Monthly Archives: July 2014

Author’s Notes, Ch. 102

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The end is now in sight!  Thanks to an extremely generous anonymous sponsor, and to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute which decided it was a wise use of my time, I will be spending Aug 26-Sep 25th in a remote house in North Carolina writing the first draft of the end of HPMOR.  After this comes a standard seasoning / revising process so don’t get your hopes up for an instant update; but revising is more routine for me, and writing the first draft is the hard part.  I can’t make solid promises upon the future, but I believe with >50% probability that we are on track for HPMOR to finish before the end of 2014.

My aforementioned employer, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, is running its 2014 Summer Matching Challenge.  There’s a lot of things going on at MIRI, now—check the link to the Summer Challenge announcement for a list.

The Center for Applied Rationality has upcoming workshops:

  • September 11-14, Berkeley
  • January 16-19, Berkeley
  • April 23-26, Boston
  • Fall or Winter: Europe (exact date and location TBD, but applications are open now)

Nick Bostrom’s nonfiction book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies is now available on Amazon.  Nick Bostrom is the Director of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute, and on a very short list of people I regard as research peers.

The second Effective Altruism Summit (August 2-3 in Berkeley, CA) still has a few seats open.  Expect representatives from GiveWell, the Centre for Effective Altruism, the Future of Humanity Institute, the Leverage Research, the Future of Life Institute, and Founders Fund, as well as MIRI and CFAR.

The philosophy behind Effective Altruism (EA) is to quantify how much good gets done per dollar in various places, and donate some or all of one’s philanthropic dollars where they are most effective.  Since there is no efficient market in philanthropy, some interventions are hundreds or thousands of times as effective as others, and those are just the ones we can solidly measure.

Not everyone in EA agrees on exactly what “the most effective thing to do per dollar” may be, or even what we’re trying to impact—are we trying to help modern-day humans? do animals also count? do we really care most about the much larger number of people who will exist in a larger future?  But we share a common interest, and a common way of looking at the world, since we agree that maximizing impact per dollar is at least the correct question to ask; and that we are allowed to be calculating about it.  I am honored to count as fellow travelers all effective altruists who ask that right question, even if we arrive at different conclusions for the moment; and I feel a warm sensation in my heart whenever I hear about someone who got involved with effective altruism through a pathway that included HPMOR.

Fan art:

(Reminder:  HPMOR is now out of room for new cameos.  I will let fan artists know if this changes.)

Recursive fanfictions:

Most awesome things I have read since Ch. 101 posted:

  • Ra by qntm, for everyone who keeps saying, “I liked the part where Harry was trying to figure out the laws of magic, can’t you just get back to that instead of having all this plot?”
  • Carpetbaggers by cofax, which addresses the question of what Peter, Susan, Lucy, and Edward did as Kings and Queens of Narnia.
  • Alexanderwales is turning into an impressive and prolific rationalfic writer.  See especially Metropolitan Man and The Last Christmas.
  • The legendary Homestuck which is… Homestuck.  I’m still working my way through this.  Best on a 7″ or larger tablet.
  • The manga Qualia the Purple has updated with Ch. 14-15.  This is what it looks like to “actually try” at something.

Somewhat unexpectedly, I realized that I have a (very) short Ch. 103 that also goes before the final arc.  I am not sure what to do with it—I would have liked to post Ch. 103 with Ch. 102 but it needs heavy revision first.  I’ve also been working on a small guide on How To Write Intelligent Rational Awesome Fiction, in the hope that someday people other than me will produce works that can be read by the sort of people who say they currently have nothing to read, and possibly nothing to live for, except HPMOR.

The next Progress Report will be on September 1st, 2014 at 5pm.   (They’re mostly pro-forma now so far as progress goes, but will still contain interesting things I’ve been reading recently, or any sufficiently interesting short pieces I’ve written.)

Progress Report, Jul 2014

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The next update, a single chapter (Ch. 102), will post on July 25th, 2014 at 7PM Pacific Time.

From August 26th to September 25th, an extremely generous HPMOR reader has arranged for me to occupy a remote house in North Carolina, and I will spend that month working solely on HPMOR.  I intend to try like hell to get at least the first draft of the final chapters fully written by that time.  Please don’t expect an update immediately after that; there’s a seasoning process where I slowly edit and polish things and think them over once they’re written, at least if they’re meant to end up reasonably perfect, and I do want the ending to be reasonably perfect.  That part, however, is much more reliable, casual, and unblocky part than writing the first draft, which is what takes unbroken concentration.  So right now it looks like HPMOR is clearly on track to finish by the end of 2014.

Latest fanfiction recs: In Fire Forged and Right Moments.  Also I finished reading Ra by qntm and it is excellent and everyone who keeps saying, “I liked the part where Harry was trying to figure out the laws of magic, can’t you just get back to that instead of having all this plot?” ought to go read Ra right now.

My current brilliant idea is that myself, Andrew Hussie of Homestuck, and Sam Hughes of QNTM, should all finish our respective masterworks, then coordinate with each other to start posting simultaneously, on the same days, at the same time of day, preferably late in the evening, starting just as finals begin.  Because that’s the closest we can come to actually eating our readers’ souls.

(Just to be clear:  That was a joke.  I haven’t talked to either of them.  Yet.)