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Harry Potter and the methods of rationality

Dec 21, 202448 min read

Harry Potter and the methods of rationality

Date Finished: Nov 30, 2021 Author: Eleizer Yudkovsky Tags: What is rationality

Рекомендую к употреблению (на английском):

  • Аудиокнига HPMOR, в котором есть озвучка по ролям от любителей книги, спецэффекты и атмосферная музыка https://hpmorpodcast.com/?page_id=56

  • Подкаст “We Want MOR”, в котором опытный читатель и новичок обсуждают темы глав и тестируют гипотезы о ходе сюжета https://hpmorpodcast.com/?page_id=2360

  • “Дайте обе!” Скомпилированный RSS фид, в котором после глав аудиокниги идут эпизоды подкаста с их анализом https://gorkyr.github.io/We-Want-MoR-Playlist/we-want-mor.rss

  • Нашёл ещё одну английскую озвучку/аудиокнигу, которую профессионал сейчас озвучивает, но он пока только на 35ой главе https://player.fm/series/harry-potter-and-the-methods-of-rationality-audiobook (это не домашняя, но тут проще архив просматривать, сортировку с Newest на Oldest если поменять) А на русском где-то на ютубе мелькали любительские переводные озвучки :)

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

🎨 Impressions

How I Discovered It

Who Should Read It?

☘️ How the Book Changed Me

How my life / behaviour / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book.

✍️ My Top 3 Quotes

📒 Ideas

Chapters 1 on empiricism Chapter 2 don’t remember

  • Chapter 3 on money and arbitraging.

    • Gold to silver in Muggle world with 5% fee and the same procedure in the world of magic with 20% fee.
    • Bystander effect.
      • More likely to receive help when standing in front one man than several.
        • Diffusion of responsibility.
          • Maybe modern schools operate on the same principle?
    • Rationality leaves you unexpectedly. Most often under emotional pressure.

Fundamental attribution error

  • When we look at others, we see personality traits that explain their behaviour, but we at ourselves, we see circumstances that explain behaviour.
    • People stories make internal sense, but they aren’t seen on the outside. What is seen is an aftermath, and we place our description of a man on the situation as a whole. Keep a cool head and find reason for all deviations. Look for a context.

Planning fallacy

  • Instead of working and working, learn how to think creatively. Captain obvious but not for all.
  • Einstein words, ingenuity prevents you from one thing that is of utmost importance, to find the single major problem.
  • Planning fallacy usually solved when current task is compared with the previously done. ^c8809a
    • When planning don’t leave for yourself little error margin, because exactly that will happen, little error.

Look up for the book: Influence: science and practice. Robert Cialdini

Fundamental question of rationality. Why do you believe what you believe? Метакогниция главенствующая функция критического мышления What do you think you know, and how do you know it?

Friendship is formed when something intimate has been shared.

  • Gift of 5 buck is much more valued than a gift of 50.
  • How to know that you are not been manipulated? Pause and contemplate recognize compliance techniques.

Premise of science: is not magic, it is the deepest possible level of understanding of the laws of the universe. Science exists not to manipulate nature, but to steer it to do what we need and when we need.

questions What is 26-hour sleeping cycle?

The mysterious game you can play only once, a game you play blind without knowing the rules. Adults call this game – life.

Chapter 8 Positive Bias

Positive bias refers to the human tendency to overestimate the possibility of positive (good) things happening in life or in research. In publication, it is the preference for publishing research that has a positive (eventful) outcome, than an uneventful or negative outcome

^16684a

In order to prove hypotheses, you have to disprove it

  • Form a hypothesis.
  • Do an experiment.
  • Measure the results.
  • Write about them.

    Explanation, theory, hypothesis

    ^44c967

    child:: 100-300 Words. How I design experiment over myself

    The best way to explain how hypothesis works is to compare these three parts of any hypothesis.

    • Explanation.
      • The most general description of the event.
      • It might be considered just an attempt to explain.
        • Formally.
        • Or informally.
      • Example: The planets orbit the sun because of gravity.
    • Theory.
      • Theory is formulated out of basic explanation and usually larger with bigger level of abstraction.
      • Theory touches underlying nature of particular phenomenon.
      • Example: All matter is attracted towards other matter by gravitational force, in proportion to the quantity of matter involved.
    • Hypotheses. ^7e56d2
      • Is testable and precise formulation of a theory.
      • Any hypothesis is designed to allow an investigation of the presented fact in the controlled environment and as rigorously as possible.
      • The purpose is to explain natural phenomenon in widely accepted way, that community will support.
        • Good theory helps make prediction and understand current results for future inquiries.
      • Example: It will be possible to explain unexpected perturbations in the orbit of one of the planets in the solar system using Newton’s theory of gravitation.
    Link to original

But really-really need not to prove what you believe in, but instead shake your castle.

  • Look into the negative side of things.
    • Only 20% get the answer.
    • Others build sand castles of their beliefs.
      • Invent complicated theories, why a belief must be true.

Chapter 10 Self-awareness.

Awful thing, to give something to consciousness and then take it back. It equals to intentional killing. Case with a hat and Harry talking about what it is to be conscious?

Transclude of Гарри-Поттер-и-методы-рационального-мышления-гл-8----30#глава-10-самосознание

Chapter 11 Baconinan experimental method

  • Baconinan experimental approach stood on the premise that you had to find a condition for both states|phenomenons: presence and the absence of the fact.
  • How to alter distant path? You only have to think about in the distant past and not postmortem, to make a right decision.
    • Though, reflection and rumination is an excellent method of looking into a problem. ^387f87

Chapter 12 impulse control

Difference in McGonagall and Dumbledore perception. As soon as he stood, silence followed. Sorting procedure.

  • Don’t fall to impulses.
    • It’s easier to fix the past if you think about consequences of the action at the right time.

Chapter 13 Asking the wrong question

  • What if the name of a mysterious game where you play only once, and you don’t know the rules of the games.
    • Life?
  • Funny thing, it all started as a prank which Harry played on himself by using certain prompts.
    • Cloak of invisibility, but I couldn’t get the answer how he has managed to accomplish the feat of defeating Slytherin.

Chapter 14 The unknown and unknowable

Chapter 15 Conscientiousness

About transfiguration and that it’s not permanent. Maybe Eleizer meant that there is nothing permanent in science, that everything eventually is going to be destroyed one way or another?

Chapter 16 Lateral Thinking

  • Lateral thinking. I have something to say on the topic. The book has been read, not to be wasted.
  • Проверить проблему машина времени для параллельных вычислений.

Chapter 17 Locating the hypothesis

Chapter 18 Dominance Hierarchies

Snape — Potter conflict, secrets uncovering, negotiations and reaching of an agreement.

Chapter 19 Delayed gratification

  • Patience and hard work are the only keys of a success.
    • Craftsmanship of losing, without losing. Service without providing one, a taxi example.

Chapter 20 Bayes’s Theorem

  • The probability of the event based on the prior knowledge. Could lead to numerous false positives. Extrapolation must be mindful.

Chapter 21 Rationalization

  • The moment you set your mind, you’ll find much and many things to prove your belief.
    • No matter if your research leads to write or wrong conclusion, the moment bottom line is drawn, you start rationalizing in favour of stated reasons. It’s fixed mindset. Ценность неудачи

Chapter 22 Scientific method

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. P.K. Dick

Transclude of Asch'S-Seminal-Experiments-Showed-the-Power-of-Conformity#99aa25

  • Don’t believe, find a problem and work on it.
    • Be the great scientist, the one who has found an important problem to work on.
      • Often significant issues doesn’t lie around, you have to make an effort to find one. Maybe here lies one of the concerns of modern science, replication crises, no one desires to prove something wrong.
      • Modern science is looking into originality, instead of looking into routine, repeat mistaken experiments.

Chapter 23 Believe in belief

Harry sets up Malfoy against mudbloods, and breaks his belief in with scientific method. DNK

  • Religion works in the same manner, doesn’t it?

Chapter 25 Hold off on Proposing a solution

A Mendelian trait is one that is controlled by a single locus in an inheritance pattern. In such cases, a mutation in a single gene can cause a disease that is inherited according to Mendel’s principles. Dominant diseases manifest in heterozygous individuals. Recessive ones are sometimes inherited unnoticeably by genetic carriers. Examples include sickle-cell anemia, Tay–Sachs disease, cystic fibrosis and xeroderma pigmentosa. A disease controlled by a single gene contrasts with a multi-factorial disease, like heart disease, which is affected by several loci (and the environment) as well as those diseases inherited in a non-Mendelian fashion.

  • Two knowns of purposeful complexity:
    • Natural selection.
      • Biosphere and creation of all living.
    • Intelligent selection.
      • AI engineering.
      • Cars.

When working on a problem, don’t start with a solution, start with a problem.

  • Describe it as fully as possible.
  • Discuss it as thoroughly as possible without giving any solutions. ^0a8579
    • Maybe we should have discussed a nail and a horse problem in such manner?
    • In short observe and think.

Chapter 26 Noticing confusion

The impossible, it often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks. Douglas Adams.

  • Rationalist should be confused more by fiction than by reality.
  • The key to becoming a successful wizard (scientist, teacher, student) is an excellent memory.
    • To be able to remember thing that you glanced once or read skimming some book.

Chapter 28 Reductionism

  • Exhaust all avenues, eat all low-hanging fruits and proceed deeper.
  • STEPS.
    • One. Make a list of all constraints. All we supposedly can’t do.
    • Two. Mark constraints, that make the least sense from the angle you are attacking a problem.
    • Three. Prioritize constraints.
    • Four. Come up with different angle and attack, look at multiple angles. Remember, a problem with irradiating a tumor.

Chapters 30-32

  • Working groups and groups dynamics

  • Harry, Hermione and Draco are setting a scene for action. Draco thought that Harry will join forces with Hermione, but in the end she tricked them both.

  • Harry acted as a non-homogenous group, unpredictable.

    • Don’t just obey orders, think if whatever you are doing right now make any sense.
    • This behavior is linked to scientific views on the world. Always question your role, model, and premises. Ask why it’s been done in a such way and does it make sense for you to do it the same way?

  • Hermione has divided her forces, it is what called defeated in detail.

    • She wins in the end. How? Pretending to be asleep?

Chapters 33-34

  • Timeless decision theory, developed by Yudkowsky.
    • TDT created in response to the rational view that everything is about wining (agents achieving their desired goals) rather than behaving in a manner that would intuitively label normal. More to look.
    • The agent should decide as if they are determining the output of the abstract computation that they implement.
  • Prisoner’s Dilemma.
    • Interesting assumption that I sit with my identical copy, and we should make a same decision. Ho. I’ll break their minds.
  • Idea about strength in the election example.
    • It flows from figures of power, not from elections and fools that are elected.
    • No democracy.
  • Blur the vision until I am able to see forest obscured by trees.

Chapter 37

  • Time is ruthless every trust put is something of someone bound to fail at some point.
    • And after you grew all callous and cynical, then come and talk about high matter.

Chapter 38 Cardinal sin

  • Is opposite of rationality.

Fundamental question of rationality: What do I think I know, and how do I think I know it?

Chapter 39-40

  • Write every significant question you had, immediately and with no exception.

    • Mistake he did, after conversation with Lucius.

  • Counterintuitive thing be defined by enemies. Harry refuses to do it.

  • What are the whizzing sounds that are written in the beginning of the chapter?

  • What is death, we are afraid of it afterlife comes from our fear of dying. Данила Медведев

Гарри Поттер и методы рационального мышления гл 30 – 40

  • Quite a few scientists are wasting their time and effort in search of immortality. Death is inevitable. Searching the cure is a fool’s errand.
    • Alongside them a whole industry is born. Mediums of all sorts for certain fee claim, that they can talk with the lost. But everything they say in one way or another is a projection of the mind.

Chapter 41

  • Dramione. Smiling face in flames. Smells of insanity
  • Tool for climbing. Gloves with surface like gecko paws. Glue to any wall or ceiling.
  • Hermione makes a sacrifice. Then comes different angles at the situation.

Chapter 42

Harry meets professor Lupin, and he tells Harry about how his father had been a bully, for a certain time.

  • Harry need courage to face the truth and destroy the image of his father.
  • And somewhere here I saw thing that I don’t like, such as LGBT. Why all the authors and creators pursue this agenda?

Humanism ch 41-45

all about patronuses.

  • Salazar could produce patronus, but Godric couldn’t.

    • Why? Does it mean that Godric had been an unhappy fellow and Salazar was a happy one?
    • Or maybe it only meant that Salazar came to peace about his true self and Godric couldn’t.
      • Similar analogy could be drawn from the story of Leonardo and Michelangelo.

  • Animals – Totems?

    • What each animal means on a bigger scale?
    • Peregrine falcon. Fastest flying creature on Earth.
      • Why falcon? What does it mean? It certainly has the meaning. All animals have some meaning.
      • According to legendsofamerica site it means: New beginnings, adventure, passionate, leadership, rising above, guardianship, superiority, prophecy.
    • Muggles were smothering their children, but dementor challenge has been harsh even by Hogwarts standard.
      • Good point of Humanity, should we overprotect our children or not?
      • Are we not bringing in the up helplessness, by doing everything ourselves? From filling diaries in the primary school to setting the trajectory of their lives.
    • Children are less afraid, that is the reason they can produce corporeal patronuses. Adults on the other hand don’t have less fear, but more courage. And courage is harder to muster in the first place.
      • What does it mean, less to fear? What conclusion could be drawn from that statement?

  • Harry approached the Dementor and experienced FEAR COLD DARKNESS.

    • Which in turn brought his dark side. That later was dispelled by Hermione’s kiss.
    • Dumbledore planned to cast a killing spell on McGonagal. Why? What he wished to succeed?

  • In the end, Harry manages to cast patronus spell in the form of human, that kills Dementor in its cage.

    • What does it mean? That only humans can somehow overrun death itself or trick it. Modern healthcare claim that we will live around 100 years. What are the consequences for the planet?
    1. I know why.
    • Dementor takes to a place where is pain, hatred, and fear. In such place you can’t understand happiness, can’t see light.
      • What place is he talking about?

  • Prophesy. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…

    • How did they defy Him three times?
    • Was Dumbledore the one who has arranged the leak and further destroying of Potter’s family? What was the goal?

Chapter 47. Personhood theory

  • Dumbledore the ultimate villain?
    • He killed, burned to death Draco’s mother Narcissa? Why? To play a power game with Lucius?
    • But it doesn’t sit well with me. Not D style.
  • Fixing Slytherin House? Salazar is not a bad person, Godric couldn’t cast a patronus. But Slytherins are believed unable to cast patronuses due to the nature of the House they are in. Untrustworthy, scheming.
  • Are snakes sentient? WIKI page.

Personhood is a status of being a person.

  • Philosophical approach to the notion that it is an individual substance of a rational nature.
    • Attributes common to definitions of personhood are:
      • Human nature.
      • Agency.
      • Self-awareness.
    • Rights of women, other races, unborn children etc.
      • It all brings much debate.
  • Sometimes I think that the world has gone irreversibly mad.
    • Non-humans animals and non-living entities.
      • Corporations.
      • Environmental features
        • Ganges and Yamuna recognized as persons.
    • Modified humans.
      • AI.
      • How much of a human can still be called human if he replaces part of his body artificially.
      • Or cryonics for that matter?

Chapter 48 Utilitarian priorities

  • The topic directly connected to personhood.
    • How can we eat animals if they possess sentience?
    • Lots of different personalities, all with different agendas and goals.
      • Each task must have a meaning from a utilitarian point of view. How certain action could be useful on various time scales.
    • Serving of utilitarian logic. Even if something dubious or controversial you should outright reject it but pursue the research and look for yourself if what you’ve don immoral or not. Not before, but after the deed has been done.
  • Does the end justify the means?

Chapter 49. Prior information

  • Conclusion drawn from invalid reasoning.

Chapter 50. Self-centeredness

  • Padma and Harry’s try to correct mean course she has taken towards Hermione, harming her reputation.

Гарри Поттер и методы рационального мышления гл 41 – 50

Chapters 51-55

  • Why the title of the first chapter in the series has been changed to redacted?

    • How norms and customs change according to certain restrictions. Dark Lord’s curse on the Defense position lead to decline in dueling and social norms.
      • Do we see it nowadays in professional circles? For example, change in a working landscape. Or excluding word service from educational standard might change the way we look into the process of teaching.

  • First time question of trust is raised by Quirell. Stanford’s experiment was all about trust. Is it not?

  • To be used by a friend means becoming stronger with the help of the friend instead of weaker.

No matter how good are intentions, sooner or later, usually sooner, everyone demonstrates how confused they are in that department.

  • Treason and guilty is not important, what’s essential is not to take risk frivolously.
  • Game of words, conceal lying with truths. Isn’t seen in the plain sight.
  • Death according to Yudkowsky is not a sentient enemy and one day it will be conquered as smallpox has been.
  • In the face of modern democracy the most innocent usually those who had not got a trial.

Harry is still a child who plays D&D and imagines himself saving maidens in distress. Still Super Mario Brothers. Transition between worlds.

  • Interesting comment that people typically donate more money if they say that all amount goes to one person, and less when information says money will go to multiple children.

    • Maybe it’s dehumanizing?

  • At a certain moment, Harry begins thinking about Bellatrix and their relationship with Dark Lord.

    • Maybe was amusing to bind her to Dark Lord, to find her expedient. When she loves utterly, completely with whole being, do not return love, consider useful. Let the victim know it.
    • Professor somehow found password of the Death Eaters. How did he do it?

  • The concept of a perfect crime.

    • Question of epistemology.
      • What do I think I know, and how do I think I know it.
      • Transclude of Epistemological-history-of-knowledge#types-of-knowledge
      • Dementor’s bias is a prisoner-guard connection.
        • Try to overcome it the way we fight usual biases.
        • Hopelessness might not indicate that the situation is really drastic, it only tells you that you are in presence of guard, Dementor. Every negative from now on must be considered suspect, fallacious until proven valid.
          • Recent prisoner with much life in her voice replayed again and again the most terrible moment in her life. Is it valid, how to check?
        • We put ourselves in the situation where we suffer. [FRANKL and DALAI LAMA]

  • Harry Potter failed Quirell, who is lying unconscious on the ground, and HP can’t solve the bind he got himself in.

    • Only dark side can. Why? Ordinary people can’t solve tough situations.
    • HP can save only one person. Hard choice.
      • It must be celebrated. Welcome to the real world. Allusions from childhood shatter hard and irrevocably.

Гарри Поттер и методы рационального мышления гл 51 – 55

Chapters 56-63, conclusion of Stanford’s prison experiment

  • Constraints have limits. There is a maximum of what any system can withhold.
    • But ultimately, as Дмитрий Егоров said during our meeting, there is only one constraint, governing the others, market.
    • What about Harry, what’s his ultimate constraint?

Memory is essential in becoming and excellent wizard, scientist, doctor, teacher. Memory plays crucial role in every prospects of life.

  • Again the topic of the death. Why Harry is so afraid of it.

    • Might it be his ultimate constraint?

  • But what is death? Why not look at it as of condition not being.

    • Stoics are used to contemplating death in this manner.

    • Death

      • It’s external. It has nothing to do with inner world.

        • Except, when we maybe apply it to ourselves in a suicidal act, though I may be wrong.

      • We, literally, die every day, as time passes behind us.

      • Mortality is a defining feature of our existence.

        • We need to find a way to hang the imminence of it over our heads on an everyday basis, as a reminder of daily lives.
        • What we must overcome is not death itself, but the way we think about it.

      • Freedom from the fear of death is the central goal of philosophical work.

        • From this work, other good liberties follow.

      • The classic Stoic response to a question of death is to contemplate our condition before birth, the state of not alive yet.

        • We don’t find it difficult to think about yet unborn children.
          • Perhaps due to the fact that we know, that a child will be born. How our perception would change if we looked at the unborn child a living child and stillborn – not living?
        • Stoic should be concerned not with the longevity, but with quality of life.

      • Knowledge mustn’t deliver us from the peace of mind and calm. If it does, there is no use for such knowledge.

      Link to original

  • Absurdity of various magical transportation system, and some scientific.

    • Broomsticks.
    • Emelya’s oven.
    • Bugey man’s Stupa
    • Izba with chicken legs.

  • Some member on forum mentioned that Russian folklore has definite trouble with commuting.

  • How many personalities is there in Harry’s head?

    • All Hogawarts houses and him?
    • Inner critic who monitors everything skeptically.
      • We meet it when Harry, at last delivers Bella to a healer and watches the surrealism of situation detached from the events themselves.
    • Maybe it’s the sign of mental disorder as with the gang in Blindsight?

  • What so bad about various correction institutions?

    • Does Harry in all seriousness considers that prisoners should be freed?
    • He even argues that not gaolers are sadistic, but all the rest of the population who silently agreed on creating such institutions.
      • What order options do we have? Exile? We are not in Ancient Greece, we are not on the grounds of the Forum where we can be delivered swift and brutal justice.
        • Capital punishment isn’t humane. It mustn’t be applied, but in some places it still exists.
        • Does it saddens me? I don’t think so. Actually I don’t feel anything.
      • Look prospectively, what we will have in the future?
      • The more people on the Earth, the more crime will be.
      • It couldn’t be helped.

  • Victims of democracy are complicit in their own destruction.

    • And where in the world Quirell has seen anything that in any form resembles original democracy. No one throws stones anymore in the open.

  • Quirell actually touches tender topic of personal change after the contact with the source of power.

    • Everybody changes. Those who didn’t, hadn’t reached it.

  • People’s attitudes change with each tide. In stormy weather they stick to the winning side and safe haven of any harbour they could reach the fastest.

    • If you walk in the shadow light and darkness will follow you simultaneously.

  • Hogwarts is a country in miniature?

    • Dumbledore mentioned that it runs even smoother it the time if unrest. As in Russia? :)
    • Habitants consolidate against common evil.

What we cannot imagine requires from somebody who can, slightly better imagination.

  • Let’s talk about imagination.

  • Comparisons with The Lord of the Rings is out of place. Does he really thing that hiding from a problem is a solution to it?

    • Avoiding equals reaching decision, and not the one you chose but the one that was chosen for you.

  • Interesting way of sending messages via two proxies.

    • All will know for whom the message is. But only the first will know from who.

  • Moody’s ruminations on getting lucky Auror against being professional one.

    • Middy argues that long career in Aurors is founded on the notion of outliving the streak of being lucky until you get good at it.
    • And begin demonstrating decent level of caution.

  • This excellently sets apart good managers and CEO from the bad one’s. Scully vs Jobs, Balmer vs Gates, I can make comparisons all day long, but you’ve got the idea, I believe.

  • It’s well known concept that we are pained from lacking something, e.g freedom only when are deprived of it.

    • Harry and his virtual imprisonment in Hogwarts.
    • If he isn’t said about that, that he is prisoner, he would be glad to spend some time in there.

  • Oh! Maybe this is the real punchline in all this chapter, Harry becomes prisoner and Dumbledore his guard? Let’s discuss it for some time.

  • Excellencies of a teacher, doctor and plumber are different, but have one common feature, all professionals in the aforementioned fields tent to face up little mistakes before they turn into BIG and unsurmountable ones.

Stanley Milgram behaviour experiment

Transclude of Milgram-Experiment--Simply-Psychology#66be4d

  • Hermione refused to obey in the first class, when Quirell demanded from her to shoot a student.
    • Harry, though is a killer.
  • About glass half full and half empty. We decide how to feel about that.
    • We decide what and how to obey the pressing demands of society or authorities.
    • They are all externals.
    • Externals
    • In the end of the TSPE Harry speculates about unfamiliar and great sensation of freedom when you haven’t made your mind about something major.
      • He missed the point that everything except his own perception is external and we are free to do whatever we wish inside ourselves.

Гарри Поттер и методы рационального мышления гл 56 – 63

Chapter 64, Omake files 4

  • Interesting view on Lord of the Rings.
    • Seriously, I haven’t considered that going to Mordor they risk delivering the ring to the only place where it mustn’t never be.
    • Maybe it was a cunning plot of one of the Elders, Elrond or Gandalf himself.

How to actually change your mind

The thrill of being a polymath

The name of the rationality

  • Kvothe is a Ravenclaw, nice stroke.

Chapter 65. Contagious lies

Lies create new lies

  • Lying about general way of thought.
    • Lies propagate lies, and you have to be a very skillful in order to weave believable lie.
    • One covers another and another and the vicious circle doesn’t end. Never.

Dark Lord imposter

  • Quirell proposed to introduce the fake dark lord, in order to cover their fuck up in Azkaban.
    • But Harry didn’t agree, he said that he needed more time think.

Chapter 66. Self Actualization, part 1

Choice and decision, once more

  • The delay in apparent action, means only one thing we haven’t reached the decision.
    • Choosing between two equally painful alternatives means that we not choosing only delay a mental pain for a bit.
    • It’s not helping.
  • So Quirell was seducing Harry into plot again and Harry postponed his decision.
    • Maybe he hasn’t had enough data to reach it, or something. But he definitely won’t jump with too many unknowns, as he did in Azkaban.
    • He learns.

Chapter 67. AP, p 2

  • Another battle and another day. Harry won again by a great margin.
    • Does it not reminds you about Socrates who always won argumentation and refuted everything that was thrown on him.
  • Knights, what from his chainmail has been made off?

Chapter 68. AP, p 3

The world is brimming with opportunities

  • In Quirell’s office Hermione has been told about opportunities.
    • Our world is brimming with opportunities, which are mostly ignored.
    • Not because they are unreachable, but because it requires of people the change of habit, the overstepping of the status-quo they erected around themselves.
    • Changing the Status Quo is hard and painful process.

Not being scared it’s not doing whatever and contemplating consequences

  • Hermione reflects on her actions and reaches wrong conclusion, that it’s worth trying to not being scared.
    • But not being scared doesn’t mean not to scare. Fear doesn’t go anywhere, we treat it differently. Not being scared means doing what you need to do nonetheless.
    • But she concludes that it means doing whatever and seeing what happened to her. Which is awful approach.

Friendship is hard to get and even harder to live with

  • We always have to compromise which is lose-lose situation, the worse scenario in any process.
    • ^fa056a
    • Does Hermione know what it means to be friends? And you? What does it mean for you to be friend?

True personality. Am I hero or a trembling creature?

  • Who is she really? Hero, companion of a hero. What does it mean to be yourself.
    • The most important question around which a whole arc is going to be built.
  • Several personal mindsets. This is usually what forces us to conform, even when we do not fully agree with the facts we are conforming to.
    • Hufflepuff. People fail to become who they really are, because they lack determination to put all the hard-work that is required.
    • Ravenclaw. Know yourself. People fail to become who they really are, due to the lack of thought and ignorance.
    • Slytherin. We become who we are by following our desires and ambitious. People fail to become who they really are by refusing doing what is necessary to achieve their ambitions.
    • Gryffindor. People live their live circumscribed, crippled by fear of cutting of thorn of lives, losing their mere possessions, hurting somebody, fear of death. But above all they live with fear what other people might say about them. The most terrible and hard to overcome fear.

Chapter 69. SA, p. 4

  • Hermione was able to perform one heroic deed, helping bullied Hufflepuff from 4 Slytherins boys. Somnium, and opening ground under the last.
    • In the end another topic has arisen. Equal rights for everyone to be a hero.
    • Society for the Promotion of Heroic Equality for witches.
      • Girls again, and rights of women. We do not have such issue in our country.

Chapter 70. SA, p. 5

Defying the authority

  • Hermione and other witches who think that they are fighting for equality organized a picket on front of Dumbledore’s office.

    • What I find interesting, is why Minerva encouraged them in a manner, saying them time and place?
    • This event attracted many spectators, one of the Quirell.
      • What answer did he wish Hermione would provide for his question.
        • What drove you to break the bounds?
        • Why is getting good marks is not enough anymore?
        • Is it a true greatness you seek?
        • Does and aspect of the world dissatisfies you that you wish to remake it to your taste?
        • Or is it a child’s game?
      • What was the purpose of them in the first place?

  • No matter what authority you have, it doesn’t give you invincibility from being wrong.

    • The point Harry proved many times during the course of his first year.
    • ^1046c5
    • Defying authority is nothing to be proud of, but being afraid of it surely won’t get you far.
      • The point that also has been proven during my tenure in GPN.
      • But what is the correct way that defying could be posed as questioning and not opposing.
      • Most people a threatened when they are openly opposed, so there is must be a balance.

Ambitions

  • What ambitions do we have?
    • What could drive us to break the bonds of status-quo?
    • When do we stop being satisfied with what we’ve got?
    • Quirell stated what is ambition in the first place.
      • And according to him it’s not something selfish, that we want for ourselves. But rather the point of dissatisfaction with the world that we wish to correct or sometimes change according to our will.
    • Что такое амбиция и как ее найти
    • ^1d1386

Chapter 71. SA, p. 6

  • Witches are looking for a game to catch.
    • Bullies could suffice, but in 16 minutes of determined search got them bored and talkative.
    • How do we find something interesting to do?
    • According to Claude Shannon it surprisal thing that are the most precious and hard to come by.
    • Interesting doesn’t happen at will it’s a game of chance, but it’s chance nonetheless.
      • So, how a chance could be increased? What you usually do?

Chapter 72. SA, p. 7

  • We absolutely mustn’t prevent our friends from action.
    • According to Yudkowsky, it’s one of the virtues of rationality.
    • ^51c8ee
  • By preventing them from taking action, we pamper and not allowing them to make their choice and make the own decisions.
    • Harry considers himself a rationalist, thus he tells Hermione just to inform them that everything might go horribly wrong.
    • Which it is, and stay out of the way.
    • But later, he changes his mind. Why?
  • The point with being wrong, understandable.
    • It’s better to do something than not.
    • Being wrong and getting hurt is the same as being stuck. Let’s say in finding solution to a certain problem.

Being cunning and ambition doesn’t mean you have to be like that

  • When somebody cast a tripping spell on Hermione, and she fell face first to the Slytherin’s table on somebody’s steak.
    • It was Malfoy who came to her later and helped to get up. He also said the words from above.
    • What do they mean in this context.
    • And his father asked him what has it been, his answer was that he is preparing for war. What war?

Chapter 73. SA, p. 6

  • Months go by and 8 witches are fighting bullies.
    • Harry asks Quirell to help, who tells him that he offered help to Hermione, she declined.
    • Harry is afraid that all this bullies fighting spinning out of the control.
  • In the end of the chapter, when Hermione asks him about if he doesn’t regret about being in Hogwarts, Harry says that non a bit.
    • And later spill his wishes, that he had when he was a child.
      • Among them, adamantine skeleton, psychic powers, telepathy and all the lot.
      • What did you wish to have when you were children. Or who to be?

Chapter 74. SA, p. 7

  • Aftermath of events in the corridor, in which Quirell helped Harry with 48 bullies.

The most intricate and complex magic in the world

  • Are people. They are simple in the essence.
    • Their interests are plain. To survive, to breed, to live good live. But ultimately wrong.
    • They forget or more precisely, don’t know, what does it mean to be a good person.
    • Good live and being a good person often don’t align.
    • How to draw a line between hero and villain?
  • The main tenet of Dumbledore is that a good shouldn’t or mustn’t win all the time.
    • He considers that good more often than not must lose.
    • Maybe he is right, there is more bad things in the world than good, or not?
    • So good of the world must be patient, and bid it’s time a collect the strength for decisive blow.
    • As Max says, endure, be patient, wait for the opening and hit, once and for all set the disagreement.
  • Stand up all the time to the evil of the world is not heroism but pride. Is it true?
    • Harry thinks that this kind of constraints force us to be creative. In order to win every time we have to be ingenious and inventive.

Гарри Поттер и методы рационального мышления гл 64 – 75

Chapter 79 Taboo tradeoffs

Observing and inferring

  • The world is not what it looks like at the first glance.
    • What you see is your observation, what you understand about it is your inference.
    • It’s all done in your head, and your head is not an ideal object for thinking in contaminated with biases, and even facts are got confused.
    • So, what do we do? Davis Deutsch had an answer for this.
    • Observation vs thinking

The poem

Doing the impossible

  • Harry is fighting surpassing forced of two armies.
    • He is looking for something to give him advantage, and uses the Идеальный объект technique.
    • Acorns, that are filled with magic of son. Later he transfigures for himself a cauldron where he brews a powerful potion.
    • The thing is he, again, found a way to surpass his adversaries in ingenuity.
      • Though in the end, he loses the battle to the intelligence of Draco Malfoy, which notices green glasses that Harry has transfigured for the occasion.
      • Draco just command to mimic Harry and do whatever he does. That brings fruits.
    • Impossible is possible, there is a catch to achieve it. You have to be able to look deeper and look sideways to find it.
      • Not many posses the ability to do that, and majority of those who posses don’t understand that thinking fast enough, of course can do the impossible quickly but only sometime and not every time and the process is unreliable.
    • What is at about thinking quickly? How does it work?

Money is evil but necessary thing.

  • Even when money don’t matter for us much, we still feel ourselves deprived of something precious when we are denied them.
    • So happen with Harry, when he offers Lucius to buy out Hermione’s blood debt to Malfoy family.
    • It’s literally painful experience, just imagining that you’ve lost a vault full of money.
    • Dan Ariely conducted a series of experiments related to money and reaction of people to different cheating situation.
    • It’s interesting, that the further the object of cheating from money the more peaceful we are at cheating.

Replacement value of a person is infinite. Is it?

  • Harry argues with Dumbledore about spending 100 000 galeons to free Hermione.
    • Is he right?
    • I mean should this money better spent on preparation for the war, discovering cure of cancer. Or maybe be of service to those who are in need, but require a drastically lower figure to help. Like buying medicine, or improving condition in the hospital.
    • It’s like in the Ten Days in a Mad-House - Nellie Bly, if she had helped some poor individual, then the rest of 1600 tortured and humiliated people would have continued their suffering.
    • What is the price of a human’s life? If there is one.
  • When we refuse to spend money to save a life, we set up a lower bound on the monetary value of the life, when we spend them, we accomplish the opposite, we set an upper bound on the monetary value.
    • If upper bound and lower bound are inconsistent, that we move money from one place to another and saving money at the same cost.
    • What the hell?

Every time you spend money in order to save a life with some probability, you establish a lower bound on the monetary value of a life. Every time you refuse to spend money to save a life with some probability, you establish an upper bound on the monetary value of life. If your upper bounds and lower bounds are inconsistent, it means you could move money from one place to another, and save more lives at the same cost. So if you want to use a bounded amount of money to save as many lives as possible, your choices must be consistent with some monetary value assigned to a human life; if not then you could reshuffle the same money and do better. How very sad, how very hollow the indignation, of those who refuse to say that money and life can ever be compared, when all they’re doing is forbidding the strategy that saves the most people, for the sake of pretentious moral grandstanding…

  • An example of wrong choice is when Lily refused to walk away from the crib with Harry.
    • It would be wiser to leave, probabilistically wise.
    • If she had walked away, then she would have lived with some degree of certainty.
    • If not, she and Harry would die with 100% of certainty.
    • Where is logic here? Only emotions.

Стоимость жизни человека бесконечна. Правда?

A fast intuitive decision is no less than a carefully weighted decision

  • In chapter 84, pr. Quirell asks her to decide after what has happened at the courthouse.
    • He offers help with transferring to one of the foreign schools.
    • She doesn’t provide an answer. Why? What holds her there?
    • What our choice would be in the first place.
  • I am actually interested in how apart from Hogwarts school look like.
    • Say in The USA or in Russia, Karkarov is from there, I can only assume this.
    • Or French school, forget its name.
    • Lets dream a little bit.

Superhero or a villain

  • Joker kills randomly and Batman saves unconditionally even those without whom the world would be a better place.
    • What tradeoffs are in here for Batman, not to stain the soul, or some kind of principle?
    • I am curious, what have I got (which principles)?
    • What limits I am ready to cross to improve a decision, though a more painful one.
    • Phoenix is no fool. When it offers its service to Harry he only offers them once. And Harry is not ready to make a radical move.
      • Obviously, he is a kid. But what of it? He has made many dumb decisions so far, what stops him now?

Magic Britain is in a parallel universe

  • Instantly comes to mind ^f9ce26 nothing is predictable.
    • But there are some ideas that I am curious to explore.
    • What magic is capable of?
    • What could be done with it?
    • And why hasn’t it been done so far?
  • You see, the magic exists in parallel reality. And according to Deutsch we live in one ourselves.
    • Where water comes from when it conjured? Maybe from another reality. Or when something transfigured into something, perhaps it swaps places with each other?
    • Or take a time turner, it shouldn’t work like this in the first place.
      • We can’t return to the snapshot of time we travelled from.
      • Time travel is not as simple as it looks as the first glance
      • But in Harry Potter universe the are doing it on industrial scale.
      • What is broken in that universe or not broken, but works differently?
      • And more intriguing is question: what other laws of physics are open for violation to any 11 years old with a stick?

How we set apart the difference between good and bad or smart and stupid

  • Imagine for a moment a person who you think is brilliant, who makes a stupid decision.
    • By your opinion it is stupid, but is it idiotic?
    • What coordinate system makes a particular decision stupid or clever.
  • With stupidity everything is quite plain, the problems come with good or bad thinking.
    • What is bad for us has not necessarily been bad for the previous generation and vice versa.
    • Clothes, the simplest example.
      • Take a look at modern fashion, our grands, if the saw it would hiccup with curses whole day.
      • Or another global issue, what LGBT, BLM and other notions from the later covet of witches.
      • What makes them right and us wrong?
      • Until 1975 homosexuality has been treated as a psychological disease, which in my opinion is still it.
    • I think it all comes from liberal notions of equality and self-expression.
  • What makes Dark Lord especially stupid or evil. By whose standard he is defined as evil?
    • Maybe it’s a necessary evil for society?

There is another mystery

  • Who is Quirell and why it is important to have a competent professor of dark arts in Hogwarts?
    • Dumbledore goes as far as saying that he would have dragged Grindelwald himself from the prison block and forced him to teach the dark arts student if needed.
    • Why is it important to train younger generation competently?
    • What are they awaiting?
  • As far as I can see, every negative event with bad outcome is hand made.
    • Decisions of D, Q and H lead to them Bellatrix, Hermione and Malfoy.
      • If they continued to study and act as normal human beings from magical Britain, nothing would have happened.
      • They influenced future with their decisions.
      • And future changes and changes in the process the agents of change.
      • ^84b945

We are what we do, and nothing more

  • In some cases doing and saying.
    • What we say defines who we are.
    • 3000 слов another reminder of identity.
  • If by some chance Quirell is an imposter playing a role, then he built himself a new identity with utmost care.
    • In real life, that thing doesn’t happen, not even occasionally.

Money rules the world

  • When Harry thought about money and played in the head different scenarios.
    • He was thinking if it was possible to return money back, in case where Hermione would be sent to the Azkaban under different pretext or law.
    • Why he was thinking about money, does it not count if we are talking about friend? What is money for him, especially if he hasn’t touched them so often.

Doing an impossible is a matter of perspective and wisdom

  • All of us can do impossible, the trick is to decide which impossible is manageable and which will stay impossible for a long time.
    • Блоки фундамента принятого решения
    • And second wisdom is to try that you can do when you have all the resources at your disposal.
    • Great advice on money making, Harry gives Hermione in the library.
    • It’s not possible to understand with any degree of certainty which decision lead to what results.
      • Any way we are not paid for results. Actually we are paid for decision. ^3d2a16
      • We are not privy to thoughts of people making decisions.
        • [Somewhere inside the vault there is an idea about biographies and leaders and decision making].
        • ^883381
    • The scale of a person vividly visible through decision.
      • Mark Whitney from Marcian by Weir.
      • Or Ryland Grace from Ave Maria from the same author.
    • How can we analyze soundness of decisions and actions?

Wrong and right, depend on the upbringing

  • Fare statement, that you choose what wrong and right according not to your tastes, but what fits your cultivated patterns.
    • Like burning witches on stakes is wrong, even if you consider particular lady highly obnoxious.
    • Or hitting children in the head during the lesson, though some of them literally beg for it.
  • There is an idea about this in The Poverty of Historicism.
  • Every person is responsible for becoming more ethical. No one can make you change intrinsic settings and thinking patterns. ^af0641
    • Only you are capable of it.
    • Atomic Habits individual is solely responsible for changing identity. The same as Draco is personally responsible for becoming more ethical towards Muggleborns.

Sometimes it’s easier to understand AI than a girl

  • Harry and Hermione are drifting apart.
  • He talks to her about the value of money, and she is still looking a way to enrich fast enough and repay the debt.

«What sort of deep mysterious thoughts are you thinking?” said a young-looking witch with short hair, sitting nearby. “I mean, just curious. I’m Brienne, by the way.” She was gazing at him with one of those looks which Harry had firmly decided to just ignore until he was older. “So,” Harry said, “you know those really simple Artificial Intelligence programs like ELIZA that are programmed to use words in syntactic English sentences only they don’t contain any understanding of what the words mean?” “Of course,” the witch said. “I have a dozen of them in my trunk.” “Well, I’m pretty sure my understanding of girls is somewhere around that level.»

  • Harry was listening to the ambient conversation, when Filch stormed into the Great Hall and announces that Troll is roaming free.
    • Ambient conversations, is what I listen when go around the city in public transport.

The constraints of time turners

  • Why Harry couldn’t go back in time and tall someone with time turner to go back in time once more.
    • Or to send a message to himself, that no need to waste any time in the great hall.
  • How would I solve this problem, having at disposal a time turner?
    • What time is this universe, it doesn’t flow. In some way it created a vortex and according to magic I can return several spins back, but no more.
    • What if I passed the impulse further to anyone else, am I able to return more than three hours?
    • What couldn’t Harry with all his might of mind and depth of wisdom?

Roles we play

  • McGonagall – stern disciplinarian.
  • Harry – mad scientist.
  • Hermione – a straight-A student.
  • Draco – scion of Ancient house.
  • Quirell – mysterious stranger.
  • Dumbledore – wisened wizard, Merlin, Gendalf?
  • What roles have assigned to ourselves and how we live up to them?
    • Father.
    • Teacher.
    • Son.
    • Uncle.
    • Friend.
    • Husband.
    • Manager.
    • Didact.
    • Athlete.
  • If so, how good am I at managing all of them?
    • Satisfaction with every role.
    • My evolutionary process began from the role of seller, then to manager, then to a top manager, and only from there I went to be a father.
    • What has changed? My values.
    • Values are what makes us change roles, evolve and become better.
    • McGonagall – needed to become better, so Harry said those words not it hate or anger (though he has experienced these feelings at the moment), but with the aim to change her.
      • Maybe Harry is a Messiah? What?! :) He is revolutioner.
      • The guy who thinks outside the box, and changer.
    • What is the role of Harry that he feels himself comfortably with Malfoy, Dumbledore and children? Communication is possible between equals
  • Actors playing roles

Growing is the natural order of things

  • From the letter parents sent to Harry.
    • What feeling have you gotten after reading the letter?
    • I had in mind the picture of turtle ninja leading old Splinter hand in hand vs splinter leading turtle hand in hand.
    • Children grow, the do stupid things. In my age I don’t want to think what I was doing in the age of my daughter or son.
    • In the course of the years we change personality, sometime to something completely unexpected.
    • Act irrationally from the parent’s perspective, sometime acts should have damaged the relationship between parent and child, but it doesn’t happen.
    • Because children still loves them and parents love their children unconditionally.
      • The shack is a great example. A trial over children.
  • The letter is the biggest emotional sentiment expressed in the book so far. IMHO.

The death of Hero. Our mind believe in the first thing it sees

  • What is the truth?
    • Did Harry actually go to Azkaban and freed Bellatrix?
    • Or it is a figment of his imagination?
    • How can we believe in what we know?
      • Problem-solving is an evolutionary process. Beware of your senses
      • Deutsch agrees with that. What can be drawn from external reality on the basis of our feelings? What entitles us to this?
      • Only questions and no solutions.
      • I think therefore I am, is completely wrong statement.
      • Maybe it should be reformulated into I think, therefore I act.
    • To accurately remember of something and to know something I have to think slower.

Obsession about avoiding death

  • I can’t understand Harry’s path to immortality.
    • Have we not prepare ourselves all lives for one event – death?
    • ^757f52 I can’t agree more with this statement.
    • Death is the biggest adventure, nobody knows what lies behind the black curtain.
    • No doubt people must live long and happy lives, but avoid death, is something interesting at least, but how can we know what is hidden behind?
    • Singularity of life, the same for black hole and technological one.
  • Why people were visiting Harry while he were keeping vigil near Hermione?
    • What can we learn from this episode?
  • Quirell thinks that there is not such thing as friendship, we just don’t know it yet.
    • What is friendship for us? Let’s define it in on way or another.
    • What roles do we play with friends? Does anyone see us for what we really are. Because all characters in HP are pretending. They are nor real. Even Hermione.
  • Harry honestly cares about people and think that getting rid of death is the only logical way for humanity.
    • During one moments of being inside his head, he started hearing Quirell’s voice as a side of a sub-personality.
    • What could it mean? That his dark side transformed into Quirell?

Communication is possible between equals

  • What is an act of communication?
    • Why is it possible only among equals?
    • Is Harry equal to all with whom he one way or another communicates or he just lucky enough to have understanding teachers?
  • It is connected with roles he plays?
  • There is a case with students, why they feel comfortable themselves when they are with me?
  • Remember that any act of communication is a chance or maybe even a goal to change someone else’s view.
    • A child asks mom to let her go with friends, he is communication the desire to hang out with friends operating under the premise that mom is against it, it might be for the number of reasons, unfinished homework, bad weather, etc.
    • So child tries to change mom’s opinion and view and make her let him go with friends.

Ignorance isn’t bliss

  • Wrong to consider children innocent, not knowing is not the same as not choosing.
    • We can’t say what behaviour a child will manifest when he grows up.
    • It depends on social circle, education and interests.
    • Children do harm to each other daily at school.
      • And harm is minor only because they can’t inflict major, due to lack of knowledge and underdeveloped bodies.
    • And if adult having capability to cause great harm but shuns away. Is he not more innocent than a child, not less.
  • How functions internal moral compass of an adult, child, muggle, wizard?
    • What influences it. Centaurus case demonstrates dramatically.
    • HP at this point begins his fall out of idealistic view on the world.
    • That all life is sacred, and starts rationalizing, even Quirell becomes part of his personality and certain moment.
    • How to choose what is moral and what immoral. How would have you acted under similar conditions?

Marks at school

Hermione and philosopher’s stone, why was she so obsessed with it?

  • To return money?
    • Different motive, to become a hero in the end or what?

Harry running into dangerous situation near Cerberus door.

  • Why did he run into, w/o thinking properly about what awaits him at the end of this path.
    • He himself told us about dangers of haste solutions.
    • Why didn’t he question?
    • The thinking started only after he found his foot on shit, knee-high.

Philosophers have created meaning of ideal justice

  • What is it.
    • According to Harry it’s a mirror.
    • But for real what could be ideal justice, how it is served and under what circumstances?
    • For ideal justice you have to have an ideal judge, it is absolutely impossible.
      • Like in Attaining perfection is impossible
      • What is perfection, it has been asked by me, though I haven’t found an answer. Not because of the lack of searching, but due to the fact that to serve ideal justice there has to be an ideal tool.
      • The mirror! Dumbledore is locked outside time, in different reality, is it not ideal punishment for his deeds?
      • For Harry’s, for every other character?

Next action is important, not failures

  • When Harry stood in front of the death eaters, he had been thinking about next important step.
    • I haven’t paid much attention to the thought, and really is that simple.
    • Nothing matters, except what comes next. Action, not rumination, self-pity.
    • Repeated action still lead to next step in the sequence, what is it?
    • You need next action.
    • Do you want to play a little bit? Lets think of failed project and work with ideas. Not this, even better abandoned project, what could be next logical step?
  • And don’t think about the impossible, once you forgot about it, nothing is impossible anymore. Only possible is left.
    • What do you think is impossible, and what is closest, next possible step towards the impossible?

Speculation about next installment

  • Hermione as super hero, Draco as a vengeful antagonist.

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