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[infangthief]

And now back to Myrtle; once she covers her eyes, you cannot see them anymore through her hands. Her eyes literally cease to exist during the time they are covered and thus she is unable to perceive anything with them.

I like the way of answering the question because of how quietly unsettling it is.

Reminds me of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:

such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you

[silverspawn]

- How did Myrtle cover her eyes when Harry entered and left the prefect's bathroom? The book says that she covered her glasses, but aren't her hands see-through? I think Harry may not have gotten the privacy he thought he had.

This raises some fun questions about ghosts in general. Like, how come if they are see-through, you cannot make out their inner organs? Well a reasonable answer is there aren't any, the ghost form merely replicates the outermost shell.

Let's think about Almost Headless Nick in this context. You can certainly see the gore at his wound when his head is dangling, but (presumably) if the head is in position, it's impossible to see the wound in the inside of his throat; only the outermost shell is replicated in the world and thus when covered up, the wound ceases to exist.

And now back to Myrtle; once she covers her eyes, you cannot see them anymore through her hands. Her eyes literally cease to exist during the time they are covered and thus she is unable to perceive anything with them.

I like the way of answering the question because of how quietly unsettling it is.

[+1] That's indeed a clever answer

There must then be a difference between recipe and result -- as in, the body plan of Nearly Headless Nick must be preserved; his would doesn't heal when his head is in place.

[silverspawn]

A few days ago I spent half of my bank account (i.e., 100 euros) on a few premium voices for NaturalReader. They're pretty great, honestly. Actually sitting down and reading a paper is a really high willpower for me; it's much easier to just have it read to me. I understand less that way for sure, but I understand much more than if I didn't read it at all, which is often what would happen instead.

Even when I do sit down to read now, I do TTS simultaneously. Somehow it makes it less tiring. It's really something I've criminally underutilized until recently.

[silverspawn]

Republican % to win Senate went up to 82 based on something last night. Probably exit polls. I couldn't ofc, but it really looked like more bias

[silverspawn]

couldn't *bet

[silverspawn]

Looks like Nate's forecasting model was spot on yet again. So annoying how I'm always right about whom to listen to!

[silverspawn]

Also seems like the market should have reacted more to the presidential prospects of DeSantis vs. Trump (barely any reaction), since the entire election was really bad for Trumpy candidates.

The night being bad for Trumpy candidates is probably also a good thing for democracy.

[Awaclus]

At this rate, my ETH prediction is accidentally going to come true within a couple of days for a reason I didn't even consider originally.

[silverspawn]

I don't think so. I mean, it's suffered a hit, but why would it go down more now?

[silverspawn]

To me the FTX thing seems not super relevant -- it's not like the failures had anything to do with ETH

[silverspawn]

I mean to do in the sense that any aspect of the ETH technology was causally responsible

[Awaclus]

Well, it's not like my prediction had much to do with the ETH technology either. It was all about the economic impact of the war making some investors cash out their investments and others prefer lower risk investments, plus temporary dipping when people panic. The merge was a factor I had considered that could have caused a potential temporary dip among other things though, and I guess it did, but the price before the dip was a lot higher than I had anticipated.

[silverspawn]

Distribution of critical replies to Nate Silver on twitter by category

[silverspawn]

[Awaclus]

Why are ad hominem and name-calling in the same category?

[silverspawn]

I'll make an updated version eventually

[silverspawn]

The way people transform animals into objects, and animals into other animals, raises some serious questions, both philosophical and ethical.

And that's not to speak of transforming a desk into a pig, as McGonnagall does in the very first lesson of the first year. Now, with my world view, this is not particularly less impossible than doing the reverse, so no real philosophical problems... but in Harry Potter, presumably life is something ontologically fundamental...

... or perhaps it's actually not and only humans are ontologically fundamental. Animals don't seem to have souls...

[silverspawn]

To be fair this one is not from the book

[silverspawn]

What's really stupid though is that all of those are world plays. "Guinea fowl to guinea pig". "Love bird to Love note". I mean come on -- if that means  such items are in sense close in the relevant space, the implications are so absurd I don't even

[silverspawn]

On the other hand, I mean the unvierse contains magic, so maybe takeing this seriously and running with it could be interesting

[silverspawn]

crypto is good.

[silverspawn]

Quest: read all of Steven Lehar's papers
Reward: +300 experience and +20 project progress

[silverspawn]

This quote from the introduction of one of his papers really sums it up:

There are many aspects of sensory and perceptual experience that exhibit a
continuous spatial nature suggestive of a field theory principle of computation
and/or representation in the brain. Visual experience appears in the form of a
continuous space containing perceived objects that occupy discrete volumes of
that space, with spatially extended colored surfaces observed on the exposed
faces of perceived objects. It is a picture-like experience whose information
content is equal to the information content of a three-dimensional painted
model, like a museum diorama, or a theater set. A number of Gestalt illusions
suggest a field-like computational principle in perception.

He provides so much evidence that this is true, and academia just ignores him (his papers tend to get <20 citations if they're accepted at all, and around half of them are usually from his other papers). I am positive that this is insane. Even if I were substantially wrong about my thesis, it would still be insane; even if Lehar was wrong, it's insane to not take him far more seriously. There's so many papers (like mine) providing incremental contributions to one tiny subfield; here we have something about 10000 times as impactful as that if it's correct, and the argument for it is completely lucid.

[silverspawn]

So the third-graders spend the entire year in Care for M Creatures taking care of Hagrid's unique cross breed, then almost all of the "Blast-Ended Skrewts" die over the course of the year, and in the end they use the last one as part of the third task

He held out his wand, ready to attack, but its beam fell only upon Cedric, who had just hurried out of a path on
the right-hand side. Cedric looked severely shaken. The sleeve of his robe was smoking.

“Hagrid’s Blast-Ended Skrewts!” he hissed. “They’re enormous — I only just got away!”

not gonna lie that's hilarious

[silverspawn]

looks kinda dope