HPMoR and the Limits of Rationality
One woman's quest to understand the Harry Potter fanfic that created the modern world.
Interactive transcripts by Regina: https://hpmoralor.sepionics.com/
Email: hpmoralorcast@proton.me
HPMoR and the Limits of Rationality
Ep. 7: Reciprocity, pt. 1 - A Good Light
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In part 1 of chapter 7, Harry meets the Weasleys. The crew learn what a belief is, kind of, and about the "third most important project in the world."
CONTENT WARNING: This episode discusses eugenics.
Citations and further reading, Part 1
- HPMoR, Chapter 7. Eliezer Yudkowsky. https://hpmor.com/chapter/7
- Elisa’s show notes: https://www.tumblr.com/ecc-poetry/tagged/hpmor%20and%20the%20limits%20of%20rationality
- “Rowling backs Potter fan fiction,” Darren Waters. BBC, 27 May 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3753001.stm
- “Crisis of Faith,” Yudkowksy. LessWrong, 10 Oct 2008. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BcYBfG8KomcpcxkEg/crisis-of-faith
- “Making Beliefs Pay Rent,” Yudkowsky. LessWrong, 28 July 2007. https://www.lesswrong.com/s/7gRSERQZbqTuLX5re/p/a7n8GdKiAZRX86T5A
- “Belief in Belief,” Yudkowsky. LessWrong, 29 July 2007. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CqyJzDZWvGhhFJ7dY/belief-in-belief
- Breaking the Spell, Daniel C. Dennett. Viking Penguin, 2006. https://ia601503.us.archive.org/29/items/breaking-the-spell/Breaking%20the%20Spell.pdf
- “JK Rowling invented Quidditch after a row with her boyfriend,” Hannah Furness. The Telegraph, 18 May 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20130519114811/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10065868/JK-Rowling-invented-Quidditch-after-a-row-with-her-boyfriend.html
- “Cricket,” Wikipedia. Accessed 15 July 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket
- “The Longest Cricket Match in History,” Matt Harris. It’s Only Cricket, accessed 15 July 2026. https://www.itsonlycricket.com/longest-cricket-match-in-history
- “The Longest Game in History.” MiLB.com, accessed 15 July 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20250306005814/https://www.milb.com/news/gcs-41224646
- “Misfits & Magic: the M-word.” Original content by Dimension 20, 2021. Edit by geirawsm, 19 Nov 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-s3zcYfFis
- “Dath Ilan,” Yudkowsky et al. LessWrong, updated 13 June 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20260711172420/https://www.lesswrong.com/w/dath-ilan
- “How to Make Superbabies,” GeneSmith and kman. LessWrong, 19 Feb 2025. https://archive.ph/sqkXi
- “I hope somebody funds this, arguably the third most important project in the world,” Yudkowsky. Twitter, 20 Feb 2025. https://archive.ph/20250304075600/https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1892374125089341444
- “Marriage: An Address to the Deaf,” Alexander Graham Bell. Deaf Rare Books, 1898. https://ida.gallaudet.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=deaf_rare_books
- “There are of course always going to be some traits that are on the borderline of what we might consider ethically permissible,” GeneSmith. LessWrong comment, 2 June 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20260715230946/https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k8pj8kMxotFGqn4mp/request-use-epilogenics-instead-of-eugenics-in-most?commentId=RZFpf6xHCNGiQqhBt
- Jake is correct: IQ is ordinally scaled. “A test score equal to the average of one’s age group defined an IQ of 100. [...] Thus an IQ score on the [Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale] (a deviation IQ) is simply a reflection of an individual’s relative standing with respect to others of the same age. it is not an absolute score. In the jargon of psychological measurement theory, IQ is an ordinal scale, where we are simply rank-ordering people. There is no absolute zero for IQ, as there is for height or weight, and someone with an IQ of 150 is not twice as intelligent as another with an IQ of 75, in the sense that someone 6 feet (1.8 m) tall is twice as tall as someone of 3 feet (0.9 m). It is not even appropriate to claim that the 10-point difference between IQ scores of 110 and 100 is the same as the 10-point difference between IQs of 160 and 150 [...] To say that someone has an IQ of 130 is simply to say that their test score lies within the top 2.5 per cent of a representative sample of people of the same age.” IQ and Human Intelligence, N. J. Mackintosh. Oxfor University Press, 1998. https://archive.org/details/iqhumanintellige00mack/page/30/mode/2up
- "The Eugenic Origins of IQ Testing: Implications for Post-Atkins Litigation," Ajitha Reddy. DePaul Law Review, 2008. https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=law-review
Hey everybody, this is Anthea, uh your host. This is part one of the three of the chapters at Reciprocity. Um this first episode at the very outset, I will give some general content warnings, but I will be putting specific ones in the intros for each episode because I cannot emphasize enough that this chapter goes to some dark places in terms of the implications that are brought up by the text and also we are gonna deal with that with varying levels of distress and horrified comedy. So uh get ready for that and have fun. We did I think I did. Anyway, listen. Specifically, I'm gonna make it sound worse specifically in this first episode. Uh we're gonna be talking about eugenes, uh, and IQ, and of course, racism is very down in those contexts. So uh yeah, don't worry, we we're gonna talk about um baseball. Baseball, that's fun, and bananas, that's gonna come up. It's not all bad. Okay, on to the episode. Anyway, speaking of fitting a lot in there, welcome to HP Moore and the Limits of Rationality. How was that segue for you?
JakeUh it worked for me. It's not clearly great for people with no context.
AntheaIt was rough.
SPEAKER_01I'll just say it was rough. Okay, I appreciate the honesty. But in that sense, that feels as if it will probably be a really good segue into what we're about to talk about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
JakeYou keep it all the warm-ups for the inevitable Patreon drama. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I keep it. I keep it around. Based on the um, based on the hints you've been giving us over the past couple weeks. About this chapter. Yeah.
AntheaYeah. Embraced. Well, welcome. Welcome to this podcast, a podcast that tests the question can you learn to be more rational by reading this Harry Potter fan fiction and researching the concepts introduced therein? Or will you only alienate your friends and family by forcing them to listen to you explain increasingly esoteric interpretations of the word update?
JakeIsn't that pretty true to how rationalism works? You got it.
AntheaI'm your host, Anthea, and I am joined today as ever by Jake.
JakeHello.
AntheaAnd Elisa. I'm drinking. How are you guys this morning?
JakeI'm pretty good.
AntheaExcellent, excellent.
JakeWe have a much calmer dog with us this time. We do.
AntheaYeah. There might be a little bit of like like dog. Dog ASMR sounds. Yeah. Yeah, but hopefully she's not gonna freak out and and bark at any point.
JakeYeah, hopefully not too annoying for most of you. For that one person, don't like don't get too excited. Yeah, don't make it weird. Yeah.
AntheaKeep it to yourself. Um cool. Yeah, let's let's jump in. This is a big, big old chapter. Uh, so I do wanna I do want to jump in pretty fast. Um I want to hit uh old business. Um, old business. I'm a lot less beleaguered than last time. That's really good. I'm I'm pretty excited to inflict this on you. Good, great.
JakeBecause the last one hurt your brain and soul, right?
AntheaIt really did. The last one left me left me feeling pretty bad. Um this one, uh, I'm not gonna say it leaves me feeling good uh per se, but I hope not. I'm excited.
SPEAKER_01I'm excited about what we're gonna talk about. Imagine that face he'll turn and he's like, I've got something really exciting for you guys. I think this is really gonna change the game, and we're like, uh oh, oh, Jake, the door's locked. So about those IQ tests we were taking today.
AntheaUm, other old business. Uh as we were listening to uh, you know, reviewing the the last chapter, uh, I just noted so in in the last chapter, Harry mentions that he has an anger management problem, and he's like, but I'm working on it. And I want to know why in the earlier chapters we were told about his uh his sleep disorder, but not that he has an anger management problem that he's working on.
SPEAKER_01To be fair, we did learn he bit a teacher.
AntheaWe did learn he bit a teacher.
SPEAKER_01From not knowing what a logarithm was. Wow, that one really stuck with you. It yeah, it's very specific. And I believe that there's evidence we talked about this, but that was months ago. Also, he was like seven or eight or something, right, at the time. That's too old to be biting people.
JakeIs it well and also too young to be biting people. There's a reverse bell curve of ages where you can bite people.
SPEAKER_01You can bite people again. You have to ask them if it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
AntheaUm, so I just wanted to call that out real quick. And and then Elisa, you had some really good show notes. I I feel like I should be plugging the fact you're doing a much better job of promoting this podcast on Tumblr than I am.
SPEAKER_01Ah, hell yeah. Tumblr, where all the peeps are at. Yeah. Um, yeah, the only social media that I've been able to maintain over the years is Tumblr. Because after every all the dust settled from the 2014 to 17 era, it actually kind of chilled out a lot. Um, so that's where I am these days. And one thing that, like, for myself, kind of, if I bring something up and I'm like, and I think, I don't actually know if I know shit about that. Um, I tend to do a little bit of like research because I set it on the record and it's out there as opposed to stray thoughts I have in our home that aren't being recorded. Right. Um, and the things that I've learned a little bit about are more about uh Inuit parenting practices, which is really cool. There's like one of my favorite things in the world to look up is like the collections of indigenous elder lore and like practical advice. Um they're on various YouTube channels and websites and things like that. So uh one of my set of show notes that I've been posting to Tumblr when I promote the podcast has uh uh links to handbooks of compiled Inuit Elder Wisdom about like raising kids, like raising a child to be like a contributing member of society, a self-sufficient, resilient um citizen who will be able to deal with pain and and like all kinds of stuff. It's very lovely. Um there are some things that I got wrong when I initially mentioned uh Inuit child rearing techniques, but other things that I think like I was correct about, but more importantly, if you click the show notes, you will actually learn from the source instead of a thing that I remember reading on NPR several years ago. Sure. And then the other one um that I is worth pointing out to me is I asked rhetorically, some might say, some might say rhetorically, are there any creatures with tentacles, but also claws.
AntheaRight, because because his luggage has clawed tentacles.
SPEAKER_01I don't know why I was suspicious that I was wrong about that, but I learned that the colossal squid has tentacles and then also hooks that like swivel. Like on the tentacles. On the tentacles, on the tentacles. Scary. Um so the all this and more is available to you if you uh look at our show notes on Tumblr.
AntheaAnd what's your Tumblr?
SPEAKER_01ecpoetry.
AntheaDot Tumblr dot com.
SPEAKER_01Dot tumbler dot com. Awesome. Dot McDonald's dot blue apron.
AntheaWe'll send you a potato.
SPEAKER_01We'll send a potato to your house.
JakeSo there's there's a non-zero chance we're gonna get mentioned by strange aeons at some point, is what I'm hearing.
AntheaI hope so. I only I've we've mentioned her, you know. Strange, be our friend. Yeah, be our friend.
JakeI'm not surprised that they've come up before on this show.
AntheaYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, because they they they cover a lot of the similar, like well, she's done it she's done a uh an episode on on HP. Oh, that's right.
JakeThat's right. That was I ten minutes of that was my only exposure to this crazy before we started.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, okay, well, that's where I get that's where my quarrel spoilers come from. Yeah, yeah. Is that is that is that video. Anyway, I'm sorry, I know. I spent too long talking when we're supposed to. No, no, I just went no, no, no, no, you're fine, you're fine. But yes, show notes.
AntheaExcellent. Uh you're not you're not you don't have any social media, do you?
JakeUm, I technically have an Instagram that I mostly made to look at tattoo artists' Instagram.
SPEAKER_03Hell yeah.
JakeBut then I posted some Pokemon drawings that I made when I was trying to get into digital art.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
JakeAnd they were kind of okay, but then uh I didn't have time to do them anymore. So have fun trying to find that and see very cool. Um my actually pretty okay Charizard.
AntheaJake is unfindable. Excellent. No, I mean someone should be.
JakeI have a pretty uncommon name. It shouldn't be too hard to sort them all out on Facebook and Instagram.
AntheaProbably yeah, definitely.
JakeYeah.
SPEAKER_01Alright. Uh so that's old business. Oh, wait, one more piece of old business. Please. Uh last time I was like, what are those rustling noises? And it turns out it was me moving my hand on this microphone. So now I want you all, sweet listeners, to know I have my hands clawed into a little Lego fist, and I'm gonna try not to move them for the next two and a half hours.
AntheaWe'll see how this goes. The audio is a is a continued work in progress, and we appreciate everybody's uh uh patience with us as we figure it out.
JakeThank you for your indulgence. As we figure it out. Anthea's doing everything.
AntheaYeah, it is the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_01I figured out one thing.
JakeIt's true. Lego claw. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Like I'm not contributing.
JakeAnd you have Lego suckers also, though.
SPEAKER_01That would be really helpful. Ooh, that would be great. Yeah.
AntheaMan, Lego.
SPEAKER_01Nature's so wise.
AntheaUm couple content warnings. Uh eugenics are gonna come up in the first half of this.
SPEAKER_01Oh god.
AntheaUh, and um in the second half, uh, there is an explicit thrape of r uh explicit threat of rape. An explicit threat of rape? Yes. There's no graphic violence. And there's a thrape of wreck.
JakeIs there any implied infant cannibalism? I've I've learned that can be a thing you have to watch out for.
AntheaOh yeah. No.
unknownOkay.
AntheaNot yet. The story so far. Harry James Potter Evans Varys is a wizard. Uh, in this universe, he is also a rationalist. He grew up reading science fiction instead of living in a cupboard. Um, which is worse for your developing brain? It's hard to say. Um, during several chapters of shopping in Diagon Alley, Harry has learned about the death of his biological parents at the hands of Voldemort. He bought a magic trunk with with tentacles and suckers and Like a colossal squid. Yes. Um he bought a bag of holding, he bought a healer's kit, um, along with his wand and other school supplies. He correctly guessed via basically no evidence that Voldemort is actually still alive. Through applied use of tropes. Basically, yeah. Basically, by being like, well, it would be it would be nice if uh if there was still something for me to do, like maybe if the if the Dark Lord wasn't actually dead, but had been thrown off into a into a spot between life and death where he tries to claw his way back in, and McGonagal made a face and he went, Oh my god, I'm right. And McGonagall was like, You are right, and that is that's deduction, baby. Sure is.
JakeIt's a rational assumption when you realize you're the main character.
AntheaCorrect. Uh so when when he had that realization, he blackmailed McGonagal into at least considering telling him what plans are in place to defeat Voldemort for good. In parting, McGonagall told him to look for a first-year girl named Hermione Granger on the Hogwarts Express. He also met Draco and Lucius Malfoy during his shopping montage and impressed Draco with his ability to be an enormous suck-up.
JakeAnd they didn't kiss, right? That was just in my head.
AntheaDid not kiss, that was just in your head. Interesting, you should mention that. Keep that in mind.
JakeLet's let's a lot of people's head.
AntheaYeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Keep that in mind. Oh my god. Oh, wait, a little bit more of old business. Oh, yeah, yeah. Joe, whenever you get here, our friend of the show, Joe Joe said um she was actually furious at me for mentioning um Harry Draco Shippers as the only people doing justice to Harry, um, doing right by Harry. I want you to know that when I was in middle school, one of my best little middle school friends had the name or was was like a hardcore Harry Draco Shipper. And because she I remember her as a sweet, kind, and gentle soul, I think fondly on all Harry Draco.
AntheaAw, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Even though it was never really my thing, so I like didn't read that much of it, including fanfics she wrote, I'm so sorry, Wesley.
AntheaI definitely was a Harry Hermione person. Sure. That was it, that was the only thing I was there for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um all of this is actually quite relevant. No god!
unknownWhy? No!
AntheaUh just as a just so as a summary of what we're getting into, in chapter seven, Harry enters the wizarding world on his own for the first time and he attempts to recruit Draco to the cause of science. That's what's going to happen in this chapter.
JakeSpoilers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. For those of you who are audio-only listeners, my eyes just rolled out of my head.
JakeFor those of you who are not audio-only listeners, please let us know what you're doing. Where are you in my room? Where are the camera?
AntheaChapter 7. Reciprocation. Okay, now, and I immediately have to jump back in. Because last chapter I said I was going to stop reading the author's notes, and then in this chapter, Yadkowski immediately put several things that interested me in the author's notes, so he has once again made a liar out of me. I was about to say, promises made. Promises broken. Whoa, a spokesman for Rowling's literary agent said that Rowling is okay with the existence of fanfiction as long as no one charges for it, and everyone's clear that the original copyrights belong to her. That's really cool of her. So thank you, JKR, and thine is the kingdom. Uh, that's Bidkowski. Um, and indeed, in 2004, in advance of the best Harry Potter movie, Prisoner of Azkaban, uh JKR said via a spokesperson that, quote, she is very flattered by the fact there is such great interest in her Harry Potter series, and that people take the time to write their own stories. Her concern would be to make sure that it remains a non-commercial activity to ensure fans are not exploited, and it is not being published in the strict sense of traditional print publishing. According to the BBC, the spokesman continued, he said writers had to ensure that the stories were not obscene and were credited to the author, and not to J.K. Rowling. He said, The books may be getting older, but they are still aimed at young children. If young children were to stumble on Harry Potter in an X-rated story, that would be a problem. Now, the stated position of this podcast is JKR can go fuck herself.
JakeYeah.
AntheaNot that I've noticed. Um That's I mean, like, listen, I don't trust that she would know what was and wasn't obscene.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
AntheaRight. She thinks Lolita is a love story. Yes, she sure does. That's why I read Lolita in the first place, was because sh I saw something about her being like, it's an amazing love story, and I was like, you have to be getting this from somewhere. And I she's not.
JakeI've heard a lot of people say that.
AntheaI knew they're all wrong. Yes. Well, I mean there are like, I don't know if there's just one common awful source or if it's like Atlas Shrugged, where so many people come to the wrong.
JakeI mean, I guess that's actually what it said in the text in Atlas Shrugged, the awful things people draw from it.
AntheaBut yeah, yeah, yeah. Atlas Shrugged, people like Ayn Rand did believe what she was saying.
JakeLike, you know, it's like some other example. Yeah, some other example where people are just keep taking the wrong lesson from the thing.
SPEAKER_01I think the common source would be our patriarchal and violent society.
AntheaYeah, yeah. And it's a beautiful book. I do think that that's part of what's uh uh part of what throws people off is that you read Lolita, it's gorgeous. It's a beautifully written book. Um but also it's a horror novel, if you ask me.
SPEAKER_01I would also like to take this opportunity briefly to point out that Nabakov in various interviews has gone, had over the years, was like, I'm kind of stunned by what people have done to this poor little girl. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He could he did not sexualize Dolores and was surprised that other people did.
AntheaYeah. Well, and to that point, like in 2004 when JKR is like, this can't be, like, I don't write explicit or obscene fanfiction. That's a point where the characters are all like 13. Uh, and it's I there are extremely reasonable, good reasons to be uncomfortable with the idea of people writing stories that are explicit, it's like sexually explicit about characters under the age of 18. I don't really want to get into that at the moment and like that whole mess.
SPEAKER_01I do think it's interesting that in 2004 these books were aimed squarely at young children, but by the end of the book series, there's a lot of content that's really not appropriate for young children.
AntheaRight, right. As we've been talking about, right? Yeah. Um I I just did it made me laugh to see that Yadkowski uh that the statement that Yadkowski is referencing made a point of saying it would be a problem for young children to stumble on inappropriate material, and then he was like, anyway, flensing.
JakeNo, this all seems reasonable for children so far. Yeah.
AntheaUh also this statement came out in 2004. Yadkowski started publishing this fic in 2021. I don't know why he's acting like he just found out about it. Like maybe he did just find out about it. He probably did just find out about it. I think he's a fake fan. Anyway. Um, the author's note continues. I feel the need to disclaim that certain parts of this chapter are not meant as bashing. It's not that I have a grudge. The story just writes itself. And once you start dropping anvils on a character, it's hard to stop.
JakeThis the whole thing has been a grudge. Like, this this story is theoretically just Edub processing all of his Harry Potter trauma so far.
SPEAKER_01At least a little bit. Okay, but in this case, let's put a pin in this. Put a pin in that Yud Yud notices within himself. Some people could say I'm going a little far. And that's noteworthy because at other times, so far, he has not had that realization.
AntheaYes. Yes. Uh, continues. A few reviewers have asked whether the science in this story is real or made up. Yes, it is real. And if you look at my profile, you'll see a link to a certain nonfiction site that will teach you pretty much everything Harry James, Potter, Evans, Veris knows, and then some.
SPEAKER_01Oh, fuck off.
AntheaSo obviously, this is Less Wrong. Uh that he's which which is the profile name that he published under non-fiction.com.
SPEAKER_01He's linking to Less Wrong? I was like, okay, Con Academy, like MIT's free courses.
AntheaOh, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no.
JakeDoes it teach me how to channel my black rage into owning my teacher?
SPEAKER_01I mean, not no. Honestly, that sounds like a competency that a lot of these people would be super interested in developing.
AntheaYeah, exactly. Well, so so the the uh the site also the the hpmore.org, uh which is where it's hosted these days, it's also still on fanfiction.net, but like So HP Morg. HPmorg, yes. Um that site also links to the Center for Applied Rationality or CFAR, which I think I've brought up before. Um I have not it it that deserves for me to dig into it more deeply, uh, because it and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, formerly known as the Singularity Institute, um are two very influential organizations and projects that directly came out of Less Wrong. Um uh this episode is already gonna be really long and we aren't even to the actual text yet, so I'm not gonna dig into CFAR today.
SPEAKER_01Um I should point out, for the purposes of any CFAR employees who may be listening, that I don't know enough about CFAR to say one way or the other, I am my boo is exclusively for the fact that this is self-dealing in the extreme.
AntheaWell, I to my knowledge, from what I've been able to find out, Yudkowski does not have any fine does not and has not had any financial ties to CFAR.
SPEAKER_01Well, I it's it's ideological self-dealing. It is ideological self-dealing. Self-referential. Even if I was positive that things that I had written about scientific concepts or about, let's say, literary concepts. That's my that's my wheelhouse. That's our wheelhouse. Let's say I had written something about the sonnet, you know, the English sonnet, and I was like really positive that that was, you know, I would still that that was accurate. I would still link to poetry.org or like some other, you know, somebody else's discussion of a sonnet if I wanted people to take me seriously about what I was saying. Sure, sure.
AntheaYeah. Um and not just to your own work.
SPEAKER_01Um yes, because uh academia and intellectualism and learning and knowledge is a team sport.
AntheaYeah, yeah. Um CFAR is really interesting to me, and I do want to dig into it at some point because I'm I love that you moved the mic closer for that.
SPEAKER_01ASMR.
AntheaUm uh CFAR still exists. They do they do workshops in the Bay Area. Um they uh Are uh they're they're one of the big like movers and shakers of like Miri is focused on on AI alignment and AI safety, right? It's it c it comes out of less wrong and out of the rationality movement, but it's not about rationality. CFAR is about rationality. Um interesting.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
AntheaYeah, it's and it's like very it's very like uh uh what's the Well that makes sense. Let's send the name that one that Mario didn't know. Oh, you also Mario Brothers? I always forget. No Landmark. Landmark. Yeah, it's it's more, it's like it's landmark forum kind of.
SPEAKER_01Way less fun than Mario Kart.
AntheaYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, um we'll get into CFAR one of these days. Uh Yadkowski doesn't have any like significant financial relationship with them, um, so him linking to it is not him being like, please give me money. Uh he did, quote, consider it absolutely vital and a top priority for the human species that this project of turning cognitive science into practical sane behavior continue forward at the fastest possible rate with the best possible people.
SPEAKER_01There's the word sane again.
AntheaYeah. It's gonna come up a lot.
SPEAKER_01Oh, Jesus.
AntheaAnyway, um, one of the themes of this chapter, i that's that's that's the author's note, we move on. Great. One of the themes of this chapter is family, and we are going to open with some family moments. Uh the epigraph is your dad is almost as awesome as my dad.
JakeAnd then they kiss.
AntheaRight, yeah, and then they kiss with a tongue. Uh into the text. Petunia Evans Varis's lips were trembling, and her eyes were tearing up as Harry hugged her midsection on platform nine of the King's Cross station. Are you sure you don't want me to come with you, Harry? Harry glanced over to his father, Michael Varys Evans, who was looking stereotypically stern but proud, and then back to his mother, who really did look rather uncomposed. Mom, I know you don't like the wizarding world very much. You don't have to come with. I mean it. Petunia winced. Harry, you shouldn't worry about me. I'm your mother, and if you need someone with you, Mom, I'm going to be on my own at Hogwarts for months and months. If I can't manage a train platform alone, better to find out sooner rather than later so we can abort. He lowered his voice to a whisper. Besides, Mum, they all love me over there. If I have any problems, all I need to do is take off my sweatband. Harry tapped the exercise band covering his scar, and I'll have way more help than I can handle. Oh Harry, Petunia whispered. She knelt down and hugged him hard, face to face, their cheeks resting against each other. Harry could feel her ragged breathing, and then he heard a muffled sob escape. Oh Harry, I do love you. Always remember that. It's like she's afraid she'll never see me again. The thought popped into Harry's head. He knew the thought was true, but he didn't know why Mum was so afraid. So he made a guess. Mum, you know that I'm not going to turn into your sister just because I'm learning magic, right? I'll do any magic you ask for. If I can, I mean, or if you want me not to use any magic around the house, I'll do that too. I promise I'll never let magic come between us. A tight hug cut off his words. You have a good heart, his mother whispered into his hair into his ear. A very good heart, my son. Harry choked up a l himself a little then. Uh that's sweet. It's a nice, it's a really nice moment. I mean, it's it's back to our our like uh petunia is is emotions.
JakeYes. Emotions lady. The woman gets to have the feelings. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Emotions lady. And also, like, I'm just I'm thinking like contrasting this, like, this level of you know, unconditional love uh with the Petunia Dursley from the books is like, thank God she got some good dick. Because like it really has cleared up a lot of stuff.
AntheaThat's okay, I do like I have been thinking about like truly the point of depar like you know, back at the very beginning, um the only point of departure. The only I mean, well, the one big change that we're aware of right at the outset. The change that makes everything else cascade off of it is Petunia got hot.
unknownYep. Yep.
AntheaThat's what fixed the wizarding world.
JakeYep.
AntheaIf Petunia hadn't been such an uggo, none of this would have happened.
JakeYeah. Able to pull down a super mid professor.
AntheaYep. Yep. Uh speaking of the professor. There were no questions about his father accompanying him to the magical side of King's Cross station. Dad had trouble just looking at Harry's trunk directly. Magic ran in families, and Michael Varys Evans couldn't even walk. So instead his father just cleared his throat. Good luck at school, Harry, he said. Do you think I bought you enough books? Harry had explained to his father about how he thought this might be his big chance to do something really revolutionary and important, and Professor Varys Evans had nodded and dumped his extremely busy schedule for two solid days in order to go on the greatest second-hand bookshop raid ever, which had covered four cities and produced thirty boxes of science books, now sitting in the cavern level of Harry's trunk.
SPEAKER_01It really sucks that his parents don't take him seriously.
AntheaMost of the books had gone for a pound or two, but some of them definitely hadn't, like the very latest Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, or the complete 1972 set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. His father had tried to block Harry off from seeing the till displays, but Harry figured his father must have spent at least a thousand pounds. Harry had said to his father that he would pay him back as soon as he figured out how to convert wizarding gold into muggle money, and his father had told him to go jump in a lake. And then his father had asked him, Do you think I bought you enough books? It was quite clear what answer Dad wanted to hear. Harry's throat was hoarse for some reason. You can never have enough books he recited the Varis family motto, and his father knelt down and gave him a quick, firm embrace. But you certainly tried, Harry said, and felt himself choking up again. It was a really, really, really good try. This is also very sweet. I really like I I really have no like aside from being like, you know, okay, Petuni's the emotional one, I really have like no notes for that.
JakeI think that's a really nice like I think if this kid was truly rational, the his first resort would be piracy for this stuff. For for getting all these science textbooks. Like they're they're huge and heavy and expensive and free on the internet.
AntheaWell, it's like 1992.
JakeOkay, that makes it trickier. This is a family that has a Usenet account. Hundred percent.
AntheaHundred percent. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I'm I'm genuinely surprised that we have not heard that Harry is an early adopter and uh hanging out on like alt dot science or something. Yeah, that's that's true.
JakeI feel like that should have come up by now.
SPEAKER_01As I kind of alluded to with, oh, it's a shame Harry's family, his parents don't take him seriously. Yeah. I do think it's interesting to note that like part of I think why we're like, oh, this is nice. Like, no, no, no. It's like is that you see both parents quite clearly communicating to Harry in their own love languages that they love him and they want him to succeed. He says, I'm I think I could do something really incredible. And his father, rather than going, okay, sure, whatever. You're 11. Like, okay, you're 11. Like, see, let's see how the year goes, and you know, then we'll talk. Um, goes on a four-city tour, spends over a thousand pounds on science books. And I'm sure that some of that is because he's like, This kid is potentially not going to be getting a good grounding in science. Like, but even here at the train station, he doesn't say, like, hey, if you feel like you're falling behind, we'll get you a tutor. Like something that would undercut the moment. Right even in a you know, even for a good reason. Like, I would be concerned that my extremely bright child was not going to be getting the education that he needed because he was busy trying to turn teacups into frogs. Like, um, so I just think it's interesting to note that. And he even gives him physical affection and a hug, which my understanding is that traditional British fathers are not not not want to do. They're not known for that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's it's lovely. It is lovely, but I do also think, you know, to to ding yud-yud and yud hairy, I think it it stands in contrast to his assertions that his parents don't take him seriously, that they don't respect him, that they that they don't value his input. Um, he's seizing on a couple of instances where they weren't perfect and use that to say that all adults are crazy and that they have a bias against children that leads them to undervalue Harry's input inappropriately.
JakeWhich does seem like something a kid would do. Like focus on the one time their parents weren't supportive and then be like, God, my parents never support me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, but I think that the invocative rational?
JakeOh, no, no, not at all.
SPEAKER_01And I think that as much as we have said previously, like, okay, not everything Harry does is rational, but how are we, as beginner rationalists, supposed to tell the difference? Yeah. I do also think that the invocation of insane and sane that Harry used to describe adults in the previous chapter indicates that we're supposed to take his assessment seriously. But we're being given evidence on the page here that his assessment is, if not incorrect, then certainly incomplete. Yeah. Yeah. Like how much does somebody have to respect you and take you seriously before it's enough? Entirely.
AntheaYeah, correctly. Apparently. Yes. They have to, they have to uh cede to you. Uh so they puzzle over how to get onto platform nine and three-quarters. Uh, and Harry accidentally lets slip that McGonagall might have been too distracted to tell him how to find the platform, and his parents are like, What did you do? And he's like, uh, nothing. And he's trying to figure out how to not tell them that there are that he knows secrets of national security implications. Um, nothing. Blackmail. Genocide wizard alive. Yeah. Uh oh what? Uh by like literally, yeah. He he's saved from having to reveal that he's blackmailing his professor um by spotting a family with an owl, and he correctly is like uh well, he spots a family with an owl. I uh oh look, there are some people with an owl, I'll go ask them how to get in. And Harry ran away from his parents towards the family of fiery redheads, his trunk automatically slithering behind him. The plump woman looked to him as he arrived. Hello, dear. First time at Hogwarts? Ron's new too. And then she peered closely at him. Harry Potter Four boys and a redheaded girl and an owl all swung around and then froze in place. Oh come on, Harry protested. He'd been planning to go as Harry Varys, at least until he got to Hogwarts. I bought a sweat band and everything! How come you know who I am? Yes, Harry's father said, coming up behind him with long, easy strides. How do you know who he is? His voice indicated a certain dread. Your picture was in the newspapers, said one of two identical looking twins. Harry Dad, it's not like that! It's because I defeated the Dark Lord you know who when I was one year old What? Mom can explain. What? Uh Michael, dear, there are certain things I thought would be best not to bother you with until now. Excuse me, Harry said to the redheaded family, who were all staring at him, but it would be quite extremely helpful if you could tell me how to get to platform nine and three quarters right now. Uh, said the woman. She raised a hand and pointed at the wall between platforms. Just walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don't stop, and don't be scared you'll crash into it. That's very important. Best do it at a bit of a run if you're nervous. And whatever you do, don't think of an elephant. George. Ignore him, Harry, dear. There's no reason not to think of an elephant. I'm Fred, Mom, not George. Thanks, Harry said, and took off at a run towards the barrier. Wait a minute, it wouldn't work unless he believed in it. It was at times like this that Harry hated his mind for actually working fast enough to realize that this was a case where resonant doubt applied. That is, if he'd started out thinking that he would go through the barrier, he'd have been fine, only now he was worried about whether he sufficiently believed he'd go through the barrier, which meant that he actually was worried about crashing into it. Harry, get back here, you have some explaining to do. That was his dad. Harry shut his eyes and ignored everything he knew about justified credibility and just tried to believe really hard that he'd go through the barrier, and the sounds around him changed. Harry opened his eyes and stumbled to a halt, feeling vaguely dirt by having made a deliberate effort to believe something.
JakeThat kid shouldn't have gone through the wall.
SPEAKER_01I actually think that would have been a great opportunity for him. Like the fact, like, you know, the whole the thing about characters and people often is like your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness because it's a very strong and salient personality trait. I think that would have been a great opportunity for him to bounce off, have to face his parents, like have to actually learn something from the people around him.
JakeSplit his head open, gets a new scar.
SPEAKER_01And it, you know, and that adds to the incognito of it all. Exactly.
AntheaYeah.
SPEAKER_01Double scars, double cool.
AntheaYeah, definitely. Um, this does feel like a good time to talk about Yadkowski's sequences to me, because the term belief is an important one within rationality. Elisa is gonna die. Um so in the sequences, Yadkowski does not provide like a single pithy definition of the term belief. Um, good. Yeah, you know. Um he actually spends like half a dozen essays exploring different versions of the term. Uh thankfully, some other less wrongers did the work of synthesizing the community understanding of the basic term for him. So the definition on less wrong is belief is the mental state in which an individual holds a proposition to be true. Beliefs are often metaphorically referred to as maps and are considered valid to the extent that they correctly correspond to the truth.
JakeSo they they see belief as a noun and not a verb.
AntheaUh yes, yeah, like a belief. Yeah.
JakeOh, I see. I thought it was talking about, they were talking about believing in something. But yeah.
AntheaRight, right. I mean, yeah, the related related terminology, right?
SPEAKER_01Belief is holding a proposition.
AntheaYeah. A belief is a proposition that can hold.
SPEAKER_01Um I mean, yet again, we see that beliefs are valid insofar as they correlate to the truth, but not all beliefs are testable.
JakeWell, so it's also very engineered-brained, again. Because like this is like they're almost describing like memory, honestly. Well, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
AntheaYeah. And this is, I mean, again, this is one of those things where it's like the the term in English is squishy. And they j and there's not like a perfectly like crystallized meaning of it even within this subculture. Um, which is which is frustrating. Um in making beliefs pay rent in anticipated experiences, Gadkowski describes beliefs as being propositions that let you anticipate or predict something. That's the understood understanding that I take from it. One example he uses is dropping a bowling ball off of a building. Your belief that Earth's gravity is 9.8 meters per second per second and that the building is 120 meters tall means that you anticipate the bowling ball hitting the ground five seconds after you drop it. That is an accurate belief that corresponds to truth or reality. Um beliefs that predict something can be inaccurate, though, like if I believe that shaking a Polaroid makes it develop faster, I predict that shaking a Polaroid picture will make it develop faster, but the shaking doesn't actually have any effect on how fast the Polaroid picture develops. In case anybody didn't know that. Um that's a belief that doesn't correspond with reality.
JakeUnless we're talking about time as perception, in which case it does make it develop faster. Because it feels faster.
AntheaWell, touche. Yeah.
JakeWell, I mean, and honestly, like I feel like that's kind of where belief can break down in these contexts. Because like it is if you only want it to be quantifiable, provable things, then like beliefs can still affect things in real literal ways, just not necessarily if you break it back down into numbers and like study it empirically, it's like, no, this technically wasn't any different. Right. It doesn't mean like, you know, it devalues the experiential.
AntheaYeah, yeah. Yes, a belief can still be subjective. Right. Yeah. Exactly.
JakeAnd like can have a real effect, even if it's not a quantifiable effect.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. It devalues a couple of things so far, but I'm gonna hold my comments until I can see more notes on the screen.
JakeIt might get worse.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for all I know.
AntheaI could be about to give him some flowers that I'll just want to take back.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
AntheaUm, beliefs are not just about sensory experiences, qua sensory experiences, kind of to your point. Like I can believe that J.K. Rowling is disgusted and confused by trans people, and I can therefore anticipate that when she writes about gender in any context, it will reflect certain regressive tropes of gender essentialism.
JakeI think that one is actually empirically proven.
AntheaI think that one, I did not say that that one was inaccurate. I just said it's not about sensory experiences.
SPEAKER_01That's fair. That's a good point.
AntheaUm, I am trying not to make this sound like belief is just a synonym for hypothesis, like an if-then statement. But there is a lot of overlap when we're talking about empiricism. Um, a belief leading you to uh yeah, because it's a belief that leads you to anticipate something.
SPEAKER_01Well, and it has to be testable because you have to be able to tell if it correlates with truth. Are you aware of any places where belief doesn't overlap with a hypothesis?
AntheaUm no, insofar as I think most ways that you can most of the ways you that you would phrase like beliefs and and empirical ideas fall into an if X then Y format, which is what I think of as a hypothesis.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
JakeI think it depends if we're talking about like hypothesis in the scientific sense of like something that you can verify. Sure. In which case, you know, like belief in God and stuff is like inherently not going to be like that. Well like it is, even though you can say if then, you can't verify it. Therefore, it's not a scientific hypothesis.
SPEAKER_01Well, and it's orthogonal to yeah, it's orthogonal to a scientific hypothesis because there's just not a way to test it. Yeah, exactly.
AntheaRight, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. Um well, and then like we often we do often use the word belief like like just like in English, not just as a like as an if-then statement, but also kind of like to describe something that we value. Yeah. Like I believe in democracy, yeah. Or I believe in God. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right?
AntheaWell, I was gonna say like a value or an imperative.
SPEAKER_01So fine, I'll say this now in case um is like, okay, well, do I believe in God? Probably, it's complicated. Um, but I do definitely believe that we were put here on this earth to be good to each other. Right. You have a value. It's it's uh it's a value, it's an imperative. And it's not necessarily something that I expect from other people.
AntheaYeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, but it is something that I believe that I should do. So if something is normative and imperative, it's not really within the framework of what this sounds like beliefs are. Right.
JakeYes. Right. Oh, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, because it's just like it's just fundamentally different. It's not, it's not a it's not a passive assumption that is testable or something. I mean, passive might not be the right word.
AntheaIt doesn't uh like your belief that you were put on earth to be good to other people does not lead you to anticipate a particular experience. It leads you to strive for a particular action.
SPEAKER_01Correct. Right. It doesn't lead me to pr to predict it impels me to act.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
JakeYeah. Well, and I think this comes from like, you know, kind of like you're both saying that a lot of times belief people mean value. Like I think it is a, you know, it's it's a word with like, you know, it essentially should have like synonyms.
AntheaYeah.
JakeBut it's used in like it's an overloaded term to use the terminology.
AntheaYeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I like overloaded. Overloaded is great. Yeah.
JakeUm like that's it's a specific programming thing, it's not worth going into, but like the programmers will know what I mean when I say overloaded terms.
AntheaThank God there's someone here who knows programming. But it makes sense to me.
JakeYeah. And like I think it's like, you know, there's inherent assumptions that we make when we hear belief that like, you know, we are skipping steps in the transitive like evolution of it. Because, like, you know, belief, you know, you know, belief means religious belief, religions mean morals, morals mean value. Right. But like our brain kind of deletes all that, where it's just like belief means value.
AntheaRight.
JakeWhich like those, you know, those steps that have been formed and associates associations that have been made over, you know, so much time is just so inherent to language and how we think of belief that it's just belief equals value, even though like you know, I think belief I'm honestly closer to Yadkowski's belief in what belief means. Like this, like fundamentally what a belief is, like, I'm you know, I'm kind of on board with what they're saying so far.
AntheaYeah. I don't I don't think there's anything wrong. Like, I I'm I'm not I'm not going into this because I'm I want to pick it apart per se. Like sometimes that is why I'm bringing up the sequences, but this is something where I'm like, I don't really have I don't necessarily have a a I don't have a problem with it. Uh would I use this term that Way in my everyday life, probably maybe, maybe not, but it's such a core piece of how rationalists like communicate and and like frame their own understanding of themselves and of their understanding, their understanding of their understanding. That I think it's important to understand what how the how it's used within the the context.
JakeYeah, totally. Because like it is, like we're saying, it's a word that can mean lots of things.
SPEAKER_01It's a word that can mean lots of things. And what's interesting, and I think like is is useful to like tease it out, not to say like this is an invalid definition of belief. Um I'm not prepared to say that right now. But in my but to note that in my own life, I actually have tried to start veering away from using belief when I'm talking about facts or something that is testable or provable. Because, you know, the uh the Earth orbits around the sun regardless of what I believe.
AntheaRight. Well, I think that kind of goes to your point about like uh Jake, about how when we hear belief, there is there there tends to be a feeling that we're talking about like something numinous, something that requires faith rather than something that's provable. Totally. Just because it's like strongly correlated with discussion of religion.
JakeYeah, like it it almost explicitly means not based on observation in people's heads, I feel like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or at least something requiring cooperation, which I forget if it's Tillich, I think it's Paul Tillich who said this, um, theologian um talking about how a relationship with the divine, and this is I think true of art as well, but like a relationship with the divine requires uh a human being to reach out towards and for the divine to reach back. Um and so like I think I would I I consider belief the way that I use belief when I'm talking about it. Like, which is again not to say that's the full definition, just a tendency that I have um to lean in lean hard into this one aspect of the definition um is to like think that a belief requires active participation and reaching out on behalf of the believer.
AntheaMm-hmm. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Or on the part of the believer. There we go.
AntheaMm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So to to jump it interesting, you talk about theologians, and obviously we're talking about God, because like that when we're talking when when Harry is like, I have to Harry feels dirty for making an effort to believe something, that really feels to me like we're talking more about that numinous kind of belief. And uh I think Yadkowski might call that belief in belief, which he is using, he's building on um a guy named Daniel Dennett. Uh in in his uh Daniel Dennett has a book called Breaking the Spell, which I haven't been able to read yet, but is I mean like it's it's a it's like an early Ots um like core atheist.
SPEAKER_01I was about to say, is it new atheism?
AntheaIt is new atheism.
JakeUm I've said that spelled N U with an umlaut over the joke before why does it sound like that? No, you have not made this joke on the podcast before.
SPEAKER_01Um just constantly thinking umlau, umlau motherfuckers.
JakeThat's a background noise in my head, is repeating umlau.
AntheaUm Puriadkowski. Depending on how your childhood went, you may remember a time period when you first began to doubt Santa Claus's existence, but you still believed that you were supposed to believe in Santa Claus, so you tried to deny the doubts. As Daniel Dennett observes, where it is difficult to believe a thing, it is often much easier to believe that you ought to believe it. You can much more easily believe that it is proper, that it is good and virtuous and beneficial to believe something contradictory or lacking evidence. So that's I think that's fairly consonant with my feeling that we're using believe to mean value instead of predict. Um like a belief in Santa Claus predicts that there will be presence under the tree. Believing in Santa Claus means you value making the prediction that someone brought presents, someone came down the chimney and brought presents to the tree.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I mean if he has to. Belief in the belief of Santa Claus. I mean, if he has to, but I mean, quick I just sorry, I know, but I think this is gonna be valuable.
AntheaI wasn't I was looking at my notes, not you, but I could feel the face you were making.
SPEAKER_01I have a quick story about Santa Claus. Okay. Uh I began to suspect that Santa Claus was not real when I was young. Yes. And as a result, I did some digging and I found a receipt for the Josefina American Girl doll that I received for Christmas. Yeah. And I shoved it in my mom's face. Yes. Uh and she said that the North Pole uh had her buy it. Yeah! And then she just had the receipt. She's hot and crafting. She's crafting. She's crafting. A double threat. Yes, exactly. Um, and but I um but I did not believe her. So I mean, I had I don't recall having this feeling of, and I'm sure like I think there are a lot of things that I subconsciously ascribe to, like stuff like that I've noticed in my own life is like shame around intimacy, like things like that, right? Like, you know, just like the classic like woman thing.
JakeUms hairspray, intimacy, shame.
SPEAKER_01Yep, yep, yeah. All three. Um, but uh, but I think those are often the dark matter. It's often the dark matter that's shaping my actions. And when as soon as I become cognizant of them, they tend to like feelings might remain, but I don't think, oh, it would still be good for me to believe in this. Like this feels to it feels like a very artificial and frankly a little bit on the spectrum way of interpreting. Because I did definitely do things when I was a kid that I was like, well, kids are supposed to do this stuff. Same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But like I didn't have like a, you know, like there was not a rent-seeking aspect. It was just kind of like a, it was an attempt to mirror, but it wasn't, but but with another layer of cognition attached. But with things like Santa Claus, for me personally, I had a whole little, I had a whole little like uncovering a conspiracy arc when I was a child.
AntheaI remember uh saying um uh off-handedly to my parents, wow, Santa's handwriting looks just like mom's, and the next year all of the notes were printed off of the computer.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god, yes.
AntheaYes. That kept me going for another year. Yes, like alright, we got a violent attack.
JakeSo that kept you going and that kept you getting presents, or kept you going as in like, okay, I guess I'm not noticing this anymore.
AntheaYeah, no, yeah. I was like, I I was not a little rational kid, I guess. Tedious, yes. Rational, no.
SPEAKER_01And with way better spatial reasoning than me.
AntheaNot way better, but significantly better. You know, yeah. Um Dennett, Dennett uses um belief in democracy as an example, uh like uh of of belief in belief, and I want to quote that because I do think it's interesting like I think that's an interesting way to like take it away from our baggage around religion and new atheism.
JakeBut it's like it it really does feel like it's the difference between the verb and the noun here. Yeah, it's like I feel like having belief in democracy versus believing that democracy works.
AntheaRight, right.
JakeLike you know, it's like you know, believing that like, you know, the the if-then thing is like, well, if democracy happens, then this will happen. Like I believe that, versus like I believe, like actively is the verb, like I believe democracy will work.
AntheaYeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.
JakeLike it it's like, you know. Yeah, I feel like one is an active thing and one is, you know, it is just something you hold in memory.
AntheaYeah, yeah, yeah. I like that. Yeah, yeah. Um, so then it writes, because many of us believe in democracy and recognize that the security of democracy in the future depends critically on maintaining the belief in democracy, we are eager to quote, unquote, and quote, Winston Churchill's famous line democracy is the worst form of government except all the other forms that have been tried. As stewards of democracy, we are often conflicted, eager to point out flaws that ought to be repaired, yet just as eager to reassure people that the flaws are not that bad, that democracy can police itself, so their faith in it is not misplaced. Because belief in belief I'm not quoting anymore, this is my read on it, that that belief in belief can serve a psychological and social purpose.
SPEAKER_01Democracy is a tulpa, and if we don't believe in it, it won't come to life. I kind of I mean, I do think that's true. I think that's true, right? Or I believe it is true. I don't fucking know.
JakeIt sounds a lot like the reverse engineering faith. Honestly. Yes. Yes. Belief and belief is you could also just say if you replace belief and belief with faith in all of these things, it kind of just means the same thing.
AntheaYeah, and I think that Dennett is is trying to get away try again, trying to not use the term faith to try and talk about like Dennett's whole thing is is doing this, uh God, I can't remember who uh it might have been Stephen J. Gould who was who uh came up with this idea of like separate magisteria, um, which is that are we talking about like magistrates or are you talking about magic stuff? Uh yes. Uh as in like separate domains, like science exists in one domain and religion exists in another domain, and never the twain shall meet.
SPEAKER_01Except that there was a prince and a princess from each magisterium, and then they fell in love.
JakeAnd the prince was kind of problematic, but he was big and strong, so it's fine. Definitely, yeah.
AntheaAnd Dennett was trying to be like, I think that we should not treat religion like it is just something that is untouchable by by reason. Like, let's look at it from a psychological perspective and try and understand like what's going on there psychologically.
JakeYeah, like it feels like the whole kind of like mind-body separation thing is like, no, like your brain is your body, you are your brain, it's a whole unit. You're not trapped in a flesh prison, you are the flesh prison.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And to not like and to give a little to give something to this apart from just the smart ass immediate answer. Um yeah, like uh this actually Dennett's um Dennett's quotation there does sort of answer my question about like, well, what a what about when something what about when a belief is a value or an imperative? He's saying, it sounds like that having belief as a value or imperative can serve uh uh uh a pro-social function because it creates cohesion, good outcomes, a virtuous cycle.
AntheaYeah. Yeah, I think that there's a a real uh a tendency that one has to avoid when talk like because uh because a lot of atheists uh sorry sorry to paint with a broad brush, but like there's this like feeling among that I see among atheists where there it's like you only believe in God or you only believe in religion because it's like getting you a social uh advantage or because you're being pressured into it or or whatever, and like like you know, and there's like a feeling of coercion that your belief must be coerced, and um, and I think Dennett I I again I haven't read all of Dennett's book, so I'm not 100% sure about this, but it it what I was able to find seems to me like he's saying, no, no, no, no, there's like there's like psychological reasons that that are not just like you'll get ostracized if you don't believe in religion or if you don't believe in God.
JakeYeah, like that can happen, but like it is a very narrow view to feel like this is why. Like it sounds like someone self-reporting of like, this is what it would take for me to believe in something, therefore this is why all of you believe in this.
AntheaYes. Funny you should mention that there's a that's a something there's a whole section in in the sequences where uh where Yudkowski is talking about like testing your own beliefs in stuff, like Occam's razor. Like if like he's like, you can't just if if you just say Occam's razor to something uh without actually like thinking about why you're applying it, then you don't actually that's not a belief. That's just a that's just a uh he doesn't use thought terminating cliche, but it's just a thought terminating cliche.
SPEAKER_01Oh really? I have one word for him Bayesian.
AntheaWell, piece of sham. But he's like, you should, if you are talking to a religious person, you should think about like like it or or like don't be so quick to say that that religious people uh are like not or or how do I how do I want to phrase this? He's saying you should be as rigorous with your own beliefs as you expect religious people to be with theirs. And like if you have a belief, you should test it with as much evidence and and like uh uh aggress and aggression as you would like to see religious people test their religious beliefs to and if you if you're not testing your own beliefs with that kind of rigor, you can never have a crisis of faith.
JakeYeah, you should be as aggro towards yourself as you are to a Christian stranger.
AntheaExactly.
SPEAKER_01Like yeah, yeah. That's that's a as expressed, that's a great principle.
AntheaYeah, yeah. He's like, you should you should try and have crises of faith. Like, like test your own beliefs. Anyway, that's not what we were here for.
SPEAKER_01No, we're here for platform nine and fucking three quarters.
AntheaWe are so uh so Harry does successfully believe in belief. Uh Molly didn't actually say you have to believe that you'll you have to think happy thoughts. She just said don't be too scared.
JakeDon't flinch. If I could do a real quick tangent, honestly, maybe what sums up why a lot of British writing and comedy doesn't jive with me.
SPEAKER_01Yes, maybe this will explain it because I feel similarly.
JakeJust fucking call it platform nine and a half. It's between nine and ten. That's what you would call it. Unless you're intentionally being tweed, which is what is happening here. Just call it nine and a half.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. There is a lot of British humor that seems to revolve around um pointing out how arbitrary a number of systems are. Oh man, wait till we get to Quidditch.
JakeOh yeah. I might agree with some of that stuff. I don't know. Quidditch is dumb. Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_01I don't know what you're talking about. Quidditch makes perfect sense.
AntheaSo Harry, uh Harry gets through the through the platform. Um he uh he notes that there is no room for this platform in King's Cross station. I've been there, can't confirm. Um Okay. Uh he is joined by his luggage and back to the text. A moment later, the youngest looking red haired boy came through the iron archway iron archway at a run, pulling his trunk behind him on a lead and nearly crashing into Harry. Harry, feeling stupid for having stayed around, quickly began moving away from the landing area, and the red haired boy followed him, yanking hard on his trunk's lead in order to keep up. A moment later, a white owl fluttered through the archway and came to rest on the boy's shoulder. Uh He gets Hedwig instead of the rat? I I I have been wondering whether this is Hedwig.
JakeHow do animals interact with this platform? Does it go into that?
AntheaNo, but Harry does wonder that.
JakeAt some point. I'm glad it's addressed, at least.
SPEAKER_01As ever, leave it to Yed Yed to handle my least pressing concerns. Yes.
AntheaUm let's find out what Yedkowski thinks of Ron Weasley. I don't want to.
JakeLet's find out how Petunia being hot has changed the Weaslies.
SPEAKER_01I just hear, okay, I know. We're about to, like, so I'm about to learn new information because I don't know anything about what he thinks of Ron. Yeah.
AntheaBut what's what what what ev uh what experience has your belief led you to anticipate?
SPEAKER_01I'm anticipating that Ron's gonna be like kind of you know Pinky from Pinky and the Brain. Yeah. But that's kind of the characterization and lens we're gonna get. It's gonna make me real fucking sad, and I have a horrible feeling that the eugenics in this in this uh chapter is gonna be related to the Weaslies.
JakeMaybe he was he was supposed to be the moral compass in the books, right? I haven't read them forever or in a long time. I I forget if I have read them. That's not as much I know the text.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. He's also like, I mean, he's it's kind of interesting because like he's good at all the same stuff Harry's good at, and bad at all the same stuff Harry's bad at, more or less. Um he's a little bit more judgmental, he's a little bit less good at sports, he's a little bit less good at combat.
JakeOh, he's he's the He's really good at chess. He's your made male friend in the anime that you don't have to be worried about taking all the girls from you. Yes, yes, gotcha.
SPEAKER_01But he's also, I mean, he's also a he's also a an unswervingly loyal friend. Um he broadly is pointing towards doing the right thing.
AntheaUm and he he serves a solid guy. He's a solid dude. He's he's you know, he serves a narrative purpose in that he is um he's Harry and Hermione's introduction to a lot of wizarding concepts because he uh grew up in the wizarding world and they're both Harry's not muggle-born, but he didn't, you know, functional culturally he is. Um Hermione is Muggle-born. Um and uh yeah, I think I think the the idea that he that he sort of Hermione's the brainy one, Harry's the brave one, and Ron is the loyal one.
SPEAKER_01I do like Ron's family also serves the function in the books of providing Harry with a f family environment, a warm family environment, and a loving environment. For the first time in his life. Yeah, for the first time in his life. Yeah.
JakeUm I mean, I'll be honestly kind of interested to see how that changes here then. Yeah. Because he already has that. So I could see that potentially leading to all the things people are grimacing about, what how Ron might be treated instead. Now that he doesn't have that core of his personality left.
SPEAKER_01The fact that Ron is in many ways treated kind of like Harry Light slash kind of a prop for a couple of or proxy for a couple of other things, like here's my feeling. I just feel like regardless of how much JK Rowling is not a good writer, which she's not, yeah. Um, at least not at writing characters and interiority, right? Like I still think of a character as a human being. And so I want to see a human being treated with a certain level of regard and respect. Yeah.
AntheaI've been trying to figure out what voice I'm gonna do for him, and I'm like, do I do a British accent for him? Cole, said the red-haired boy. Are you really Harry Potter? I don't know. I don't know if I'm gonna. Oh my gosh, he says core?
SPEAKER_01That's the first thing he says.
JakeOh my god! What if you go for like really problematic Japanese accent for Ron?
AntheaNo!
JakeYou want me to do that?
AntheaWe haven't gotten cancelled yet. Yes, we can't. Let's drive this podcast into a ditch. Excuse me.
SPEAKER_01Um, I don't know that I'm gonna try and do that. Oh, I could do like a low rider accent. You could you have you have my permission. Yes, are you really Harry Potter? Um, no, that actually feels for reasons of white passing privilege and economic privilege feels super bad.
JakeAgain, let's just remind you that was Elisa Chavez that just said that. In case it's fair that people may have forgotten.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Elisa Mexican vanilla Chavez.
AntheaOkay. Cool, said the red-haired boy. Are you really Harry Potter? Not this again. I have no logical way of knowing that for certain. My parents raised me to believe that my name was Harry James Potter Evans Verys, and many people here have told me that I look like my parents. I mean my other parents, but Harry frowned, realizing, for all I know, there could easily be spells to polymorph a child into a specified appearance. Uh what, mate? Not headed for Ravenclaw, I take it. Yes, I'm Harry Potter.
JakeOkay, we're starting to see what they think about Ron.
AntheaI'm Ron Weasley, said the tall, skinny, freckled, long-nosed kid, and stuck out a hand, which Harry politely shook as they walked. The owl gave Harry an oddly measured and courteous hoot, actually more of an eh sound, which surpr sound, which surprised Harry. The owl said Yeah, the owl's an audience surrogate, so it's going uh Um So Harry uh Harry decid Harry's like, oh god, everybody knows what I look like. Uh and he pulls out even with the sweatband. Um so he pulls out he just goes like full hijab. He pulls out a scarf and he wraps it around his face. Then he shut that drawer and pulled out another drawer and drew forth black wizarding robes, which he shrugged over his head now that he was out of Muggle territory. There, Harry said. The sound came out slightly muffled through the scarf over his face. He turned to Ron. How do I look? Stupid, I know. But am I identifiable as Harry Potter? Uh Ron said. He closed his mouth, which had been Open. Not really, Harry. Very good, Harry said. However, so as not to obviate the point of the whole exercise, you will henceforth address me as Varis might not work anymore. Mr. Spoo! Okay, Harry, Ron said uncertainly. The force is not particularly strong in this one. Call me Mr. Spoo. Okay, Mr. Spoo. Ron stopped. I can't do that. It makes me feel stupid. That's not just a feeling. Okay, you pick a name. Mr. Cannon, Ron said at once. For the Chudley Cannons. Uh Harry knew he was going to terribly regret asking this. Who or what are the Chudley Cannons? Who are the Chudley Cannons? Only the most brilliant team in the whole history of Quidditch. Sure, they finished it at the bottom of the league last year, but what's Quidditch? Asking this was also a mistake. So let me get this straight, Harry said, as it seemed that Ron's explanation with associated hand gestures was winding down. Catching the snitch is worth one hundred and fifty points.
JakeWhat a hot take. No one has ever, ever called this out before.
AntheaYeah. How many ten point goals does one side usually score, not counting the snitch? Uh maybe fifteen or twenty in professional games. That's just wrong. That violates every possible rule of game design. Look, the rest of the game sounds like it might make sense, sort of, for a sport, I mean, but you're basically saying that catching the snitch overwhelms almost any ordinary point spread. The two seekers are up there flying around looking for the snitch and usually not interacting with anyone else. Spotting the snitch first is going to be mostly luck. It's not luck, protested Ron. You've got to keep your eyes moving in the right pattern. That's not interactive. There's no back and forth with the other player, and how much fun is it to watch someone incredibly good at moving their eyes? And then whichever seeker gets lucky swoops in and grabs the snitch and makes everyone else's work moot. It's like someone took a real game and grafted on this pointless extra position so you could be the most important player without needing to really get involved or learn the rest of it. Who was the first seeker? The king's idiot son who wanted to play Quidditch but couldn't understand the rules? Actually, now that Harry thought about it, that seemed like a surprisingly good hypothesis. Put him on a broomstick and tell him to catch the shiny thing. This goes on.
JakeYou don't say. But also, if there's fifteen to twenty ten point goals, that means it's not irrelevant. That means the plush is catching the snitch.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. It's hard, but you could still do it.
JakeBut like it does not overwhelm the point spread. It is in fact less than fifteen to twenty ten-point goals.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
JakeIt is underwhelmed by the other points. Assuming there's just one snitch incident per game.
SPEAKER_01Also, the beaters try to knock the sneak seeker off their broom, which is extremely dangerous. Yes.
AntheaBut like, is a is a you know accepted, and there's yeah, there's bludgers running around trying to knock people off of their brooms. The beaters are trying to get the bludgers to interfere with other players. Right. A perfectly good strategy is to get the bludgers to interfere with the seeker, with the other team's seeker, so that your seeker can try and find the snitcher earlier.
SPEAKER_01I hate that I hate Yakowski so much that I'm caping for fucking quitting.
JakeIf this book came out today, would the beaters be called gooners instead?
SPEAKER_01Oh no. So, like, also, just um, okay, a couple things. Uh, I guess from this we've learned, if I'm a baby rationalist, I've learned that if I if I don't make myself immediately understood to someone um after a paragraph of random stuff, uh, I can safely assume they're an idiot and disregard anything they have to say. Yep. Uh-huh. Learning about sports is not worth your time. Yeah, which is not reflexively tribal at all.
JakeOnly if they're bad game design.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. It's actually, it's actually not even worth it to be curious about sports. And Harry knew that before he had heard a single thing about it. He wasn't like, oh, interesting. A type of game that I've never heard of. Um, he knows instinctively, without getting any input, that this is gonna be stupid, and he's correct.
SPEAKER_03Right?
JakeI really hope the story, I'm I'm not optimistic in terms of how the writing has been so far, but I really hope it puts Ron into Ravenclaw and Harry into Hufflepuff. That would be so that would be quite an interesting conflict for the character to overcome.
SPEAKER_01It could, because Harry would take this blow to his new forming ego, but also then be like, well, I still have to be a science guy. Like, that's what I like.
JakeYeah, also this Harry might kill Ron if that happens. I think that would actually be consistent with their thoughts and actions.
SPEAKER_01This Harry might kill Ron for no reason. Yeah, yeah.
JakeBut be very rational. Dumb people don't deserve to exist, I feel like is maybe what we're inching towards.
SPEAKER_01Oh, interesting. I feel interesting. I don't like the Avia, I don't like this at all. I don't like this at all. I feel three times.
AntheaWere you did you skip anything in that last section? I'm skipping a little bit of of Harry continuing to make suggestions about how you could make uh make Quidditch better, and Ron is Ron is horrified by the but it ron you know this Ron cares deeply about Quidditch and he's like what and he he's like you don't have to you don't have to like be mean about it, do you?
JakeNo, you do. That's how nationalism works.
AntheaThat's fair, he doesn't have to be mean about it. Um Harry says, if you can't criticize, you can't optimize. Oh but uh uh up to the point that I stopped reading, I did not skip anything.
SPEAKER_01So all of the little all of the little three separate asides about how Ron's a fucking idiot. Yes. At no point does Harry think maybe I could have been clearer about what I just said. Nope. Nope, not once. Also, I mean, look, he's 11, but Mr. Spoo or Mr. Cannon, it's gonna be very suspicious to call someone wearing a scarf over his face by Mr. Mr. Whenybody is the size of an 11-year-old.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Yes. If I were a rational gal, I would say, well, I know that Harry Potter's starting at Hogwarts this year, and I haven't seen a Harry Pot any Harry Potter on the train, but I have seen this scarf-decked fellow named Mr. Cannon.
AntheaWhich is not a surname I've ever heard before. Anyway. Yeah. Um, yeah, man. Uh yeah, you're picking up everything that I figured you'd pick up. Um just a couple notes about Quidditch. Uh in an annotated edition of The Philosopher's Stone, uh, in twenty thirteen, J.K. Rowling wrote, Quidditch was invented in a small hotel in Manchester after a row with my then boyfriend.
SPEAKER_01Oh dear.
AntheaI had been pondering the things that hold a society together, cause it to congregate, and signify its particular character, and knew I needed a sport. It infuriates men, which is quite satisfying given my state of mind when I invented it. Yeah. Now I'm gonna give her that one. Yeah, fair. Um I also have seen fans allege, and I have no see no I don't have any I don't have any evidence to support it, but I see no reason to disagree with it, that Quidditch's silly rules and long game times are rolling poking fun at cricket.
JakeYeah, that's I I kind of took it that way.
AntheaYeah. Um according to Wikipedia, typically test and first class cricket matches are played over three to five days with at least six hours of cricket being played each day.
JakeThey've made some like modernized versions of cricket that are only like a day instead.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Hell yes, it's the Kentucky cycle of games. Yes.
AntheaIn 1939, England played South Africa in a match that went for nine out of ten days and only ended because the English team had to catch a boat home. Yes! Yes! What? I also learned. I also learned. Baseball also doesn't have a time limit. One of the suggestions Harry makes is that you have a game clock like soccer or f or American football, where like that's how you know when the game is over, right? Okay. Like time runs out. Um like because he's because Ron is like, how else will how will you know if you get rid of the snitch? How will you know when the game is over? And Harry is like, put a time limit on it. Um and I Oh, no bad. Oh, well, so so baseball also doesn't have a time limit. Baseball has an innings limit, right?
SPEAKER_01Well baseball ends, the game of baseball ends when you invoke clocher.
AntheaNerd.
JakeI think you take the cloch off the yeah, yeah.
AntheaThe longest professional baseball game ever played lasted eight and a half hours, starting at 8 25 PM on April 18th, 1981, and continued for 32 innings at a 1-1 tie until they stopped the game at 4 07 a.m. on April 19th. I'm gonna say The players were delirious with exhaustion.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's fair. I'm disappointed in America.
AntheaThat's the best we can do?
SPEAKER_01Come on. Yeah.
JakeWell, because those cricket games have like processes.
SPEAKER_01Yes, they would stop and go eat dinner and stuff and like and then pick it up the next day. Okay, so eight and a half hours of being at straight play. Of just you're being at your peak. You're running as fast as you can, you're throwing as hard as you can, you're trying to catch- Okay.
AntheaIt has been stuck at one one. They play like like it's like one for like it's one-zero for like eight innings, and then in the ninth inning, they tie it up, and then no one can get past that for another.
JakeIt kind of makes sense because like I feel like being a batter takes the most focus of any of the positions. Yeah. So as people start to become delirious, it's just like, well, it's easier to defend than attack here, so it's just gonna be one-one.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. Not to make another theater reference, but I have a really cool idea for a new staging of no exit.
JakeI also want to make this take longer by just interjecting one of my favorite and only fun facts about athletes that I know. Yes. Is that I think his name was Ron Bradman, is one of the like biggest outliers in sports of all time in cricket. Because he has a batting average of something like these numbers are wrong, but it's like the right scale. He has like a 0.92 batting average, and the next person is like 0.68. And then everyone else is very tightly packed behind them. And everyone's just like, we can't explain why Ron Bradman is such a freak. It's like it is perhaps one of the most exceptional outliers in the history of sports. We don't know why guys a cricket beast can't figure it out. Amazing. Amazing.
SPEAKER_01And before we leave sports entirely, don't forget that if you have a secret, you can whisper it to a bird, and then whatever that baseball player is will hit it and it'll explode.
AntheaThat was a pitcher.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it was a pitcher. Yeah, pitcher.
AntheaEven more amazing. Yeah, yeah. Threw that ball so fast that it just exploded that bird.
JakeThat bird was deleted.
AntheaYeah, yes. Um Ron is saved from Harry's continued Quidditch Rules revisions by the arrival of one Draco Malfoy.
JakeUh.
AntheaWho greets Harry by name, despite Harry being wrapped in a scarf.
JakeAnd with a kiss? Just with a little kiss.
AntheaGod, I can't remember what voice I was what I was doing for Draco, so you know, how smug. Yeah, yeah. I think he I'm him I might do an English accent for. Porter, drawled a young boy's voice, what is that on your face and what is standing next to you?
SPEAKER_01Ew.
AntheaRon's look of horror was replaced by utter hatred. You Harry turned his head. And indeed, it was Draco Malfoy, who might have been forced to wear standard school robes, but was making up for that with a trunk looking at least as magical and far more elegant than Harry's own, decorated in silver and emeralds and bearing what Harry guessed to be the Malfoy family crest. Emerald A beautiful fanged serpent over crossed ivory wands. Draco, Harry said. Uh or Malfoy, if you prefer, though that kind of sounds like Lucius to me. I'm glad to see you're doing so well after um our last meeting. This is Ron Weasley. And I'm trying to go incognito, so call me, uh Harry looked down at his robes. Mr. Black. Harry, hissed Ron. You can't use that name.
JakeThat's their word.
AntheaHarry. Jesus Christ. No, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
AntheaI in um in uh Misfit and Magic. Misfits and Magic, um, because that's that's the uh Kids on Broomsticks uh Dimension 20 season that Abria Yangar. I was about to say, isn't that one that Abria DMs? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that she that she GMs. Um because it's uh it's two black players, one Asian player, and Brendan Lee Mulligan. Um there's a lot of there's a lot of jokes along those lines. And in that, in that game, um the word muggle is the M word. Oh no. There's a lot of like well, you get you get M-word privileges. Anyway. Um Harry, you can't use that name. Harry blinked. Why not? It sounded nicely dark, like an international man of mystery. I'd say it's a fine name, said Draco. But it belongs to the noble and most ancient house of black. I'll call you Mr. Silver. You get away from from Mr. Gold, Ron said coldly, and took a forward step. He doesn't need to talk to the likes of you. Harry raised a placating hand. I'll go buy Mr. Bronze. Thanks for the naming schema. And Ron, um Harry struggled to find a way to say this. I'm glad you're so enthusiastic about protecting me, but I don't particularly mind talking to Draco. This was apparently the last straw for Ron, who spun on Harry with eyes now aflame with outrage. What? Do you know who this is? Yes, Ron, Harry said. You may remember that I called him Draco without him needing to introduce himself. Draco sniggered. Then his eyes lit on the white owl on Ron's shoulder. Oh, what's this? Draco said, in a drawl rich with malice. Where's the famous Weasley family rat? Buried in the backyard, Ron said coldly.
JakeSo this has to be because Petunia was hot. That's the only point of departure. So she's Scabbers is dead.
AntheaYep. Yep, that that tracks. Aw, how sad. Pot uh Mr. Bronze. I should mention that the Weasley family is widely agreed to have the best pet story ever. What to tell it, Weasley? Ron's face contorted. You wouldn't think it was funny if it happened to your family. Oh, Draco purred, but it wouldn't ever happen to the male voice. Ron's hands clenched into fists. That's enough, Harry said, putting as much quiet authority into the voice as he couldn't manage. It was clear that whatever this was about, it was a painful memory for the red-haired kid. If Ron doesn't want to talk about it, he doesn't have to talk about it, and I'd ask that you not talk about it either. Draco turned a surprised look on Harry, and Ron nodded. That's right, Harry. I mean, Mr. Bronze, you see what kind of person he is? Now tell him to go away. Harry counted to ten inside his head, which for him was a very quick one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. An odd habit left over from the age of five, when his mother had first instructed him to do it, and Harry had reasoned that his way was faster and ought to be just as effective. I'm not telling him to go away, Harry said calmly. He's welcome to talk to me if he wants. Well, I don't intend to hang around with anyone who hangs around with Draco Malfoy, Ron announced coldly. Harry shrugged. That's up to you. I don't intend to let anyone say who I can and can't hang around with. Silently chanting, please go away, please go away. Ron's face went blank with surprise, like he'd actually expected that line to work. Then Ron spun about, yanked his luggage's lead, and stormed off down the platform. So yeah, so point one, Scabbers is dead, and the only point of departure is the platoon is hot. So how do we I don't know what what chain of events led to that. I'm genuinely very curious.
JakeAlso, wasn't Scabbers a dude? Yes, he's Peter Pettigrew. Okay.
AntheaYeah. No, he's Peter Pettigrew the whole time.
JakeOkay, so this dude is also dead now, presumably.
AntheaPresumably.
JakeOkay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Oh my god. I totally forgot that Scabbers was Peter Pettigrew. Yeah. Yeah. So I I so listen, just yeah, I forgot that. Um uh okay, uh also maybe relevant. Um, my mom hates rats.
JakeI mean, is it because they keep dying around her? Because she's so hot.
SPEAKER_01So just this dog. This dog hates rats. Oh my goodness. Uh she's a mighty hunter. Um uh okay, I don't know what else you were gonna say, but I just I just think like I'm not gonna talk about Ron and about how glad I am that we're not bashing Ron. Go for it.
AntheaYeah, well, okay, because I don't actually I don't find Ron particularly out of character. Like, uh I don't actually think he's being written as particularly stupid.
JakeYeah, I feel like where he says Mr. Gold instead is just him being dumb and like, oh, I forgot the word already and said gold instead of.
SPEAKER_01I think it's him being like, whatever Draco picks, I'm gonna do the opposite.
JakeOr like you're actually better than you're actually better than what Draco said. That's right, that's right. That was that was me being a Mr. Bronze.
AntheaUm He's been kind of slow on the uptake of Harry's attempts to go incognito, but not actually less so than Draco. Because Draco also immediately calls him Potter, uh, and then we'll call him Potter several more times in the following lines of dialogue. Um he's been friendly. Uh he info dumped about an important piece of wizard culture. Uh and then when a guy who was raised by the hottest fashion executioner Harry has ever seen approaches, Ron, who absolutely knows that the Malfoys were connected to Voldemort, the guy who killed Harry's parents.
JakeYeah, they're an empirically evil family.
AntheaThey are an empire and everyone knows it. He tries to warn Harry away from him, and like that, like uh, you know, okay, maybe Harry doesn't, like, at this moment understand how how d like connected the Malfoys were to Voldemort, to the peop to the guy who killed his parents.
SPEAKER_01So But he assumes Ron's reaction is baseless and has nothing to do with him or any empirical fact. Yes.
JakeYeah, when Ron is actually demonstrating an expert blind spot here, in which case he knows so much about the wizarding world, it feels obvious to him why it should be apparent to Harry.
SPEAKER_01Right, yes. Yeah. So that's a really well-written example of a lot of biases that Yakowski did by accident because he's a fucking idiot. Yep, yep. Um, that's not the official position of the podcast, but it is increasingly the official position of me, Alisa.
AntheaLike, Harry doesn't have to like Ron, you know, in any version of any universe. He doesn't have to like Ron. Like, and I will even grant you that uh that Ron being like, I'm not gonna hang out with anyone who hangs out with a Malfoy is like kind of is is like him being like, this is my friend, you know, in a very like kid way of saying like I saw you first, and then being like, Well, I'm gonna play on your emotions, and Harry being like, no, we just met, I don't owe you anything. Like um, but he does d I don't know if you can see my notes. No. Great. Uh but we get this. If you didn't like him, Draco said curiously, why didn't you just walk away? Um his mother helped me figure out how to get to this platform from the King's Cross station, so it was kind of hard to tell him to get lost. And it's not that I hate this Ron guy, Harry said. I just just Harry searched for words. Don't see any reason for him to exist, offered Draco. Pretty much.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
AntheaHoly eugenics, Batman!
JakeAnd then they throw fist.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
AntheaI what have you said? Like I like I anticipate that this is going to be about how Harry doesn't think that Rom should exist.
SPEAKER_01I said I thought the eugenic stuff was gonna be about the Weaslies, but I didn't think it was gonna see a reason for him to exist? That's a really strange and specific formulation of Isn't it? Isn't that word? Yeah, uh before we move on.
JakeIt seems pretty in line with things so far, really.
SPEAKER_01Before we move on, I will say, um, the value that's being expressed, at least out loud by Harry, I guess the actual truth is that he just thought Ron was annoying and not interesting and don't wanted him to go away from reality. Um, which is different than dying if you never existed. Yes. Um but uh but um but what he says is that he doesn't want to be told with whom he can and can't associate. Sure. Which is such a centrist going on a Nazi podcast move. That I'm just I'm not surprised that so many of these rationalist new atheist centrists have ended up falling into Nazi potholes.
AntheaIt does, they're they're yeah, I I like yeah, like not that they're Nazis, but they do fall into Nazi potholes. Speaking of, um, I think we'll probably get deeper into the eugenicist streak that shows up in the rationalist community some other time.
JakeOh no.
AntheaWe're but I wanna I'm gonna introduce it for now.
JakeOkay. This is a eugenics amusbouche.
AntheaEugenics, so wet are eugenics palettes.
SPEAKER_01It's just a tasting flight of eugenics.
AntheaYeah. Um, in Yadkowski's original fiction world, Daith Elan, quote, the average IQ in Earth equivalent terms is 143 after an unknown number of generations of Heritage optimization pursued via positive government subsidies. End quote. Sorry. And in 2025, he described a potential project dedicated to making super babies that can solve AI alignment for us by being super smart and super healthy, as, quote, arguably the third most important project in the world.
JakeWe could do an episode on that paragraph.
SPEAKER_01We could we easily could. Oh my god, Super Babies is actually um the critically acclaimed sequel to Muppet Babies.
JakeSo And like if these babies were men, it'd be some kind of like Uber.
AntheaOh I don't know, Uber babies.
JakeUber dudes.
AntheaUber Yeah, Uber dudes.
JakeUber men.
AntheaUber men? I like it. I haven't read that one before. Yeah. Yep. I know that I will make some rationalists uncomfortable or defensive by saying this, because rationalists who espouse the idea that people should be able to choose to have kids with higher IQs, fewer diseases, and less depression really, really hate it when people say that's eugenics. To the point that you will find people in the community arguing that they should come up with a different word for breeding for the best possible person, so that people will stop calling it eugenics. Because it's not about force sterilization or genocide. It's just about selecting for desirable traits like intelligence. People who espouse these ideas are very clear to correct the idea that, quote, I want to prevent you from marrying to correct the idea that I want to prevent you from marrying as you choose. Before I speak upon this subject, I want you distinctly to understand that I have no intention of interfering with your liberty of marriage. You can marry whom you choose, and I hope you will be happy. I think, however, that it is the duty of every good man and every good woman to remember that children follow marriage, and I am sure that there is no one among the deaf who desires to have his affliction handed down to his children.
JakeAnd be sliding through on a technicality again.
AntheaOh, sorry, that was Alexander Graham Bell in 1898 telling deaf people they shouldn't marry other deaf people. People on less wrong say things like, quote, I'm merely arguing that people should have the right to give their children better genetics, so long as those changes have at least some benefit to the well-being of the child. There are, of course, always going to be some traits that are on the borderline of what we might consider ethically permissible. For example, should deaf parents be allowed to purposefully have a deaf child? I lean towards yes, particularly if the child can choose to reverse the condition with some kind of implant or medical procedure later in life.
JakeI'm praying I can do that.
AntheaCool. Um I'm glad we've moved from telling deaf people, of course you can marry whoever you want, but should you? To of course you should be allowed to have deaf kids. It's a borderline ethically permissible choice. That feels like progress to me.
SPEAKER_01Ooh, it's a little two steps forward, one step back into the side. Um I just Okay, I know you have more stuff. All my homies hate Alexander Graham Bell, by the way. He sucks. Um uh couple just quickly, um Okay, what the fuck is a good gene?
JakeYeah, I was gonna say, that's like when when talking about like, oh, as long as it helps the well-being, is like we'll all agree on what well-being means, right? There won't be any contention there.
SPEAKER_01I don't think there will be any problems there. Intellect is just one gene, right? So you can just kind of pick that way, flip it on instead of off, and that'll do it. Yeah, it won't have any kind of interaction with anything else.
AntheaLook, these guys are they're not saying that it's gonna be simple. They're not saying that. They're saying and they're not saying that you're gonna be able to go from uh an average IQ of 90 to an average IQ of 120 or 140 overnight in one generation. You're gonna get maybe a couple of points of IQ when you do the polygenic embryonic screening that they recommend.
JakeAm I misremembering? I thought I I thought average IQ was always a hundred. I thought that's how the scale works.
AntheaUm I genuinely don't know.
JakeBut I mean, he said in his world, oh, it has there's an average IQ of 140. I thought, like, no, there isn't.
AntheaLike, am I misunderstanding?
JakeNo, I think the average IQ in your world is a hundred.
AntheaYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It would be it would be red as well.
JakeI misremember.
SPEAKER_01No, I think you might be right. I'll look I'll look into that and we'll put it in the show notes. He says 143 is the average where he is, because um, but yeah, it just Which means we're both smarter. Than the average Dapholanian. Um I just but like the idea of there are certain things that you can identify. There are certain genetic markers that carry specific risks, like for instance, the marker for Taysax disease. Yeah. Um but there's other things where it's not clear to me that that's how it works. It's not settled that intellect is genetic in the way that we understand it. Like that's based on retrofitting IQ tests, which were formed like basically like to play defense against black people being considered smart. Um like, you know, I there'll be show notes about this, because I'm sure that what I have just said, I'm like, mm, I do want to do a little more, you know, uh qualified. We'll do our we'll do our good diligence on that. But the idea that like I I don't I don't concede the point that even if that's something one, that like even if it's something that's okay to want, um, that that high IQ is something that correlates to genes in the way that we understand them. Sure. Yeah. Um, oh, also, uh uh Chaser, it's not acceptable to want that. Like sorry. Uh a human being's value is not determined by their intellect. There are human beings a human being's success is not fully determined by their intellect. I mean, really, to I mean, there's if you wanted to improve people's quality of life.
AntheaThe previous chapters about how there were probably thousands of people like Einstein who just never were able to uh who who never became Einstein because they didn't they didn't have the one thing that Einstein had. Also, we've all seen Do we remember what the one in one thing Einstein had that no one else had was?
JakeI'm gonna copyright off it.
SPEAKER_01Enough calories while he was between the ages of zero and five. Any other guesses?
SPEAKER_03Cool haircut.
SPEAKER_01No lead paint in the house. A very important problem.
AntheaThat was it. That was it. Oh man, I'm so stupid.
SPEAKER_01I'm only just above average IQ in Gutkowski's dream world. Um, but like, yeah, so like and I know like there are social interventions that would do a lot more to if we're talking about, oh, but these are traits that'll promote people's thriving, there are uh political interventions that we could make uh that would be way less costly in time and money than this dead end of researching super babies.
JakeWell, and we've all seen the Lisa Simpson chart. We're actually dooming the baby to be sad by making them smart. Exactly.
AntheaWell, and I I I you might be joking. I'm not sure.
JakeSort of.
AntheaNot really, but yeah. Like, I think something that is interesting is that there is a very um what's the word I'm looking at? I mean utilitarian is, but that's not exactly the the word that I'm clawing for. Um uh but like uh the these super babies are being like this is like Yadkowski says that this is the third most important project in the world. Um not because it will improve the quality of life for the children themselves, but because if we have because if we are going to solve artificial superintelligence, artificial general intelligence, AI alignment, we must have smarter people. Counterpoint. Uh uh God, why is that gonna drive me nuts? Um it's a it's a very like imperative uh uh useful uh idea. Like like the the reason to do this is for its use, not for its inherent good. Counterpoint, you said.
SPEAKER_01I mean, of course they would talk about of course talking about this as use is uh is coming up again. Um, your screen went black. Oh no. Um counterpoint. Mom, dad, what is it, Epsilon? I don't want to be an AI researcher when I grow up. I want to play drums.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01And I guess that Yakowski would say that you can throw a bunch of super babies at the problem and only a couple of them will start indie rock bands and the rest of them will work on AI alignment or someone will work on AI alignment and be smart enough to like Yeah, opposite, like if you yeah, if you yeah, yeah, if you as long as you as long as a couple, you know, of the the smartest of the smart get the get through there. But okay, so and this is another problem where this is something that he thinks is going to be solved by raw compute, as opposed to here's the deal. Some people say no one has ever explained, and by some people I mean Nazis have said no one has ever explained why diversity is our strength. The reason that diversity is our strength is because a multitude of viewpoints and lenses gives you a more holistic view of a problem and potential solutions and more imaginative potential to get outside of received wisdom than just being really, really smart, but having one extremely narrow range of experiences. That's why diversity is our strength. So the idea that having a bunch of super babies who are all optimized for one particular axis of human proficiency. Now let's assume I don't think that's possible. Let's assume it is possible. Right. I don't I think that would be a violation of the human rights of these babies. Uh let's assume that it's not that. Um, the idea that this would be the correct solution to solve problems that Yadkowski wants to solve is an assumption that relies on the variable of raw intelligence. The higher it goes, the more compute you have, the better results you get. That is true of machines, but it's not true of people.
JakeAlso, the minions have been warning us of the other danger if you direct everyone towards genetic similarity.
AntheaYeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.
JakeBanana.
AntheaBanana!
JakeBecause if all of everyone's genes are the same.
AntheaAnd all in the banana?
JakeNo, the I'm assuming this is gonna be nonsense. I'm telling you nonsense. But no, it's it's how we now have the I can't remember the names of them, but how we now have different bananas than we used to, because all of the bananas died. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Simple, yeah, but diversity. Like, I know we're talking about not necessarily genetic diversity, but bringing it back to eugenics and diversity. Like you intentionally want genetic mutations and quote unquote faults and flukes, because otherwise, all the bananas die, except we are the bananas this time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you don't know what kind of conditions are gonna arise in the future where well like where you would if you Yeah, by which it would be a bad exam a bad uh You said it better than I did.
SPEAKER_03But you don't know what conditions I said banana.
SPEAKER_01That's not true. You said banana and you said minions. That's right. Um No, uh you don't know what conditions will arise in the future where you might want some of that genetic variation lingering. Yeah, yeah.
AntheaI got I uh two two thoughts. Uh one, for for a community that loves sci-fi so much, I think it's crazy that like Gattaca never comes up in these conversations.
JakeI mean, it's it's a trope at this point that you know tech bros only take the bad lessons from you know scientists and think they're the good ones.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of like there's even um one of my favorite sci-fi stories is called When I Was Ms. Dow, which is about um this alien group that like patterns themselves after human beings, but in like they're they're a total different morphology and all this stuff. They have no concept of gender, and this alien becomes Ms. Dow, a research assistant, to get closer to a scientist, but then like falls in love with him and kind of attaches to this idea of the gender that they have. Uh-huh. Um, it's a really cool story. It's about gender and colonialism and like things like that. And uh I don't think it really features at all into uh the uh the worldview expressed here. It seems like also they probably didn't watch Gattaca because it was a movie that wasn't based on a book by uh I don't know. Well, yeah, it's it nominated for an award of any kind because I feel like they don't catch a lot of those films.
AntheaI don't know. Well, if they are uh uh nominated for an award.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
AntheaInteresting, interesting. I yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01No, look, I haven't seen Phantom Thread. No. So whatever. I can't throw stones.
AntheaPoint two. I do want to know, uh like I want to be super clear and fair. Like Cryonics, this uh definitely not eugenics idea is not necessarily it's not like a universally held belief in the community. There is at least one heroic commenter. Yes! Yes, yes, finally a hero! It's like uh that quote I read about um about saying that uh that sure deaf parents should be allowed to have deaf to purposefully have deaf children. Um uh that's a guy named Gene Smith, uh, or Gene Smith. Um, and he gets followed around by this commenter who is just like leaves these long, well thought out comments about like what you are advocating for is not politically or ethically neutral. I know you think it is, but what you are talking about, I am a I am an autistic, trans, queer, like weirdo. My conservative parents would absolutely have tried to genetically engineer me out of existence. They would have tried to choose for me not to exist. You are not talking about something that is just politically neutral. Um That being said, I'm is that what Yagyod means by hero? Is what I mean by hero. Yeah, hell yeah. Hell yeah. Uh so we are we're getting, I swear we're getting near my break point.
unknownOkay.
JakeSo you're scrolling a lot.
AntheaYeah, we can take a break here, actually. This might be a good before we go, I think.
SPEAKER_01Because we've been recording for a minute.
AntheaOkay, I also and ending, you know, taking taking a break on part one on anyway, rationalists, not non-eugenicists. I need a refill. Yeah. Step one of my alcohol. And you probably needed one before we started this section. And definitely, definitely.
SPEAKER_01And step two, I'll pour more wine next time. I won't make the same mistake again. Yeah, yeah. And uh step two is I also just want to note that, like, Draco Malfoy is being cruel to Ron from the get-go in ways that should be obvious to Harry that he's. They are obvious to Harry. He calls it out. He calls it out one time, but he doesn't call out like, gosh, the entire way that you have positioned yourself towards Ron. And I mean, I guess it becomes apparent at the end because he's like, yeah, I don't see why he exists. But like, is it therefore fine or neutral to call him that? What is that next to you? Like, that's how Draco opens.
JakeWell, he already thought Ron was dumb though, so it's fine, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, yes, I Harry did, yeah. But like, so I just think that that's also something else that if I'm a baby rationalist learning from this, that I'm supposed to take away from this, that if people are cruel to somebody, especially if they've shown themselves to be lesser, um, it's maybe not great. You maybe wouldn't do it yourself, you wouldn't do it like that. But you agree with that cruel person's underlying assumptions and you don't think that it's uh disqualifying that they behave in this way.
JakeCruelty and anger are acceptable if you are right.
SPEAKER_01Yes, they're yeah, they're more yeah, yep.
AntheaSnaps.
JakeYeah. That is the belief of this podcast.
AntheaYeah, yes, oh yeah, yeah. We think that. We don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And on that note, we're gonna take a break. And that's it for part one. Check back in a couple of days for part two where things are really gonna go off the rails. You thought this one was a lie. Man oh man, uh, mind the content warnings. Check out the show notes actually for citations and further reading. We got lots of good stuff in there. Videos, articles, short stories. Uh, this is a good episode for uh for further reading. Our website is HPMOR and the limits of rationality.buzzsprout.com. You can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Cockcasts, and other places. If you like the podcast, tell your friends. Leave a five-star rating or win in places where you can do that. And uh thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Harry Potter and the methods of rationality and the sequences are copyright Eliasia Yachowski. This podcast may contain copyrighted material, the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner, for the purposes of commentary, criticism, and transformation, which are protected under the doctrine of fair use. This podcast is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 international license. The music you heard in this episode is The Watchmaker's Secret by Nikolai Haydlass from HookSounds.com. Thanks for listening.
