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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

The Methods of Rationality

Aug 23, 2017 by Eliezer Yudkowsky

Harry: You can't DO that!

Minerva McGonagall: It's only a transfiguration; an animagus transformation, to be exact—

Harry: You turned into a cat! A SMALL cat! You violated Conservation of Energy! That's not just an arbitrary rule – rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signaling! And cats are COMPLICATED! How can you go on thinking using a cat-sized brain?

Minerva: Magic.

Harry: Magic isn't enough to do that! You'd have to be a god!

—Harry's first encounter with magic

268Chapter 1: A Day of Very Low Probability
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112Chapter 2: Everything I Believe is False
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83Chapter 3: Comparing Reality To Its Alternatives
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80Chapter 4: The Efficient Market Hypothesis
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88Chapter 5: The Fundamental Attribution Error
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78Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy
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76Chapter 7: Reciprocation
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70Chapter 8: Positive Bias
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52Chapter 9: Title Redacted, Part 1
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66Chapter 10: Self Awareness, Part II
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40Chapter 11: Omake Files 1, 2, 3
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49Chapter 12: Impulse Control
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44Chapter 13: Asking the Wrong Questions
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49Chapter 14: The Unknown and the Unknowable
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38Chapter 15: Conscientiousness
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46Chapter 16: Lateral Thinking
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40Chapter 17: Locating the Hypothesis
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43Chapter 18: Dominance Hierarchies
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41Chapter 19: Delayed Gratification
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43Chapter 20: Bayes's Theorem
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44Chapter 21: Rationalization
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