Eliezer Yudkowsky

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

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  • Maxhas quoted3 years ago
    “Muggle researchers have found that people are always very optimistic, compared to reality. Like they say something will take two days and it takes ten days, or they say it’ll take two months and it takes over thirty-five years. For example, in one experiment, they asked students for times by which they were 50% sure, 75% sure, and 99% sure they’d complete their homework, and only 13%, 19%, and 45% of the students finished by those times. And they found that the reason was that when they asked one group for their best-case estimates if everything went as well as possible, and another group for their average-case estimates if everything went as usual, they got back answers that were statistically indistinguishable. See, if you ask someone what they expect in the normal case, they visualise what looks like the line of maximum probability at each step along the way - everything going according to plan, with no surprises. But actually, since more than half the students didn’t finish by the time they were 99% sure they’d be done, reality usually delivers results a little worse than the ‘worst-case scenario’. It’s called the planning fallacy, and the best way to fix it is to ask how long things took the last time you tried them. That’s called using the outside view instead of the inside view.
  • Денис Бангhas quoted4 years ago
    stern-but-proud
  • Денис Бангhas quoted4 years ago
    with long easy strides,
  • Денис Бангhas quoted4 years ago
    feeling vaguely dirtied by having made a deliberate effort to believe something.
  • Денис Бангhas quoted4 years ago
    May I inquire as to who that was,
  • Денис Бангhas quoted4 years ago
    So here we part ways, for a time
  • Денис Бангhas quoted4 years ago
    it is prohibited without supervision.
  • Денис Бангhas quoted4 years ago
    how did you find Harry?"
  • Денис Бангhas quoted4 years ago
    Harry felt like throwing up, or cheering, or fainting, or something.
  • Денис Бангhas quoted4 years ago
    courtesy and obedience
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