Author Topic: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality  (Read 2283 times)

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Offline Domino

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« on: Dec 21, 2010, 11:03:15 AM »
Today I find myself reading fanfiction, something I typically avoid. Harry Potter fanfiction no less. And it's awesome.

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This is an Alternate Universe story, where Petunia married a scientist. Now rationalist Harry enters the wizarding world armed with Enlightenment ideals and the experimental spirit.


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    So not only is the wizarding economy almost completely decoupled from the Muggle economy, no one here has ever heard of arbitrage. The larger Muggle economy had a fluctuating trading range of gold to silver, so every time the Muggle gold-to-silver ratio got more than 5% away from the weight of seventeen Sickles to one Galleon, either gold or silver should have drained from the wizarding economy until it became impossible to maintain the exchange rate. Bring in a ton of silver, change to Sickles (and pay 5%), change the Sickles for Galleons, take the gold to the Muggle world, exchange it for more silver than you started with, and repeat.

    Wasn't the Muggle gold to silver ratio somewhere around fifty to one? Harry didn't think it was seventeen, anyway. And it looked like the silver coins were actually smaller than the gold coins.

    Then again, Harry was standing in a bank that literally stored your money in vaults full of gold coins guarded by dragons, where you had to go in and take out coins out of your vault whenever you wanted to spend money. The finer points of arbitraging away market inefficiencies might well be lost on them. He'd been tempted to make some sort of snide remark about the crudity of their financial system...

    But the sad thing is, their way is probably better.

    On the other hand, one competent hedge fundie could probably own the whole wizarding world within a week. Harry filed away this notion in case he ever ran out of money, or had a week free.


Give it a look here or here

Offline Jeremy's Sea

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #1 on: Dec 21, 2010, 12:24:02 PM »
OMG that is freaking hilarious.

Offline Parrot

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #2 on: Dec 23, 2010, 01:10:00 AM »
I've always had this thought about the protections around the stone in the first Harry Potter book: they didn't seem to be very good protections at all.

They seem more like skill testing challenges, which make absolutely no sense in terms of providing any sort of protection.  It's like setting the bank vault to open for anybody who's skilled enough to solve a series of highly challenging Sudoku puzzles.

It does make sense if you think of it in another way though.  What if those challenges weren't meant to protect the stone at all?  Perhaps the object at the end of all the challenges was a fake, and these "protections" were just a scheme that would cause anybody seeking the stone to waste their time on a fruitless pursuit.

They had to make the challenges difficult, but potentially solvable in order to keep any would be thieves busy so that they would be too occupied to think about it and guess the truth - which is that Dumbledore was carrying the stone around on his person the entire time.

This is the kind of strange theory that I come up with once i a while :D

Offline azinyk

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #3 on: Dec 23, 2010, 01:26:33 AM »
I've always had this thought about the protections around the stone in the first Harry Potter book: they didn't seem to be very good protections at all.

The first protection is a locked door, which brings to mind the question: why does anyone in the wizarding world bother to lock their doors when a 12-year-old girl can open them with a single word?


Online Neon Genesis

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #4 on: Dec 23, 2010, 01:56:33 AM »
Hermione wasn't able to open the second lock, so I assumed that Dumbledore made the second lock stronger.  Since the first lock lead them into the room with the multi-headed dog, they might not have assumed it was necessary to make the first lock stronger.  But someone who can get past Fluffy might need a stronger lock the second time.   

Offline Domino

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #5 on: Dec 24, 2010, 07:34:49 AM »
I'm actually going off this a bit, the story is charging off and diverging too much. I rather liked it as a spoof/satire - a sane, rational mind stuck in the world of Harry Potter.

Offline IrishJazz

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #6 on: Dec 24, 2010, 07:39:45 AM »
Perhaps expecting sustained sanity and rationality from someone willing to devote the time to writing Harry Potter fan fiction is a bit optimistic
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Offline Domino

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #7 on: Dec 24, 2010, 10:53:29 AM »

...Good point.

Offline Silly Llama

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #8 on: Jan 03, 2011, 01:34:28 AM »
Great, you're going to make me read fanfiction for the first time ever...

Offline MikeNH

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #9 on: Jan 03, 2011, 02:36:12 AM »
haha that sounds pretty entertaining...

responding to the other comments, how hard would it be to just use magic to produce a gold coin?? Compared to the other shit they can do with magic, that sounds like it would be taught the first day...

Offline Silly Llama

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #10 on: Jan 06, 2011, 03:58:17 AM »
haha that sounds pretty entertaining...

responding to the other comments, how hard would it be to just use magic to produce a gold coin?? Compared to the other shit they can do with magic, that sounds like it would be taught the first day...


Or, as in the Sword of Truth series, turn copper coins into gold.

Offline jack wooster

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #11 on: Jun 13, 2011, 11:00:04 AM »
There is now a podcast of Harry Potter &TMOR on Itunes well worth a listen.  The first few chapters are quite good but the story really get going when Harry gets to Hogwarts it is worth persisting with for the Sagan-like Quirrel alone.
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Offline Scybert

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #12 on: Jun 13, 2011, 09:06:40 PM »
This comes from lesswrong and Eliezer Yudkowsky.  I've met him twice at Singularity summits, and he has some good ideas.  I find the site full of navel-gazing, but want to get around to reading this.

Offline EmergentSystem

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #13 on: Jun 15, 2011, 08:46:52 AM »
How does he react to the time traveling device?
Dr Johnson, they said: “we are delighted to find that you’ve not included any indecent or obscene words in your dictionary.”
“Ladies, said dr Johnson, “I can congratulate you on being able to look them up.”

Offline andrewclunn

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
« Reply #14 on: Jun 15, 2011, 08:56:15 AM »
Great, you're going to make me read fanfiction for the first time ever...

Damn it.  +1