I actually expected Harry to cast the Killing Curse as a last ditch desperation/rage effort. He knew what it does, has seen the wand movements and pronounciation (in the Dementor dream), knew and had the required state of mind. That should be enough to cast it, as per Ch26 (“He is in his sixth year at Hogwarts and he cast a high-level Dark curse without knowing what it did.”).
Jurily
I seem to remember a story about Warren Buffett: whenever he tried to teach people to trade, they failed miserably. When people asked him on why he didn’t follow his own teachings on specific successful trades he did, he simply said “Oh, I changed my mind at the last second.”
I’ve never seen sources for it though, so take it with a grain of salt.
So I should (a) not care about personal identity over time, even if it exists, and (b) stop believing that it exists.
That sounds like a thought-stopper. What is the utility of the belief itself? What predictions can we make if personal identity exists? What is the maximum set of incremental changes you can make to yourself until you stop being “you”? What is the utility of being “current you” as opposed to “optimized you”, and which “you” gets to decide? What is the utility of being “you five years ago” as opposed to “current you”, and which “you” gets to decide?
The hypnotic induction is just a Ritual designed to convince the client that they can be “hypnotized” in a way that matches their preconceptions. After the first session, it’s much more efficient to use an instant reinduction trigger or suggestions like “I can hypnotize you in hundreds of ways impossible to resist” or “all my suggestion will work easily, automatically, whether or not you think you’re hypnotized, in exactly the way that benefits you most”.
As for amnesia, stage techniques are awesome. It’s really hard to doubt you’ve been hypnotized when you count your 11 fingers, can’t get up from the chair or watch your arm grow to twice the size.
Which one of these do you claim?
the editors failed when identifying this book as “people want”, since it only sold tens of millions
the editors weren’t rewarded for their good judgement
since not every single person on Earth likes it, it should not be allowed to reach those who do
there is no market for romance novels
What’s the deal with spells and age? If Harry is really so far ahead of his class and can already cast spells nobody else can, why is it just now that he can cast “second-year” spells effortlessly?
Canon or not, this reminds me too much of the public school system of a certain country where kids are verboten to use words “they shouldn’t know yet”.
I’m not sure he’d needed to do that. Until we hear otherwise, he has access to all the knowledge of Salazar, who knew enough to build Hogwarts. Which also means the source code to the wards and the means to change them.
Can you even transfigure something that transfigures itself back? Of course Quirrell can do it if it’s possible, but is it possible?
Chapter 20:
“Yes, nuclear weapons!” Professor Quirrell was almost shouting now. “Even He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named never used those, perhaps because he didn’t want to rule over a heap of ash! They never should have been made! And it will only get worse with time!” Professor Quirrell was standing up straight instead of leaning on his desk. “There are gates you do not open, there are seals you do not breach! The fools who can’t resist meddling are killed by the lesser perils early on, and the survivors all know that there are secrets you do not share with anyone who lacks the intelligence and the discipline to discover them for themselves! Every powerful wizard knows that! Even the most terrible Dark Wizards know that! And those idiot Muggles can’t seem to figure it out! The eager little fools who discovered the secret of nuclear weapons didn’t keep it to themselves, they told their fool politicians and now we must live under the constant threat of annihilation!”
A wizard university seems out of the question.
Adjusted for confidence in the factual accuracy of resumes, it’s a tough call.
I’m not sure HR would approve racial stereotype studies as part of the hiring process.
Is there a name for the following pattern?
Argument or just noticing confusion
“He looks way too confident, he’s probably better at the field or has significant information”
Catastrophic failure more or less matching my predictions
I seem to run into this a lot lately, but the alternative of assuming I’m correct seems even worse. I’m also often not in a position to ask about the source of their confidence.
Is he a Bayesian racist?
If he got his opinion by updating it constantly and is willing to update it in the other direction given further evidence, yes. What he actually ends up doing with it is another matter entirely. I wouldn’t expect a Bayesian redneck to join the KKK, for example.
Is she a Bayesian racist?
I’d think she’s either committing the fallacy of trusting statistics to exactly predict the individual case, or simply not doing proper cost analysis. Even if the statistics say there are no unsolved crimes and none of the crimes are committed by Asians, the expected negative utility of running into the first Asian criminal in history should outweigh the inconvenience of avoiding one person on an otherwise empty street.
Thinking about what to do is an action in itself. If you pause to think whether to brake or steer left to avoid a crash, you’re not doing either. If a SWAT officer pauses to think during the part of a raid when the most important decisions happen, people get shot.
Most optimal algorithms do not involve questioning their own validity. There are times when you design and optimize, and there are times when you execute. Downtime is only useful when you’re not up.
Don’t think of it as “causes me to relax”, you’re the one doing the relaxing. You already know how to do it without the pill too, just pretend you’re taking it. And then pretend you’re pretending. And then practice a couple of times until you can do it automatically and don’t need to think about it anymore.
So, apparently NLP is pseudoscience, and now I’m confused. Does anyone actually claim
Richard Bandler hasn’t demonstrated even a single verifiable, undisputable result with his methods, and he’s been fabricating things like this for decades?
his methods don’t lead to his results in a way that matches his predictions?
the creator of NLP is not qualified to decide whether or not his methods are NLP?
If there are no claims to any of the above, what exactly was discredited?
I’m aware that Strugeon’s law is in full effect within the NLP community, my questions were specifically about Bandler and his results.
I fail to see how anything you said has an impact on the observation that Andy did not need to return to the mental institute. Unless you dispute at least that single claim, the lack of research is better explained with the hypothesis that the researchers failed to understand the topic well enough to account for enough variables, like how Bandler almost always teaches NLP in the context of hypnosis.
If whatever Bandler does is producing verifiable results, shouldn’t it be at least an explicit goal of science to find out why it works for him, as opposed to whether it works if you throw an NLP manual at an undergrad? Shouldn’t it be a goal of science to find out how he came up with his techniques, and how to do that better than him?
Given the current scientific framework you don’t change a theory based on anecdotal evidence and single case studies.
Oh, I see the problem now. You’re waiting for research to allow you to decide to do the research you’re waiting for. When the scientific framework tells you there isn’t enough research to reach a conclusion, doesn’t it also tell you to do more research? Picking a research topic should not be as rigorous a process as the research itself.
Even if all the anecdotal and single case studies are false, shouldn’t you at least be interested in why so many people believe in it? NLP is not a religion, you pick it up as an adult. Even if the entire NLP/hypnosis/seduction/whatever industry is just a giant crackpot convention, they still demonstrate enough persuasion techniques to convince people it’s real. Shouldn’t you be swarming over that with the idea of eliminating your suicide rate?
The claim is not observable in any way and offers no testable predictions or anything that even remotely sounds like advice. It’s unprovable because it doesn’t talk about objective reality.
I predict that if the Pope declares Jesus is God, there will be more worlds in which Jesus is God than worlds in which Jesus is merely the son of God.
If a statement does not say anything about observable reality, there is no objective truth to be determined.
Or that since she ran for sunlight, she wasn’t inside Hogwarts technically, therefore the wards didn’t pick up her injury. We already have proof the attacker expected her to do that.
Which would also explain her last words.