Micah Kennedy’s Reviews > Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality > Status Update

“Do you think you’re, you’re just genetically better than everyone who lived back then? Like if you’d been transported back to fifteenth-century London as a baby, you’d realize all on your own that burning cats was wrong, witch-burning was wrong, slavery was wrong, that every sentient being ought to be in your circle of concern?”

☝️

It was an elementary theorem of probability that if you knew what your answer would be after updating on future evidence, you ought to adopt that answer right now. If you knew your destination, you were al- ready there. And by analogy, if not quite by theorem, if you could guess what the descendants of humanity would think of something, you ought to go ahead and take that as your own best guess.

💯 🙌

And the thought had occurred to Harry that it looked like everyone was competing to see who could be most angry, and nobody would’ve been allowed to suggest that anyone was being too angry, even if they’d just proposed the saturation nuclear bombing of Ireland. He’d been struck, even then, by an essential emptiness in the indignation of politicians.

When you are older, you will learn that the first and foremost thing which any ordinary person does is nothing.

“Most people ARE afraid, Miss Granger,” said the old wizard. “They live their whole lives circumscribed by crippling fear that cuts off everything they might accomplish, everything they might become. Fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, fear of losing their mere possessions, fear of death, and above all the fear of what other people will think of them.”

Harry gave a little shrug. His spoon dropped back into his cereal, and went on stirring without a pause. “Why does any kind of cynicism appeal to people? Because it seems like a mark of maturity, of sophistication, like you’ve seen everything and know better. Or because putting something down feels like pushing yourself up. Or because being cynical feels like knowing a secret truth that common people don’t know

“Gosh,” Harry said half a minute later, “you get a seer smashed on six slugs of Scotch and she spills all sorts of secret stuff.” 👌

We can NEVER have enough plots!

In retrospect, Harry had given himself hours to make the most important discovery in the history of magic, and months to break through the undeveloped mental barriers of an eleven-year-old boy. This could indicate that Harry had some sort of major cognitive deficit with respect to estimating task completion times.

:P