gattsuru

Karma: 683

gattsuru 27 Aug 2018 16:35 UTC
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in reply to: Biff Wiff’s comment on: Y Couchinator
I would caution that in many states—including California—the law specifically prohibits waiver of some tenant rights. Even where not prohibited, such waivers can be challenged easily and, even if that challenge is unsuccessful, will be both extremely expensive and time-consuming.
That style of worst-case scenario is unlikely, but it’s something to be very aware about.

gattsuru 6 Jan 2016 1:42 UTC
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in reply to: gwern’s comment on: January 2016 Media Thread

Abrams’s style of movie-making is unbearably light and facile, to the point where blowing up multiple planets doesn’t even register emotionally—and how did that particular scene even make sense? does this whole movie take place in a single solar system or something?

The Starkiller Base is described as a hyperspace weapon, while the target locations were (supposedly) all in one location, and Expanded Universe physics allow bleedoff of energy or physical interaction between objects moving within hyperspace and normal space (though never for anything interesting to my knowledge). This is kinda goofy, but you’re in a Star Wars setting so it’s not unreasonably so.

On the other hand, the use of planets to pull the projectiles out of hyperspace doesn’t really make sense with how the Falcon breaks through the base’s shields, so they don’t do a terribly good job of staying with or explaining those rules in the film, and it’s horrible at actually passing the impact of what is supposed to be billions of people dying.

I wasn’t too put off by the protagonist’s Mary Suedom, since she’s Corran-Horn level at worst, but agreed with most of the other complaints and frustrations. It’s also worth pointing out how extremely unsurprising the film is; even with the vast lows of the Expanded Universe, it picked not from its best moments and ideas but from many of its most unremarkable and boring.

gattsuru 14 Apr 2015 1:55 UTC
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on: Snape’s knowledge of valence shells
It’s possible that he read it from Harry’s mind. Snape is a powerful legilimens, does not believe that anything is cheating when he has to win, Harry had no protection or even deep knowledge of the technique, had to have been thinking of the answer, and hadn’t thought to avert his gaze until later.

That said, Severus is more in tune with the Muggle world than most others in the setting, and in Chapter 61 we see Dumbledore treat him as an expert source on muggle technology :

“Severus?” the old wizard said. “What was it actually?” “A rocket,” said the half-blood Potions Master, who had grown up in the Muggle town of Spinner’s End. “One of the most impressive Muggle technologies.”

Later in Chapter 18, we also see the phrase “Common sense is often mistaken for legilimency.” Especially as a potions master and someone who retained an interest in muggle chemistry into adulthood, Snape does have more reason than most wizards to know this information. Harry also tends to overestimate both his knowledge, and both he and Quirrel tend to assume the victories of others come from innate differences rather than simple changes in planning or knowledge.

On the other hand, had Snape known that information, it would also mean he could have ended the world accidentally. Dunno what to make of that.

gattsuru 31 Mar 2015 15:17 UTC
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in reply to: seer’s comment on: Discussion of Slate Star Codex: “Extremism in Thought Experiments is No Vice”

So that’s an argument for why it would be better if life were fair.

If the experienced observations were to look different. Stuck with the universe we’ve got, though...

gattsuru 30 Mar 2015 15:05 UTC
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in reply to: seer’s comment on: Discussion of Slate Star Codex: “Extremism in Thought Experiments is No Vice”

I don’t see what this quote is supposed to mean, besides a deep-wisdomy way of saying that you don’t want to take responsibility for the consequences of your actions.

Ah, it’s not really about locus of control: the context is destitute people falling ill due to contaminated food. It’s more about situations where bad things happen that are not readily controlled or avoided due to lack of knowledge or circumstance.

The point of the quote is that it is no more comforting to be Job, and to have your family killed and everything taken from you because it is a deity’s plan, than it is to be a moral nihilist who has your family killed and everything taken from you because the universe is a cold and unforgiving place. To many people, Job’s deal is less desirable, because railing against the fundamental unfairness of the universe is a lot more socially condoned where a lot of deities are lightning-bolt-happy.

gattsuru 29 Mar 2015 2:18 UTC
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in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: Discussion of Slate Star Codex: “Extremism in Thought Experiments is No Vice”
Robertson doesn’t strike me as a particularly scholarly thinker, but even less well-thought religious folk have confronted the problems of evil and tragedy. The story of Job is a common subject of discussion in churches and among religious folk, and it’s always framed as horrible things happened to Job because of his belief in a deity and because of the deity. Christians aren’t unused to the concept of bad things happened because of their faith rebounding on them.

He’s fantasizing about the outside world giving ‘indisputable proof’ of external morality. The religious folk have /countless/ scenarios like this, and the better-spoken ones will explicitly call them tests of ‘relative’ morality.

There’s a pretty easy response to Robertson’s thought experiment even within that framing—to borrow from Babylon 5′s Marcus Cole, “wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?”—but the state of promoted discussion by atheists is so terrible that Robertson’s probably not aware of it.

gattsuru 12 Mar 2015 20:37 UTC
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in reply to: William_Quixote’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 120
Also, whether Harry intended it or not, he gave two separate choices: whether Harry should stay away entirely, and whether Harry should be a friend that does not manipulate or risk harming Draco ever again. At least to some extent, Draco’s refusal to respond reflects a disjoint answer to both questions, and has invited Harry to remain a friend that may manipulate or harm Draco for his own good.

gattsuru 12 Mar 2015 20:00 UTC
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in reply to: OphilaDros’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 120
Crouch, Nott, or Jugson, though I’d guess the latter more heavily—Jugson’s constantly in the center of the blood-purist aligned factions during one of the battle games, and mentioned as Dumbledore’s example of a powerful Death Eater with a seat on the Wizengamot, as well.

Mr. White was selected for a particularly humiliating and harmful process, and coincidentally Quirrelmort had wanted to harm Lucius badly on the scale of framing him for attempted murder of his own son, and there’s a pretty clear connection.

gattsuru 12 Mar 2015 16:21 UTC
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in reply to: drethelin’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 119
Possible, but Dumbledore’s discussions of death and mortality in chapter 39 seemed like he was trying to avoid becoming Harry’s Mentor/Opponent—ie, if he were trying to manipulate Harry with this deep emotional reveal, he’d have done so in a different way. He continues to treat death as a normal matter in chapter 110, even though he doesn’t believe Harry to be nearby and does believe that the only listener will not be able to communicate his position to Harry, and Quirrelmort says that he’d expoused such positions long before he had access or cause to access the hall of prophecies.

gattsuru 12 Mar 2015 0:36 UTC
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in reply to: drethelin’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 119
Dumbledore is fundamentally Deathist, and not only has he personally been locked out of mortality by his own trap, several of his interventions (most obviously killing a pet rock) were less related to making Harry oppose Voldemort effectively, and more into making Harry the sort of person that would promote transhumanist ideas including anti-Deathism.

gattsuru 11 Mar 2015 15:56 UTC
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in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 119
In this setting, there are things you avoid learning even if you’re higher status than the secret-keeper. Some secrets are dangerous even to the listener.

I suspect Mrs. Bones includes anything rising from a fragment of Voldemort’s torn soul, whether the trick that decapitated dozens or revived an ancient dark lord, in that set. Part of the reason she distrusts Harry is that she believe he’s an eleven-year-old struggling with a dark spirit—which gives him a comparative advantage of knowing what evils needs must be kept under wraps

gattsuru 11 Mar 2015 2:20 UTC
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on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 119
I find it funny that Dumbledore’s efforts to subvert prophecies for his own ends resulted in something directly opposed to his claimed values. I wonder if that’s a direct attribute of prophecy, or just coincidence, or both.

gattsuru 10 Mar 2015 15:40 UTC
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in reply to: Mperv’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 114 + chapter 115
He’d just been attacked by a magical source that disarmed his weapons at the wrists, was cast wordlessly and without wand motions, and did not leave an obvious bolt to block. This is probably a bad time to show off.

At a deeper level, Voldemort (and Mad-Eye Moody) favor a combat philosophy of dodging, under the quite reasonable realization that there are a large number of spells that can overwhelm shields or are unblockable.

gattsuru 9 Mar 2015 19:37 UTC
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in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 118
The Officials involved have believed Quirrel to be David Monroe for a long time (chapter 84), that seems to have become the Official Story over the last couple days, and Mad-Eye Moody knew that Quirrelmort should have been fired out of a cannon into a sun as soon as he took the Defense position, so they’ve been asking questions and taking the first reasonable answer for a while.

I’m fully expected Moody to dive through a door with stunners flying, yelling “Not paranoid enough!” because /someone/ didn’t expect door transfiguration, but most of the other people involved have already gotten suspicious and had their suspicions allayed.

gattsuru 9 Mar 2015 5:03 UTC
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in reply to: spriteless’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 117
Then he’d be an eleven-year old surrounded by bleeding but live adult Death Eaters, and with only (and specifically) two tourniquets, with no easy way to get them medical attention or stun them.

There’s ways to incapacitate them less lethally, but you’d need to think a little further outside of the box, and they’re not really compatible with MoR!Harry’s outlook nor the narrative progression.

gattsuru 9 Mar 2015 1:09 UTC
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in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 117
We have strong evidence suggesting that bringing people back to life is possible in this setting, and turning wizards into the same person except not-magic is possible. It does not require God-like powers, or even as much investment as bringing them back to life as magical beings, so much as it requires MoR!Harry to have been more invested in his ethics.

Of course, if he were, then they’d probably not have needed to die in the first place.

On the other hand… According to various world clocks, 37 people die every 15 seconds. I’m not so heavily into the effective altruism movement as to make an enemy of all but the most efficient options, but it’s a number to remember. Most alternative methods for incapacitating the Death Eaters less-lethally would have had greater risk of failure, and most methods for would require significantly more time and magical power than saving an average life.

For as much as it makes Harry sympathetic to wish he didn’t kill them, there’s only so much investment to that purpose before it would be bad thinking of its own—even if you don’t value their lives less.

gattsuru 8 Mar 2015 22:05 UTC
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in reply to: TobyBartels’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 117
In a search for kindness, not using cloistered information for personal advantage, and low tendency for factionalism, “child of a Death Eater” is a pretty hard constraint.

gattsuru 8 Mar 2015 20:52 UTC
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in reply to: MarkusRamikin’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 117
Quirrel had seen Harry use /Diffendo/ on some trees, and later that the trees have been cut. He was unconscious (and in an extradimensional bag) when Harry had cut through the wall in Azkaban, and only saw a cut circle of wall. He may not have known that Harry had anything up his sleeve more complicated than a Cutting Charm; he certainly had no reason to believe that Harry could wordlessly transfigure the tip of his wand into well over a hundred feet of braided carbon nanotubes. Quirrelmort has never seen—only Dumbledore, Hermoine, and Professor McGonagall have.

But that’s really not the part that got him.

Quirrelmort had accepted the risk that Harry could have escaped, or killed everyone present, just as he accepted the possibility that the Unbreakable Vow wouldn’t have been enough to stop Harry from destroying the world. If he were absolutely certain, he’d not have bothered with backup plans. He did not care about the deaths of the present Death Eaters, and losing his own body was merely a minor setback. It’s Harry’s ability to instantly and permanently incapacitate without letting Quirrelmort’s spirit loose that made the threat serious. That’s a problem Dumbledore was relying on an ancient and frighteningly powerful artifact to implement, and Quirrelmort’s mode of thinking doesn’t exactly encourage thinking of these matters..

gattsuru 5 Mar 2015 22:03 UTC
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in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 114 + chapter 115
It’s implied that more experienced wizards and witches can freely transfigure objects at a range, but Harry can’t do that. However, even without Partial Transfiguration, objects that have been joined together can be transmuted as a whole (see chapter 28, with a wand touching one part of an object and converting parts into different components. We’ve also seen transfiguration operate differently on different components of a system. Once Harry has stuck spider-silk between his wand and a Death Eater, he can convert components of the Death Eater as easily as if he were standing next to them.

Harry’s not shown any interest in this sort of biochemistry (the closest we’ve seen is a reference to “knockout gas”, which means he knows less than nothing), and while propofol was well-known in 1992, it’s not referenced in the sort of literature he’s likely to read, he has been trained not to consider transmuting humans, his character isn’t really aligned with less-lethal conversions, and there is a very high complexity penalty to this plan.

There are also some possible volumetric issues. We hadn’t gotten an actual transfiguration rate since chapter 23, where he could only do five cubic centimeters per minute, while it would take about ~15 cubic centimeters of propofol to rapidly sedate this number of Death Eaters. The post-exam chapter gave an update of cubic millimeter “as fast as he can concentrate his will and magic” and “in a fraction of a second”, which is imprecise enough to be useless. He was able to transfigure a unicorn in about an hour and a twelve-year-old’s corpse fast enough to avoid notice, recently, and presuming unicorns are similar in volume to even a small horse he’d need to be moving much faster than 15 cubic centimeters a minute (900 cubic centimeters is less than a liter, a very small shetland pony would operate somewhere in the area of 180-200 liters, so… not sure folk did the math on that one).

But it’s interesting as a thought experiment.

This isn’t the only or even a particularly useful option—Voldemort’s gun could be rigged to fail in a cubic milimeter transfiguration, and to catastrophically fail in a cubic centimeter transfiguration; wands become dramatically less useful when they and their owner’s fingertips are coated in a fine layer of teflon, vocal cords or the median nerve turned into cheese at about 1.5 cubic centimeters per person would make even wandless spell-casting impossible. More destructive but non-lethal options are left as an exercise for the reader.

gattsuru 4 Mar 2015 23:45 UTC
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in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 114 + chapter 115

What are you talking about here?

In Chapter 16, Quirrelmort instructed the class in a very simple hex that caused a small amount of pain and no lasting harm called Ma-Ha-Su. He then selects three students, Hermoine, Draco, and Harry Potter, and then requires them to select a student and fire Ma-Ha-Su at them, taking Quirrel and later House points for non-compliance. The comparisons to the Millgram Experiments become explicit in chapter 63. Hermoine refuses, Draco fires on Hermoine, and Harry fires on himself.

Harry explicitly beats Quirrelmort’s plans, here : “Yes, quite ingenious, but there was a lesson to be taught and you dodged it.” It’s not clear he ever gets the intended lesson, given that Quirrelmort seemed to intend to teach Harry to harm Draco on obedient command.

Interestingly, this could have not just failed but have gone horribly wrong for Quirrelmort, and he wouldn’t have even understood why. One of the common responses to Millgram-like actions in the last few years of science fiction is to turn on the person giving illegal orders. Harry wouldn’t do that because of his upbringing, but other possible Riddle-clones would wanted to fire Ma-Ha-Su on Quirrelmort and claimed he counted as a student—and either required he flinch or dodge from a trivial spell, or risked publicly triggering the resonance that would have brought Dumbledore down on Quirrelmort’s head. The man’s not exactly been known for his happy subservience, after all.

Even without reaching that unlikely but disastrous possibility, ‘success’ would have had dramatically different results than Quirrelmort expected, given Quirrelmort’s difficulty understanding what Harry was trying to do with Draco even at that point. Blunt, blunt stupidity.

What does this mean?

Command Push is set of force philosophy where commanders give direct orders involving not only a mission’s goal, but also its execution, tools, and specific tactics. It’s very common historically, where communication is slow, or where the commander has much greater understanding of the field than individuals, but it’s highly dependent on commander skill and knowledge, and very vulnerable to subterfuge. Quirrelmort is hugely prone to this, as are Harry Potter and (to a lesser extent) Draco.

This is usually contrasted with Recon Pull, Mission-type Tactics, or Command By Negation, where commanders provide goals, time constraints, and resources, but allow units to develop their own strategies to achieve those goals. This requires more training, faster communications technology, and higher levels of trust in subordinates (less so in Command By Negation, where you at least double-check with a commander), but puts more minds on a problem and can more readily adapt when lines of communication are cut or when situations on the ground change.

((Command Push and Recon Pull are video game terms from the Civilization series: different armies have different terms for these philosophies, usually subdivided into separate generations or divided by recent inspirations. Modern armies tend to use more modernized techniques derived from combinations of the two branches and further IT developments, though they’d not really be practicable in the time frame present here.))