I suggest you reroll. I heal paper cuts in a couple of hours.
SkyDK
Harry has already figured out quite a few solutions to the monetary problem. The long run (and cheap solution) would be to apply himself and his side to the clearing of Hermione’s name. That wouldn’t just earn him a 100.000 galleons it would also improve Hermione’s political standing, leave Malfoy’s (and to a certain extent Dumbledore’s) reputation in its currently weakened state plus strengthen his argument against the political structure of Magical Britain. Not to mention he can do all this WHILE having starting his money-making schemes. Though we might as well not care since I seem to recall that the great EY seems to have said that this story ends after the first year of Hogwarts. Regardless: the interesting part is what kind of extra power Lucius has vis-a-vis Harry now.
My personal experience is that I’ve attached different parts of my personality to my different languages. I’m currently fluent in three and passable in two others. I notice that the part of my personality I attach to a given language depends on a variety of factors, but I can have a marked impact on it by focusing on my associations while learning the language. This is particularly true when I take the language from the classroom to an an experience of immersion.
In this regard I’ve also noticed that languages of the same root (for me: Danish, English and German) have a tendency to invoke related frames of minds whereas new language families (French, Arabic and Polish) allow me greater freedom in what kind of thoughts are likely to occupy my mind when I use them and hence what kind of person I am in this tongue. It’s worth noting that the Polish me is closer to the French me than both the Arabic and Danish parts. I suspect a likeliness in grammar and syntax to have played a role in this.
Now the funny thing is that I didn’t really notice this phenomena myself. While living in France I was visited by my parents. Both my dad (who was fluent in French) and my mum (who isn’t and wasn’t) noticed that everything from my tone of voice, to my subject matter to the way I gestured and moved changed when I changed between languages. American friends, independently, later made remarks in the same direction.
I must admit though that I haven’t tried it regarding decision making. It’s definitely worth a try and as it is, I’d predict that thinking in French will help me visualise a given situation, Danish would be preferred for extracting the emotional response, English for both estimating it’s likeliness of happening as well as turning the given situation into a joke whereas my Polish and Arabic are not quite yet at the same level of abstraction. I’m prone to being extremely flirtatious in Polish and my Arabic has a tendency to call on my altruistic and carefree sides.
Given Harry’s knowledge about basic game theory and decision making theory how come he’s so bad at producing fake information? I refer both to his dealings in conversations (where he arguably has increased his game level), but even more so in the mock battles. Not hiding the creation of green sunglasses did seem unnaturally stupid taking into consideration:
He knew scouts might be sent to track his dealings (it is after all a basic of military tactics as well as the logical thing to do against an enemy you know is outnumbered when you have to figure out what he does to deal with his disadvantage).
The cost/benefit was vastly in favour of benefit.
He himself had trained Draco to acquire better information before acting.
Furthermore I’m rather stunned by how bad at constructing ambushes and firing lines Harry is.
If the context loses the safety property, sing out of tune, miss the beat and do some negative association exercises. In other words I regard it as overtly cautious to fear a cult sensation before the community is even at a community level.
But for those of us that are risk-averse (which should be none of us, but probably is the majority): Do you know of any community building exercises that do not have a potential negative backlash?
[… or is our kind doomed to be one of a kind? insert ominous music of own choice]
It would be a bad use of political capital considering how easy he could gain money in other ways while keeping a majority(? - at least combined with some help from Dumbledore’s side) vote on pretty much whatever issue up his sleeve...
if you can be kind and moderate in your personal behavior, you can get away with incredible amounts of institutionally-mediated violence and extremism, especially to anyone who feels like they “know” you. Hypothesis: the most dangerous people are those who can give us the illusion of “knowing” them while they command an institution whose internal operations we don’t see.
This suits extremely well with both local communities relationship to known criminals and to historical figures. Politics is a mind-killer and so on, but a lot of heroes of different nations have done some downright nasty stuff, but managed to keep their reputation due to perceptions about their personal manner. It has recently been used by leaders such as Chavez and Khomeini, but American presidents have also used this effect extensively (why kiss babies?) and historical figures from Cesar to Richard Lionheart and countless of medieval kings have also garnered good will by the actions they have undertaken in public while at the same time doing something in the opposite direction of way greater magnitude through their institutions of power.
No. It’s just a clock. But it is there, so Dumbledore knows at which point in time he should jump back to (given the option of course) {all this is an interpretation of loserthree’s post}
I disagree. Harry can do partial transfiguration. If he cannot figure out ways to earn insane amounts of cash just through that then he is too retarded to be called rational (remember that he can actually extract resources in ways the wizarding world cannot—as I write in another place: mining ++).
Plus you underestimate the degree of separation between the two worlds plus the extreme lack of respect the wizarding world holds for muggles.
And about the 100.000 galleons: well if they’re bright, ambitious and socially aware plus they’re using questionable sources they SHOULD act surprised. Not acting surprised would give away their game to the idiots remaining.
I will be severely disappointed if EY will waste time on the money issue. It doesn’t deserve much more than a paragraph. Perhaps two just to let us know that Harry won’t abuse it, because he doesn’t want to call too much attention to himself.
It was great! It also allowed me to test a couple of thesis of generating solutions. The closest I got was doing something completely different than working directly on the generating of solutions; I can’t remember the name of the theory stating that this should be the case, and while having it strengthened is somewhat disheartening it is nevertheless a useful piece of information.
Now if I weren’t so bad at shaving, I might even remember to use Occam’s razor next time and reduce “Harry marries Hermione” to “Harry makes Hermione part of house Potter”. Still much in the ways of the force have I to learn ;)
Only defence of my marriage theory was that I wasn’t quite sure that people could just be adopted into houses. Even thought it makes perfect sense, having seen it in action.
I suspect/expect you’ll write what power Lucius can legally claim over Harry sometimes soon?
Also I learned to actually look up the experiments you referred to...
All in all thank you for a highly entertaining and inspiring chapter!
(upvoted chaosmosis) How is utilitarian not cold-blooded? As far as I understand, utilitarians work by assigning utility values between different outcomes and choosing the one with the most utility. That seems pretty cold-blooded.
100k years worth of life > 2 minutes of intense pain and loss of 2 years of life.
Makes sense. I was confused so I looked it up: “And the third wizard, the binder, permanently sacrifices a small portion of their own magic, to sustain the Vow forever.” I guess the self-improvement part is out of the question then...
Still; it’d be a pretty hardcore thing to do for an ambitious dying grandfather. Make his grandson, age 3, swear the vow (something along the lines: “I will never spend an awake moment on anything except improving my abilities or the situation of my family”—it could be phrased better) and then die happily.
Highly unlikely: blood debts have probably been a significant political currency for a long time, and both due to institutional path-dependency and a lot of vested interests, I highly doubt that they’d change the importance of blood debts. Also: it seems like a lot of the justice system is built up around this concept. It would require a total overhaul of the justice system to deal with the blood debt. Otherwise they’d have to change the significance of being imperiuse’d which is also unlikely due to most of them otherwise being Azkaban(ne)d
And this doesn’t sound like a teleological argument to yourself?
From a strategic point of view having Light-Harry as a gullible ally is worth way more than having Dark-Harry be so knowingly. If the plot is to gain control of Magical Britain under one single leader who you puppeteer (him being embedded with your brain patterns and all) there’d be no sense in turning him dark now. The political strategist would rather:
Put Dumbledore in a bad position by allowing Harry to be the one to stand up for the students. Possibly in a way that humbles Dumbledore by the great “wisdom” of Harry, but meanwhile in a way that doesn’t alienate Harry from Dumbledore’s political allies before he’s been groomed and positioned to lead them. A way to do this would be to present evidence that Harry would be able to deduct and present on basis of being the Boy-Who-Lived AND someone who actually thinks. It might very well involve Harry find out, and proof, that Snape burned the letters. Snape being a double turncoat means that he’d be an easy suspect. Quirrelmort already has good reason to see him gone (that’s how he deals with traitors if you recall) plus it’d severely weaken Dumbledore’s hold on the Slytherin part of Britain. Here the taboo trade-off is Snape’s future who Dumbledore trades to keep the school.
Quirrelmort might already have been there for the duel between Hermione and Draco. Hence he’d have a memory of it and be able to pull that memory to a pensive. That memory would be enough to proof Hermione innocent. If this is the case Quirrelmort ends up distancing Harry from Lucius; which might be a good idea considering that Quirrelmort probably prefers to be the one in charge of the dark side and have Harry as a champion of the light. The taboo trade-off would then be Draco’s father.
I see no reason to make Harry appear dark. Actually I’d consider that extremely stupid since Quirrelmort has obtained all the political power he could hope to and now knows that that is not enough. He needs both the wolves and the sheep.
How is that rational?
Our time zones are different (hence you might have written me in the middle of my writing), but I think I reached my goal: thank you for your help. I’m still struggling a little bit with the interface.
Yes, of course. First of all, I just updated it to 0.15-0.20. This might actually be a bit high, but I’ve set it higher than what I feel is right due to my bias (consisting of Eliezer finding a more interesting way of writing the story).
It is “so low” due to the following:
a) I believe that Quirrel is not seeking a physical confrontation with Harry (earlier we saw him toss Harry a knut (that could have been a portkey to a volcano))
a.1.) Harry wouldn’t win such a confrontation (a sneak attack would of course be much more likely to get the job done)
a.2.) If there is a confrontation and if that confrontation ends with the death of Quirrel, I expect the wands or Lily’s ritual to be the deciding factor, not any action of Harry’s.
b) I consider it most probable that Quirrel tries to turn Harry to his ways (0.6 < p < 0.5)
b.1) Harry might try to counter-turn Quirrel. I do doubt though that this will end with one of them dying. Killing one another seems so irrational...
c) if Harry decides Quirrel must die, he’d do better using henchmen
[I’m now officially not a fan of the editing options here]
Prediction time!
Due to Harry’s new vow he’ll feel forced to kill Quirrel: 0.2 > p > 0.15 [UPDATED from 0.1 > p > 0.05]
Due to Harry’s new vow he’ll feel forced to kill Dumbledore: 0.12 > p > 0.08
Due to Harry’s new vow he’ll end up killing the wrong person (bad judgement call on Harry’s behalf): 0.15 > p > 0.1
Due to Harry’s new vow he’ll end up killing the wrong person (bad execution on Harry’s behalf): 0.1 > p > 0.05
Due to Harry’s new vow he’ll not kill the right bad guy at the right time hence become indirectly responsible for the deaths of innocents: 0.3 > p > 0.2
Please add and/or comment on predictions.
I disagree. Techniques for spreading rationality are highly rational to learn. Considering subjects such as Why Our Kind Can’t Cooperate I dare say that it’s almost essential for the project of disseminating rationality that LessWrong as a group learns how group dynamics work and how successful communities are built. If we consider being rational a good thing then we ought to make it as attractive as possible to feel as part of the rationalist group.