Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Then they turned serious. "But Harry, we don't really know how to do anything like that -"

  "So figure it out," Harry said. "I have confidence in you. Not total confidence, but if you can't do it, tell me that, and I'll try someone else, or do it myself. If you have a really good idea - for both the ridiculous story, and how to convince Rita Skeeter and her editors to print it - then you can go ahead and do it. But don't go with something mediocre. If you can't come up with something awesome, just say so."

  Fred and George exchanged worried glances.

  "I can't think of anything," said George.

  "Neither can I," said Fred. "Sorry."

  Harry stared at them.

  And then Harry began to explain how you went about thinking of things.

  It had been known to take longer than two seconds, said Harry.

  You never called any question impossible, said Harry, until you had taken an actual clock and thought about it for five minutes, by the motion of the minute hand. Not five minutes metaphorically, five minutes by a physical clock.

  And furthermore, Harry said, his voice emphatic and his right hand thumping hard on the floor, you did not start out immediately looking for solutions.

  Harry then launched into an explanation of a test done by someone named Norman Maier, who was something called an organizational psychologist, and who'd asked two different sets of problem-solving groups to tackle a problem.

  The problem, Harry said, had involved three employees doing three jobs. The junior employee wanted to just do the easiest job. The senior employee wanted to rotate between jobs, to avoid boredom. An efficiency expert had recommended giving the junior person the easiest job and the senior person the hardest job, which would be 20% more productive.

  One set of problem-solving groups had been given the instruction "Do not propose solutions until the problem has been discussed as thoroughly as possible without suggesting any."

  The other set of problem-solving groups had been given no instructions. And those people had done the natural thing, and reacted to the presence of a problem by proposing solutions. And people had gotten attached to those solutions, and started fighting about them, and arguing about the relative importance of freedom versus efficiency and so on.

  The first set of problem-solving groups, the ones given instructions to discuss the problem first and then solve it, had been far more likely to hit upon the solution of letting the junior employee keep the easiest job and rotating the other two people between the other two jobs, for what the expert's data said would be a 19% improvement.

  Starting out by looking for solutions was taking things entirely out of order. Like starting a meal with dessert, only bad.

  (Harry also quoted someone named Robyn Dawes as saying that the harder a problem was, the more likely people were to try to solve it immediately.)

  So Harry was going to leave this problem to Fred and George, and they would discuss all the aspects of it and brainstorm anything they thought might be remotely relevant. And they shouldn't try to come up with an actual solution until they'd finished doing that, unless of course they did happen to randomly think of something awesome, in which case they could write it down for afterward and then go back to thinking. And he didn't want to hear back from them about any so-called failures to think of anything for at least a week. Some people spent decades trying to think of things.

  "Any questions?" said Harry.

  Fred and George stared at each other.

  "I can't think of any."

  "Neither can I."

  Harry coughed gently. "You didn't ask about your budget."

  Budget? they thought.

  "I could just tell you the amount," Harry said. "But I think this will be more inspiring."

  Harry's hands dipped into his robe, and brought forth -

  Fred and George almost fell over, even though they were sitting down.

  "Don't spend it for the sake of spending it," Harry said. On the stone floor in front of them gleamed an absolutely ridiculous amount of money. "Only spend it if awesomeness requires; and what awesomeness does require, don't hesitate to spend. If there's anything left over, just return it afterward, I trust you. Oh, and you get ten percent of what's there, regardless of how much you end up spending -"

  "We can't!" blurted one of the twins. "We don't accept money for that sort of thing!"

  (The twins never took money for doing anything illegal. Unknown to Ambrosius Flume, they were selling all of his merchandise at zero percent markup. Fred and George wanted to be able to testify - under Veritaserum if necessary - that they had not been profiteering criminals, just providing a public service.)

  Harry frowned at them. "But I'm asking you to put in some real work here. A grownup would get paid for doing something like this, and it would still count as a favor for a friend. You can't just hire people for this sort of thing."

  Fred and George shook their heads.

  "Fine," Harry said. "I'll just get you expensive Christmas presents, and if you try returning them to me I'll burn them. Now you don't even know how much I'm going to spend on you, except, obviously, that it's going to be more than if you'd just taken the money. And I'm going to buy you those presents anyway, so think about that before you tell me you can't think of anything awesome."

  Harry stood up, smiling, and turned to go while Fred and George were still gaping in shock. He strode a few steps away, and then turned back.

  "Oh, one last thing," Harry said. "Leave Professor Quirrell out of whatever you do. He doesn't like publicity. I know it'd be easier to get people to believe weird things about the Defense Professor than anyone else, and I'm sorry to have to get in your way like that, but please, leave Professor Quirrell out of it."

  And Harry turned again and took a few more steps -

  Looked back one last time, and said, softly, "Thank you."

  And left.

  There was a long pause after he'd departed.

  "So," said one.

  "So," said the other.

  "The Defense Professor doesn't like publicity, does he."

  "Harry doesn't know us very well, does he."

  "No, he doesn't."

  "But we won't use his money for that, of course."

  "Of course not, that wouldn't be right. We'll do the Defense Professor separately."

  "We'll get some Gryffindors to write Skeeter, and say..."

  "...his sleeve lifted up one time in Defense class, and they saw the Dark Mark..."

  "...and he's probably teaching Harry Potter all sorts of dreadful things..."

  "...and he's the worst Defense Professor anyone remembers even in Hogwarts, he's not just failing to teach us, he's getting everything wrong, the complete opposite of what it should be..."

  "...like when he claimed that you could only cast the Killing Curse using love, which made it pretty much useless."

  "I like that one."

  "Thanks."

  "I bet the Defense Professor likes it too."

  "He does have a sense of humor. He wouldn't have called us what he did if he didn't have a sense of humor."

  "But are we really going to be able to do Harry's job?"

  "Harry said to discuss the problem before trying to solve it, so let's do that."

  The Weasley twins decided that George would be the enthusiastic one while Fred doubted.

  "It all seems sort of contradictory," said Fred. "He wants it to be ridiculous enough that everyone laughs at Skeeter and knows it's wrong, and he wants Skeeter to believe it. We can't do both things at the same time."

  "We'll have to fake up some evidence to convince Skeeter," said George.

  "Was that a solution?" said Fred.

  They considered this.

  "Maybe," said George, "but I don't think we should be all that strict about it, do you?"

  The twins shrugged helplessly.

  "So then the fake evidence has to be good enough to convince Skeeter," said Fred. "Can we really do that on our own?"
<
br />   "We don't have to do it on our own," said George, and pointed to the pile of money. "We can hire other people to help us."

  The twins got a thoughtful look on their face.

  "That could use up Harry's budget pretty fast," said Fred. "This is a lot of money for us, but it's not a lot of money for someone like Flume."

  "Maybe people will give discounts if they know it's for Harry," said George. "But most importantly of all, whatever we do, it has to be impossible."

  Fred blinked. "What do you mean, impossible?"

  "So impossible that we don't get in trouble, because no one believes we could have done it. So impossible that even Harry starts wondering. It has to be surreal, it has to make people doubt their own sanity, it has to be... better than Harry."

  Fred's eyes were wide in astonishment. This happened sometimes, between them, but not often. "But why?"

  "They were pranks. They were all pranks. The pie was a prank. The Remembrall was a prank. Kevin Entwhistle's cat was a prank. Snape was a prank. We're the best pranksters in Hogwarts, are we going to roll over and give up without a fight?"

  "He's the Boy-Who-Lived," said Fred.

  "And we're the Weasley twins! He's challenging us. He said we could do what he does. But I bet he doesn't think we'll ever be as good as him."

  "He's right," said Fred, feeling rather nervous. The Weasley twins did sometimes disagree even when they had all the same information, but every time they did it seemed unnatural, like at least one of them must be doing something wrong. "This is Harry Potter we're talking about. He can do the impossible. We can't."

  "Yes we can," said George. "And we have to be more impossible than him."

  "But -" said Fred.

  "It's what Godric Gryffindor would do," said George.

  That settled it, and the twins snapped back into... whatever it was that was normal for them.

  "All right, then -"

  "- let's think about it."

  Chapter 26: Noticing Confusion

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  Professor Quirrell's office hours consisted of 11:40 to 11:55 AM on Thursday. That was for all of his students in all years. It cost a Quirrell point just to knock on the door, and if he didn't think your reason was worth his time, you would lose another fifty.

  Harry knocked on the door.

  There was a pause. Then a biting voice said, "I suppose you may as well come in, Mr. Potter."

  And before Harry could touch the doorknob, the door slammed open, hitting the wall with a sharp crack that sounded like something might have broken in the wood, or the stone, or both.

  Professor Quirrell was leaning back in his chair and reading a suspiciously old-looking book, bound in night-blue leather with silver runes on the spine. His eyes had not moved from the pages. "I am not in a good mood, Mr. Potter. And when I am not a good mood, I am not a pleasant person to be around. For your own sake, conduct your business quickly and depart."

  A cold chill seeped from the room, as though it contained something that cast darkness the way lamps cast light, and which hadn't been fully shaded.

  Harry was a bit taken aback. Not in a good mood didn't quite seem to cover it. What could be bothering Professor Quirrell this much...?

  Well, you didn't just walk out on friends when they were feeling down. Harry cautiously advanced into the room. "Is there anything I can do to help -"

  "No," said Professor Quirrell, still not looking up from the book.

  "I mean, if you've been dealing with idiots and want someone sane to talk to..."

  There was a surprisingly long pause.

  Professor Quirrell slammed the book shut and it vanished with a small whispering sound. He looked up, then, and Harry flinched.

  "I suppose an intelligent conversation would be pleasant for me at this point," said Professor Quirrell in the same biting tone that had invited Harry to enter. "You are not likely to find it so, be warned."

  Harry drew a deep breath. "I promise I won't mind if you snap at me. What happened?"

  The cold in the room seemed to deepen. "A sixth-year Gryffindor cast a curse at one of my more promising students, a sixth-year Slytherin."

  Harry swallowed. "What... sort of curse?"

  And the fury on Professor Quirrell's face was no longer contained. "Why bother to ask an unimportant question like that, Mr. Potter? Our friend the sixth-year Gryffindor did not think it was important!"

  "Are you serious?" Harry said before he could stop himself.

  "No, I'm in a terrible mood today for no particular reason. Yes I'm serious, you fool! He didn't know. He actually didn't know. I didn't believe it until the Aurors confirmed it under Veritaserum. He is in his sixth year at Hogwarts and he cast a high-level Dark curse without knowing what it did."

  "You don't mean," Harry said, "that he was mistaken about what it did, that he somehow read the wrong spell description -"

  "All he knew was that it was meant to be directed at an enemy. He knew that was all he knew."

  And that had been enough to cast the spell. "I do not understand how anything with that small a brain could walk upright."

  "Indeed, Mr. Potter," said Professor Quirrell.

  There was a pause. Professor Quirrell leaned forward and picked up the silver inkwell from his desk, turning it around in his hands, staring at it as though wondering how he could go about torturing an inkwell to death.

  "Was the sixth-year Slytherin seriously hurt?" said Harry.

  "Yes."

  "Was the sixth-year Gryffindor raised by Muggles?"

  "Yes."

  "Is Dumbledore refusing to expel him because the poor boy didn't know?"

  Professor Quirrell's hands whitened on the inkwell. "Do you have a point, Mr. Potter, or are you just stating the obvious?"

  "Professor Quirrell," said Harry gravely, "all the Muggle-raised students in Hogwarts need a safety lecture in which they are told the things so ridiculously obvious that no wizardborn would ever think to mention them. Don't cast curses if you don't know what they do, if you discover something dangerous don't tell the world about it, don't brew high-level potions without supervision in a bathroom, the reason why there are underage magic laws, all the basics."

  "Why?" said Professor Quirrell. "Let the stupid ones die before they breed."

  "If you don't mind losing a few sixth-year Slytherins along with them."

  The inkwell caught fire in Professor Quirrell's hands and burned with a terrible slowness, hideous black-orange flames tearing at the metal and seeming to take tiny bites from it, the silver twisting as it melted, as though it were trying and failing to escape. There was a tinny shrieking sound, as though the metal were screaming.

  "I suppose you are right," Professor Quirrell said with a resigned smile. "I shall design a lecture to ensure that Muggleborns who are too stupid to live do not take anyone valuable with them as they depart."

  The inkwell went on screaming and burning in Professor Quirrell's hands, tiny droplets of metal, still on fire, now dripping to the desk, as though the inkwell were crying.

  "You're not running away," observed Professor Quirrell.

  Harry opened his mouth -

  "If you're about to say you're not scared of me," said Professor Quirrell, "don't."

  "You are the scariest person I know," Harry said, "and one of the top reasons for that is your control. I simply can't imagine hearing that you'd hurt someone you had not made a deliberate decision to hurt."

  The fire in Professor Quirrell's hands winked out, and he carefully placed the ruined inkwell on his desk. "You say the nicest things, Mr. Potter. Have you been taking lessons in flattery? From, perhaps, Mr. Malfoy?"

  Harry kept his expression blank, and realized one second too late that it might as well have been a signed confession. Professor Quirrell didn't care what your expression looked like, he cared which states of mind made it likely.

  "I see," said Professor Quirrell. "Mr. Malfoy
is a useful friend to have, Mr. Potter, and there is much he can teach you, but I hope you have not made the mistake of trusting him with too many confidences."

  "He knows nothing which I fear becoming known," said Harry.

  "Well done," said Professor Quirrell, smiling slightly. "So what was your original business here?"

  "I think I'm done with the preliminary exercises in Occlumency and ready for the tutor."

  Professor Quirrell nodded. "I shall conduct you to Gringotts this Sunday." He paused, looking at Harry, and smiled. "And we might even make it a little outing, if you like. I've just had a pleasant thought."

  Harry nodded, smiling back.

  As Harry left the office, he heard Professor Quirrell humming a small tune.

  Harry was glad he'd been able to cheer him up.

  That Sunday there seemed to be a rather large number of people whispering in the hallways, at least when Harry Potter walked past them.

  And a lot of pointed fingers.

  And a great deal of female giggling.

  It had started at breakfast, when someone had asked Harry if he'd heard the news, and Harry had quickly interrupted and said that if the news was written by Rita Skeeter then he didn't want to hear about it, he wanted to read it in the paper himself.

  It had then developed that not many students at Hogwarts got copies of the Daily Prophet, and that the copies which had not already been bought up from their owners were being passed around in some sort of complicated order and nobody really knew who had one at the moment...

  So Harry had used a Quieting Charm and gone on to eat his breakfast, trusting to his seat-mates to wave off the many, many questioners, and doing his best to ignore the incredulity, the laughter, the congratulatory smiles, the pitying looks, the fearful glances, and the dropped plates as new people came down for breakfast and heard.

  Harry was feeling rather curious, but it really wouldn't have done to spoil the artistry by hearing it secondhand.

  He'd done homework in the safety of his trunk for the next couple of hours, after telling his dormmates to come get him if anyone found him an original newspaper.

  Harry was still ignorant at 10AM, when he'd left Hogwarts in a carriage with Professor Quirrell, who was in the front right, and currently slumped over in zombie-mode. Harry was sitting diagonally across, as far away as the carriage allowed, in the back left. Even so, Harry had a constant feeling of doom as the carriage rattled over a small path through a section of non-forbidden forest. It made it a bit hard to read, especially since the material was difficult, and Harry suddenly wished he was reading one of his childhood science fiction books instead -