fits perfectly well in context.
I don’t think it was. If there is any notion of consequences at all, there are methods to be developed for steering consequences where you want them to go, it’s not a matter of social or genre convention to break this principle.
I don’t believe you parsed the context correctly.
Yes. I dislike connotations of “supposed to”, since it equivocates between laws of thought and social expectations, but this distinction doesn’t map to the context, because two worlds are involved instead of just one. In context, the intended distinction is between the author following or breaking in-world laws of nature, filtering the evidence essentially.
Non sequitur
Privileging the hypothesis—that mingling with your past self is harmless. It’s the rare timetravel fiction (fanfiction or otherwise) where such interactions are harmless; usually, it’s disastrous in some respect. In the absence of an actual example that it is not disastrous, like the Tom Riddle citation, our priors are not 50⁄50 or outright assuming it’s harmless.
No. Please read the grandparent again. I cannot explain more clearly without explaining basic logic itself. The reply simply does not follow.
The remainder of what you say here could be made as a reply to the great grandparent where it would at least fit (even if I would still disagree based on priors).
It was brought up as a matter of priors.
ArisKatsaris apparently reads only time travel stories where interfering with the past and especially yourself is all fun and games, and hence, the absence of any statement as to the harm or profit of interfering with yourself confirms his prior of safety. I read mostly stories where interfering with yourself is ridiculously universe-level endangering, and where the silent evidence leaves me at interfering with yourself is dangerous. My question points out this difference—why would I ask for evidence of safety if my default assumption is safety?
And this is why I say good point about Tom Riddle—because there’s an example of interfering with a past self (magically and mentally, no less), with no apparent ill consequences.
I don’t appreciate this attitude.
I’ve read and seen time-travel stories with all sorts of different rules. And I can recognize and distinguish in my mind the rules used in each. In “Time Traveller’s Wife” there’s nothing wrong with touching yourself. In “Gargoyles” there was nothing wrong with touching yourself. In “All you Zombies” there’s nothing wrong with time-travelling to meet your sex-reversed self, having sex and impregnating yourself, and then birthing yourself.
Prisoner of Azkaban future Harry casts a Patronus to save himself. A whole chapter of Methods of Rationality was devoted to Harry pranking himself.
If you can’t tell apart the ruleset used in Harry Potter & Methods of Rationality (or for that matter Harry Potter canon), then that’s your failure of reason, not mine.
And in Methods of Rationality you read a chapter where Harry initially fears that time-travel is ridiculously universe-level endangering, and was assured by McGonnagal that it wasn’t. Why are you even bringing this up then? You know it’s not universe-level endangering in Methods of Rationality.
And yet you seemingly choose to ignore that chapter, in favour of the rulesets in other stories, by other authors, in other fictional universes.
Tell me, which evidence do you think possess higher entaglement with Method of Rationality future plot-points—the time travel stories you’ve read in other fictional universes, or the chapters written by the same author in the same fanfic, ones deliberately designed to establish the ruleset of timetravel?
Where he doesn’t touch himself or use magic on himself (not going to re-read it just to check).
I also ‘know’ that you can’t time travel back more than a few hours, and certainly not decades/centuries. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.
I wonder how many stories have you read where it’s “using magic on yourself” specifically that somehow is a problem, but extensive pranking and other interference isn’t?
Yes, that’s even more evidence against your theory.
I\d like to hear the reasoning about how the fact you need to disregard the WHOLE stated ruleset of Harry Potter time-travel, not just isolated pieces of it, somehow supports your theory.
I had not remembered the examples inside MoR, but the priors were still correct—interference is usually bad in time travel stories. I’m not ignoring the examples subsequently presented. I’ve specifically—twice now—singled out one piece of evidence as very good counter-example for the HarryxQuirrel part of the time-travel thesis. (In the absence of good time-travel counter-counter-examples, I’d prefer to look at the other parts of the argument, like Quirrel’s priors, his sickness, his apparent connections to Hat-and-Cloak, etc.)
Whatever the explanation for Quirrel turns out to be, it will be strange and against conventional Wizarding knowledge, with the exception of the horcrux category of explanations (inasmuch as it’s known to a very few other wizards like Dumbledore). It is weak evidence at best and much reliance should not be placed on the thin reed of conventional Wizarding wisdom.