Eliezer:
I just wanted to thank you for this quote
And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star, they won’t tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they’re old enough to bear it; and when they learn they’ll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed!
My grandfather just died and it captured a lot of the outrage and hope for the future I have.
why your choice of monogamy is preferable to all of the other inhabitants of relationship-style-space, for you.
You may wish to rethink your assumption that American population norms apply to readers of Lesswrong. I’m pretty sure that people here are more likely to be “Rah, polyamory!” than to be knee-jerk in favor of monogamy. Also, I’m pretty sure that there are a lot of nillamorous people here who you are completely ignoring, myself included.
He does have the ability to turn the world into a lake of fire, true. All powerful wizards have this ability and it is implied that every magical power in the world would turn against him if he tried anything that foolish. He has a giant hammer which he dare not use, if only because he’s not evil. Also, he is still amazingly vulnerable to almost any adult wizard who wishes him ill—powerful weaponry doesn’t imply a powerful defense. He might have been able to assassinate every member of the Wizengamot, but I doubt he would have survived the attempt. If it comes to open warfare he’s toast, and his stunt made it much more likely that someone would decide he had stepped over the threshold of open warfare. He’s safe for now at Hogwarts, but it was still stupid.
The first item was “I will not go around provoking strong, vicious enemies”
Good advice, and advice Harry failed to follow.
Is it the author’s opinion that the creation of house elves was a terribly evil deed? It would seem that to think that after their creation, they would want to do what they have been designed to do and so would be no more evil than creating an intelligence which would want to bowl and fish all day. Even if we accept that creating conscious entities which are forced by means of their preferences to do menial work is wrong, it would seem to be better to create them, than to force those who don’t enjoy such work to do it. Is Harry just confused by his intuitions about the evil of slavery, without sufficient reflection?
ETA: While this argument works in the abstract and is useful for countering human biases against “slavery” and applies in the particular for the creation of Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, house elves have addition features I wasn’t considering which makes their creation morally evil.
It’s good, but we should retain the top level post for things that are truly important.
I will say this much, Mr. Potter: You are already an Occlumens, and I think you will become a perfect Occlumens before long. Identity does not mean, to such as us, what it means to other people. Anyone we can imagine, we can be; and the true difference about you, Mr. Potter, is that you have an unusually good imagination. A playwright must contain his characters, he must be larger than them in order to enact them within his mind. To an actor or spy or politician, the limit of his own diameter is the limit of who he can pretend to be, the limit of which face he may wear as a mask. But for such as you and I, anyone we can imagine, we can be, in reality and not pretense. While you imagined yourself a child, Mr. Potter, you were a child. Yet there are other existences you could support, larger existences, if you wished. Why are you so free, and so great in your circumference, when other children your age are small and constrained? Why can you imagine and become selves more adult than a mere child of a playwright should be able to compose? That I do not know, and I must not say what I guess. But what you have, Mr. Potter, is freedom.
What we call consciousness/self-awareness is just a meaningless side-effect of brain processes (55%)
What does this mean? What is the difference between saying “What we call consciousness/self-awareness is just a side-effect of brain processes”, which is pretty obviously true and saying that they’re meaningless side effects?
Donated $50.
charitable giving actually can signal wealth
Charitable giving allows you to signal very high levels of wealth effectively, because you get newspaper coverage praising you for being able to donate millions (billions) of dollars. You don’t get that kind of recognition for donating, say, ten thousand dollars, so if you aren’t actually rich you get way more wealth signaling per dollar by buying clothes or club membership or a new car.
Point in favor of this all being a plot by Quirrell to cause Harry to be more willing to overthrow the ministry:
But by then he’d already declared war on the country of magical Britain, and the idea of other people calling him a Dark Lord no longer seemed important one way or another.
ETA: Evidence this is the result of Quirrell’s plotting at all:
Harry’s mind flashed back to another day of horror, and even though Harry had been on the verge of writing off Lord Voldemort’s continued existence as the senility of an old wizard, it suddenly seemed horribly and uniquely plausible that the entity who’d Memory-Charmed Hermione was the very same mind that had—made use of—Bellatrix Black. The two events had a certain signature in common. To choose that this should happen, plan for this to happen—it would take more than evil, it would take emptiness.
What is your purpose in reading SF?
Do you want to be better able to understand the sort of references someone on Less Wrong might make?
Then I’d suggest The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, A Fire Upon the Deep and Accelerondo.
Do you want to be exposed to a lot of futurism ideas?
Then I’d suggest Permutation City, Blindsight and Rainbows End.
Do you want to read something that’s just fun?
Then I’d suggest A Civil Campaign, On Basilisk Station and Ender’s Game.
All of these books are written by people who have written multiple books, if you find you like them, you can easily read their other titles.
But real heroes shouldn’t need the promise of a high status title to get the ball rolling.
Real heroes are the sorts of things we expect to find in escapist fantasy, but we live in the real world where promises of status really do get certain people off their duff and acting on important problems.
“Are you all lost?” cried Albus Dumbledore. “She is too young! Her mind would not withstand it! Not in three centuries has such a thing been done in Britain!”
The leading article, written by some name that Harry didn’t recognize, had called for the minimum age for Azkaban to be lowered, just so that the twisted mudblood who had defaced the honor of Scotland with her savage, unprovoked attack upon the last heir of a Most Ancient House within the sacred refuge of Hogwarts could be sent to the Dementors that were the only punishment commensurate with the severity of her unspeakable crime.
This is a definite break from the historical record.
Am I the only one who now wants to campaign for gay rights with the slogan “Death Eaters against homophobia!”?
unverifiable claim to having been diagnosed with Asperger’s
I, Lucas Sloan, do solemnly swear that Alicorn is not neurotypical, and very probably has Asperger’s. I further attest that the information this comment is based on is the result of having physically interacted with her.
I am willing to bet, at 10,000 to 1 odds, that you will sleep sometime in the next 2 weeks. The pay out on this bet is not transferable to your heirs.
And thus, Hermione Jean Granger was permenantly sacrificed in a ritual which manifested Harry Potter.