Quotessence
Home / Books / Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

Book by Eliezer Yudkowsky · 4 quotes · Hpmor, Science, Harry Potter

Filter quotes by topic

AllHpmorScienceHarry PotterMethods Of RationalityEvilPsychologyRationalityCheatingCultural RelativismDumbledoreEgocentric BiasEvidenceExperimentFailureFeynmanFlitwickFoodHermione GrangerMasteryMorality

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Quotes

“If you want to win this argument with Dad, look in chapter two of the first book of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. There's a quote there about how philosophers say a great deal about what science absolutely requires, and it is all wrong, because the only rule in science is that the final arbiter is observation - that you just have to look at the world and report what you see. Um... off the top of my head I can't think of where to find something about how it's an ideal of science to settle things by experiment instead of arguments -”

SciencePhysicsObservationRichard FeynmanFeynman
Book:Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Create image

“Then you get the wrong answer and you can't go to the Moon that way! Nature isn't a person, you can't trick them into believing something else, if you try to tell the Moon it's made of cheese you can argue for days and it won't change the Moon! What you're talking about is rationalization, like starting with a sheet of paper, moving straight down to the bottom line, using ink to write 'and therefore, the Moon is made of cheese', and then moving back up to write all sorts of clever arguments above. But either the Moon is made of cheese or it isn't. The moment you wrote the bottom line, it was already true or already false. Whether or not the whole sheet of paper ends up with the right conclusion or the wrong conclusion is fixed the instant you write down the bottom line.”

ScienceHarry PotterRationalityMethods Of Rationality
Book:Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Create image

“I'm not stupid, Mr. Potter. What's the real reason you didn't tell me, and what were you actually doing with Mr. Malfoy?" "Ah. Well..." Harry broke eye contact with her, and looked down at the library table. "Draco Malfoy told the Aurors under Veritaserum that he wanted to know if he could beat me, so he challenged me to a duel to test it empirically. Those were his exact words according to the transcript." "Right," Harry said, still not meeting her eyes. "Hermione Granger. Of course she'll remember the exact wording. It doesn't matter if she's chained to her chair, on trial for murder in front of the entire Wizengamot -" "What were you really doing with Draco Malfoy?" Harry winced, and said, "Probably not quite what you're thinking, but..." The horror scaled and scaled within her, and finally broke loose. "You were doing SCIENCE with him? " "Well -" "You were doing SCIENCE with him? You were supposed to be doing science with ME!”

Science
Book:Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Create image