Noriko: Wow, you must have a real knack for it!
Kazumi: That’s not it, Miss Takaya! It takes hard work in order to achieve that.
Noriko: Hard work? You must have a knack for hard work, then!
ShardPhoenix
Karma: 3,303
So in other words, it’s not that the strongest can’t also be the tallest (etc), but that someone getting that lucky twice more or less never happens. And if you need multiple factors to be good at something, getting pretty lucky on several factors is more likely than getting extremely lucky on one and pretty lucky on the rest.
I enjoyed this post—very clear.
Yeah, the I’ve enjoyed the arc well enough, and there were some great bits in this chapter, but it’s been a bit small-potatoes compared to some of what’s come before, and there’s definitely a sense of “just how many bullies are there at Hogwarts, anyway?”. It’s almost like SPHEW is literally grinding bullies for XP.
I think it’s a bit absurd to call something a “fridging” when the character in question has been around for 90 chapters and had their own major story arc, etc. That’s really getting away from the spirit of what the “women in fridges” idea is complaining about (ie women who only serve to die in order to motivate the male characters).
Some interesting examples but this seems to be yet another take that claims to solve/dissolve consciousness by simply ignoring the Hard Problem.
I think this is one of the more plausible and subtly horrifying suggestions so far.
Tips on giving a speech or presentation:
Practice your presentation several times out loud (if possible).
The first thing you should talk about after introducing yourself and your topic is why the audience should even care about your topic (and don’t assume it’s obvious).
If using a hand-held microphone, hold the microphone near your mouth, not in front of your chest.
If you’re using a computer for slides or a demo, set it up ahead of time if possible.
I’d like to see some examples of types of large institutions that you believe should exist, but don’t due to lack of coordination.
You know what they say—“Asking once will bring you temporary shame, whereas not doing so will bring you permanent shame”.
They also say “Answering a question will make you feel superior for a while, whereas not doing so will give you a lifelong sense of superiority”.
Rin: “Even I make mistakes once in a while.”
Shirou (thinking): …This is hard. Would it be good for her if I correct her and point out that she makes mistakes often, not just once in a while?
I’m not sure what was hard to understand, but here goes:
Quirrel, with much secrecy, proposes to Harry that they bust (the supposedly originally good) Bellatrix Black out of Azkaban. They go to Azkaban and break in near the top. Quirrel guides the way down, while invis-cloaked Harry protects them from the Dementors with his Patronus.
They arrive at Bellatrix’s cell and free her in a weak state. Harry pretends to be Voldemort so that Bella will obey him (implying that when Voldie “died” he really went into baby Harry). On the way back up, they encounter an Auror after Harry gets so pissed at the dementors/Azkaban that his patronus temporarily flares out of control, alerting the guards. Quirrel fights him while Harry and Bella hide under the cloak. Quirrel tries to AK the auror, but Harry unconsciously moves his patronus in the way. This saves the auror but hurts Harry and knocks out Quirrel (that “sense of doom” is apparently a warning of bad interactions if their magics touch).
Harry gathers up Quirrel (who reverted to snake form) and stuffs him into his bag, gets Bella to obliviate the auror, and heads downward, somewhat panicked. He almost falls to the dementors but realizes that his dark side (ie Voldie Horcrux) is making him weak to them by being overly afraid of death. He manages to calm down his dark side enough to proceed.
Harry considers powering-up his patronus enough to kill all the dementors, but realizes that this would kill him. He despairs because he knows that aurors are coming methodically down the stairs (taking their time to ensure no escape). Dementors approach. Harry theorizes that they only reflect the minds of those around him, so he tries to believe that they will turn around, and also threatens them out loud. They leave, but he isn’t sure if his theory was right or if they just got threatened.
He considers giving himself up, but comes up with one last plan. He hides in a cell while constructing an escape device via transfiguration, and then uses partial transfiguration to cut a hole in the wall. He decides to give up anyway while Quirrel and Bella escape, but Quirrel wakes up and convinces him to come with them. They escape on a rocket-powered broomstick, fast enough to get past the patrolling aurors outside.
Phew.
I’m expecting a positive ending for a few reasons, one of which is that since this is rationality propaganda I doubt Eliezer wants to portray Harry’s super-rationality as having ultimately bad results.
I think this is a slightly different issue. In Magic there’s a concept of “strictly better” where one card is deemed to be always better than another (eg Lightning Bolt over Shock), as opposed to statistically better (eg Silver Knight is generally considered better than White Knight but the latter is clearly preferable if you’re playing against black and not red). However, some people take “strictly better” too, um, strictly, and try to point out weird cases where you would prefer to have the seemingly worse card. Often these scenarios involve Mindslaver (eg if you’re on 3 life and your opponent has Mindslaver you’d rather have Shock in hand than Lightning Bolt).
The lesson is to not let rare pathological cases ruin useful generalizations (at least not outside of formal mathematics).
He wanted to find fault with the idea but couldn’t quite do it on the spur of the moment. He filed it away for later discrediting
The Magician King by Lev Grossman
A fascinating article about rationality or the lack thereof as it applied to curing scurvy, and how hard trying to be less wrong can be: http://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm
A currently living person doesn’t want to die, but a potentially living person doesn’t yet want to live, so there’s an asymmetry between the two scenarios.
Past me is always so terrible, even when I literally just finished being him.
Karkat from Homestuck by Andrew Hussie
I went a similar path (doing physics but not really excelling at it) and ended up a programmer. I’m pretty happy with programming overall. Note that in real-world applications, most of the effort goes into the engineering-like side of making sure your code is clean and maintainable, rather than the comp-sci-like side of having clever data structures and algorithms. It certainly doesn’t feel “too easy” most days, though it can sometimes be frustrating when you end up spending time struggling with tools rather than what you’re really trying to do.
But, Senjougahara, can I set a condition too? A condition, or, well, something like a promise. Don’t ever pretend you can see something that you can’t, or that you can’t see something that you can. If our viewpoints are inconsistent, let’s talk it over. Promise me.
If this is to be taken as a sort of prophetic/religious statement that will certainly be believed, how about this:
“It is better to rely on the labour of machines than the labour of beasts, and better to rely on the labour of beasts than the labour of man”.
(Based on the idea that historically, technological progress was often disincentivized by the abundance of cheap/slave labour).