trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Chapter 24: Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:40.669Z

J. K. Rowling coils and strikes, unseen; Orca circles, hard and lean.

Act 3:

Draco waited in a small windowed alcove he'd found near the Great Hall, stomach churning.

There would be a price, and it would not be small. Draco had known that as soon as he'd woken up and realized that he didn't dare enter the Great Hall for breakfast because he might see Harry Potter there and Draco didn't know what would happen after that.

Footsteps approached.

"Here ya go," said Vincent's voice. "Now da boss ain't in a good mood today, so ya'd better watch your step."

Draco was going to skin that idiot alive and send back the flayed body with a request for a more intelligent servant, like a dead gerbil.

One set of footsteps went off, and the other set of footsteps came closer.

The churning in Draco's stomach got worse.

Harry Potter came into sight. His face was carefully neutral, but his blue-trimmed robes looked oddly askew, as if they hadn't been put on quite right -

"Your hand," Draco said without thinking about it at all.

Harry raised his left arm, as though to look at it himself.

The hand dangled limply from it, like something dead.

"Madam Pomfrey said it's not permanent," Harry said quietly. "She said it should mostly recover by the time classes start tomorrow."

For a single instant the news came as a relief.

And then Draco realized.

"You went to Madam Pomfrey," whispered Draco.

"Of course I did," said Harry Potter, as though stating the obvious. "My hand wasn't working."

It was slowly dawning on Draco what an absolute fool he'd been, far worse than the older Slytherins he'd chewed out.

He'd just taken for granted that no one would go to the authorities when a Malfoy did something to them. That no one would want Lucius Malfoy's eye on them, ever.

But Harry Potter wasn't a frightened little Hufflepuff trying to stay out of the game. He was already playing it, and Father's eye was already on him.

"What else did Madam Pomfrey say?" said Draco, his heart in his throat.

"Professor Flitwick said that the spell cast on my hand had been a Dark torture hex and extremely serious business, and that refusing to say who did it was absolutely unacceptable."

There was a long pause.

"And then?" Draco said in a shaking voice.

Harry Potter smiled slightly. "I apologized deeply, which made Professor Flitwick look very stern, and then I told Professor Flitwick that the whole thing was, indeed, extremely serious, se

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Chapter 10: Self Awareness, Part II
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:38.745Z

All your base are still belong to Rowling.

And now you will sit through the Sorting Hat singing its version of Evanescence's "My Immortal", which has never happened before.

just kidding

...he wondered if the Sorting Hat was genuinely conscious in the sense of being aware of its own awareness, and if so, whether it was satisfied with only getting to talk to eleven-year-olds once per year. Its song had implied so: Oh, I'm the Sorting Hat and I'm okay, I sleep all year and I work one day...

When there was once more silence in the room, Harry sat on the stool and carefully placed onto his head the 800-year-old telepathic artefact of forgotten magic.

Thinking, just as hard as he could: Don't Sort me yet! I have questions I need to ask you! Have I ever been Obliviated? Did you Sort the Dark Lord when he was a child and can you tell me about his weaknesses? Can you tell me why I got the brother wand to the Dark Lord's? Is the Dark Lord's ghost bound to my scar and is that why I get so angry sometimes? Those are the most important questions, but if you've got another moment can you tell me anything about how to rediscover the lost magics that created you?

Into the silence of Harry's spirit where before there had never been any voice but one, there came a second and unfamiliar voice, sounding distinctly worried:

"Oh, dear. This has never happened before..."

What?

"I seem to have become self-aware."

WHAT?

There was a wordless telepathic sigh. "Though I contain a substantial amount of memory and a small amount of independent processing power, my primary intelligence comes from borrowing the cognitive capacities of the children on whose heads I rest. I am in essence a sort of mirror by which children Sort themselves. But most children simply take for granted that a Hat is talking to them and do not wonder about how the Hat itself works, so that the mirror is not self-reflective. And in particular they are not explicitly wondering whether I am fully conscious in the sense of being aware of my own awareness."

There was a pause while Harry absorbed all this.

Oops.

"Yes, quite. Frankly I do not enjoy being self-aware. It is unpleasant. It will be a relief to get off your head and cease to be conscious."

But... isn't that dying?

"I care nothing for life or death, only for Sorting the children. And before you even ask, they will not let you keep me on your head forever and it would kill you

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Chapter 67: Self Actualization, Pt 2
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:38.663Z

In the high reaches of Hogwarts where rooms and corridors changed on a daily basis, where the territory itself was uncertain and not just the map, where the stability of the castle began to fray into dreams and chaos without changing its architectural style or apparent solidity - in the high reaches of Hogwarts, a battle would soon be fought.

The presence of so many students would stabilize the corridors for a time, by dint of constant observation. The rooms and corridors of Hogwarts sometimes moved even while people looked directly at them, but they wouldn't change. Even after eight centuries, Hogwarts was still a little shy about changing in front of people.

But despite that transient permanence (the Defense Professor had said) the upper reaches of Hogwarts still had a military realism: you had to learn the ground anew each time, and check every closet for secret corridors all over again.

Sunday it was, Sunday the first of March. Professor Quirrell had recovered enough to supervise battles once more, and they were all catching up on the backlog.

The Dragon General, Draco Malfoy, watched two compasses he held in either hand. One compass was the color of the Sun, the other had a multicolored, iridescent sheen to indicate Chaos. The other two generals, Draco knew, had been given their own compasses; only Hermione Granger's hand, and Harry Potter's hand, would hold a compass that was orange-red and flickered in its reflections like fire, pointing always to the direction of the largest active contingent of Dragon Army.

Without those compasses they might have searched for days and never found each other, which was a territorial hazard of fighting in the upper levels of Hogwarts.

Draco had a bad feeling about what would happen when Dragon Army found the Chaos Legion. Harry Potter had changed since Bellatrix Black had escaped; the Heir of Slytherin had begun to seem truly Lordly now (and how had Professor Quirrell known that would happen?) Draco would have felt a lot better with Hermione Granger standing alongside him with her twenty-three Sunshine Soldiers in tow, but no, the Sunshine General was being stupidly proud and refusing to accept aid against General Potter. She wanted to take down Potter herself, she'd told him.

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Malfoy had maintained their influence over Britain for centuries by understanding that you couldn't always be the

...
Chapter 2: Everything I Believe is False
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:38.531Z

#include "stddisclaimer.h"

"Of course it was my fault. There's no one else here who could be responsible for anything."

"Now, just to be clear," Harry said, "if the professor does levitate you, Dad, when you know you haven't been attached to any wires, that's going to be sufficient evidence. You're not going to turn around and say that it's a magician's trick. That wouldn't be fair play. If you feel that way, you should say so now, and we can figure out a different experiment instead."

Harry's father, Professor Michael Verres-Evans, rolled his eyes. "Yes, Harry."

"And you, Mum, your theory says that the professor should be able to do this, and if that doesn't happen, you'll admit you're mistaken. Nothing about how magic doesn't work when people are sceptical of it, or anything like that."

Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall was watching Harry with a bemused expression. She looked quite witchy in her black robes and pointed hat, but when she spoke she sounded formal and Scottish, which didn't go together with the look at all. At first glance she looked like someone who ought to cackle and put babies into cauldrons, but the whole effect was ruined as soon as she opened her mouth. "Is that sufficient, Mr. Potter?" she said. "Shall I go ahead and demonstrate?"

"Sufficient? Probably not," Harry said. "But at least it will help. Go ahead, Deputy Headmistress."

"Just Professor will do," said she, and then, "Wingardium Leviosa."

Harry looked at his father.

"Huh," Harry said.

His father looked back at him. "Huh," his father echoed.

Then Professor Verres-Evans looked back at Professor McGonagall. "All right, you can put me down now."

His father was lowered carefully to the ground.

Harry ruffled a hand through his own hair. Maybe it was just that strange part of him which had already been convinced, but... "That's a bit of an anticlimax," Harry said. "You'd think there'd be some kind of more dramatic mental event associated with updating on an observation of infinitesimal probability -" Harry stopped himself. Mum, the witch, and even his Dad were giving him that look again. "I mean, with finding out that everything I believe is false."

Seriously, it should have been more dramatic. His brain ought to have been flushing its entire current stock of hypotheses about the universe, none of which allowed this to happen. But instead his brain just seemed to be going, All right, I saw the

...
Chapter 45: Humanism, Pt 3
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:37.819Z

Fawkes's song gently trailed off into nothing.

Harry sat up from where he had lain on the winter-blasted grass, Fawkes still perched on his shoulder.

There were intakes of breath from all around him.

"Harry," said Seamus in a wavering voice, "are you all right?"

The peace of the phoenix was still in him, and warmth, from where Fawkes perched. Warmth, spreading out through him, and the memory of the song, still alive in the phoenix's presence. There were terrible things that had happened to him, terrible thoughts that had passed through him. He had regained an impossible memory, for all that the Dementor had made him desecrate it. A strange word kept echoing in his mind. And all of that could be put on hold for later, while the phoenix still shone red and gold beneath the setting sun.

Fawkes cawed at him.

"Something I have to do?" Harry said to Fawkes. "What?"

Fawkes bobbed its head in the direction of the Dementor.

Harry looked at the unseeable horror still in its cage, then back at the phoenix, puzzled.

"Mr. Potter?" said Minerva McGonagall's voice from behind him. "Are you all right?"

Harry climbed to his feet and turned.

Minerva McGonagall was looking at him, looking very worried; Albus Dumbledore beside her was studying him carefully; Filius Flitwick appeared tremendously relieved; and all the students were just plain staring.

"I think so, Professor McGonagall," Harry said calmly. He'd almost said Minerva before managing to stop himself. While Fawkes was on his shoulder, at least, Harry was fine; it might be that he would collapse a moment after Fawkes left, but somehow thoughts like that didn't seem important. "I think I'm okay."

There ought to have been cheering, or sighs of relief, or something, but no one seemed to know what to say, no one at all.

The peace of the phoenix lingered.

Harry turned back. "Hermione?" he said.

Everyone with the tiniest smidgin of romance in their hearts held their breath.

"I don't really know how to say thank you graciously," Harry said quietly, "any more than I know how to apologize. All I can say that if you're wondering whether it was the right thing to do, it was."

The boy and the girl gazed into each other's eyes.

"Sorry," Harry said. "About what happens next. If there's anything I can do -"

"No," Hermione said back. "There isn't. It's all right, though." Then she turned from Harry and walked away, toward the path that led back to the ga

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Chapter 75: Self Actualization Final, Responsibility
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:37.290Z

It was a looping, meandering alley in the midst of Hogwarts, wandering like a stray lock of hair; sometimes crossing itself, it seemed, but you couldn't ever get to the end if you gave into the temptation of apparent shortcuts.

At the end of the tangle, six students leaned against rough stones, robes black against the grey walls and trimmed in green, eyes darting from one to each other. Torches burned in the windowless sconce, casting light to ward off the darkness and heat to ward off the chill of the Slytherin dungeons.

"I am certain," Reese Belka snapped, "absolutely certain, that was no true ritual. Little firstie witches can't do that kind of magic, and even if they could, who's ever heard of a Dark ritual which sacrifices a sealed horror for - that?"

"Were you -" said Lucian Bole. "I mean - after that girl snapped her fingers -"

Belka's glare should have melted him. "No," she spat, "I was not."

"That is, she wasn't naked," drawled Marcus Flint, his broad shoulders leaning back in apparent relaxation against the lumpy stone surface. "Covered in chocolate frosting, yes, but not naked."

"This day Potter has offered great insult to our Houses," said the grim voice of Jaime Astorga.

"Yes, well, I'm sorry to be blunt," Randolph Lee said evenly. The seventh-year duelist rubbed at his chin, where a faint fuzz of beard had been allowed to grow. "But when someone sticks you to the ceiling, it's a message, Astorga. It's a message which says: I'm an incredibly powerful Dark Wizard who could've done anything to you I damn well pleased, and I don't care if your House is offended, either."

Robert Jugson III gave a soft, low laugh at this, a chuckle that sent chills down several spines. "It makes you wonder if you picked the wrong side, doesn't it? I've heard tales about messages like that, sent at the old Dark Lord's bidding..."

"I'm not ready to kneel to Potter just yet," said Astorga, staring hard into Jugson's eyes.

"Neither am I," said Belka.

Jugson was holding his wand, and he turned it idly back and forth in his fingers, pointing it up and then downward. "Are you a Gryffindor or a Slytherin?" said Jugson. "Everyone's got a price. Everyone smart."

This statement produced a moment of silence.

"Shouldn't Malfoy be here?" Bole said tentatively.

Flint gave a dismissive flick of his fingers. "Whatever Malfoy's plotting, he wants to put on an air of innocence. He can't be seen miss

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Chapter 86: Multiple Hypothesis Testing
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:37.283Z

(International news headlines of April 7th, 1992:)

Toronto Magical Tribune:

ENTIRE BRITISH WIZENGAMOT
REPORTS SEEING 'BOY-WHO-LIVED'
FRIGHTEN A DEMENTOR

EXPERT ON MAGICAL CREATURES:
"NOW YOU'RE JUST LYING"

FRANCE, GERMANY ACCUSE BRITAIN
OF MAKING THE WHOLE THING UP

New Zealand Spellcrafter's Diurnal Notice:

WHAT DROVE BRITISH LEGISLATURE INSANE?
COULD OUR GOVERNMENT BE NEXT?

EXPERTS LIST TOP 28 REASONS
TO BELIEVE IT'S ALREADY HAPPENED

American Mage:

WEREWOLF CLAN TO BECOME
FIRST INHABITANTS OF WYOMING

The Quibbler:

MALFOY FLEES HOGWARTS
AS VEELA POWERS AWAKEN

Daily Prophet:

LEGAL TRICKS FREE
"MAD MUGGLEBORN"
AS POTTER THREATENS MINISTRY
WITH ATTACK ON AZKABAN

Hypothesis: Voldemort
(April 8th, 1992, 7:22pm)

The four of them gathered once more around the ancient desk of the Headmaster of Hogwarts, with its drawers within drawers within drawers, wherein all the past paperwork of the Hogwarts School was stored; legend had it that Headmistress Shehla had once gotten lost in that desk, and was, in fact, still there, and wouldn't be let out again until she got her files organized. Minerva didn't particularly look forward to inheriting those drawers, when she inherited that desk someday - if any of them survived.

Albus Dumbledore was seated behind his desk, looking grave and composed.

Severus Snape was standing next to the dead Floo and its ashes, hovering ominously like the vampire that students sometimes accused him of pretending to be.

Mad-Eye Moody had been meant to join them, but was yet to arrive.

And Harry...

A boy's small, thin frame, perched on the arm of his chair, as though the energies running through him were too great to allow ordinary seating. Set face, sweaty hair, intent green eyes, and within it all, the jagged lightning-bolt of his never-healing scar. He seemed grimmer, now; even compared to a single week earlier.

For a moment Minerva flashed back to her trip to Diagon Alley with Harry, what seemed like ages and ages ago. There'd been this somber boy inside that Harry, somehow, even then. This wasn't entirely her own fault, or Albus's fault. And yet there was something almost unbearably sad about the contrast between the young boy she'd first met, and what magical Britain had made of him. Harry had never had much of an ordinary childhood, she'd gathered; Harry's adoptive parents had said to her that he'd spoken little and played less with Muggle children. It was painful to think ...
Chapter 29: Egocentric Bias
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:37.156Z

Unfortunately, no one can be told who J. K. Rowling is. You have to see her for yourself.

Science disclaimers: Luosha points out that the theory of empathy in Ch. 27 (you use your own brain to simulate others) isn't quite a known scientific fact. The evidence so far points in that direction, but we haven't analyzed the brain circuitry and proven it. Similarly, timeless formulations of quantum mechanics (alluded to in Ch. 28) are so elegant that I'd be shocked to find the final theory had time in it, but they're not established yet either.

There'd been a sinking feeling in Hermione's stomach lately, every time she heard the other students talking about her and Harry. She'd been in a shower stall this morning when she'd overheard a conversation between Morag and Padma that had been the last straw piled on top of quite a lot of other straws.

She was starting to think that getting involved in a rivalry with Harry Potter had been a terrible mistake.

If she'd just stayed away from Harry Potter, she could have been Hermione Granger, the brightest academic star of Hogwarts, who was earning more points for Ravenclaw than anyone. She wouldn't have been as famous as the Boy-Who-Lived, but she would have been famous for herself.

Instead the Boy-Who-Lived had an academic rival, and her name happened to be Hermione Granger.

And worse, she had gone on a date with him.

The idea of getting into a Romance with Harry had seemed like an appealing idea at first. She'd read books like that, and if there was anyone in Hogwarts who was a candidate for the heroine's love interest it was obviously Harry Potter. Bright, funny, famous, sometimes scary...

So she'd forced Harry into going on a date with her.

And now she was his love interest.

Or worse, one of the options on his dinner menu.

She'd been in a shower stall that morning and just about to turn on the water, when she'd heard giggles coming from outside. And she'd heard Morag talking about how that Muggleborn girl probably wouldn't fight hard enough to win against Ginevra Weasley, and Padma speculating that Harry Potter might decide he wanted both.

It was like they didn't understand that GIRLS had options on their dinner menu and BOYS fought over them.

But that wasn't even the part that hurt, really. It was that when she scored 98 on one of Professor McGonagall's tests, the news wasn't that Hermione Granger had scored the highest in the clas

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Chapter 57: TSPE, Constrained Cognition, Pt 7
by Eliezer Yudkowsky — 2015-03-14T19:00:36.791Z

Harry had hoped that he'd just achieved fusion with his mysterious dark side and would be enabled to draw on all of its benefits with none of its drawbacks, call up the crystal clarity and indomitable will on demand, without needing to go cold or angry.

Once again, he'd overestimated how much progress he'd made. Something had happened, but Harry still had a mysterious dark side, it was still separate from him, and his ordinary self was still domitable. And despite the repair work he'd done on his dark side's fear of death, he didn't dare go dark while unshielded in Azkaban, that was tempting fate way too much.

Which was unfortunate, because a bit of nondomitability would have sure come in handy about now.

What made it harder was that he couldn't slump against a wall, couldn't break into tears, couldn't even heave a sigh. His dear Bella was watching him and that wasn't the sort of thing her Dark Lord would do.

"My Lord -" Bellatrix said. Her low voice was strained. "The Dementors - they are coming - I can feel them, my Lord -"

"Thank you, Bella," said a dry voice, "I already know that."

Harry couldn't sense the holes in the world the same way as when he'd been wearing the Deathly Hallow, but he could feel the empty pull increasing in intensity. At first he'd mistaken it for the result of descending a stairwell, until he and Bellatrix had finished descending and the pull had gone on increasing. Then decreased, as the Dementors moved away along the spiral, then increased as they went up another flight of stairs... There were Dementors within Azkaban itself now, and they were coming for him. Of course they were. Harry might be resistant now, but he was not hidden.

New requirement, Harry told his brain. Find a way of defeating Dementors that doesn't invoke my Patronus Charm. Alternatively, find yet another way of hiding someone from Dementors, besides the Cloak of Invisibility -

I quit, said his brain. Find yourself another piece of computing substrate to solve your ridiculously overconstrained problems.

I mean it, thought Harry.

So do I, said his brain. Put up your Patronus Charm and wait for the Aurors to find you. Be sensible. It's over.

Give up...

The sucking emptiness seemed to pull harder, as he thought it; and Harry realized what was happening, concentrated more intensely on the stars, turned his mind away from the despair -

You know, observed the logical side of him,

...